I think your 100 percent correct.

Now the correct question is how do you drill this into young peoples heads that thousands of years genetic drive to actually sleep with anything that moves and procreate the species is now fundamentally incorrect and immoral by todays standards.

I think there is a HUGE massive pharmaceutical potential for a drug that limits sex drive in 14-40 year old men.

Good marketing tactic... show people in jail who did not take the hormone inhibitor tell kids if they want to stay out of jail and never be charge with a sexual or discrimination charge all they have to do is take this pill that's 100 percent covered by insurance.


EDIT think about the potential of pharmaceutically removing the thought of having sex from men's minds... it would free up 99 percent of their brain capacity to actually do productive things for society.... It has the potential to advance humanity profoundly.......just one little pill a day

I actually agree with you.

I met my wife at work like 18 years ago....things were a lot different then]

These days work relationships actually pretty much a bad idea

+1

Now married 11 years so obv. not part of the 99%.

I should also qualify it's (to me) less of an issue if you are just working at the same place, size depending obviously. If there's any hint of subordinacy to the advances (IE you rank them even if not in the same department) there becomes a serious consent issue and its just not a good look

I usually miss the non-verbal cue of not wanting any action when she puts my dick in her mouth. Those are hard to watch.

A couple of things.

1. We had multiple stories from Weinstein where he was accused of raping women by going down on them. Thats the way this story started.

Obviously a lot different here, but worth noting the context that assualt/pressuring someone can look very different in differeng scenarios.

2. Theres an assumption that runs throigh alot of this discission (and it was there in the CK discussion too) where we assume that the guy missed the signals.

We have plenty of evidence that shows predators deliberately push the boundaries, thrive on those ambiguities and often actually get off on the coercion.

Like. There is a interpretation here where Ansari knew exactly what he was doing and did it deliberetely, knowing that he always has plausible deniability.

Edit. The fact that Ansari writes about dating and social cues in depth makes me even less likely to give him the benefit of tbe doubt. He does this for a living. He is not some horny 17 year old on his first date.

If anyone wants an example of someone who doesnt get it.

If she puts your dick in her mouth then says she doesn't want to **** you, and you agree, then you continue to try to **** her, ya missed the signal and likely are too dumb to be left alone with people.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...xual-behaviour

That whole article is worth reading.

And this is why this is not a slippery slope witch hunt whatever. The only way a moron like him will get it is if there is a consequence that requires a price be paid by the man independent of empathy for the woman's perspective and caring more about getting it right than getting sex from them like it's a conquest instead of a mutually beneficial experience.

This will of course never happen but 90% of consent issues could be solved if teens were taught the same consent rules commonly used in every S&M relationship.

With respect to your edit, maybe he was just drunk and his judgment was impaired such that he didn’t actually pick up on the cues?

The problem with Ansari's behaviour is, I'm not one of those people who think there should always be explicit affirmative consent, but when he starts getting mixed messages, he absolutely then needs to seek affirmative consent before resuming. I certainly would, and I don't have the power dynamic that he does, being a TV star etc.

I have mixed feelings about the story for some of the reasons the WaPo editorial goes into. Couple quotes from the story:

"My hand stopped moving"? "I turned cold"? Those aren't cues at all.

The problem here is that I'm being asked to accept not merely her factual account of what happened, but her retrospective interpretation of it. She's sure she gave off cues, but when asked what they were she says ridiculous things like "my hand stopped moving" and says not just that she doesn't know if he noticed or not, but that "I don't think that was noticed". Those are some weak cues. Ansari should have sought affirmative consent, but in terms of how egregious his misdeeds were, I'm not willing to rely on this woman's interpretations of the encounter.

Yea anyone who is defending Aziz's actions here is pretty suspect. Obviously he knew what he was doing, trying to get laid as fast as possible without consideration of anything else. Any "signals" weren't relevant.

His comic persona just makes him a raging hypocrite in addition to being a freak and a weird dude.

Here's a couple of things I'm still mulling over.

For those in the "this was definitely assault" camp (not even sure who is in this group), based on only the information available, do you think Aziz deserves jail time or any other criminal penalty for this?

I'm fine calling him creepy and a ****ty person, but not sure I can make it to assault.

