Being brought to task to answer for your actions does not make you a victim. Your repugnant actions unto others made THEM victims.
I would like to think LCK could be redeemed here, but I am not confidant that will happen when it doesn’t seem like he has really accepted the truth of the harm he caused.
Lexicat, these are good & even anguishing questions to consider theoretically. My first response is, we can’t find real-life answers until the abusers are removed from positions of power. Far from being ostracized, they are running the world. They’re in the highest offices of our country. They’re in the police, they’re in the courts, they’re running the jails, they’re preaching from the pulpit or the bima, they’re making the movies we watch, they’re gerrymandering our voting districts.
As for what to do with them, someday, when things are different, & restorative justice is possible…I don’t know. IIRC, in Marge Piercy’s speculative novel, Woman On the Edge of Time, perps were branded on the forehead. They were then allowed to mingle, but I think not allowed positions of power, & maybe not able to take part in consensus decisions. Worth going back to read the book perhaps.
Who cares?
(Men, mostly.)
As Maureen basically points out in the article, those are not especially important questions.
She was generous to offer some ways back into something like respectability for such abusers. Bummer that you don’t seem to have listened to her.
I do see that and a start would be to stop the abuse and seek help. Then probably a few years of honest helping people. A long hard process of helping heal his victims while also healing himself. Not a funny process but it would have to be honest and perhaps work at stopping that shit in other people.
There are no easy fixes and I think that is the scary part to a lot of people.
Therein lies the problem; nothing has been done in the pursuit of any actual redemption on the part of the men who abused and violated women.
To answer the question;
No, doing nothing won’t ever “redeem” anyone.
Personally, I think they need to actual show some contrition and not continue on with behavior that dehumanizes women. I don’t think that’s too much to fucking ask is it? Can we live our lives in peace and not have to try and negotiate our professional life wondering if we’re going to be forced into some sexual situation that we don’t want and didn’t ask for?
But… But he waited for several months! That’s like, basically the same thing at actually doing anything at all, or at least addressing your behavior in some way, right?
Yes! I mean, that’s kind of the easiest thing they can do… they don’t even deserve a fucking cookie for doing it!
You’d think that LCK would have done two things straight away…
It’s messed up that they feel its so easy to whip something out of their pants, but so hard to find solutions and make amends.
And it’s nice to see some actual outwards signs of redemption. Jenny Yang has several ideas in the following Twitter thread.
Yes. I totally agree. It’s the long term aims I am thinking about.
The women I talk to care too, when we consider the question become one of what happens to the majority of men (plus some women). It’s not a trivial question. It’s a question of social transformation.
I think the long term aim is a society where men and women operate from a level playing field, and rape/sexual assault are taken seriously as violent crimes. Again, that’s a bare minimum beginning.
How about they get their act together?
So you’re saying that all of these called out abusers are wandering around like lost souls, or maybe like, moldering away in dumpsters somewhere?
Cuz you know, they’re not. They can still get other jobs. Hell, many KEEP their jobs, or just go right back to them.
This kind of “concern” for what happens to abusers is exactly the kind of shit that Maureen wrote against. Please read her piece (or read it again, more carefully).
Yes! I heartily believe in redemption, but redemption isn’t just about erasing the past and getting another chance. It’s about living in a new way. I can believe that at some point Louis C.K. isn’t a horrible person, that he can be redeemed, but also, at the same time, believe that he shouldn’t get the spotlight again. That so many are willing to just overlook it means they’re not really interested in redemption at all, they just are sad he got caught doing things so many others are doing and want to keep doing.
Is the word “fag” still a part of his act? In his TV show they literally addressed this exact issue. If he’s still doing bits using the word, that’s an impressive piece of willful blindness.
Well, if we’re talking about rapists and sexual abusers, prison seems like a good start - there are laws against that sort of thing. The problem, of course, is that our justice system makes it very hard to put them there. I am… surprised that masturbating in front of someone who doesn’t want it isn’t considered a crime? But looking at the stars of #MeToo, most don’t seem to be suffering any sort of legal consequence.
Kids are probably better off without a parent who is a rapist/abuser.
I think the concept of redemption is flawed, and it is alluded to in the article. I don’t think they ever get to escape it - there’s no scrubbing the record or forgive and forget. There is only getting to a point where a person can be accepted back into society. For me, the victim should have a lot of say in that.
(Society is another problematic word, because it implies a uniform mass that has a collective opinion - and that is pretty fractured in America today).
In Louis CK’s case, the only reason we’re talking about it is that a lot of people used to enjoy his work. Had he been some guy working in middle management at a big company, we probably don’t hear about him again.
They are very frequently the same people. There’s even a cliche in recovery that addresses this, “Hurt people, hurt people.”
That said, I don’t disagree with you. It’s one of the major damages of being guilty. By hurting someone you’ve automatically placed yourself out of the running for receiving the help and attention you need. I feel, like as not, that’s a big part of why people act out in these terribly damaging ways. They try to set themselves up to be beyond hope, in an attempt to give up on themselves because it is so exhausting, and discouraging to move forward and keep failing.
If you find yourself in the positon to help a perpitrator learn a better way to live, you may very well be saving his next victim.
milliefink, I think you are misinterpreting me. Maureen’s article was rad, and I am not criticizing her. I’m not criticizing #MeToo, either. I am trying to pose the question: suppose #MeToo is successful long term in the job-loss and social ostracization project. Suppose this success takes down most or all abusers and rapists: that’s a huge section of society. Social transformations do not simply look just like the world we live in, only without the bad stuff: so what will the world look like?
Kids—especially boys—are probably better off with parents who teach them that women are human beings, and what sexual abuse and rape are, and that they have no place in society or their lives.
And, assuming the long term success of #MeToo, what happens to the meaning of “registered sexual offender” when that is literally most men?
