Gender Roles, Sexist Ideology, and Troubling Consent:  

 
As we have seen, the Aziz Ansari story has been the subject of intense public debate, pitting feminist against feminist 
over the question of whether Ansari’s depicted behavior constitutes sexual misconduct or simply a failure of 
communication. Using the exhibit sources and argument sources given, frame a debate between two perspectives, 
highlighting relevant passages in Grace’s story in Exhibit A that would support each side of this debate: 
 
III. ARGUMENT SOURCES: What is consent? 
 
THREE STANDARDS FOR CONSENT: ​“The first option says that to prove unwillingness, there must be some verbal protest. 
The second option says we should assume non-consent unless there is clear affirmative permission. In the first option, silence and 
passivity always imply consent; in the second option, silence and passivity always mean no consent. In the third option, silence and 
passivity can imply either consent or non-consent, depending on all the circumstances.” 
 
CAN CONSENT BE INVALID? ​ ​“If two free people want to enter into a voluntary, consensual agreement that doesn’t infringe 
on anyone else’s rights, why should the government stop them? If someone wants to work for $5 an hour, and someone wants to hire 
that person for that much, and no one is forcing either one of them to enter into the agreement, by what authority does the 
government step in and stop them?” - Ira Stoll 
WHAT MAKES CONSENT “VALID”?​ “In situations like robbery at gunpoint, successful coercion renders consent invalid. The 
victim's agreement to transfer his money to the robber does not actually change who has the (legal or moral) property rights over it; 
that is, the token of consent is not transformative. Similarly, if a surgeon forced her patient at gunpoint to agree to a medical 
procedure, he would not be giving valid consent to that procedure. However, not all threats invalidate consent. Suppose the robber 
were armed only with a sharp tongue and threatened: “Your money or I mock you!” Assuming that is really all that her victim thought 
she would do, we would expect him to resist such a weak threat. It would be strange for him to claim that he had been forced to hand 
over his money. Threats that the person threatened could reasonably be expected to resist do not render consent invalid.” 

IS CONSENT ALWAYS VERBAL? ​“There is no such thing as non-verbal consent. Consent must be ​(a) verbal, (b) mutual, and (c) 
reiterated for every new level of sexual behaviour" - Antioch’s Affirmative Consent Policy 
 
IS AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT TOO FAR? ​ ​"Once rules become the standard by which we judge what is right​ and what is 
wrong, then we lose the capacity and the maturity to​ deal with what are always complicated problems."​ ​ Furedi grew up during the 
sexual revolution of the 1960s and​ thinks the younger generation is more conservative. ​ ​ "Sexual morality has become much more 
puritanical and much more regulated. I often watch my son, who's now 18, and his generation, and it really does remind me of that 
19th Century, Jane Austen hesitancy that I find very alien to my own socialisation. We're going to lead to a world that becomes much 
more micromanaged." 
 
II. EXHIBIT SOURCE A: Grace’s Story: ​Ansari wanted to have sex. She said she remembers him asking again and 
again, “Where do you want me to fuck you?” while she was still seated on the countertop. She says she found the question tough to 
answer because she says she didn’t want to fuck him at all.“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?’” He then poured her a glass and handed it to 
her. She excused herself to the bathroom soon after. 
Grace says she spent around five minutes in the bathroom, collecting herself in the mirror and splashing herself with water. 
Then she went back to Ansari. He asked her if she was okay. “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d 
rather not hate you,” she said. She told ​babe​ that at first, she was happy with how he reacted. “He said, ‘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.’” 
This moment is particularly significant for Grace, because she thought that would be the end of the sexual encounter — her 
remark about not wanting to feel “forced” had added a verbal component to the cues she was trying to give him about her 
discomfort. When she sat down on the floor next to Ansari, who sat on the couch, she thought he might rub her back, or play with 
her hair — something to calm her down.Ansari instructed her to turn around. “He sat back and pointed to his penis and motioned for 
me to go down on him. And I did. I think I just felt really pressured. It was literally the most unexpected thing I thought would 
happen at that moment because I told him I was uncomfortable.”Soon, he pulled her back up onto the couch. She would tell her 
friend via text later that night, “He [made out] with me again and says, ‘Doesn’t look like you hate me.’” Halfway into the encounter, 
he led her from the couch to a different part of his apartment. He said he had to show her something. Then he brought her to a large 
mirror, bent her over and asked her again, “Where do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to fuck you right here?” He 
rammed his penis against her ass while he said it, pantomiming intercourse. 
 
