Every morning I wake up wondering which celebrity’s sexual misconduct I’ll be writing about. Today’s sweepstakes winner is former Silicon Valley star and current Yelp reviewer T.J. Miller, who is accused of going all Jian Ghomeshi on a college girlfriend. The woman, who The Daily Beast called Sarah, alleges that during a consensual sexual encounter, Miller hit and choked her, things that she did not consent to.
“We started to fool around, and very early in that, he put his hands around my throat and closed them, and I couldn’t breathe,” she recalled. “I was genuinely terrified and completely surprised. I understand now that this is for some people a kink, and I continue to believe it is [something] that should be entered into by consenting parties. But, as someone who had only begun having sexual encounters, like, about three months earlier, I had no awareness this was a kink, and I had certainly not entered into any agreement that I would be choked.”
T.J. Miller and his wife made a statement to The Daily Beast denying the allegations.
Sarah “began again to circulate rumors online once [my and Kate’s] relationship became public. Sadly she is now using the current climate to bandwagon and launch these false accusations again,” the Millers wrote. “It is unfortunate that she is choosing this route as it undermines the important movement to make women feel safe coming forward about legitimate claims against real known predators.”
This is a little different from the other allegations of sexual misconduct flying around, so let’s talk about why. As the woman mentioned, it is a thing people do. It’s not really my cup of tea, but I have known more than one woman who did enjoy this sort of physicality during sex.
But when you want to do something extreme like this during sex, you should probably bring it up beforehand. And you know, if someone isn’t into the thing you want to do, don’t do it. There are plenty of people who are. Find one of them and do whatever the hell the two of you want, you’re both adults. Don’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want, and if you do something and your partner asks you to stop, then stop. Pretty simple.
I guess the big question is “Did T.J. Miller do this?” I don’t know. It doesn’t seem entirely out of character for someone who assaults a cab driver for liking a politician he doesn’t like. This doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that only happens once, though. If the alleged incidents went down as described, we’ll probably hear more allegations from more women about Miller soon.