America Needs More Gentleman...And Ladies, Too

In the Op Ed section of this Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan described the declining nature of the interaction between men and women as she analyzes the sexual harassment charges against Aziz Ansari. Although she does not specifically identify him by name, it is pretty clear whom she is referring to. While as a woman, the story is in itself disheartening, as a side note, I am particularly saddened because it paints one of my countrymen in a less than favorable light after we have spent decades striving for respect and recognition in a foreign country.   

Noonan says that the country is suffering from the fact that there are not enough men behaving like gentlemen. Ansari was “boorish, a slob and wished to use the woman (who is given the pseudonym Grace) sexually and didn’t understand her reservations.” She uses the example of the interaction between Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn in “The Philadelphia Story” in which Stewart refuses to press his advantage because Hepburn was under the influence and could not give clear consent. But in the case of Ansari and his unnamed accuser, there was fault on both sides. The fact that some men do not act like gentleman does not completely exonerate women who fail to respect themselves enough to stick to their standards.

An article by Jaclyn Friedman, self -professed sexual consent educator, on Vox.com blames Ansari for ignoring Grace’s boundaries.  Yes, Grace deserved to be treated with the utmost respect as all women and people in general do, but respect is earned, not automatic, and Babe.net gives a spotlight only to her version of events to show that she was sexually harassed. Reading her account on the website, it seems as though Grace did not clearly enforce her boundaries from the beginning and Ansari was acting on the ambiguity she was projecting. He was neither naïve nor unsophisticated about dating or relationships, so he deserves to be believed when he said, “It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned.”

Caitlin Flanagan’s article in The Atlantic  provides a more detailed account of the incident. According to Flanagan’s article, it was Grace who was the initiator, ignoring her date and pursuing Ansari at a party in Los Angeles, while he continued to ignore her. She was looking for attention from Ansari and her actions were engineered with that aim in mind. Flanagan suggests that alcohol was a contributing factor to the ambiguity, lowering the inhibitions of both parties, a fact which Noonan leaves out of her analysis. As Grace herself says of that first meeting when she saw Ansari, “I stood up, and I’m like tipsy at this point and feeling really confident.”

She continued to flirt with Ansari by text, later accepting his invitation for a date and agreeing to meet him at his apartment when they returned to New York. She returned willingly to his apartment after dinner, so I find it difficult to believe that she had no idea what might possibly occur after that. Ansari and the young woman engaged in mutual acts of a sexual nature, just short of actual intercourse, but throughout Grace never expressed any sort of strong objection, leading him to believe it and any further activity was consensual. Flanagan sees this episode and others like it as indicative of the fact that modern women, for all their progress in the classroom, the athletic field and the workplace, lack the strength of women of previous generations in being able to enforce their boundaries. When Ansari implied that he wanted to have sex with her shortly after they arrived at his apartment, by saying he was going to get a condom, that would have been the ideal time for Grace to have expressed her objections if that was not something she wanted to do. Instead, she says, “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.”- a very different response from just saying No! 

Noonan seems to sympathize with Grace against her detractors, who say she constructed her story to characterize herself as a helpless victim when she was anything but, because she wanted to be identified as a member of the #MeToo movement.  Natasha Lennard of The Intercept criticizes those who condemn Grace for not just walking out when she felt uncomfortable and violated. She points to the words of Halima Mansoor, a journalist, who writes, "Privilege blinds people who have it to assume everyone else has the same power and therefore should react how they might.” Lennard uses the letter written by Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national organization of 70,000 female farmworkers to support her contention that all victims of sexual harassment lack empowerment. 

That contention has validity when there is a distinct power imbalance as between employer and employee, teacher and student, priest and parishioner, therapist and patient, etc. But Grace exercised her free will (muted perhaps by alcohol) long before the date to contact Ansari, flirt with him, accept his invitation to go back to his apartment and to engage in some acts of a sexual nature with him. She never claimed that Ansari used any type of force or intimidation to get her to engage in such activity, only that he ignored the nonverbal cues that she was uncomfortable. On Mansoor's Twitter feed, she says, "Many people I've spoken to -- men and women -- will tell you sometimes it is very difficult to hit stop or say 'No' in a sexual encounter where the other person isn't listening and is rushing so much that there is no space to think." Grace was aware that Ansari was rushing her at the restaurant and that should have made her stop and think for a moment about why he was in such a hurry. If she felt things were really getting out of hand, she could have given him a verbal indication that she did not want to continue and left at that point. She also had a cellphone with her to call for help if necessary and a way of leaving the situation at any time. That hardly qualifies her as a powerless victim in the same category as the farmworkers that Lennard references.

As the evening wore on and the suggestions of activities became less palatable, she accused Ansari of being the same as all the other guys. Flanagan believes that the young woman had been familiar with this type of interaction before and had behaved in a similar manner on previous occasions. 

Noonan speaks at length in her article about what it takes to be a gentleman. She says that she was told once by a man that “it’s hard to be a gentleman when fewer of the women around you seem interested in being ladies.” That’s a pretty broad generalization about women. There are two misconceptions in this argument. First, the man is assuming that fewer women are interested in being ladies perhaps because of the small segment  of the female population he has been exposed to. Maybe it’s just that he is choosing to associate himself with the wrong type of women or meeting them in the wrong environment. The women, conversely, have been indoctrinated to believe that in order to get a man to notice them they must present themselves in a sexually attractive light and behave in a way that attracts the man’s attention or risk being overlooked. So it’s something of a Catch 22. 

Noonan says that is when the men should try harder and “step up your gentleman game.” 

The second misconception is the flip side of the dilemma of being a gentleman. In her article, Noonan says, “we are all here to teach and inspire” but given the changed social environment of modern times, many women may not recognize that the man’s reserve and courteous behavior is actually a mark of respect for her, so they will label him as dull and boring and ignore him in favor of a man who is more aggressive and exciting, one who may ultimately end up victimizing them, thus creating the self-fulfilling prophecy that all men are pigs.

Grace subsequently responded to a text that Ansari sent her the night after the date. She begins by acknowledging that she enjoyed meeting him and then calls him out on his behavior, which to me is sending out mixed signals. He could have denied her feelings or blamed her, but he sincerely apologized for his role in the misunderstanding, which is trait #12 in the Gentleman’s Journal's "List of 20 things that make a man a gentleman" which Noonan refers to in her article as a guideline for appropriate male behavior. 

As more details emerge about the story, they depict the young woman as a calculating misandrist, searching for her 15 minutes of fame. When closely scrutinized, Grace’s version of events is vaguely reminiscent of the story of the boy who cried wolf. It is evidence that a movement that began with the highest of intentions, providing public support for victims of sexual harassment and censure and punishment for their victimizers, has become a revolution that has gotten out of control, destroying both the guilty and the innocent in its wake and leaving men and women even more embittered with each other as a result.