The Guardian

How should young women react as #MeToo moves into dating? Female writers discuss | Anne Perkins, Iman Amrani, Marie Le Conte, Rachel Shabi and Ash Sarkar

Aziz Ansari and Cat Person are taking the #MeToo debate into today’s dating scene, showing gender disparity and raising consent issues
‘I recognise that by blaming Grace’s response, I am also saying that on one level Ansari’s behaviour is OK.’ Photograph: Cassie Wright/WireImage

Anne Perkins: Being young is the time when you should be utopian in your views

Anne Perkins.

Part of me wants to give “Grace” a really good shake. What did she expect, dating Aziz Ansari, a man 10 years older than herself and famous enough to have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, whatever his public reputation as a thoughtful and considerate person fully signed up to #MeToo. The message of his haste to leave the restaurant, the food barely finished, the wine untasted, and race her back to his apartment is so blatant it might have been written up in one of those neon bubbles.

Her failure to tell him where to go once things went pear-shaped when she was there is even more worrying. Sure, she indicated that it was not what she wanted. A genuinely thoughtful man of course would have responded appropriately. He didn’t. She should have left. That is level one in elementary social skills.

But I recognise that by blaming Grace’s response, I am also saying that

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