RELATED VIDEO: STARS WHO SPOKE OUT AGAINST HARVEY WEINSTEIN

GRACE: We are having a conversation about Aziz Ansari and his career - which has understandably been the talk of the office. Mahalia and I disagree on the matter so we thought we'd jot down our thoughts in order to make sense of the situation. I should probably just lay out my main argument which is that I don't think this should ruin his career. I actually don't like Aziz Ansari's comedy so it's nothing to do with thinking he deserves a second chance because he's talented. I just think that this is such a textbook case of bad sexual politics in 2017 and that there's much more to be gained from having a candid conversation about how common what happened with him is then to act like he's an anomaly or an exception to the rule. Thoughts???

MAHALIA: My stance on Aziz's career going forward is not "Why should it end his career?" but "Why shouldn't it?". My thoughts are as follows: Throughout the entire history of Hollywood, women (especially women of colour and LGBTQI+ folks) have been shown the door for being linked to these situations, and most of the time they're victims ( Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd here as examples), so why should Aziz get to go on without any career implications? Him having some real-shit career blows would at least go to show that his actions and wrong-doing won't go unpunished—which, in my opinion, they shouldn't.

Ansari at the Golden Globes

GRACE: Totally see your point here. It's such a gross thing that has been so endemic in Hollywood and in the workplace for women in general. I watched Blade Runner again recently and was reading about Sean Young and she had this really promising career ahead of her after that movie, then she got involved in this messy harassment lawsuit with James Woods and she never worked again but his career thrived. There are hundreds of stories like that. From my perspective, I think that post-Weinstein we weeded out a lot of really horrible, really savage sexual criminals, and now we need to be talking more broadly about the culture that exists that allowed them to operate for so long. The same culture that allowed Weinstein to work for years also allowed Aziz Ansari to feel okay with pressuring a clearly uncomfortable girl to have sex with him. My argument would be that Aziz Ansari is just a byproduct of that culture, it's the way he's been programmed to understand sex and women, and that's the same culture most men we know operate in (sadly). I think ending his career would give people the false sense that he's another bad apple and that this isn't how most men behave. If we instead say: Look, here's a guy that is engaged with the feminist conversation, who is modern and young and millennial and even he can't go on a date without acting inappropriately, then we have a very serious problem with the way our boys and men are socialised. I think that would be more effective.

MAHALIA: I agree on the socialisation thing—the way we teach boys and men about consent, gender inequality and the entire paragon of rape culture has to change. Has to! And maybe we agree that his entire career shouldn't be ended completely, but I think there should at least be some real-world ramifications for him. As a hypothetical, if Netflix, who gamely cancelled Kevin Spacey's House of Cards, cancelled Master of None (despite the fact that it just scooped up a Golden Globe), wouldn't that be a good message to send that any verifiable evidence of sexual misconduct (which Aziz never denied) would be penalised? I feel like, although Harvey Weinstein and Brett Ratner and those guilty of those disgusting high-level sexual crimes have been ousted, there are a countless many still working that are of a so-called "middle tier,"—that being, they've committed acts of sexual misconduct that are without a doubt damaging and awful but that probably wouldn't earn them jail time. If the industry were to enforce some sort of tangible punishment for Aziz, wouldn't that be of help in the long run? If before, the admissible standard (not ours, but the industry's) was Weinstein-esque rape and assault (and given the amount of years he did the things he did, we can say it was), and now it's "middle tier" sexual misconduct (which campaigns like Time's Up are working to eradicate, but for argument's sake, we'll say is still in play), wouldn't punishment of Aziz Ansari work to push that 'admissible bar' even lower? Until we live in a world where sexual misconduct doesn't exist, shouldn't sexual misconduct, from either end of the spectrum, be swiftly punished?

GRACE: I understand what you're saying. I would find Netflix cancelling Master of None a step too far. At the risk of sounding like Matt Damon, I do think we need to draw a line in the sand between years of sexual assault and being pushy/sleazy/gross in a date scenario, I feel like they are different enough to warrant totally different punishments. The problem with this conversation is that there are so many grey areas. But yeah, I personally don't think this allegation warrants having his show cancelled. Part of what plays into that is that I don't feel like Aziz will get off scot-free - he's been publicly humiliated and he'll never really be able to escape these connotations if he has any sort of a career going forward. Which isn't to say I feel sorry for him, but I feel like if you're a creep, being outed as a creep and having your future work impacted and your legacy as a performer tainted is a pretty fitting punishment. I'd be worried that Aziz being fired would cause a backlash to the #MeToo movement as it suggests a 'one size fits all' response to these sorts of allegations which I think lacks nuance. Not that your argument of why the show should be cancelled lacks nuance—that might have been badly worded. I mean I worry people will interpret the movement as having a lack of nuance if we can't acknowledge that Kevin Spacey and Aziz Ansari are very different cases.

