Anonymous Photographer, Katie Way of Babe.net Accused of #RevengePorn Against Aziz Ansari

Nothing more depressing for a writer than to find that someone else shared your thoughts about something but was so much better at putting it into words.

While my response to a tweet from Cher about the Aziz Ansari allegation -- which to me is the more interesting (but with far higher stakes since it affects real lives) version of The New Yorker's Cat Person (fiction) story everyone was debating last month -- got some play, Caitlin Flanagan really nailed it in her her piece for The Atlantic.

Was Grace frozen, terrified, stuck? No. She tells us that she wanted something from Ansari and she was trying to figure out how to get it. She wanted affection, kindness, attention. Perhaps she hoped to maybe even become the famous man’s girlfriend. He wasn’t interested. What she felt afterward—rejected yet another time, by yet another man—was regret. And what she and the writer who told her story created was 3,000 words of revenge porn. The clinical detail in which the story is told is intended not to validate her account as much as it is to hurt and humiliate Ansari. Together, the two women may have destroyed Ansari’s career, which is now the punishment for every kind of male sexual misconduct, from the grotesque to the disappointing. 

As awed as I was, I guess it was foolish to think even she'd gotten the definitive -- and final(!) -- word on the subject. Indeed, I woke up to reactions from friends I greatly respect that still saw nothing wrong with the #RevengePorn piece on Babe.net. It was in the shower while getting ready for work that I realized that a far greater percentage of the world is OK with (what I call) the Yelpification of everyday life, meaning anyone (and everyone but especially celebrities, obviously) should be on notice that anything (and everything) you do -- even in the privacy of your own home where there is just that, the expectation of privacy -- is fair game to scrutiny by the world, by way of an artfully worded tweet directed at the lowest-hanging "journalist." Not a fan of Ansari's, but it will be interesting to see if Katie Way and his still-anonymous date succeeded in destroying his career.

Aziz Ansari responds. (Note the reference to responding to her concerns ... PRIVATELY)

In September of last year, I met a woman at a party. We exchanged numbers. We texted back and forth and eventually went on a date. We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual. The next day, I got a text from her saying that although "it may have seemed okay," upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. 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. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said. I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture. It is necessary and long overdue.

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