The allegation of sexual assault against comedian Aziz Ansari has been met with rightful skepticism. Days after it first appeared in the pages of Babe, there seems to be a near consensus that Ansari’s behavior, while gross, did not actually constitute sexual assault, despite his accuser’s claim to the contrary.
The incident has sparked a healthy conversation about our sexual politics, providing observers an opportunity to consider important questions about consent. That’s a conversation we’ve been having for years now, though it’s been largely confined to the context of college campuses.
And for good reason. The Obama administration’s Title IX guidelines ushered in an era where dozens of men across the country who had engaged in ordinary alcohol-fueled hookups faced investigations for sexual assault, often predicated on questionable definitions of “assault” and “consent.” Many of these men have since sued their universities and won at least their reinstatement.
Writing at Reason, Robby Soave drew a helpful parallel between those cases and the allegations against Ansari, correctly noting how “boorish behavior similar to Ansari’s — behavior that most pundits say they consider gross but not criminal, at least in Ansari’s case — is routinely investigated as sexual misconduct on university campuses.”
“Ansari is lucky he’s not a college student,” Soave continued, “otherwise he could have been accused months or a year after the incident, investigated by a lone administrator with sole power to decide which witnesses to interview, called before a hearing to answer charges he does not fully understand, forbidden from consulting a lawyer or cross-examining his accuser, found responsible for sexual misconduct under a preponderance of the evidence standard, and expelled from campus as required by Title IX, the federal statute that mandates gender equality in schools.”
He’s absolutely right. An unusual coalition of feminists, dissident feminists, and conservatives — along with a swath of people outside those conversations altogether — has emerged to dispute the characterization of Ansari’s behavior as sexual assault. When it comes to repairing the broken system on campuses, perhaps the response to this high-profile case study will prove to be a clarifying moment.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has, of course, rescinded the troublesome Obama-era guidelines. As the Washington Examiner reported earlier this month, the Education Department is aiming to release the new draft rule by March, meaning the conversation about sexual assault on college campuses will flare up again soon.
That so many people rebuffed the notion that Ansari’s behavior constituted sexual assault — and so many went so far as to call his public shaming unfair — should inform how we approach campus policies in the future. Men of far less privilege than Ansari have been subjected to far worse.
