(Photo, Rex)
When Babe, a Brooklyn-based women’s news and lifestyle site, published a story about an anonymous source’s date with Aziz Ansari that, as the article’s headline proclaimed, “turned into the worst night of [her] life,” it pushed the conversation about consent in new, difficult directions. Though “Grace” (the pseudonym Babe used for the source), did consent to the sexual encounter she describes, Ansari’s behaviour was suspect—he was clearly coercive, seemingly misunderstanding, or perhaps ignoring, his partner’s non-verbal cues.
But that point—that consensual sex can still feel bad for women, and that’s a problem—hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves. Partially, this is because Babe ran Grace’s story as, “a bizarre hybrid of reported piece and personal essay, with editorial comments inappropriately interjected,” which does a disservice to the both Grace and the site’s readers, as Jill Filipovic explains in The Guardian. “It seems to have been reported only because there was a celebrity name attached,” she says. “And not even because the celebrity broke the law or leveraged his power to do wrong, but because he was sexist and sexually entitled—while despicable, that’s shaky grounds for broadcasting an individual’s sexual play-by-play. As a result, we’re arguing about whether Aziz Ansari is a sexual assailant, and missing the more relevant conversation about sex, male entitlement and misogyny in the bedroom.”
But it’s also because that “more relevant conversation” is just really hard to have; Ansari’s behaviour wasn’t illegal, but it was a distressingly common example of how men are conditioned to approach sex—almost as a goal to be accomplished, not a shared experience between partners—and how women are conditioned to accept it. In that context, it’s easier to understand how many people, how many women, felt uneasy about seeing Grace’s experience fall under the umbrella of #MeToo. It would require us to look back at past relationships with a careful eye… and maybe see them in a disturbing new light.
Enter this literally perfect Twitter thread from writer Ashley C. Ford, who used a conversation with her college roommate as a jumping off point to talk about why some women don’t feel like they can expect mutual pleasure from sex and why it is so. profoundly. fucked. up.
One of my favorite parts of college was how much my friends were willing to talk about sex. Like REALLY talk about sex. The good, the bad, the hilarious, and the downright confusing. We talked about it all & there were many times I ended up like [thinking emoji]
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
One of those times, I asked my roommate what it was like to sleep with the guy she’d been seeing, and she shrugged, “Kind of like sleeping with anyone else. You just lay there and let them do it!” Then we both got real quiet.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
In that moment, I was trying to figure out if I’d heard her correctly, and I think she was trying to figure out why I looked so…stricken? Confused? Finally, I asked, “What do you mean by ‘just lay there’?”
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
And she said, “You know like when you come home and you’re drunk, or you’re too tired, or you don’t feel like it, but he’s there, and he wants to, so you just…kinda…let him.” Now that she’s confirmed what I thought I heard, I’m like [wide-eyed emoji]
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
Me: Do you like having sex like that?
Her: Well, I like him a lot.
Me: Yeah, but when the TWO of you have sex TOGETHER do you get pleasure from the sex?
Her: Sometimes. I guess I think of it as something I do for him. Like a thank you, or a compromise.— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
I asked a few more questions, but it didn’t get better. She didn’t feel like she should expect mutual pleasure from her sexual encounters. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t expect–nay, DEMAND–mutual pleasure from sex with another person.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
The conversation kinda petered out after a while, but it really messed me up. We were both smart, midwestern, 21-ish, sexually active young women, but somehow, we’d gotten completely different messages about what to expect during a sexual encounter.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
I was well aware (as most college roommates are) that many of the nights when my boyfriend was sleeping over, she also had someone sleeping over. It had never been a big deal for either of us, but after that conversation…something shifted.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
It occurred to me that what was happening in my room when my boyfriend slept over, and what was happening in her’s when someone slept over, were both technically sex, but also, they were not the same. And I’m not talking about preferred positions.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
I was not (and am not) the most secure person in the world, but I always believed in the fundamental truth that sex was something I was supposed to enjoy too. And I demanded that. Before our conversation, no one had ever told her that was even an option.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
A few months after that convo, she told me it had messed with her. She started to look back on her sexual encounters and realized that not only did she not enjoy them, she could barely remember them because she’d “go somewhere else in her mind”.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
She said, “I started to wonder if I could do to them what they were doing to me. If I could have sex with them while they just laid there. And just the thought of it made me so sad. I just…how do they keep going?”
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
Now technically, she had not been sexually assaulted. She never said no. She often said yes. But after years of men laying on top of her limp body and “taking what they can get”, she had absolutely been harmed.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
It’s clear that we need better more definitive language to have nuanced discussions about the spectrum of harm inflicted on the bodies and psyches of women during bad sexual encounters. We can build that language together, if we keep talking to each other about this.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
There are going to be missteps. There will absolutely be attempts to sensationalize these conversations. People will do anything for profit. But the important thing is that we KEEP. TALKING. We’ll figure out the details along the way.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
If our ultimate goal is to find & snip the cultural thread that leads to what happened to my friend, we’re going to need to be honest about who we are, who we’ve been, what we’ve seen, what we’ve done, and what we believe to be true.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
This is not going to be easy. It is easy to call out the grey areas, but it is much much harder to define them, to measure them, and to learn from them. You don’t dismiss it because it’s grey, you go deeper into it, and you have the tougher conversation.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
We’re not warring with each other. We’re revealing ourselves to each other & that is bound to get messy & uncomfortable. It’s okay to feel those things. Just don’t. stop. talking. about it. Don’t give up on the conversation because it’s hard or you feel ashamed. You’re not alone.
— Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) January 16, 2018
“After years of men laying on top of her limp body and ‘taking what they can get,’ she had absolutely been harmed”—can anyone really argue with that? It hurts women when their partners feel entitled to their bodies, with little regard for their wants and desires. And not just women; Twitter user @itscottmichael replied to Ford’s thread with an example of how this problematic dynamic appears in the gay community.
The most common example: When meeting up with new guys for dates, I had to resolve the fact that if I liked him, I would have to give it up to him in some way for him to like me back/make him happy. This is a commonality that I related to deeply in @iSmashFizzle‘s thread.
— Scott Michael (@itscottmichael) January 16, 2018
As Ford explained in an appearance on BuzzFeed News’ AM to DM on January 16, even if Ansari’s behaviour wasn’t assault, it was on a “spectrum of harm.” And that’s why it’s not a “distraction” from “real issues” to talk about men who don’t abuse, but do coerce. That’s one of the real issues. This conversation shouldn’t be restricted to calling out people who use their professional power to take advantage of their employees, or who are violent, or who behave in ways clearly contrary to the law. We also have to talk about the way we approach sex in our day-to-day lives, how power dynamics come into play and just what we expect from our sexual partners, even if it’s confusing or hard.
Otherwise how will anything really change?
Related:
Why The Aziz Ansari Story Could Have Happened to Anyone
The Weinstein Effect: An Ever-Expanding List of Accusations
Timothée Chalamet Joins the Stars *Finally* Speaking Out Against Woody Allen