Well, women are the emotional basket cases who constantly manipulate men through their feminine wiles and their tears, don’t ya know! Men are just reacting rationally and logically as always… I mean it’s TOTES logical to jack off in front of women who work for you or whose career to can be made by you… it’s TOTES logic to slip a drug in a woman’s drink so you can rape them! Perfectly sensible and rational, because men are ALWAYS that… /s
Except when they get caught assaulting someone. Then, suddenly, it’s all “male rage” and testosterone that was at fault.
For me the thing is…I care less (not completely zero…just less)…about someone like LCK. I care about my two sons. What I teach them and by extension what they represent to their friends, co workers, life partners, their children, etc. I guess my point is…there are more of us pleebs than of people like LCK and I think we collectively have a greater network of influence than he does.
If ordinary husbands, dads, boyfriends, brothers DO push the real change needed on our side of this issue…then people like LCK find themselves with zero support and entirely ostracized. Which is exactly what will get them to either change or go away for good.
Well its a more complex event than say Cosby or Weinstien. Where things were very clearly non-consensual. And the behavior easily fits known pretatory behaviors.
But its pretty clear at this point its not
There’s at least one accusation where he may have blocked an exit. Though even the accuser isn’t totally clear on that. His accusers seem to all be commedians or people in entertainment. All of whom were younger than him, almost all of whom were subordinate to him in some way. Before even the first (vague) account. There were public accounts of crass, public behavior from CK. “I’m going to fuck you tonight” was apparently a favorite “pickup line” of his, and there were some other pretty creepy ones.
So there’s definitely a lot of it that looks pretty predatory. Even as he superficially sought consent. Doesn’t seem to have punished, or actively hurt any of these women’s careers or threatened to. The lack of physical contact.
But critically every women we’ve heard from, bar Silverman who herself outlines how her experience is different, describes this as non-consensual. We haven’t heard from anyone who said no, or felt like they could. And that’s your problem. Its creepy, fucked, and wrong. If not Cosby level creepy fucked and wrong. The daylight there is why there’s a conversation over whether CK can, and how he would, redeem himself or become a better person.
Its plausible that that CK isn’t a straight up pathological abuser. But instead a clueless, creepy guy with a particular fetish. Who took advantage of or enacted a social dynamic he didn’t fully understand. A social dynamic we all internalise and enact to some extent. So a society is as culpable as CK situation. What isn’t plausible is that this was consensual fun among adults that came off wrong, or became awkward.
Asking employees or peer workers to take care of their sexual needs is defacto sexual harassment.
The specific sexual desire is not the issue here. I have no doubt that there are online communites and dating services that are set up for people who are into this.
The problem is his utter lack if discretion and respect for the women he worked with. Asking those women to have vanilla sex would be just as problematic.
No one should not have to field random dudes sexual requests at work or in public spaces. Again, simply asking isn’t without consequence.
The women who broke the story said he did ask, but they thought he was joking- and understandably- because it falls far outside of accepted social norms. They were horrified when actually did it.
It’s also important to remember that he denied it for years. As the bigger star he was believed. They were forced out of their community because he chose to cover his ass instead of own up to it.
Yes and no. I mostly agree with the thrust of what you’re saying about forgiveness mainly being the purvey of those that were involved.
But when someone commits any kind of offence (civil, criminal, interpersonal) they also commit an offence against the wider community. And there are even times when the victims refuse to forgive, but the community does – the most extreme example of this is the debate around Anders Brevik in Norway. He’ll get out within the lifetime of many of his victims (although there may be a “prolonged psychiatric hold” put on him – anyone who is up to date on this feel free to let me know what the status is). It will obviously be easier for the community to forgive him (though perhaps not to trust him) than his victims (in most cases, at least).
So what are your thoughts on this? And in the digital age, what are your guiding principles?
There are two things I hate about this. One, is hearing people say over and over “but he asked first.” It’s not really asking if you don’t give people the real option of saying no. Someone mugging me at knife point could say “Can I please have your wallet now?” Technically, the mugger has asked a question but I’m not really in a position to freely say HELL NO YOU CAN’T HAVE MY WALLET.
The second thing I hate is the expectation that women are supposed to know the exact right thing to do in a situation where they are being sexually harassed or assaulted. It’s demeaning and can be really scary. Sometimes you are frozen with shock that someone would do or say the things they are doing or saying. It’s really difficult to keep your cool and be assertive. Plus, a lot of times you are afraid of being assertive because you are afraid of triggering even more aggressive behavior. I wish more people would really think about how difficult that position is for someone. You can’t always easily say no, get the eff away from me.
Wow… I… I don’t even…
I don’t care what Sarah Silverman did, “allowed” or said; that in no way negates the predatory nature of Louis CK’s misbehavior with other people.
Sexual assault is always about power. It is not about attraction. If you are attracted to a person, I would advise strongly against raping them, that will not increase your chances of a relationship. It is about establishing that the other person has no ability or right to refuse your advances. That is the power dynamic in play. And in instances of sexual assault, that is the underlying factor, whatever other minor things may be overlying.
16 posts were split to a new topic: facepalm
Sure, I think so too. But I think that the boys will be boys mindset is pretty strongly ingrained for many people (men and woman), and changing the that is a difficult proposition. I’m trying to do that right now (and so are you) here, and you see the push back we’re getting.
Just keep doing whatever you can in your life, and that will help someone, I’m certain. Thanks for actually caring about this stuff enough to want to change it too.
If he did ask Rebecca Corry before he did it, and as she says, they were equals, then that would make it consensual, right? Like, there’s no power imbalance and he asked and she said yes.
When one party has made “protecting the men” in sexual assault and harassment cases part of it’s platform, we are facing an uphill battle. Not a hopeless one, but not easy. And damn it, it should be easy. Really, it should require no effort to convince folks that raping people is wrong, but one would think it would be easy to say that Nazis are bad too. It has become a terribly ass-backwards world.
well, but men can’t help it and women should be able to prevent rapes, soooooo… /s
But yeah, you’re right it’s an uphill slog… I refer you to this thread for evidence.
Too often society turns a blind eye to sexual assault and violence. In many ways, the ethos of our culture encourages the use of power over others and disdains vulnerability. So long as contemporary culture reinforces traditional constructs of masculinity, ignores the subjugation of women, encourages silence, justifies violence as an appealing or inevitable expression of power, blames the victim, and enacts oppression in all of its forms, sexual violence will persist.
Evidence presented for judgment. Not even sure what some of this means. How the hell do you “close your female organs?” I am a doctor, and this statement is beyond my knowledge of human anatomy…
He should be immediately thrown off the bench.
Dear BB admins, could you please at least blur NSFW text and pics? Asking for a friend.
God, she is so funny.
