Ashton Kutcher: On Friends and Strangers

Thoughts I'd rather keep to myself.

Image of Ashton Kutcher courtesy of Shutterstock.com

There’s a terrible trap in success: the desire to keep it.

When I wrote the Drew Barrymore piece last week, I had no idea what a ruckus it would cause. And now, of course, I’m fretting about writing something unpopular.

So I’m going to write something unpopular. A minority opinion, if you will, about Ashton Kutcher, which will undoubtedly win me no friends and probably lose me a few.

He’s been on my mind ever since his disastrous apology video became public. He and his wife Mila Kunis wrote letters of support for their friend Danny Masterson, who was recently sentenced to 30 years for raping two women. They were addressed to the judge in the case.

When a journalist published the letters, Kutcher and Kunis made the video apology. It was awful. I’m rarely disappointed in anyone because I have the lowest expectations of people possible. Even I felt let down.

I’d planned on writing an open letter to Kutcher last week, but it’s such a complicated topic I didn’t get anywhere. I put it on the back burner.

I’m still not getting anywhere. An open letter isn’t necessary anymore. Plenty of people let him know what he did. But I still want to try and address what happened, even if it’s not resolved in me.

When I started this Substack a couple of months ago, I wanted to be able to explore ideas without the demand of neatly tying up my thoughts in a bow. My thoughts are never even gift-wrapped. My thoughts are in a plastic bag in the backseat of my car, mixed up with a whole bunch of other detritus.

I greatly appreciate the work Kutcher did at Thorn, an organization he helped found which deals with the sexual exploitation of children. His statement about the Masterson letter was at such odds with the version of him I knew. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

When he co-founded Thorn with his ex-wife Demi Moore in 2012, it was as a youngish, white, successful dude. Most guys in this category are not going to bat for sexually exploited children.

And when I write about rape, my target audience isn’t other rape survivors. I don’t need to explain misogyny to them. My target is people who look like Kutcher. My target is men.

I was thrilled he was working with Thorn because he was an example to other men. I remember thinking,

Maybe other guys like him will step up.

Humans are never one thing, yet current wisdom insists we are. We’re either horrible or wonderful, right or wrong, good or bad. I don’t believe the mistakes Kutcher made recently negate the work he’s done over the past 10 years on behalf of brutalized children.

The flip side is I’m a committed feminist, a rape survivor, and reported an assault in 1983. There was no #MeToo in 1983. There wasn’t even DNA. The experience of testifying in court remains the worst trauma of my life.

I both admire Kutcher’s work, and absolutely understand why survivors no longer want him associated with Thorn, from which he resigned.

Like I said, my thoughts are not neatly wrapped. But there’s something fascinating about how humans operate in this story. There’s a mirror showing us something about ourselves.

Gabriel García Márquez wrote,

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

We can’t see people’s secret lives, even the people to whom we are closest. Yours is safe from me, and mine is safe from you.

Sometimes, though, someone’s secret life becomes public. It’s most shocking when a crime is committed. We can’t imagine anyone we love doing such a terrible thing. We can’t reconcile different versions of the same person.

If there is a terrible aspect to a human, does it negate any good they’ve done? I know it’s less frightening to believe certain criminals are monsters. But monsters don’t commit crimes. We do.

No one wants to believe this, but the wonderful people we know in our private lives are capable of rape and murder.

And when the criminal is our friend, I think it’s natural to believe there must be a mix-up. It’s not the person we know, because we aren’t privy to their secret life. We only know the private and public ones.

I think it’s probably what happened to Kutcher. And I wonder if it’s what’s happening to me, as I write about him. Am I giving him more credit than he deserves? Do I want him to be better than he is?

It’s possible. It’s also possible he’s not one thing.

Kutcher showed up for the hard stuff in life, the things people can’t bear to hear about, let alone dive into. He showed up in a place most men would avoid at all costs.

It means something to me that he did something for the brutalized and voiceless children traded in the sex industry. He did this long before #MeToo, long before it was a smart PR move to phone in support for women and children.

I contributed to Thorn because of his outreach. Nobody wants to talk about rape or exploited children. I certainly don’t, because inevitably I end up taking care of the feelings of the other person in the conversation.

It is so much easier to say I’m fine than to deal with your feelings about what happened. Or worse yet, your advice.

Everyone wants rape survivors to heal, to have closure, to…stop thinking about it. Please heal, so we don’t have to think about it anymore. Please heal, so we don’t have to be uncomfortable. Please have closure, so we are spared from ever asking how you’re doing again.

Most survivors live in isolation for survival’s sake. The rest of you aren’t too good at talking about it. The next person who tells me they hope my writing brings me closure and healing is going to get…my most baleful stare.

The first time I wrote about rape was in 2016. Afterwards a very intelligent, educated, compassionate feminist told me she hoped I was taking care of myself, and to treat myself to a bubble bath or some tea.

