I even feel like maybe this is a perfect and great apology, too late.
Timing matters. He’s a comedian, he knows this.
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Probably this is related to a male fantasy of getting something for nothing, that and a general lack of respect for women and themselves.
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Humbabella, Not talking Kategorischer Imperativ.
The examples of women speaking up encouraged more women to speak up. The examples of #metoo encouraged more people to declare #metoo. (BTW, #metoo) I welcome more examples of ways to acknowledge abusive actions done in the past, rather than the lawsuits and denial and “sex addict” responses we are mostly seeing.
The Not Getting It is strong with this one…
For someone who so often plumbed his own life for material, this casts his jokes with a much more sinister aspect…
http://the-toast.net/2013/07/22/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-former-mrs-louis-c-k/
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Does he? He’s a professional comedian, one of the best in the business, if there’s one thing that Louis C.K. understands how to do is effectively communicate with a left-leaning audience.
Up till now, when his career was about to permanently implode, his reaction was to dismiss and deny, only when it hit the fan did his apology come out.
Now it may be completely sincere, but he’s also a smart guy who knows his audience. Expressing true regret and not asking for forgiveness is also the course of action that best preserves his career.
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Or the tragedy of getting it, but behaving in the exact opposite way.
This is so much better than most of the ways celebrities and politicians and all the rest react. He’s still a jackhole. But this is better than most.
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I actually turned it off after about 10-15 minutes when I tried to watch it. And I totally like inappropriate humor, loved Sarah Silverman’s latest Netflix special. But C.K.'s was just, bleh, and not terribly funny I don’t think.
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It’s stunning how many men on this board are still equivocating [edited to add: is that the right word? maybe just ‘making excuses for’] CK’s behavior after the man has stated, “These stories are true.”
Where did he stand? How did he threaten them? It was KIND OF consensual.
No. No no no no no.
Read here:
Then please make it your business to read more about what it means to be a woman in a man’s world.
And stop defending a man who has already said he’s guilty.
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Well, we have two choices. Take him seriously and believe he wouldn’t want people diminishing his actions or excusing him; or believe he is an anti-social master manipulator and in which case it would be bizarre to want to diminish his actions or excuse him. Either way, I don’t see how people are defending him.
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Blown away by that statement. What a classy guy.
(/s)
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Then please make it your business to read more about what it means to be a woman in a man’s world.
Every man should read this piece by Laurie Penny:
She’s a treasure of the anglophone world.
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Excellent piece. Thanks for posting that.
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Thanks for the link to Laurie Kilmartin’s insightful NYT piece.
She sums up the last month well:
“It is so strange to see sexual harassment being taken seriously, at long last.”
How much later? That’s the problem: He wasn’t 15 when these incidents occurred. He was 35 years old in 2002. At what age should a person be charged with knowing that it’s not okay to ask a stranger to just look at your dick?
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Among other things, I think he realized that this is the only way for him to possibly be part of his daughters’ lives in the future. Even then, they might still be disgusted by him for life.
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Thank you so much for posting this article. It will be the link I send men (and women) about this moment, this conversation, when the topic comes up. Brilliant and so very well stated.
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To me there are different degrees of offense, different degrees of sexual harassment / sexual assault. In the lower end the acts could something like making an inappropriate lewd joke and in the upper end serial raping children.
I think the person making an inappropriate joke very rarely is an irredeemable predator whereas the rapist needs probably to be removed from society to protect others.
With C.K. we know of three cases:
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Masturbating in front of the two women
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Masturbating on the phone
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Asking to masturbate in front of a woman
The first one is the most serious to me. Obviously, according to the victims, he lacked their consent. But did he do it in spite of this or did he misinterpret their laughter (or possible thumbs up, according to Gawker) as consent? Did he abuse his influence/power in the comic community knowingly?
Should he act like all comics are his subordinates in the sense that he has huge influence that community? Did he try to negatively influence their careers afterwards? And most seriously, if he blocked the women from escaping that would make the thing a lot worse to me.
Depending on the details at best he’s a flawed man with a exhibitionist trait and at worst a sociopathic serial predator in a position of power. Or something between. As of now what C.K. did, based on the NYT article, thankfully seem to me to be toward the lower end of the spectrum (this may yet change). Still serious but not irredeemable (I find I am seriously lacking in the criminological and ethics vocabulary in English here).
That is why the details matter to me.
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