MAHALIA: I like your one-size-fits-all/nuance argument—and I agree with it in part. Maybe my hypothetical cancelling of Master of None is a step too far, and I definitely don't want to paint Aziz with the same brush as men like Brett Ratner, Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey. I think that would be unfair and would be detrimental to the movement. Can I ask, do you think what Aziz has gone through so far (the allegations, discussions and his subsequent apology-non-apology) is 'enough?' Or do you think some other type of penalisation, on any level, is warranted? Again, I don't want to equate what happened with Aziz with rape or sexual assault, the woman who wrote the piece isn't and I don't think we should either, but I don't think I agree with the argument of the humiliation/scandal as being 'enough'. Past examples have proved that sexual misconduct/assault or even rape allegations don't really have any long-term ramifications in the realm of Hollywood. Mel Gibson, Sean Penn and Johnny Depp are all proof that no matter how grievous your crimes (and even if you're convicted of them), the chances of them hurting your career are slim—these men are all still enjoying healthy careers today. Abuse, assault and/or misconduct allegations have rarely gotten in the way of an actor's career before, do you think they will for Aziz? Again! Broken record, but don't want to equate Aziz and the men I have mentioned, just trying to create a basis of comparison.

GRACE: It's a really tough question because the truth is I don't know. I still find it so shocking that Johnny Depp was so readily welcomed back into Hollywood so quickly after the It's a really tough question because the truth is I don't know. I still find it so shocking that Johnny Depp was so readily welcomed back into Hollywood so quickly after the Amber Heard abuse claims . So there is definitely a precedent of it just being swept under the rug and forgotten about pretty quickly. But I think with Aziz Ansari, he's built his whole career on this #woke persona and now that's been totally shattered—so where will he go from here? I can't see him having a career anywhere near as successful as it would have been had this not come out, so in that sense I think he will ultimately suffer quite a lot for it, but going forward each case (and there will of course be more) is going to be different so it may just be a case by case basis. I really don't have the right answer to what the best response is. But I do think that there is room for—to borrow a phrase from Oprah—"reconciliation" in this whole thing. I think if you've got a guy who messed up, and he acknowledges it and wants to work on himself and it seems genuine then we should allow him to do that. Not applaud him for it, or make it out like he's some amazing guy, but let him try to make amends. Dave Chapelle's recent Netflix special The Bird Revelation got quite a bit of backlash because of his approach to #MeToo, but I actually agreed with a lot of what he was saying. There's a quote—and I'm not going to get this totally right—but it's something like "If women want to win this fight they're going to have to have a lot of imperfect allies". This may be the kind of thing he's talking about. This could go on forever! And I want to hear your response. But I think the most important thing in this whole mess is that we're having these conversations. In this Post-Trump Facebook-bubble time I feel like the art of conversation has been lost so I am very psyched we can talk about these issues in an intelligent way. It's the only way forward!

MAHALIA: I couldn't agree more and I'm buying you a coffee later. These conversations, whether or not we're on the money in the end, are an important inroad into changing the climate that has allowed sexual misconduct to thrive—in any industry, not just Hollywood. Having the freedom to express our opinions and have an open discussion is capital g-Good. My final point: Perhaps Aziz's case could definitely also tie into a generational thing—the men I mentioned above are all of a previous generation where their standards of conduct were (grossly) acceptable in some way. Aziz is a millennial, and he has marketed himself as a millennial. And given that our generation is very committed to social growth, re-learning and re-educating on this topic, perhaps the consequences he will face will be different than those that came before him. I personally hope so. On another note, I hope that the conversation we're having on this topic—and the ones happening all over the world, both in the New York Times and on the Inner West Sydney bus in the mornings—have an affect not only on Aziz, but on the men listening and hopefully realising that this behaviour isn't going to fly anymore, in any capacity, on any end of the spectrum. Time's up.