Aziz Ansari Accused of Sexual Misconduct
[Content warning: This article discusses sexual misconduct, and the anonymous woman quoted in the article goes into detail about her alleged experiences. Only read if you’re in an okay place for that.]
Aziz Ansari has been accused of sexual misconduct on a recent date. Katie Way at babe spoke to a 23-year-old woman, referred to as “Grace” in the article to protect her identity, who went on a date with Ansari in September of 2017. After the two came back to his apartment, Grace alleges that Ansari repeatedly and aggressively pushed for more sexual contact, despite her repeated verbal and non-verbal cues to stop.
“It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again,” she told babe. “It was really repetitive. It felt like a fucking game.”
“Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” Grace said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold … I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.”
For instance, Grace says Ansari immediately began touching and kissing her when they got into the apartment, and she says that when Ansari asked, “Where do you want me to fuck you?” she felt shocked and answered, “Next time.” She says he then tried to clarify, asking, “Oh, you mean second date?” and when she said, “Oh, yeah, sure,” his response was to ask, “Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?”
She says she then told Ansari, “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.” Initially, she says, he reacted in a way that reassured her, replying, “Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun” and suggesting they just “chill over here on the couch.” However, she claims that once she had seated herself on the floor beside the couch, Ansari “sat back and pointed to his penis and motioned for me to go down on him. And I did. I think I just felt really pressured. It was literally the most unexpected thing I thought would happen at that moment because I told him I was uncomfortable.”
She claims he later brought her to a large mirror in the apartment and “bent her over and asked her again, ‘Where do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to fuck you right here?'” while pantomiming intercourse. At this point, Grace said, “I just remember looking in the mirror and seeing him behind me. He was very much caught up in the moment and I obviously very much wasn’t. After he bent me over is when I stood up and said no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this.”
Grace claims that Ansari again responded by suggesting that they “just chill, but this time with our clothes on.” However, she says that soon after they were dressed and seated on the couch, “he kissed her again, stuck his fingers down her throat again, and moved to undo her pants.”
Grace says she was able to leave the apartment shortly after that, and that she “cried the whole ride home. At that point I felt violated. That last hour was so out of my hand.”
Babe also shared what they allege is a text exchange between Grace and Ansari, initiated after she sent him a text the next morning to explain how he’d hurt her.
This is the text Grace* sent Aziz Ansari after their date which left her feeling “violated”. She tells Ansari how uncomfortable he made her feel, saying “you ignored clear non-verbal cues” and “kept going with advances.”
Read the full story on https://t.co/FyMMG6uO1j. pic.twitter.com/lPOvW6tFTr
— babe (@babedotnet) January 14, 2018
“I didn’t leave because I think I was stunned and shocked,” Grace said. “This was not what I expected. I’d seen some of his shows and read excerpts from his book and I was not expecting a bad night at all, much less a violating night and a painful one … I believe that I was taken advantage of by Aziz. I was not listened to and ignored. It was by far the worst experience with a man I’ve ever had.”
Many readers have reacted to the piece by observing that this sort of experience is all-too-common, with some using that fact to downplay Ansari’s behavior and others using it to illustrate how pervasive the dangerous “keep trying” attitude toward consent is.
The thing about that Aziz Ansari story is almost every single woman has had that experience at least once in her dating life. #MeToo
— Cher (@thecherness) January 14, 2018
Been reading the stuff about Aziz Ansari and here’s something that keeps coming back to me: how very VERY fucked up the lessons men get about sex are.
— Dr. NerdLove (@DrNerdLove) January 14, 2018
A lot of men will read that post about Aziz Ansari and see an everyday, reasonable sexual interaction. But part of what women are saying right now is that what the culture considers “normal” sexual encounters are not working for us, and oftentimes harmful.
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 14, 2018
The thing about the Aziz Ansari allegations, whether they’re accurate or not, is that so many of us can relate to a guy trying 50-leven times to convince you to have sex and because you don’t explicitly say NO, he keeps trying, despite your discomfort.
— Britni Danielle (@BritniDWrites) January 14, 2018
I’ve been thinking all night about why the Aziz Ansari allegations account struck me as strange and odd. Couldn’t put my finger on it. Until…I realized in my 20s I’d had many many many dates just like Grace described in her account.
— Nneka M. Okona 🇳🇬 (@afrosypaella) January 14, 2018
Ansari’s representatives have not yet responded to babe’s request for comment.
(Via Teen Vogue and babe; image: Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com)
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