Relevant SNL skit from last night: Dinner Discussion - SNL - YouTube
Sounds like you want to go all original sin here: we are all bad people. The “logic” does not follow. Dividing the world into “good” and “bad” people may make for a fun show premise (“The Good Place”) but it is in general a very silly thing to try to do in the real world. A person who does “a bad thing” is not necessarily a bad person. They are a person who did a bad thing. Should a parent react to their child caught lying to them by labelling the child a bad person?
The terms? [Yoda]Exist they do; use them we not must.[/Yoda] If we choose to use the terms, then let’s restrict that use to those who have enough of a pervasive pattern of bad or good enough behavior that labelling them such is warranted. That’s a smaller set of humanity.
First off - yes. Already said so: to me time does not alter the calculus given sexual assault having been committed. The scenarios I presented seem very black and white even without the active lie being told.
And the scenarios were premised off of what you presented:
So let’s start with the premise as you presented it and as I then varied for the sake of the discussion. In your opinion does it being twenty three or six years later change what is the ethically and morally correct action to take? Does having continued to live the lie for decades make the lie smaller?
Now you want to take out the explicit lie and leave the scenarios otherwise the same? Sure. The next day she did not comment about it and he said nothing and behaved as if it had not happened. “Only” a lie by omission now. Maybe she remembered and chose to stay quiet, for any of a variety of reasons, or she maybe did not remember, but the individual did not himself say anything about it at the time or anytime after, while the whole time remaining what he would claim to be is her “good friend.” Do the answers change?
Do you need additional facts? Which additional facts would change your answers? In what ways?
Yes, I agree. This is why I think the terms would ideally not exist in the language.
But since they do, I use them as they are used. How they are used is inconsistent–on the one hand, they are used to divide things up as though things were black and white. On the other hand, they are used to apply to people in a way that doesn’t actually admit of black and white divisions. In my view, original sin is built in to the way we talk about good guys and bad guys, good people and bad dudes, etc. It’s an implication we prefer to avoid, but it’s there anyway, and we ignore the implication because it is useful to do so, in order to separate ourselves from the possibility of thinking we’re fundamentally capable of doing things we fundamentally disapprove of.
Between you and me, DSeid, let’s resolve not to use the terms at all. Forget I ever said “bad dude”. I wasn’t speaking my own language at the time anyway. I was trying to speak everyone else’s beep boop.
Ansari’s behavior shows he may have, and may in the future, genuinely harm people in sexual situations–no matter what we think of whether Grace herself was harmed–and so it’s a good idea for someone to warn others about him.
I think what you disagree about is whether he shows he may have, and may in the future, genuinely harm people in sexual situations, by his behavior in the grace situation. Is that correct?
Probably not worth further argument. I’ll just register that your position here seems not just incorrect but ethically repugnant!
Do you think a poll would bear out the idea that women would prefer, 26 years later, to be told, sans invitation, by someone they are friends with that 26 years ago when they said “no I didn’t put my finger in your vagina while you were drunk” they were lying, and they did, and they’ve since come to realize what they did was bad, and they’re resolved to do better, and they are sorry they did it?
Do you not think a significant percentage of people would strongly prefer that guy just keep it to himself?
If you do think so, you’re saying that’s not relevant to the ethics of coming forward?
Or do you really think people would, practically one hundred percent of them, want him to come forward with this??
I think every man and woman may in the future genuinely harm people in sexual situations. Feelings are sensitive things and people sometimes get hurt when in pursuit of their strongest desires especially when it often includes being vulnerable. If what you are trying to ask is whether or not I believe his behavior as reported by Grace identifies him as someone more likely to cause others such pain than pretty much anyone else is, at least given a hook-up circumstance, then indeed the answer is that I do not believe so. The sort of miscommunication that occurred there will often occur between virtual strangers having a sexual encounter unless both parties are far above average at broadcasting what they do and do not want and at reading what the other does and does not want. The bad outcome for Grace was the result of the process, not ill intent or particularly bad skill from Ansari. The bad outcome for Ansari, his public humiliation and the probable impact on his career, OTOH is the result of bad intent from Grace.
Well I’ve offered my answers already, as “ethically repugnant” as you may find them. Yes I believe that a victimized person would rather know the truth about having been victimized by “a friend” (or a priest, or a family member, or dentist while sedated …) than have the facts hidden from them. I believe a victimizer who says that it is better for the victim for them to not come forward and confess to what they did with honest remorse (not in a request for forgiveness) is engaging in self-delusion of the worst and most pathetic kind.
I think nearly 100% of victims would, if given a choice, rather know that the person that they have been thinking of as a good friend had in fact both victimized them and been lying to them about it for decades (be that a lie of commission or omission), would rather know ugly truth than not know what their friend had and continues to do to them.
