Just over a year after the Babe article that hobbled his career and left many asking if #MeToo had gone too far, Aziz Ansari has returned.
Evidently, some forgiveness has arrived with the clouding of memory. Ansari finally addressed head on the sexual harassment allegations against him. In a stand-up on Monday, he said he felt “terrible” about what happened. “But you know, after a year, how I feel about it is, I hope it was a step forward. It made me think about a lot, and I hope I’ve become a better person.”
If he’s learned something, maybe others can too: “If that has made, not just me, but other guys think about this, and just be more thoughtful and aware and willing to go that extra mile, and make sure someone else is comfortable in that moment, that’s a good thing.”
As a refresher, in January 2018 the millennial women’s website Babe published an anonymous account of a date with the comedian that went terribly wrong, with Ansari repeatedly pressuring a young woman toward sex.
Many questioned the legitimacy of the story: The article relied on the personal account of a single anonymous source. And Babe, according to Slate, specializes in “vulgar tomfoolery,” although it “has made previous forays into harder journalism.”
But Ansari did acknowledge, at least, that the date did happen. In a statement after the article ran, Ansari said, “We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual.”
If you want to read the full account, you can make your own judgement, as countless readers already have, on who was to blame for the anonymous source, “Grace,” riding home in an Uber crying.
Speculators, many of them men who have never been in a similarly uncomfortable situation, said Grace shouldn’t have gone home with Ansari, and she had plenty of opportunities to leave. Both statements may be true. But wrenching away from a situation such as hers can be difficult, and armchair speculation is easy.
The Ansari of this account reminds me of a man from “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece. When it comes to sex, where has the modern age brought us? Right here:
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
…
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit …
The lie at the heart of the date was the impression of caring. The problem was not Grace’s agreement to go back to Ansari’s apartment. It was his vanity and our culture’s glorification of the nebulous concept of “consent” over the far more important love and respect.
The night was not, as many defenders of Ansari claimed, just a “bad date.” A bad date is a man who chews his avocado toast with his mouth open and tells you that you really don’t understand federal monetary policy. A bad date happens when a man leans in for a kiss on the doorstep as you dodge and turn back toward your apartment.
A date like the one Grace describes is a violence, a metaphor for a culture that claims sex without love lacks nothing as long as both parties agree to it.
As Ansari moves on, it’s hard to know how much of the celebrity’s apology is sincere and how much is saving face. A year later, Ansari is saying all the right things. But they mean nothing if his ego still blinds him to the problem of indifference. Unless he comes to realize that the impression of consent is no guardrail against misconduct, Ansari has yet to understand why #MeToo emerged in the first place.
