{"id":245,"date":"2022-06-21T11:23:27","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T11:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/breakthecycle.org\/aziz-ansari-and-many-other-men\/"},"modified":"2024-04-13T21:51:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-13T21:51:27","slug":"aziz-ansari-and-many-other-men","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/blog\/aziz-ansari-and-many-other-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Aziz Ansari, and many other men"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Please note: Entries within this blog may contain references to instances of domestic abuse, dating abuse, sexual assault, abuse or harassment. At all times, Break the Cycle encourages readers to take whatever precautions necessary to protect themselves emotionally and psychologically.\u00a0 If you would like to speak with an advocate, please contact a 24\/7 peer advocate at\u00a0<\/span>866-331-9474<\/a>\u00a0 or text “loveis” to 22522.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aziz Ansari, and many other men<\/div>\n
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This blog post is originally from\u00a0abbyhonold.com\u00a0and all rights are reserved to the author. Abby is a\u00a0rape survivor\/thriver + sexual assault advocate. Her work includes fighting for a bill to\u00a0expand the use of trauma-informed techniques<\/a> in responding to sexual assault. Thank you for allowing us to repost.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I know I\u2019m not the only woman who\u2019s been reliving unpleasant memories ever since Babe\u2019s story about Aziz Ansari<\/a>\u00a0[trigger warning – sexual assault for that link] surfaced. At first, I honestly just felt shocked at the level of detail. I was having flashbacks to being raped because of the sexual descriptions in the article. I wasn\u2019t the only one; the support group I started was overrun with pending posts about the article and how upsetting it was to read.<\/p>\n

Next, the comments started overwhelming my feed on nearly every form of social media. \u201cThis is stupid\u201d. \u201cShe could\u2019ve just left\u201d. \u201cThis is disrespectful to REAL victims of sexual assault\u201d. \u201cShe should\u2019ve said \u2018no\u2019 more\u201d. \u201cWhat was he gonna do, hit her?\u201d<\/p>\n

Uh yeah, actually, maybe. My mind immediately flashed back to an incident where I had given a firm \u201cno\u201d when a male friend told me he wanted to have sex with me and promptly got a black eye. I thought about the boyfriend when I was young who had grabbed me by the hair and tried to force me to give him a blowjob. I thought of a boyfriend who would insist \u201cjust give me 5 more minutes\u201d when I would start protesting. I remembered the time I just laid there, frozen, while a guy I had agreed to go on a date with (but didn\u2019t agree for him to bring me back to his house alone) had kissed me and felt around my body; I just closed my eyes and waited for it to be over. I just was hoping that he wouldn\u2019t rape me.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s pointless to try to list all the times I\u2019ve been in this situation. I\u2019ve been in this situation so many times that I remember how shocked I was the first time I dated a guy who actually wanted me to be interested in what we were doing. I remember the first time we were kissing. He had started to progress further, and I flinched \u2013 and he just stopped. \u201cSorry,\u201d he said, \u201cmaybe next time.\u201d I was blown away. I remember telling him eventually how crazy it felt to have someone who actually cared whether I was involved in what was happening. And I still remember his response: \u201cthanks, but that\u2019s how everyone should treat you\u201d. It was the first time that I realized that maybe it wasn\u2019t normal to feel like you only have two options: either you have to physically fight your way out of a sexual encounter; or you just sit there, you \u201clet\u201d them take it to a certain point, and you aren\u2019t allowed to feel bad about it. Maybe, just maybe, there were guys out there who cared about whether I wanted to participate or not.<\/p>\n

So I started exploring that. In fact, I learned that I could actually insist on it. I started paying attention to how men I went on dates with acted at the end. Did they lurch forward at the end of the date with unfocused eyes and try to hurl a tongue down my throat? Disqualified. I still struggled with being rude in the moment. I was scared of being insulted, physically hurt, or worse. But I was finally paying attention. I still encountered uncomfortable, non-consensual situations like this along the way, but I was starting to validate for myself that these men were actively choosing to ignore me when I tried to speak up. That\u2019s not how physical touch had to be. I married a man who loved me. Like, actually loved me, respected me, and cared about my boundaries. It was incredible and still is.<\/p>\n

Then I read Grace\u2019s story this week. My initial instinct while reading was that I was becoming upset, but that this was just \u201cbad sex\u201d. I thought to myself that I should give Ansari the benefit of the doubt. But I kept reading. And then I read it again. I took note of every time that she mentioned that she had expressed discomfort. I took note of how often he ignored her. And I realized that I had to publicly put my foot down.<\/p>\n

People send me messages frequently about how I am a \u201creal rape victim\u201d. I have scars, he\u2019s in prison, he had many (many) victims, therefore it is \u201creal\u201d. I\u2019ll obviously agree that I was \u201creally\u201d raped. But if that\u2019s where you\u2019re putting your bar for what counts as unacceptable behavior from men, it\u2019s time to talk. Because what Ansari did was wrong, despite the fact that no one is calling for him to go to prison or register as a sex offender. Grace says that she was sexually assaulted. And really, that\u2019s not up for debate by anyone else. Whether or not it meets a legal definition (which most victims never have validated for them), she left the experience feeling upset and traumatized. She describes it in the headline as the \u201cworst night of my life\u201d. Her account very clearly leaves no room for consent. In fact, it doesn\u2019t sound like he ever explicitly asked at all. She verbally protests, she moves away, she freezes and doesn\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n

I can look back now and say that I know that I would be stronger than I once was if something like that ever happened again. But would I? Our responses aren\u2019t always up to us. Most of us can recognize, for example, that we\u2019re better at giving advice to other people than we are at doing the best thing for ourselves in the moment. Until you\u2019re actually there, in that moment, you have no idea what your response will be. Writing an article about how you \u201cknow how to call a cab\u201d isn\u2019t helpful, and you don\u2019t even know if it\u2019s accurate. You weren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

The bar for what consensual sex should be is not \u201cshe didn\u2019t fight me on it\u201d, \u201cI stopped once she started crying\u201d, or \u201cshe was laying pretty still, but it\u2019s not like she told me to stop.\u201d Sex is not a game that you try to win. Consensual sex is not about only one person\u2019s desire. Teach all of this (and more!) to your children (absolutely not just the girls). Push your schools to start education about healthy relationships and consent at a young age. Remember that men are fully capable of understanding the word \u201cno\u201d, and every other polite variation of it, and they should never be treated as if they don\u2019t understand. Every single one of us can play a role here, and it doesn\u2019t have to be a negative one.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Ansari specifically, he can choose to do better. He can learn and change. The many men who have sent me questions asking why this behavior would qualify as assault can also learn to change. Because we deserve more. Those of us (while mostly female, but really of any gender) who have experienced that publicly-determined \u201cgray area of consent\u201d deserve to not encounter people who don\u2019t care about what we want. We deserve to have an actual say in whether we\u2019re being touched. We deserve to help create a world where our future children aren\u2019t recreating our mistakes. If you disagree with those statements, I probably can\u2019t help you. But if you read those statements and agreed, even if you don\u2019t know how to help everyone get there, I\u2019m glad you\u2019re on board. Start listening to us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please note: Entries within this blog may contain references to instances of domestic abuse, dating … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":600,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4816,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/245\/revisions\/4816"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}