So now “I’ll just register” that I’ve asked you to reply to a small series of scenarios several times now, and answered your various questions about my take on them, but that you’ve still not directly answered me.
I gather that you believe telling “a friend” that you had assaulted her (be that assault rape, molestation, or other) and lied to her about it 20 plus years ago and hidden it from her ever since is ethically repugnant and that continuing to allow her to think of you as her good friend is ethically superior. Is that correct?
If so what if it was five years ago? Last year? Last week? Yesterday? Not looking for a bright line just a sense of when the time maintaining the lie is long enough that unasked for confession of the truth and honest remorse is more harm than good, unless confession with remorse is in your opinion never the less poor action. It is clear, to you, that 20 plus years is far enough that the harm offsets the good. What’s the farthest away, even if that time is just one day, if it exists at all, that you are clear confession and remorse is the more ethical option? There can be a big grey area that depends on specifics and that is okay.
Will you answer this time?
IMHO poll to see what some women here would prefer. To some degree it is a Matrix choose the pill question. Except of course in the real world the (would be repentant) victimizer is the one choosing which pill for the victim.
You should have proposed a poll question for possible revision. 
From my point of view, again, much more would need to be known about the situation before a clear yes or know could be given. The severity makes a difference. It makes a difference whether she thinks about it every day or never. Rtcetcetc
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It really matters what her reaction would have been.
If it were someone with whom you had a sexual relationship, and that happened, and they asked, “Did you stick your finger in my pussy last night?”, and you reply, “Ummm, no?”, then whatever, they wouldn’t have been that upset about it then, they wouldn’t be upset now.
If they would have been offended then, and if the friendship would have ended then over your actions, then not telling her means that your friendship has been based on a lie. The admission is less about what you did then, but how you continued to lie to her face every day for the last 20+ years.
If she doesn’t think about it, because she doesn’t think that anything happened, that doesn’t get you off the hook. OTOH, if she does think about it, because she knows that someone stuck their fingers in her pussy that night, that just makes it far worse.
Of course the obvious - the victimizer does not know how much the victim thinks about it. But if the victim not thinking about it gets the victimizer off the hook then someone guilty of molesting patients while under anesthesia is doing the morally correct thing by continuing to cover his tracks carefully so he is never discovered, right?
And dude the body of the post is mostly your direct quote!
Concerning which I didn’t give an indication that it was carefully, finally crafted for a poll–it was just a suggestion. It’s okay, there are just a few changes I would have made ideally to make it more clear, and some background info from the thread I would have added in.
But NBD.
About the length of time: It’s definitely relevant. Guy molests a woman on the table, and has a pang of conscience the very next day? He confesses immediately and goes to the cops. Has a pang of conscience twenty five years later? (And it was a one time thing?) He keeps it to himself.
Why? I actually am not sure. I am not sure there is a logic to it tbh. I think this is just how people are. They will find an immediate confession to be something they can significantly respond to, and will find a decades-later confession to be at best puzzling, at worst simply recasting their lives over the decades that have passed in a way that is unpleasant and they have no control over. It’s almost like doing it to them again.
I was discussing this with my closest friend, who is a woman, and who often calls me on BS. Her line on cases like mine with my friend, and the clearly-sexual-assault case of fingering the friend while drunk, is that coming forward about it twenty six years later simply functions to, in her words, “transfer emotional agony” to the woman in questin. In her view (which, of course, is the same as mine in this case), the guy does better to keep it to himself and live with his guilt, rather than re-hashing the event with the woman and forcing her into difficult decisions and possible emotional trauma she didn’t ask for.
(BTW she agrees with you guys that what I did as a kid was not sexual assault.)
Another thing she insisted on (I swear unprompted) was how complicated and case-by-case these things are. It really isn’t black and white, and to treat it as such is… well, as I said, ethically repugnant. I’m sorry to sound so severe but I’m letting you know where I come from. I don’t just kind of disagree with you, and I don’t just want to believe what I do for some self-serving reason. I find your view (sorry) careless! In a way that, if you act out on this view with the wrong person at the wrong time, you’re going to really hurt them unnecessarily! (And I don’t mean just you confessing to something, I am sure you are innocent in that regard, but things like advising others to do so.)
As to whether Ansari showed himself to be more likely than many, or more likely than expected, to genuinely harm someone in a sexual situation (regardless of whether we think he genuinely harmed someone in the situation with Grace), I am not sure how it’s possible you can, on an assumption that he account is true, not come away with an impression that at best the guy doesn’t know how to act on care for consent. That’s dangerous.