When he phoned her, he said he was sorry for shoving her in a bathroom. Ms. Corry replied that he had never done that, but had instead asked to masturbate in front of her. Responding in a shaky voice, he acknowledged it and said, “I used to misread people back then,” she recalled.
The call confounded her, Ms. Corry said: not only had he misremembered the incident, which made her think there were other moments of misconduct, he also implied she had done something to invite his behavior. “It is unfair he’s put me or anyone else in this position,” Ms. Corry said.
I agree, a simple apology is not enough. It’s up to the victims whether or not they choose to forgive him on a personal level, but now he also owes a debt to society for his role in perpetuating and capitalizing on the messed up environment of Hollywood and our patriarchal society in general. If he reamains a free man (and I suspect he will), he could dedicate himself to promoting women’s rights and educating others on behaviors to avoid (i.e., don’t use your standing to abuse and humiliate other human beings). In a few years perhaps society (including his children) and history will look at him as a pioneer in cleaning up showbiz through taking personal responsibility and using his talent and resouces to end this nonsense. Opportunity knocks if he’s willing to answer.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, almost every single guy masturbates. It’s probably 95% at least. I’m not sure what the percentage is for women – I get the sense it’s lower, but a lot of women do it to.
Masturbation is an odd thing. It’s not really something that most people consider appropriate to discuss openly, even though it’s an extremely common thing. In a related subject, kind of like how porn is one of the most consumed forms of media, and people don’t talk a lot, openly, about their porn habits.
Louise C.K. cracking jokes about how he likes jerking off is a fairly common comedic technique that involves openly discussing a taboo or verboten area of discussion.
Why this would lead someone to believe he’s also the same kind of guy, because he talks about jerking off in his comedy, who would whip his dick out in front of a female colleague and start wanking in front of them, well, I’m having a hard time making that leap.
Talking about a taboo area, in this case male masturbation, in a comedy act? Yeah, sure.
Exposing yourself and masturbating in front of real, live, unsuspecting people? WHAAAAT?! NOOOOO!!!
His specials/shows are no longer found on Netflix. At least I didn’t find them last night when I was looking for a scene from “Louie” episode to quote.
Jack Dahl: “You gotta go away, to come back.”
They have been scrubbed, which I find a little weird - I get that they don’t want to pay him for plays, but removing the entire body of work - ensemble work - also hurts the other fine actors/crews/production people who played a part in their creation. He has a mighty body of work out there - removing it is a little revisionist imo. Let people watch it, see how creepy some parts of it are in retrospect, just don’t pay him.
"The Times article says he proposed his favorite sex act to another pair of women he didn’t know (but who admired him) “as soon as they sat down in his room, still wrapped in their winter jackets and hats.” When they “laughed it off,” he did it anyway. C.K. would have his fans believe that he honestly thought this would be erotically pleasing for the two bundled-up women, and that he truly believed he had their consent.
This is an insult both to the women he harmed and to the concept of consent itself. The skewed power dynamic of which C.K. claims complete ignorance is just one contributing factor to his abuse. Asking someone if you can take out your penis—especially if that person is a co-worker, and especially if she has shown absolutely no sexual interest in you, like if she’s just walked into your room with her winter coat and a friend—will often be enough to make her feel threatened. (For C.K., that was probably part of the thrill.) It’s enough to make female industry peers question their worth, doubt their own talent, restrict their movements, and decline career opportunities. His words alone—the words he claims he believed established consent—were a major part of his harassment. Men who force women to watch them masturbate, or force them to field a request to do so, get off on causing women fear.
What makes this statement even worse is C.K.’s carefully crafted reputation as a self-aware, self-deprecating guy who’s given a lot of thought to gender dynamics and exploitation. He writes that he had no idea that “the fact that I was widely admired in [the victims’] community … disabled them from sharing their story and brought hardship to them when they tried because people who look up to me didn’t want to hear it.” This is another obvious falsehood. No abuser—especially not one who has written entire television episodes about sexual harassment and assault—is ignorant to the forces that silence survivors. Nearly all the women who have publicly shared stories of being harassed by C.K. have one thing in common: They admired C.K., and he knew it. He was further along in his career and highly successful; they were trying to protect their careers. There is a reason why Harvey Weinstein, C.K., and other men whose abuse has come to light in recent weeks always target people younger or less connected than they are. Those people are far less likely to talk."
It’s interesting the amount of people of the mind to stop watching Louis’ content, full stop. I understand that his behavior sucks. I’m not excusing what he did. Nor will I suggest that he deserves to continue his career. However, he has already made some pretty great things. Some will now pretend that they never really liked his content, but those of us who were genuinely affected by his work, pre-misconduct, have all at one time or another described his existing work as “great”. I have even heard the word “masterpiece” used to describe “Horace And Pete”. I agree. I think of all the great novels written by people known to be monsters, lunatics, murderers, and generally shitty people but we never really consider that when we talk about acceptable content. It is the right of anyone who is going to turn their back and pretend that his work doesn’t exist. I don’t understand that impulse. It seems somehow anti-intellectual to me. After some time has passed, I will probably finally start the new Pamela Adlon series he produced and I will probably like it.
Yes, but it’s a private thing. I also don’t want to hear about people’s colonoscopies or toilet habits or how often they dust their bookshelves. I’m not intrinsically discussed by any of those things, I just don’t need to hear about those parts of people’s lives. The information is of zero value to me.
Various theories floating around. One I give some credence to is that concealment of male masturbation is an advantage over other males. That is because masturbation clears older sperm and loads up fresh, virile, energetic sperm, ready to go. The lack of displaying one’s sperm status is an advantage because if they know a guy’s habits and status, they could swoop in and get there first and therefore impregnate and pass on their genetics, not his.
I don’t know how this relates to CK, but it seems like he has deviated pretty far from this normal primate mode, if this theory holds any water.
I’m not gonna defend what he did in any way, but I think before you can call something “rape” it needs to involve, at a bare minimum, some sort of physical contact between attacker and victim.
@orenwolf, is this inside your job description?
Can you tag some of the ad stuff so it doesn’t get shown side-wide? I know it might be impossible for the external ads, which frankly are uncanny to disturbing sometimes, but boing boing’s own could be fixable, couldn’t it?
FTR, I revisit the articles and threads on this subject, and I think about them a lot (but unstructured). Please, don’t engage me in this discussion based on my post.
