And just like that, he's back.

Aziz Ansari, the award-winning comedian turfed from the pop culture pantheon in January after an online essay graphically detailed his date with an anonymous 23-year-old who claims he pressured her into sex, ignored her cues to stop and acted generally boorish and clueless.

Those, of course, were heady days for the #MeToo movement, when you couldn't turn on the TV or click your smartphone without hearing about some Machiavellian powermonger felled by allegations of sexual assault.

Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K, Jeremy Piven, Kevin Spacey, Jeffrey Tambor. Oh man, the list goes on.

They were trying times, I can tell you, for the beleaguered, middle-aged men who populate social media feeds, irrationally convinced the boom would drop on them as well, whether they were guilty of anything or not.

It's a witch hunt, they cried. These revenge-crazed feminists will take us all down. This is a human rights issue!

But Ansari — embarked on a comeback tour a mere 10 months after his career was allegedly destroyed — was, in retrospect, the turning point, and in some small way, their salvation.

Here was a guy who — like them — had no idea how to behave with women, was stymied about the nature of consent and seemed miffed that aggressive badgering for sex could be misconstrued as in some way inappropriate.

No means no? What, are you kidding?

To the delight of these aggrieved tacticians, prominent feminists came to Ansari's defence, writing furious essays castigating his anonymous victim for unleashing "3,000 words of revenge porn" over what they argued was her grotesque overreaction to a "bad date."

As the #MeToo movement splintered into bickering factions over which offences warranted reprisal and which reflected the entitled whining of sheltered snowflakes, diminutive, mild-mannered, "Times Up" pin-wearing Ansari — with his convivial brand of "woke" comedy — became their unwitting poster boy.

Except for one problem: as the smart people pointed out, #MeToo isn't just about sexual assault. It's also about not acting like a jerk.

"It's a complicated issue," notes TK Pritchard of the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region.

"Sexual violence exists on a spectrum. 'Consent' is not just something you engage in so you don't go to jail."

And so Ansari arrives in Kitchener on Wednesday — just as convicted sex offender Bill Cosby and alleged sex offender Jacob Hoggard (of Hedley) before him — with his head down, avoiding interviews (including with this newspaper) as pundits debate the magnitude of his sins.

The concern, notes Pritchard, isn't about whether Ansari is a good guy or a bad guy.

It's that by squabbling over specifics, people are missing the larger issue.

"It's really interesting that Bill Cosby, Hedley and now Aziz Ansari — three very powerful men who have been part of the sexual violence conversation — have all come to Kitchener in the last three years," says the Centre's public education manager, who runs a Male Allies program that should probably be mandatory in schools.

"What message are we sending in our community about what we think about sexual violence?"

No one is suggesting Ansari — who issued a mealy mouthed pseudo apology after the incident expressing his "surprise and concern" — be strung up by his fingernails and ostracized for life.

But as a self-proclaimed "feminist" whose Netflix show, "Master of None," explores the nuances of modern dating, there are those who feel that sneaking back into the spotlight without addressing his role in the controversy is not only disingenuous, but inappropriate.

"If I burned your house down and the next day said 'Yeah Joel, your house caught on fire. I'm sorry that happened' and sort of half apologized, and then six months later I didn't understand why you don't trust me in your house or with fire, it would seem ludicrous," points out Pritchard.

"Maybe what I should be saying is 'I want to apologize and make reparations and get therapy and counselling and maybe I should not be trusted with fire for a while.' Maybe having that power right now is not a good idea for me."

Whether or not Ansari's behaviour meets the legal definition of sexual assault is less important, Pritchard notes, than the fact that — like disgraced comic masturbator Louis C.K., also on the comeback trail — he has yet to display an understanding that, if nothing else, he violated a basic standard of trust.

"So many people have never been challenged on their 'normalized' behaviour," he points out, citing Ansari as a link in a long chain of male entitlement.

"We can shift the culture, but it's not going to change today. It's not just you go to a one-hour workshop."

When a lot of these stories broke, he points out, people talked about how men were being unfairly taken down, their careers ruined by allegations and innuendo.

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"That was in January. Now it's November, so the impact has been really limited. What you're seeing (with Ansari) is someone stepping back and then resurfacing, not making a real commitment to learning."

The bottom line: the men who complain loudest are suffering the least, while their female accusers — no matter how credible their allegations — are facing major blowback for daring to speak up.

Take Christine Blasey Ford, whose allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager were deemed credible, then ignored as he ascended to the pinnacle of the U.S. justice system while the beleaguered psych prof had to move four times and still receives death threats.

And what the heck is going on at St. Michael's private school in Toronto? Mired in scandal over graphic videos of male students sexually assaulting each other in apparent hazing rituals that stretch back decades and speak to the school's homophobic, hypermasculine culture.

"Toxic masculinity," a year after #MeToo shone a light into dark corners of the male psyche, it isn't just a buzzword — it's a real thing.

"There are people across the board who believe in ending sexual violence," notes Pritchard. "But most of the work has been done by women, trans and non-binary people. It's really important for men to step up."

So welcome back, Aziz.

Cosby — facing multiple allegations of sexual assault that would later send him to prison — received such an enthusiastic standing ovation in 2015 he felt compelled to write Kitchener a personal thank-you note.

Hedley, whose lead singer is due in court Wednesday on sexual assault charges of his own — the same day Ansari appears in Kitchener — almost sold out the Aud in March as diehard fans insisted allegations of rape didn't factor into their ticket-buying decisions.

Given these realities, it is unreasonable to imagine Ansari — hailed as a conquering hero in other cities — will suffer ill effects from his alleged transgressions when he appears in Kitchener.

Protests?

After an extensive internet search, the only thing I could find was a single tweet castigating Centre in the Square for catering to the lowest common denominator by bringing in "garbage humans."

"Has #MeToo gone too far?" muses Pritchard, who insists a much larger discussion is required.

"No, these are messy, difficult, complex conversations. The fact we have a backlash only proves we have a lot of work to do."

Aziz Ansari Live Wednesday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m.

Centre in the Square, Kitchener

Tickets: $55.75-$85.75

Call: 519-578-1570 or go to www.centreinthesquare.com