My takeaway? Old time views on courtship and pursuit cannot co-exist with modern feminism. Do away with “non-verbal cues.” Millennial women cannot harp on affirmative consent and then say “But I gave you non-verbal cues.” Can’t have it both ways.

Yes I agree. Instead of a well written story that would prompt us to start discussing consent right away this is a story that left me with my head spinning for a few hours. I wish they had not immediately linked it to the #metoo movement.

You’re right. I’m an idiot. I’m an assault survivor (stranger rape) and a moron. This story minimizes real assault. I’ve also fought a guy off with a broken bottle who was restraining me (on a separate occasion) and attempting to get me to suck him off. Guess I’m just sheltered like that.

Agreed. There are important conversations here about consent, about feeling pressured to go along, about feeling pressured to be sexually aggressive, about real actual communication between human beings dating, and other issues where we as human beings dating each other have roles and responsibilities and…

He was absolutely tacky. And we’ve all been there. But to call this an “assault” diminishes assault and removes agency from women. (Not arguing at you - just thinking out loud!)

Jez is right here, they should have left out the wine anecdote. That undercut the whole story and the awkward sex moves were written to embarrass Aziz.

But I thought 23 was #adulting? So if you date anyone who is older and/or has more money, it’s automatically a power imbalance weighted against the woman?

Slut shaming?
I’d personally say the most unfairly shamed party here is Aziz Ansari. By far. I thought Caitlin Flanagan’s piece was excellent and her description of the Babe piece as basically “revenge porn” was accurate.

Exactly my thoughts. The humiliation factor made my skin crawl to read.

the editors of Babe were . . . courting a bad faith conversation

Looking into the story as well, I thought the same thing, but didn’t want to be the first person to voice that thought. I’ll always give the benefit of the doubt, but the story made it come off like petty airing of dirt rather than actually pointing at predatory behavior.

This was a bad date. She had a horrible date with a clueless guy who thought he was being sexy and hot. She was made to feel uncomfortable, and it wasn’t right.

This piece is unreal. I’ve been looking for Jez’s take on this for over 24 hours. They haven’t covered it at all except to say that Babe did it badly. Way to have those tough conversations, Jez

Just here for the comments:

Nothing in that article suggests that *every* goddamn person on set knew anything untoward was occurring.

I can’t believe they cited this as actual birth control. My app that I used four years ago warned that ovulation dates were an estimate and not to count on them absolutely. I was on a new bc and took my pill a few hours later and spotted. So I used my app’s calendar to use back up during the unsafe dates. Turned out…

How do we know that ‘the people working on set went out of their way’ to keep this quiet?

Just to be clear, his having consensual sex with an age-appropriate woman, albeit his subordinate, voids his ability to speak out about a far more contemptible act - the rape of a child?

So? What’s the point of this comment?

I mean, it’s not like he was taking a baseball bat to her ribs in front of everyone. He very well could have been sinister enough to do it simply by loosening her support harness just a little bit, with everyone concluding it was just a freak accident. Kramer had been a veteran stunt coordinator for years at that…