Nine months after Louis CK admitted to sexual misconduct, he made a quiet return to comedy: he did a surprise set at New York’s Comedy Cellar. He was the second comedian to perform after his fall from grace – Aziz Ansari had already performed there months ago.
The venue where Louis CK performed Sun night also hosted Aziz Ansari for some "surprise" sets back in May. Looks like NY's Comedy Cellar is ground zero for comics accused of sexual assault and/or misconduct on their self-perceived road to redemption.
— teri belle smith (@happathy) August 28, 2018
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, people are beginning to call for nuance in examining the cases of these famous men. They are quick to state that what CK did was not as bad as what Weinstein did. What Ansari did was not as bad as what CK did, or what Cosby did.
The owner of the Comedy Cellar helpfully clarifies that for us, by saying that Ansari was “unfairly treated.”
It has been echoed several times since, across social media. “It’s unfair to Aziz to lump him in with CK or Cosby” – this seems to be the reigning sentiment.
https://twitter.com/tweetrajouhari/status/1035999749696937985
Unfair is a powerful word, isn’t it? It invokes timeless beliefs about justice: it is cosmically broad. It suggests that something very terrible is happening to Aziz, when the truth is that he is only being mentioned in a few newspapers next to C.K.
Certainly, he has not lost his career. There is nothing to suggest that he will not continue to make TV. Quite the opposite – Netflix has gone on record to state they want a Master of None Season 3 when he is ready.
The word ‘unfair’ is being skillfully deployed to mask the truth: there is no actual punishment being delivered to the man. The only real consequence is that women might have some misgivings before going on future dates with him.
B) I'm so used to the boys club in comedy things like this don't shock me…but that doesn't mean situations like this don't make me angry and frustrated for the people who have struggled to be heard and seen in a business that appreciate diversity.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) August 28, 2018
If that is the case, why should we not lump him in with Louis CK? After all, they are both powerful comedians with their own TV shows. They are both men who have been accused of and acknowledged sexual misconduct, and they are both currently in the process of returning to public life. They are both – ironically – men who have built brands on being woke male feminists. The similarities would make comparison logical.
Yes, they did two very different things. CK broke the law, multiple times. Ansari had a date with a woman that turned into “the worst night of her life”. But can we categorically say which offence is the most important? What calculus do we use to figure out the severity of each thing that falls under sexual misconduct?
https://twitter.com/priya_ebooks/status/928914703534850048
There is an overwhelming cultural pressure to excuse Aziz, to say that what happened to him was simply a “bad date”. A date gone wrong. Tangled wires. A misreading of things, or a failure in communication (never mind that she clearly communicated No verbally and nonverbally a number of times).
It is a seductive notion, this: it snatches fault away from the hands of Aziz and relegates it to the ether. It recasts the date as an unfortunate incident in which but neither party was at fault.
https://twitter.com/priya_ebooks/status/1006457862183243777
So why blame Aziz? He’s a brown man, after all – he is held to a higher standard than white men. It’s unfair to compare him to actual sex offenders. (Never mind that we don’t know Grace’s ethnicity. What if we are throwing a woman of colour under the bus while protecting a brown man?)
The truth is that if we don’t “lump Aziz in” with Louis CK, we don’t have anywhere else to put him. Part of what makes #MeToo so important is that it addresses a vast spectrum of harassment, abuse, and misconduct.
#MeToo was not only about open-and-shut cases of rape: for the first time, women across the world were addressing the grey areas of rape culture. If the #MeToo movement should not call out Aziz Ansari, which movement will?
https://twitter.com/priya_ebooks/status/998498091408900096
Consider Grace’s own words. “I don’t want to feel forced, because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.” (She’s talking about sex here. What is forced sex but rape?)
Could there be a more explicit formulation of her lack of desire? And yet, Ansari did not stop when his date told him he was forcing her. After a brief lull, he returns to harassing her for sex.
What feminists are trying to say is that this, too, is rape culture. It is rape culture when a man persistently badgers an unwilling woman. It is rape culture when you keep putting an uncomfortable woman’s hand on your dick. It is rape culture when you ignore her freezing at your touch, or her hesitation to go through with sexual acts. It is rape culture when a man – who, remember, is famous for his feminist principles and his profound understanding of modern dating – crosses these many boundaries.
If a dating guru can “misread” a situation so badly, what hope is there for the ordinary clueless man?
https://twitter.com/priya_ebooks/status/998498214348177408
The push for nuance in this particular case is misplaced. We do not need to exonerate Aziz Ansari under the guise of complicating the conversation. Quite the contrary, we must insist on keeping him in.
If we are to shrink the vast grey area between consensual and nonconsensual, if we are to reduce the number of ‘dates gone wrong’ – it is our only choice.