She also expressed her feelings to him the next day. He heard her out and apologized. I see no reason to doubt the sincerity of his apology. His statement on the matter affirms that he took her words to heart.

While I am careful about putting obligations on the part of a woman to not be assaulted, THIS needed to be said. Women are (WILD GENERALIZATION COMING) often eager to please and slow to disappoint. It did not appear that she could not have left, or that she would be facing some negative consequences of telling Ansari…

No. I think that consent has nothing to do with what you WANT to do, it has to do with what you AGREE to do. And if you agree to do something of your own free will, doesn’t matter if you want to do it or not, you consented.

This x100.

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.

There was some sleaziness to his plays, but nothing that seemed outside the Tom Haverford playbook of overreaching. Certainly nothing that constitutes coercion.

Everyone keeps mentioning that he was jamming his fingers down her throat and then elsewhere, then the throat, then elsewhere... etc etc.

The story reads to me like a groupie dissatisfied she was treated like a groupie.

Just here for the comments:

It’s a more extreme circumstance, certainly. But the general point, that you can agree to something while also not wanting to do it, stands.  I believe exactly what I said, but obviously sex is a different scale than a job.  The guiding principle still applies.

I said that applying the standard you’re setting (of either asking for and obtaining consent for each sex act, or getting pre-approval for sex acts without having to ask) is not practically applicable. All you have to do is take a set of scenarios and run your ideal through them, it’s inoperable. You can’t step…

And if I were you I wouldn’t go around implying that each and every sex act has to be signed off in triplicate before it commences. (See? I can be hyperbolic too!)

Okay, honest question: what are the methods you can get someone to do something without their consent?

Good luck with the practical application of that standard.

Yes, I know that doing something doesn’t mean you agree to it. But the way the article is phrased, it really sounds like she agreed to it.  Again, if I say “they asked me to do it and I did it”...that sounds an awful lot like I agreed to do it.  If I didn’t agree to do it I would probably say “they asked me to do it…

She followed him home.

Read the original story. They had mutual oral sex before this — and were both naked. That doesn’t make any of this cool, but adds some context.

Yet every decision she made, she kept allowing herself to stay in that situation

You’re kidding. You think that we’re aiming to get to a place where every single sex act (and there are so many! and so many degrees!) cannot be enacted without the back-and-forth transaction of asking permission and giving consent?

She did not give consent and he had sex with her. Legally and morally, that’s rape.