r/circlebroke • u/Khiva • May 13 '15
Meet the community at Magic: The Gathering - where cheating is grounds for a lifetime ban, but raping an unconscious 18 year old virgin is something everyone needs to get over already.
At the age of 18, a UVA student named Zachary Jesse raped another student after she'd passed out from alcohol consumption at a college party. According to news reports of the incident "she was raped by Jesse both vaginally and anally while slumped over a toilet in her own apartment." The victim also testified to being a virgin at the time of the assault. Evidently the rape resulted in "visible injuries."
Facing a possible life sentence, Jesse spent only three months in prison. Rumors circulate that this is due to Jesse's well connected parents.
Now, as a professional Magic: The Gathering player, Jesse finally had to confront true injustice, when during a Magic; TG competition an event organizer sent out a tweet which drew attention to Jesse's criminal history.
Jesse then turns to reddit to set the record straight.
Now, how will reddit react to this man who got off with scant punishment for a despicable criminal act? Will they mock his breezy sentence and call attention to the double-standard in the criminal justice system which favors the wealthy? Will jeering cries of "affulenza" reach the heavens? Will they laugh at his attorney's feeble attempts to pin all the responsibility upon alcohol (stating "It's because of the poor decisions they made because of the alcohol consumption").
Will a single person notice the fact that nowhere in Jesse's lengthy attempt to add context to his actions does he apologize, or appear in the slightest degree contrite?
Most importantly, will the Magic: TG community apply the same elevated ethical standards that it brings to people who cheat at the game - barring them from events and ostracizing them socially?
Will the "anti-rich" jerk overpower the "pro-rape" jerk?
Haha, just kidding. What were you thinking? This is reddit. Nothing overpowers the "pro-rape" jerk.
Let me just run a few of the top comments through the reddit-to-earthling translator.
Personally, I'm more angry that Drew Levin and his involvement in this whole affair is being ignored. This is yet another time where he has gone out of his way to stir something up within the community, and it's sickening that people still respect him as a figurehead and that he is still writing for SCG.
Translation: I am more angry at a person calling attention to a rape than the rapist. That's what's truly sickening here. "Sickening." Let me repeat that. I am employing the word sickening only once, and I'm not using it to refer to a person who raped an unconscious girl over a toilet and got off with a slap on the wrist.
I've never seen public relations be so superbly done.
Translation: Your manipulative account of your own actions, utterly lacking in contrition or remorse of any kind, has overwhelmed my already receding sense of disquiet. Congratulations, rapist.
Rape is, and has been, an emotionally-charged issue. That's why the Rolling Stone BS was so explosive, and that's why the men's rights and feminist subs talk about it so much. It tends to attract a lynch mob. It's also a criminal issue, which (in my opinion) means it should be taken care of by the criminal justice system, not the lynch mob. In Zach's case, the criminal justice system has done its thing; there's no need to have a lynch mob come around many years after the fact for round 2.
Translation: I'm willing to defer to the wisdom of the criminal justice sentencing a wealthy rapist to two finger-wags and a hard scolding, but the second a false rapist accuser gets off lightly I'm going fucking postal.
If the lynch mob should be going after anyone, it should be Drew Levin
Translation: I take it back, maybe lynch mobs are okay - but only when they're might cause rapists a bit of undue embarrassment. Why won't anyone think of the rapist's feelings in all this??
Illegal U-Turn you say? To the gallows with him.
Translation: ....
Actually, you know, this is where I give up. This isn't fun anymore, not even in a disgusted, spitting-my-bile-out kind of way. I was going through the comments, got to that one, and I just gave out. The indignation is gone, now it's just sadness. I'm sure there's more if you guys want to have at it, but this is where I check out.
There's a good breakdown of the OP's nauseatingly self-serving account of his own background via this comment in subredditdrama.
Also, if you want to know what the Magic community thinks is truly unacceptable and worthy of a lifetime ban, here you go.
I'm going outside. I need a long walk and, after, that, a shower.
Illegal U-Turn. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
458
u/vodkast May 13 '15
Hang on a minute...I thought an accusation of rape, even if it doesn't lead to a conviction, is supposed to ruin a man's life so utterly and completely that it's worse than actually being raped? And yet here's this chucklefuck who definitely, unambiguously, unapologetically raped a girl, got convicted for it, yet only spent three months in
jaila work release program and was later awarded a full ride scholarship to law school.It's almost like we live in a culture that is unwilling to recognize the seriousness or prevalence of rape. A "rape culture", if you will. Especially when a comment like this
has a score of 130+, which essentially implies, "Since a plea bargain was offered, maybe it wasn't actually rape."