Comedian and actor Aziz Ansari has responded to allegations of sexual assault, saying he had believed the encounter to be “completely consensual”. Over the weekend, Babe magazine published a graphic account from a 23-year-old woman who went on a date with Ansari which turned horribly wrong. The woman— who chose to remain anonymous and uses the pseudonym Grace— said it took her a long time to “validate this as a sexual assault.'”
Apparently, Ansari took Grace back to his apartment after a dinner date where she felt uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated. He told her he was going to grab a condom “within minutes of their first kiss,” to which Grace “said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’”
She says he resumed kissing her, and they briefly performed oral sex on each other. “It was really quick. Everything was pretty much touched and done within ten minutes of hooking up, except for actual sex.”
She also says Ansari repeatedly made a move on her that she called “the claw”:
“The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.”
She also said he kept guiding her hand to his penis:
“He probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times. He really kept doing it after I moved it away.”
The worst part was that he wouldn’t let Grace stop or move away from him, and ignored all her attempts at refusing him:
“It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again. It was really repetitive. It felt like a fucking game. Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points. I stopped moving my lips and turned cold. I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.”
“I wasn’t really even thinking of that, I didn’t want to be engaged in that with him. But he kept asking, so I said, ‘Next time.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you mean second date?’ and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ and he goes, ‘Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?’”
After he poured her a glass, she excused herself to the bathroom to collect herself. After she came out, he asked her if she was okay and she responded with “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.” Grace thought that was the end of that and felt immensely relieved when Ansari responded with “Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun.”
“The response was technically very sweet and acknowledging the fact that I was very uncomfortable. Verbally, in that moment, he acknowledged that I needed to take it slow. Then he said, ‘Let’s just chill over here on the couch.'”