News flash: I’m way beyond a bath. I’d prefer to burn things down. But I can’t, because I don’t want to go to jail. My rage has two places to go—into the ears of my highly skilled trauma therapist, and occasionally to the page.

I don’t write to heal. I write because I don’t want other women to go through what I went through. Instead of suggesting a bubble bath, maybe email your Representative in Congress and ask what they’re doing about sexual assault in the United States.

There is no closure for me because things don’t change for other women. And that’s what is so crushing about Kutcher. At the end of the day, it’s always #PoorRapist. Survivors are forgotten.

It makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

But in this mess, there’s something bigger going on. There’s something about how we categorize people.

Occasionally, a simple criminal psychopath shows up, a Charles Manson. One look at him let me know he’d happily gut me, but a Manson is a rarity. Statistically it’s the friendly face who is most dangerous, the person we know in private.

As a kid, the mythic, dangerous stranger of my imagination lurked in an El Camino, parked by dark woods, and smoked a cigarette. He was instantly recognizable. I knew not to talk to that stranger because he looked a lot like Charles Manson.

A stranger never showed up. Other predators did, but I can’t think of one who didn’t first give me a warm smile.

I’ve lived long enough to understand we rarely recognize people with bad intent as we mingle with them. It’s the dopey architect accused of burying multiple bodies on Gilgo Beach. It’s the nice man working next to us at the crisis center named Ted. It’s our father, or brother, or his best friend, or ours.

I think it’s why reporting rape is so difficult. There’s usually a contract between friends: I’ve got your back. I can imagine countless conversations between rape victims and rapist friends. They go like this:

-Sorry, I got carried away because you’re so hot.

-We good?

-Thanks. (Like we agreed to it.) I’ll give you a call later in the week.

The rape survivor wrestles with being a bad friend if she reports the crime.

Maybe I don’t understand what happened to me. Maybe nothing happened to me. Maybe it was my fault, it was probably my fault. Maybe forget it.

Life is complicated because people are complicated, as are relationships, families, and structural systems like misogyny and racism. It’s very scary to go up against a privileged white guy, because laws are made to protect them. And the implicit instruction given to women is,

Don’t cross us. It’ll end badly for you.

I want life to be different.

I want a justice system which doesn’t re-traumatize people who report sexual assault. I want rape prosecuted with vigor, and I want long prison sentences, because it’s a deterrent, and men rape with impunity.

But our system is the one we’ve got.

Even so, I would not want to be in Ashton Kutcher’s shoes. If a friend of mine were facing 30 years, I’d be agonized. If my friend’s family asked me to write a letter to a judge, I’d be in an ethical bind.

Last year a friend of mine was killed by a woman whose excuse seems to be she was having a bad day. I personally believe she should’ve been charged with murder. I looked up the definition. I think a depraved indifference to human life qualified her for a murder charge.

I am not the D.A. She was charged with manslaughter in the first degree.

If she were a Black woman instead of a wealthy white one, I have no doubt—none—she would have been charged with murder.

I try and avoid courtrooms at all costs, but I did go to one hearing.

The defendant walked into the court in a prison jumpsuit. She’d been at Riker’s since she turned herself in. Misery radiated off her.

I wouldn’t usually say this next sentence out loud, as it’s part of my secret life.

I felt a wave of something for her. She looks like me as a young woman. She’s white and has reddish hair and gained weight in jail, and I remember what I felt like when I thought gaining weight was the worst thing that could happen to me. And I thought of her at Riker’s, and it’s hard to wish Riker’s on anyone. I felt something for her probably because I saw myself in her.

And I thought of my dead friend Barbara, who was one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever known. I wondered for the umpteenth time what Barbara would think about her killer’s sentencing.

In a world of good and bad people, I am not allowed these thoughts. I had them anyway.

I think Ashton Kutcher looks at his friend Danny Masterson, who he knows in public and private life, and sees himself. Just like I saw myself in the woman who killed my friend. It’s much easier to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is like us, someone who is not The Stranger we imagine.

As much as I hate seeing anyone suffer, we cannot have people out on the street who push elderly women to their death because of a temper tantrum. They must be locked up.

And as sad as it is for Masterson’s family, reducing his sentence isn’t justice. When a rapist’s sentence is reduced, you might as well say to the victim,

Remember, your life doesn’t count. His does.

Ashton Kutcher will always have my gratitude for the work he did at Thorn.

He showed up for the hard stuff for over a decade. He founded an organization that works to end the suffering of tortured children. The work he did is difficult, and emotionally devastating.

He did it anyway. I suppose I just want to acknowledge I’ll never forget it. I don’t know what’s more human than having good intentions and failing anyway.

This story and what I think of him may never be resolved in me. It will simply bump around inside my secret life.