The Other McCain

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Aziz Ansari ‘More Thoughtful’ Now (But It’s Still Not Safe to Date Abby Nierman)

Posted on | July 14, 2019 | Comments Off on Aziz Ansari ‘More Thoughtful’ Now (But It’s Still Not Safe to Date Abby Nierman)

Aziz Ansari (left) and his accuser Abby Nierman (right).

In January 2018, after an account of a young woman’s bad date with comedian Aziz Ansari went viral, I immediately recognized that “Grace” (as the article called her) did not deserve anonymity. She was not the victim of a crime, and if Ansari’s treatment of her was crude and clumsy, this was unfortunate, but why publicly humiliate him and ruin his career by wrongly smearing him as a Harvey Weinstein-type #MeToo predator?

My post identifying “Grace” as Illinois native Abby Nierman didn’t exactly go viral, although it did attract about 10,000 clicks in the first two months after it was published, then declined until last week, when there was an unexplained spike in traffic to the post. What happened?

Aziz Ansari recently released a special on Netflix, in which he discusses the aftermath of his date from Hell:

Aziz Ansari wastes no time on his new Netflix special talking about the sexual misconduct allegation leveled against him during the height of the #MeToo movement.
Dropping [July 9], the special is titled Aziz Ansari Right Now and runs a little longer than an hour. . . .
The actor and comedian greets the large crowd of adoring fans before getting serious.
“You know, I haven’t said much about that whole thing, but I’ve talked about it on this tour, ’cause you’re here and it means a lot to me,” Ansari said. “I’m sure there are some of you that are curious how I feel about that whole situation.” . . .
“There’s times I felt scared, there’s times I felt humiliated, there’s times I felt embarrassed, and ultimately I just felt terrible that this person felt this way,” he said. “After a year or so, I just hope it was a step forward. It moved things forward for me, made me think about a lot. I hope I’ve become a better person.”
His situation led to some serious talks with his friends, he explained.
“I always think about a conversation I had with one of my friends where he was like, ‘You know what, man? That whole thing made me think about every date I’ve ever been on.’ And I thought, wow! That’s pretty incredible. If this made not just me but other people be more thoughtful, then that’s a good thing, and that’s how I feel about it,” he said.

Yeah, OK, but what about Abby Nierman?

Her as-told-to account at the now-defunct site Babe-dot-net disturbed me when I read it, because Ansari was guilty mainly of bad technique. Abby Nierman was evidently willing to have sex with him, after he’d taken her out to dinner at a quaint riverfront restaurant, and they might have become a serious couple if Ansari’s technique hadn’t been so clumsy. It’s not just that he “moved too fast,” but that he moved all wrong.

How is it that a popular TV star in his 30s can’t do better than lunging and groping? His clumsiness, as described in the article, bothered me.

There seems to have been some kind of communication breakdown, not just between Aziz Ansari and his date, but between men and women generally in the area of sexual etiquette. Up until the point that they returned from dinner to Ansari’s apartment, everything seems to have been going smoothly, and when it started going bad — well, why was she unable to communicate to him that what he was doing wasn’t what turned her on? Or why did Ansari fail to pick up on the clues that his technique wasn’t working? She liked him, and had hoped this date might lead to something serious, so why did she manage their encounter so badly and then blame him, publicly humiliating Ansari in an article that sought to put him in the same category as known rapists?

While this caused Ansari’s friend to say it “made me think about every date I’ve ever been on,” it made me think of something “Red Pill” philosopher Rollo Tomassi has said, namely that women expect guys to “just get it.” Women believe men should automatically do the right thing, in terms of relationships. Men are expected to be clairvoyant, to know what a woman wants without her having to say anything.

When the Aziz Ansari story first went viral, one blogger commented:

The mainstream coverage . . . shows that leaving a woman unsatisfied is non-consensual now. Preventing rape isn’t enough. Women can’t merely want sex, they must enjoy it after the fact.

Indeed, and it was this story — even more than the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, perhaps — that convinced a lot of people that the #MeToo crusade had turned into a hysterical witch-hunt. Everyone agreed that Aziz Ansari’s behavior as described in the article was . . . less than ideal, to put it as politely as possible, but it was not criminal or predatory. By every indication, Abby Nierman was willing to have sex with Ansari, but his clumsy technique was a turn-off, and he did not “just get it.”

The title of my January 2018 post was “Guys: Don’t Date Abby Nierman,” and that still holds true. A woman who would trash a guy’s reputation the way she trashed Aziz Ansari is not a good woman. Unless and until guys are willing to show some solidarity by collectively avoiding women who act the way Abby Nierman did, the dating world will continue to be a dangerous nightmare. Be careful out there, guys.



 

Category: Sex Trouble

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