That...doesn’t seem like a fair observation at all.

Knitting is my other main hobby - if you haven’t heard of it already, I highly recommend signing up for Ravelry! It’s a knitting site that is a sprawling fiber arts wonderland-slash-resource.

I hear you. There was way too much focus on how people talked about the story as opposed to what actually happened. As much as he likes to present it as “crossed wires” or “misunderstanding” the real truth that Ansari doesn’t want to focus on is that he sexually assaulted that woman and now his career is potentially…

I turned to Mrs Dollars and showed her the headline and said “How is it so many of us still need to be sat down like children?” and without missing a beat shes like “Because like 80% of yall are rapists”

Exactly! I don’t know why people act like this is such a high standard. All it means is making sure that the person you’re having sex with actually wants to have sex with you! If you don’t care whether or not the person you’re having sex with is enjoying themselves, you need to reevaluate your priorities. Not only are…

This is my perception after listening to others who’ve been in Grace’s situation. Grace doesn’t know she’s met Jekyll & Hyde yet, so when he starts acting crazy...she still thinks it’s sweet Dr. Jekyll...so she stays. She wants Dr. Jekyll to comeback.

Nearly every woman I know has a similar story (or stories) about giving in to sex because she was worn down. No, technically she wasn’t forced and didn’t fear for her life... but she also realized that her “no” wouldn’t matter, anyway, and she might as well go along with it and get it over with so the whole episode…

Same. I’m still struggling to define my recent assault/rape as assault/rape. During the encounter, I repeatedly said no, and he would repeatedly momentarily acknowledge my protest before trying again. Eventually, he did it so that I wasn’t really given the choice to stop him before he did it, but while he was doing…

How about dealing with what actually happened and how she actually felt, instead of what she “should” have done or felt?

I recently re-read Obedience to Authority, in which Stanley Milgram describes how he asked people how they would act in a scenario that involved saying no when circumstances pushed a yes, and they all said they would stop and say no as soon as they wanted to, but when he put people into an actual experiment, very few…

I understand what you’re saying and I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, many of the commenters on these pages would be singing a different tune if it wasn’t a well-loved liberal being accused. I remember way back when Julian Assange first ducked into the embassy I was lambasted on these very pages for saying that he…

Ansari’s response reads like such bullshit it’s amazing. Three paragraphs that boil down to “I thought everything was ok” and doesn’t dare to even discuss what his actions were, like repeatedly following her around the room trying to stick his fingers in her mouth whenever she moved away.

1. We do have a term for it - sexual coercion. It covers encounters like this that aren’t necessarily illegal, but aren’t exactly super consensual either, because one person made the other person feel like they couldn’t refuse sex. When someone is ignoring your attempts to shut sex down, it’s hard to be 100% sure that…

I wish I was this eloquent.

That would be progress, but it not only still puts the entire burden of the encounter’s dynamics on the women, it also completely disregards the reason why women - young and even older - are reasonably fearful of taking that risk.

I like how casually dismissive you are of the labor it takes to process trauma in order to admit victimhood. PTSD, anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, all of those drain the life right out of people and here you are, acting like it’s no big deal. And you’re incredibly wrong about millennials being “work shy”. There’s…

Are we outing assault victims without their consent now? Can I ask why you felt this is okay?

The only uncomfortable party in this discussion is Ansari and his supporters. She told him to pump the brakes and he chose to hit the gas. Fuck him and everybody down with him. Better to err on the side of caution than to err on the side of sexual creepiness. No means no unless you’ve got some edge playing, role-play…

The sanctimony of it all is what is killing me. Jezebel regularly engages in that same bs but they want to hold the moral high ground on this one. The comments really show how internalized all of this is as well. that place is a cesspool of sycophants and toxic shitheels.

Not just The Root. Every non-Cis White Heteronormative person is going to be watching this one just waiting for the inevitable #NotAllWhiteWomen remarks.