Alternatively, if the woman brought a civil suit against Aziz, what kind of damages (i.e., how much) would you award her, based only on the information available?

In order for me to make legal judgements like that I'd have to hear a case and defense, not just on principle but because I'm not familiar with the details based on that third person article without a rebuttal, or the law.

That said, based on what I know so far I'd love to see Aziz, and others who have yet to be accused publicly, come forward and show some true introspective contrition. Not the fabulously worded mia culpa after years of denials like ck, not the defensive "if I acted inappropriately or hurt someone" bs, but act like the ****ing role models they pretend to be. If we got to that point, one where they come to terms with what they have done and just take responsibility for it, step up and show men that as a group we can all consider how to improve because it is clearly ****ed up for women---then maybe we get to the nuts and bolts of it. Until then we are not even at the starting line and are bus trying to legislate or bully the symptoms of the problem instead of getting to the root.

He does that and I will admire him for it. He doesn't, I couldn't give a rats ass what monetary or career price he pays.

I'm asking you what you think the law should be. Not what it is.

As far as the rest, can you just assume you hear the whole story and it doesn't substantively differ from the accounts given: Her statement is basically the same, Aziz says "Yeah that's more or less what happened, except she seemed way more into it to me".

I don't care that much about what career price he pays either. That's the ****ty person tax. I suppose if she made it up completely, then I guess I would care. Although he could go after her for defamation, I don't think that's good enough. However, in this case, I think we can clearly rule out that she is making the whole thing up based on the info we already have.

In my mind, the career price he pays is different from the what he legal system would/should force him to pay.

Seems like a silly question. He didn't assault anyone or have non-consensual sex, even by the woman's own account... so why would there be any criminal or legal consequences?

Like you said if people choose to believe he's a creep or a ****ty person, and that ends up hurting his career... well it's a free country and he'd have his own actions to blame.

I mean civil cases are decided on the preponderance of the evidence, which is surely the same standard we should be using for what career price he pays?

Having read the story a few times and thought it over, I don't think Ansari should be sanctioned at all. Certainly a decent chance that he was abusive, but hard to put a percentage on it. I think when the woman's own account includes a bit where she says that she doesn't think Ansari noticed the cues she was giving off, that's a big problem. Saying "I was giving off clear cues but he didn't notice" is either saying that he has impaired recognition of interpersonal cues or wanting him to be a mindreader, and in either case it doesn't seem that he would deserve blame. It does seem to me that Ansari should have sought affirmative consent, but even there I am relying entirely on the woman's account and it's too shaky a foundation to make any judgement on him.

Chris,

I mean we have been over it and over it, but career repercussions in Hollywood are not sanctions. People become unpopular for any number of reasons and their popularity is their worth. If someone gets fat and no longer gets parts it's not a sanction. This isn't either, it's business.

You are also right that she said he may not have been picking up on all the non verbal cues, except he did on some of them. He agreed to cool it twice. He said "you don't seem to hate it now" or whatever. That means even if she gave off weak signals some of the time he got some of them as well and confirmed it.

It doesn't sound like she is accusing him of assault. Don't know if she is going to sue him. Civil suits are weird to me here because while I suppose he should lose enough to hurt him I don't know why a woman who is abused by a less wealthy person is somehow damaged less. Frankly I can't give my usual hot take here because I have little frame of reference.

Maybe you don't view it as assault (which I don't think is unreasonable). However, I'm not sure there is universal agreement on the bolded. The question was for those who would disagree with it. I agree that for someone who views it the way you do, the issue is clear cut.

If we accept the Aziz story into the #metoo movement, it really appears that women have no agency over their decisions. It reminds me of those who would claim if a woman has a drink she can no longer consent; that woman are these fragile, childlike beings who are incapable of making their own decisions and are completely at the mercy of men. Doesn't feel very empowering.

A woman's ability to exert her agency was restricted or removed in pretty much every other case that's hit the news. Weinstein was an assaulter. Lauer made woman fear their professional careers would be harmed if they did not reciprocate. Franken did not give the woman a choice by fondling them with no advance warning or under circumstances not befitting aggression.

This is not the case here, however. Aziz was not offering a hollywood career for sex. This woman could have cut things off at many points. Aziz is not a mind reader, are awkward men forever doomed because they are poor at picking up on very subtle, potentially confusing signals?