  
ARGUMENT SOURCES: Is consent sufficient to make sexual conduct morally legitimate? 
 
From C.K. Egbert: “Suppose we have a world in which we define consent as active, explicit, and ongoing. In addition, 
we will assume that we have a legal system that reliably and adequately deals with cases of sexual assault. However, we 
will keep the other social-sexual norms intact (normalization of pain, eroticization of violence, and instrumentalization of 
women). In this world, Alice is a heterosexual female who wants the physical and emotional intimacy of a romantic 
relationship. She does not want to engage in any sexual activity that is painful or degrading for her; instead, she wants sex 
to be mutually pleasurable. What are her options? 

1) Find a man who does not have a preference for eroticizing violence. This is going to be extremely difficult because 
men are strongly socialized into norms that train men’s sexual responses to situations in which women are harmed and 
objectified. Since not hurting women is merely a “preference,” there is no motivation for men to not have those 
responses or to be concerned about sex being reciprocal. 
 
2) Never have a sexual or romantic relationship with a man. 
 
3) Habituate herself to the social-sexual norms. 
 
I am not saying that Alice is owed a relationship. But is Alice coerced? The answer is yes, because she is denied an equal 
opportunity to pursue a relationship to satisfy her need for emotional and physical intimacy. If we required, for example, 
that all black people must first be physically abused before they are able to earn their college degree, this would clearly be 
unjust. Similarly, a romantic or sexual relationship for Alice — something which people often think is a genuine human 
need, or at least an important personal good — comes at a cost that men do not have to pay, and the cost is her own 
suffering and bodily integrity. Would Alice no longer be coerced if she habituates herself to engaging in painful or 
degrading sexual behaviors in order to attain the intimacy she desires? It seems this is an even greater form of coercion; a 
coercion that becomes so ingrained that she can no longer see herself as deserving anything other than pain or abuse.” 
 
 
What Is a Sexist Ideology? Or: Why Grace Didn’t Leave  
 
1. What is Hanel’s principle claim? What is a sexist ideology? How does Hanel use this concept 
to make her argument? 
2. Consider the Exhibit sources provided after the story: How might one appeal to those 
Exhibit sources to motivate Hanel’s case? 
3. Do you agree with Hanel’s argument? 
 
