The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari

The author repeatedly writes attacks against feminists, but dresses them up as other topics of interest. This article is framed as a defense of Aziz Ansari from the perspective of an aging female baby-boomer detatched from the younger generation. But its core is a laudation of the sexist environment responsible for creating strong women familiar with saying "No" to sexual pressure, and a jumble of insults vilifying various feminists. As another example, she did the same thing in 2004 with a piece ostensibly about nannies. Ms. Magazine has a thorough criticism of the piece and of the author,

"A little reporting would have gone a long way to help Flanagan’s argument that nannies are suffering at the hands of feminists. But there wasn’t much there. ... Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in an email discussion with Flanagan and the writer Sara Mosle in Slate magazine, 'if [Flanagan’s] piece was about how employers should pay their nannies' Social Security taxes, then my reading skills are in serious decline.'"

http://www.msmagazine.com/winter2004/backtothekitchen.asp

Two months ago Flannigan wrote, "In the America of earlier generations, one thing that silenced women who wanted to report unwanted sexual acts was how important it was not to damage a man’s career, his reputation, his family. Was one unpleasant event really enough to cause so much trouble to a respected member of the community, to a breadwinner?" but that was in order to take a jab at feminist Al Franken. Today she presents the other side, "Aziz Ansari was a man whom many people admired and whose work, although very well paid, also performed a social good. ... a man who didn’t deserve it." That kind of selective logic is confusing until it's understood that the only consistency in her writing are the attacks against feminism.

From my perspective her intent was

1) To embarrass and humiliate Aziz 2) To suggest that men even those who are standing up for #metoo are culpable. 3) To suggest even further that in the man vs woman debate, men are more responsible due to the fact that woman do not have choices when dealing with aggressive men.

My reading of these events is that it is fairly polarizing for many, some suggesting (on twitter) that men should learn to read "signals" and this is common issue. While others suggesting that her own actions like the oral sex are the signals.

But overall in my mind this was feminist revenge porn, which has been triggered by the growing influence of the #metoo movement. It was definitely not representative of the movement, help to the movement, or anything other than just a vexatious attempt to get some revenge.