Wedge issues

By What the fuck - 03/10/2023 09:00 - United States

Today, I learned that there are people who actually, unironically believe that Danny Masterson is innocent. Faith in humanity: Gone. FML
I agree, your life sucks 457
You deserved it 252

Same thing different taste

Top comments

I'm American and I had to google it myself- he's a actor (known mainly for appearing in 'That 70s Show') recently convicted of raping 2 women. Guess I haven't been much paying attention to the news lately, it sounds like a big scandal.

I learned that there are 70 mln. people in the USA who actually, unironically believe that Donald Trump is innocent. Faith in humanity: gone in November 2016, returned in November 2020.

Comments

I am not American. Who the heck is that?

I'm American and I had to google it myself- he's a actor (known mainly for appearing in 'That 70s Show') recently convicted of raping 2 women. Guess I haven't been much paying attention to the news lately, it sounds like a big scandal.

pizzadaddy 10

he's an actor, most famous for playing Hyde on That 70s Show. He was recently convicted for Raping multiple women

I learned that there are 70 mln. people in the USA who actually, unironically believe that Donald Trump is innocent. Faith in humanity: gone in November 2016, returned in November 2020.

Let's not get political here but conceptually if 70 million people think something, it may be worth talking to them to learn why. Just to flat out say they are crazy locks you out of the opportunity to learn. They may still be wrong but if you haven't had in depth conversations with multiple then you really don't know what they believe. Also no matter what it's impossible for 70 million people to be wrong about everything. I find it no matter who I talk to there's always good things to learn. Little nuggets of gold that make me a better person.

Screw it, I'm going straight to the Godwin and asking if you believe all the Germans who followed the Nazi party weren't completely wrong?

I thought something like that, once. Then I saw Donald Trump mock a disabled guy and still get 70 million people to vote for him. I can't prove he's guilty of anything but publicly mocking a guy with a disability, but that's enough for me to say that any of the 70 million who voted for him after that who aren't crazy are assholes.

I haven't followed any of what's going on so I have no clue about his case but it's just a general comment. Part of the problem is that what we call rape today was practically expected behavior in the not so distant past. If you watch a lot of these documentaries about Hollywood actors in their lives there's tons of underage sex and drug use going on. The worst problem with rape is that we don't have a solid definition. The problem with that is you need to know when you're committing a crime so that you can not commit a crime. I'm not justifying rape. I'm just saying that this is one of the most difficult areas legally to nail down. There's a legal principle that I see a lot of situations that deals with what a reasonable person would do. This is also really hard to nail down especially in this type of case. Imagine someone who gives consent to a certain extent and then revokes consent. What is a reasonable person going to do in this situation. At what point can they consent be revoked and how fast does the other person have to act based on this revoked consent. Also does consent determine whether something is a crime? Your neighbor borrows your lawn mower and you can say sure but bring it back at the end of the day. Instead he brings it back the next morning so you call the police. Somebody says you can borrow my socks but only if you wear the red one on your right foot and then you wear the red one on your left foot so they call the police. When is it you being a jerk and when is it rape? You might think this is too theoretical but there have been a lot of cases that deal with almost this exact situation. The outcomes have gone both ways. There was a girl who carried a mattress around campus claiming that her ex-boyfriend had raped her but all the evidence pointed the opposite. He sued the school for allowing this girl to defame him and he won because there was tons of evidence of consent. Another time a reporter didn't use protection and went to jail.

The mattress girl story is easy to find and there's tons of stuff online for it so feel free to look that one up. One other one that is extremely significant it's another college student consent situation. A girl and guy undressed and get in bed and she says everything goes except one thing. Can you act like that and then send the person to jail if they don't follow exactly what you said? Is it legal to say everything goes except for this one thing and if that one thing happens bam you're in jail? Is that reasonable? He claims that at one point she said yes and was okay with it but that felt bad the next day. She admits the same she was okay with everything except one thing. I don't remember the total outcome because I stopped following the story. I'm pretty sure the boy got kicked out of college at least. In this case it seems like you're walking a fine line. I think the law should be solidified so that everyone knows where the line is. At least that way the girl can stay with confidence this is okay and that's not and the guy can say with confidence I'm not going to go to jail for doing what I thought was okay.

About 20 years ago high schools taught that, "no means no". Now we've switched to "yes means yes". I think a lot of these accusation are based on that shift. Where one party thought they were on the same page, there was never a "no" or resistance, things appeared consensual. Then 20 years later it turns out they were just playing along because they felt they had to because of status, strength, money, or some other perceived power imbalance simply existing.

Sometimes it's hard for people to believe that celebrities they like are secretly monsters of the highest order. Also the accusations were from events that happened over 20 years ago with no other evidence. Danny got 30 years for losing in a game of "He said, She said". Not saying he shouldn't have, but if he had a better lawyer or if this wasn't the era of "me to" things could have just as easily gone the other way.