Interesting Point on #MeToo/The Aziz Azari Incident

The big lie of feminism, Faith Moore writes, is that men and women are exactly alike. Not just equal -- exactly alike.

Including as regards attitudes towards disposable, nigh-anonymous sex.

Which isn't true, of course, and leads to wild, hysterical accusations:

[I]t begins something like this: Men and women are exactly the same. And women have been oppressed. So anything typically "female" is just a sign of oppression.... So everyone should want to be more like men.

Which leads us to this: If everyone needs to act like men, everyone must feel the same way about sex that men do. So women should want to engage in random hookups and meaningless sex. So -- even though she consents -- if anything feels wrong about that, it must be the man's fault for making her feel violated since it can't be that meaningless sex isn’t actually what women want. So she must be a victim.

You have to add in the victimization fetish, and female supremacism -- you're always right, Girl, and he's always wrong -- but yeah, that's a pretty good point.

I don't have much clever to add, but I would make these two somewhat obvious points:

1. There is nothing a man and a woman can do alone in an apartment that they can't do in a public area, except for the one thing they can only do when alone.

If you want to talk, great, stay out together at a bar or coffee shop or desert cafe. If you want to watch a movie together, get this, go see a movie. You don't have to go into someone's apartment alone and "Netflix and Chill" to see a movie.

My point is, this girl went up to this guy's apartment. That doesn't mean she's consented to be sexually assaulted or anything like that, but it surely means she's consented to permitting him to try to persuade her to have sex.

Otherwise -- what is the point of being alone in an apartment with him? Again, there's nothing a man and a woman can do when they're alone that they can't do when they're out in public, except that one thing.

This wasn't an office or an interview situation. This was a date, which then proceeded to an upstairs invite, as Seinfeld would say.

What was her preconception of what a dude would try to do behind closed doors?

Again, not saying that this justifies sexual assault on anyone, but if you go into a situation where people usually Do The Sex you can't be astonished and hurt that the guy actually thinks you might want to Do The Sex.

2. That said, Azari seems to have been pretty aggressive.

3. But that said, she never left (at least until she did). I saw some people arguing that it's hard for a woman to say no. That she doesn't want to make a scene, or make the guy feel bad. Etc.

But she didn't have to do any of those things. She can just do what everyone in the world does: Yawn and say "I have to get up early tomorrow, I should get going."

No drama. Just end the date with a minimum of drama and fuss.

Again, yeah, Azari (per this account) seems to have been very insistent and persistent in his drive to get easy sex, but... at some point, did she not realize the end-game he had in mind? Why not just... leave?

I think this gets back to the Faith Moore's point -- it's because she didn't want easy, casual, nigh-anonymous sex. She actually hoped that this would be some kind of prelude to dating him or something, but she can't admit that -- not empowering! A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle! -- and she's conditioned to believe that Fun Frisky Sexy Feminists are always DTF, and she's a fun, frisky, sexy feminist.

So she counterfeits her actual desires to herself, and also, to Aziz Azari, who is not exactly insane for thinking a woman who comes up to his apartment and engages in making out and oral sex might be interested in sex, and, having pretended to be, against her own instincts, to be a Fun Frisky Sexy Feminist who's always DTF because that's So Empowering And Stuff, gives off "non-verbal cues" that she doesn't want to have sex while actually obliging (reluctantly, it seems) in oral sex and masturbation.

She's confused about what she wants, Aziz Azari is confused about what she wants (but pretty damn sure of what he wants), and feels hurt and used and treated like a causal sex object, more or less because she was treated like a casual sex object, and that's more or less because it's now become Industry Standard that Fun Frisky Sexy Feminists are supposed to be cool with being casual sex objects -- So Empowering! -- and alleged Feminist Allies like Aziz Azari have learned that too.

And if this leads to bad feelings and bruised emotions well, gotta be a man to blame.

Night! I'm sure there will be more twists and turns in the Shutdown soap-opera but I think it's likely we'll have a shutdown so I don't feel like waiting up for confirmation.

Another Vote:

posted by Ace at 08:32 PM

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