One night in 2017, ‘Grace’ went on a date with actor Aziz Ansari. She later described the date as “the worst experience 
with a man I’ve ever had,” and accused him of sexual assault (Harmon 2018; Respers France 2018; Way 2018). In a 
statement, he responded by saying that the sexual activity was completely consensual. While Grace felt pressured, 
uncomfortable, and violated, he was convinced that the sexual acts were consensual. How is it possible that a man who 
describes himself as an ally to the feminist cause engages in such unacceptable actions and seems incapable of 
understanding them for what they are, that is, acts of sexual violence? And how is it possible that a woman who feels 
uncomfortable is still incapable of resisting further advances? In this paper, I argue that such cases have to be 
understood within the framework of a ‘sexist ideology,’ that is, a social structure that constrains our actions and 
epistemic tools of interpretation. What hinders Ansari from understanding the act as sexual violence and what hinders 
Grace from resisting Ansari is the complex set of interconnected sexist practices which determine who owes what to 
whom based on different gendered roles. 
While some feminists have praised Grace for coming forward about this seemingly “normal” case of sexual 
behavior, a case that gained massive attention during the #MeToo-movement, others have accused her of weakening 
this movement. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Bari Weiss writes that, “if you are hanging out naked with 
a man, it’s safe to assume he is going to try to have sex with you,” and that, “if he pressures you to do something you 
don’t want to do, use a four-letter word, stand up on your two legs and walk out his door” (Weiss 2018). Jessica Valenti, 
on the other hand, writes that, “ a lot of men will read that post about Aziz Ansari and see an everyday, reasonable 
sexual interaction. But part of what women are saying right now is that what the culture considers ‘normal’ sexual 
encounters are not working for us, and [are] oftentimes harmful. (Respers France 2018).” Valenti is right in saying that 
often “normal” sexual encounters are harmful. ​And Weiss is correct in saying that Grace could have walked 
out—according to her statement, Ansari pressured her, but she stayed of her own free will. But the greater 
question is: Why did she not leave? Why did Grace feel unable to refuse the pressure and just leave when 
Ansari did not pick up on her clues of discomfort? And why did Ansari fail to pick up on these clues? ​What I 
claim in the following is that Ansari’s as well as Grace’s behavior are constrained by a powerful sexist ideology, and that 
we fail to understand cases like this if we ignore the underlying sexist framework that structures them. In other words,​ I 
claim that Ansari’s failure to adequately understand his actions and Grace’s incapability of leaving the 
uncomfortable situation should be understood as social practices within a wider framework of—what I 
call—‘sexist ideology’.  
According to my proposal, a sexist ideology is a social structure, constituted by ritualized social 
practices, and rationalized by a coherent cultural framework that organizes social agents into binary gender 
relations of domination and subordination.​ What I attempt to show is that the problematic and common experience 
of men who fail to correctly understand their own behavior as acts of sexual violence (e.g., Ansari) as well as the difficult 
phenomenon of women who are incapable of resisting an uncomfortable situation (e.g., ‘Grace’) can be better 
illuminated with a specific theory of ideology. Such a theory makes intelligible the ways in which those involved in 
certain social practices can fail to understand their own acts and experiences for what they are or fail to act according to 
their own best interests…​Social practices that constitute sexist ideology are sexual violence, domestic abuse, 
forced marriage, forced surgery of intersex persons, hate crime against transgender persons, and so on. ​To be 
coherent, the cultural framework functions with a range of schemas (including rape myths) that make intelligible the 
sexist social practices grounded in binary gender relations. Thus, when I speak of sexist ideology, I have in mind a whole 
range of interconnected social practices.​ ​Sexual violence as a social practice within sexist ideology is supported by 
other social practices and by the underlying cultural framework—the set of interdependent public 
schemas—that makes certain acts unintelligible or masks interpretations by providing alternative and false 
understandings.  
We can now understand how Ansari fails to understand his behavior as an act of violence and how 
Grace believes that she “owed” him. The sexist ideology they are embedded within masks a more adequate 
interpretation of their own experiences and instead provides a dominant but false alternative explanation. ​Take, 
for example, Lois Pineau’s insightful discussion of when it is reasonable to assume that consent is indeed 
given...[​Pineau’s consent-based standard] assumes that we know what we want and we do not make choices 
against our best interest. However, such an assumption is questionable. ​After all, Grace did make a choice—she 
did not leave but engaged in pressured oral sex—that was against her best interest. ​Ideology can bring it about that 
women consent due to specific schemas, such as the one that makes it seem as though women owe sex to 
men; indeed, they might believe in the same schemas as men. Furthermore, growing up in a system that 
socializes women into being submissive (and enjoy it!) can render them incapable of distinguishing their real 
desires from their false desires. A woman might be so deeply influenced by the ideology that she actually 
believes that submission is her real desire. ​This is problematic for...how we understand consent, because it assumes 
that none of the participants in the sexual encounter are constrained by the “choice architecture” of sexist ideology and, 
hence, that they know what they want. ​Thus, in sexist ideology, consent—even enthusiastic consent—becomes 
questionable.