And I agree with both of your points. I just don’t want to erase the fact that forgiveness can be a personal act in a relationship between individuals, it doesn’t require ratification by the populace. But you’re right, it has absolutely no bearing on what his victims suffered or how they feel now.
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Not in the BB Story as far as I can tell:
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Maybe. But it bears pointing out that giving someone consent to do something to you isn’t the same as enabling them to ignore consent with others. That’s 100% on him. She might well have enabled him in other ways - and it sounds like a lot of people in his sphere did, as is usually the case where power enables predatory behavior - but consenting to let him masturbate in front of her wasn’t one IMO.
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This was depicted in the pilot for her series that was never picked up, Susan 313. The video’s no longer available, however.
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I feel like this is the valuable takeaway here. This is how he crossed the line without realizing it*. If more people can hear this and understand it, maybe fewer people will become victims.
*man, I hope he didn’t realize it.
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There is a tweet on the post thst refrences it as well as other links. I remember that most of the discussion was around that detail as well as whether or not he had blocked the exit.
I think focusing on this misses the point that no one should be walking around asking just anyone to watch them masturbate, and definately not employees or career peers.
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It should be a no-brainer not to ask sexual favors from anyone over whom you hold any sort of power. It ain’t rocket science.
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Agreed. I always liked his stand up as a whole…he made me laugh through most of it. The issue now is (having gone back and rewatched some) the parts that were semi-awkward before and maybe I laughed at that awkwardness…now are painfully awkward in this light. Along with to your point…the consistent denials…the idea that he used some of those moments as possible fuel for some material helps paint the clear picture of someone who cannot truly see what they did that was wrong.
Like you said…I too hope for the best. I’m just not holding breath on that.
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common sense is not common. 
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i wish the arbiters of good and evil would stop telling me who I need to hate, and who I can forgive…
just kidding - I make my own decisions - good or bad - and do my best to keep my decisions, my nekkid bodily habits and my opinions private
(thanks Mister44 - i made the spelling change, and you made my morning 
)
Bill Cosby never acknowledged that what he did was wrong, and he likely never will. His particular pathology thrived on the power to take advantage of the vulnerability of others. There is no excuse for it, nor is there an excuse for those who enabled him to continue it.
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It’s not just about power though:
“To be real clear, CK had ‘nothing to offer me’ as I too was his equal on the set the day he decided to sexually harass me,” Corry wrote. “He took away a day I worked years for and still has no remorse. He’s a predator who victimized women for decades and lied about it.”
It’s okay to express your sexuality and of course you should ask first. But asking without an established relationship is not a neutral action.
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sigh I got browbeat when I defended CK, that the women gave initial consent. At least seeing he has had past approvals establishing the possibility of the weird behaviour, but, honestly, who wacks off in front of random friends for giggles?
And women get death and rape threats for speaking out.
And many of these women were people who worked for him in some capacity, in a field where who you know and who you can avoid pissing off matters in your career, where saying no has consequences… and as others noted, the woman who said yes thought it was a joke, not that he was actually going to whip is tiny dick out and beat off at her. So, she really didn’t think he was going to do it…
Why is this so hard to say that he did a shitty, harassing thing to women who worked under him, and accept that it was wrong for him to do so?
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Awman… I hate to tell you…
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I think it is creepy as fuck. But on the scale of bad, seems meh, still. Him blocking the women in the room physically is where he committed a crime. He is weird, he learned that he could do something like this younger, that it was accepted before, just establishes a new level of weird for me.
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No, he’s not weird. He was being predatory. This is not some funny quirk that is within the realm of social acceptability. If people can’t learn that humiliating others when you have the power to do so is wrong, then they need to change their behavior and maybe be exiled from polite company for a while, at the very least. There needs to be consequences for this kind of thing for people to understand it’s NOT acceptable.
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I reject the notion that all sexual assault is some power dynamic.
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You’re wrong. Any one who has been sexually harassed in some way knows this to be true, because it almost always rests on a power dynamic.
Just like punching someone because you can get away with it, or using a position of power to “punish” others is wrong, so is taking advantage of someone in a less powerful position than you, sexually. It’s fucked up and not some weird eccentricity. It’s the reality for millions of people around the world right now who are subject to those power dynamics.
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It is projection. That has always bothered me about this line of thought for years. The feelings of the victim are not the motivation of the attacker. The attacker in any situation like that can be ascribed power.