Aziz trying to rush dinner up? Maybe he's had a great time with some chick who shared a vintage camera with him, and he's so sexually attracted to her, he's excited at the prospect of a one night stand. Woman like casual sex and one night stands as well -- although the discussion today seems to take that away from them. Asking for affirmation before sex? Sex, especially casual sex, is spontaneous and exciting -- no better way to kill the mood than asking "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Likely due to evolution, we have a dynamic of men as the aggressor and the female as the gate keeper. A man who is timid and nice to the point of playing it safe = not a turn on. Note I am not saying men should be aggressive in the face of clear evidence that their advances are unwelcome. But often woman seeking casual sex do not want to throw their clothes off and say **** me, but instead may want the man to work for it, or want to at least give the impression they have to be seduced. I realize the woman in this case did not feel this way inside (or in hindsight), but this sort of sexual foreplay that occurred in this incident is not that outrageous in the real world, nor completely unwelcoming to women.

I'm not absolving Aziz of not being weird or creepy, but frankly, a specific incident like this should not be news worthy and Aziz should not be shamed over it. There is a larger conversation that could be had over it, that the man as the pure aggressor and woman afraid to speak up is something that we could change.

Or it appears that sometimes people can be pressured into go along with things that they really don't want to do. But you're right, it's probably the former.

Y'all mother****ers are something else. I really didn't want to go back and read that again but ****, it's worse than I remember. Here is what HE did, without the weaker signals to focus on instead. She did have agency and excersised the **** out of it.

-Kissed her, she says let's slow down, he responds by moving to oral sex and asking her for it.
-Pulls her hand to his dick repeatedly after she continues to pull it away.
-follows her around the room when she tried to get space.
-she tells him no sex tonight so he makes up some bull**** about a second glass of wine and continues.
-she says "I don't want to feel forced" which is pretty ****ing clear and he acknowledges it and agrees and says he will stop but doesn't.
-he starts kissing her again and again acknowledges that she asked him to stop and he understood with the cutesy "don't look like you hate me" comment
-she says "I'm not ready to do this" which is as clear as you can hope for and again he agrees to stop.
-then he tried again.

Like wtf? Yeah it took her that long to finally leave which was the literal only way he would stop it seems, and she was probably thinking that she could BELIEVE him when he said he would stop. If he had stopped maybe they would have had a nice time. Hell maybe she would have even decided she wanted to **** him.

That's just a dorky confused awkward fella? Gtfo. They were on a first date ffs. He was shoving his fingers down her throat like some porn move after she said no sex several times. If she was into it, great but she wasn't and said so. Jfc.

Let's take this in particular, because this is a good example of where this woman's perspective is being accepted as fact. Here's the lead-in to this:

So OK, this seems pretty pushy, but only to the extent of being a sleaze. Here Ansari is saying he wants to have vaginal sex. So she goes to the bathroom and collects herself and then we get this:

Note that this is not a general "no". She's had 5 minutes in the bathroom calming down, she's not being put on the spot here. To Ansari, this might look like she is just starstruck and nervous and wants to slow down a bit, especially since we don't know how it was delivered. It may have been delivered in a lighthearted kind of way.

But what Ansari thinks, maybe, is that wants to slow down meaning not jump straight to vaginal sex. Remember, this is what happened at the start of the encounter:

So to Ansari, it looks like she's comfortable with all that and then has gotten nervous about vaginal sex. So when he says "let's chill on the couch", what he means is going back to the stuff they were doing before, oral sex and so forth. He thinks she was OK with that. If he hasn't read her cues that she's uncomfortable, there's no reason for him to think otherwise. He's also just asked her if she's OK and she has not communicated to him clearly that she's uncomfortable with the whole encounter. Then when he wants her to go down on him again, she goes ahead and does it, further confirming to him that she is currently comfortable with everything short of full sex.

Is this all the correct reading? I have no idea. It's one possibility. Ansari being an abusive ******* is also a possibility. What I'm saying is that we only have her account to go on, and her view of everything that was said and done is coloured by a general uncomfortableness with what was happening that I'm not convinced she communicated to Ansari.