Even Ansari, the semi-ironic expert who authored a book on interpersonal communication, claims to have not perceived Grace’s distress. He may have perceived “mixed signals,” but also that his advances were ultimately warranted. In a sort of internal ink-blot test within the story, Ansari was seeing something totally different from his date, Grace. This sort of human mating ritual always involves complex arrays of social cues.
Part of this complexity does draw from prudishness about sex, and sex panics, that are critical to avoid. It draws from a Victorian tradition in which women (particularly women) are imbued with the idea that to have sex at another person’s first suggestion is to somehow be easy (or some such); in which culture gets mostly oriented around the male libido; in which the female libido is seen to exist only for purposes of procreation within marriage.
That framework still informs much of the rhetoric that puts the onus on women to protect themselves from sexual assault or unwelcome advances. Never mind when the woman does want sex. For many people, even consensual encounters might involve some ritualistic “I should probably get going” or “How about one more drink?” banter. If agreeing to stay a bit longer is often taken as agreement to more than that, two people can end up on very different pages. In a charitable reading, that may be what Ansari thought was happening.
The reality is that this is an audit in which most everyone is implicated—everyone has some situation in which they could have been more communicative, more respectful—and there will have to be a way to tell these stories without precipitating a sex-panic-panic. Few people want a sex panic. When I even see the term sexual misconduct on a CNN banner, it feels regressive, like a person is being ridiculed for the sexual equivalent of eating with his elbows on the table. It does seem that the shared goal is a world filled with sex that’s as minimally policed as possible—pleasurable, communicative, respectful, noncoercive, consensual sex. As much or as little of it as you want.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/this-is-not-a-sex-panic/550547/