Originally published at: Someone pulled their dick out: 2022 Grammy winner Louis C.K. and the #MeToo movement | Boing Boing
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As a man, I really do understand that feeling of how a person can come back and have a career after something like this. It’s scary that a persons whole life and career can be taken down by a hashtag. That idea we are all caught up in a cultural movement and how can things be the way they were? Do I have to be on guard and if female co-workers will come after me? How would I ever bounce back? How can I handle everything shifting as if there is no solid ground for our culture!?
Then I realize I have never had the desire to whip out my dick in front of a co-worker and jack off and that it’s really easy to not lock people in hotel rooms and jack off in front of them.
Louis C.K. can just honestly fuck off.
P.S. Fag is not a great insult that means asshole and once you learn the history of a word when you become an adult perhaps you shouldn’t do a routine that gives cover to every bastard on the internet that wants to slur gay people.
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A year. Just write off a year as a starting point. I’m not saying what should or should not happen after that year, but just sit out one before starting your comeback or speculating about how your friend should begin his comeback. At least that way, when you start popping up in January of 2019 and people say, “oh yeah, he’s been gone a while, when was that whole thing with him? 2017? Oh, so he must be pretty sorry if he laid low that long…”
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A change in career sounds like a good move for the guy. Helping people heal isn’t as lucrative as comedy, but that shouldn’t matter.
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It’s significant that the “men who are caught up in it” are the perpetrators of abuse, assault, and harassment.
I love Louis CK’s work and talent but, yeah, Black’s passive-exculpatory phraseology is total BS. Also, it is up to no-one but the perpetrators to “figure out a way” to “find redemption” for themselves. Those within the #metoo movement, especially the direct victims, can decide for themselves when such redemption is truly earned. Testing to see if “the coast is clear” for his career to resume doesn’t qualify in that regard.
To Ms. Herman: I’m so sorry you were victimised in that way but appreciate your bringing your personal experience and perspective to this story.
Or a slight shift. He’s a talented playwright, judging by “Horace and Pete.” If he’s so eager to get back in the game he’d do better to write plays and scripts under a pseudonym for a while. If he truly craves public fame, though, he can start by being the kind of healer described by you and Ms. Herman, using his talent to take things beyond personal apology to public advocacy on behalf of #metoo.
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Instead of appearing at an unannounced show telling jokes, meekly trying to garner support by “starting small,” what if he leveraged the same power, talent, and connections that he used to silence and discredit his accusers and applied it to the problem of toxic masculinity in America? I think you would be surprised how quickly allies, male and female, would be supportive of him.
This. So much this. At the very least, he could leverage the interest in his case to do a series of benefits for groups like Women Against Rape or Planned Parenthood.
And talk openly about the impact the case has had on his life & on his daughters.
LCK has always been willing to make ruthless fun of people close to him, as in his “Kids are assholes” routine about his daughters. How about turning that around? How about brutally mocking the kind of man who thinks sexual abuse is OK? Or a bit about Louis & Bill Cosby sharing a jail cell? Or how about hiring some female comedians to find the funny here?
Not by a hashtag. By repeated compulsive sexual abuse.
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The top part of my comment is a long sarcastic rant.
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I do not know who wrote this piece, but man-alive…WELL DONE.
I asked the question on my social media “Who decides who can be redeemed and who can’t?” in context of Louis CK. So many people are willing to just write him off forever more. Whether they didn’t like him because of his comedy and style, or it was his atrocious and deplorable behavior in regards to #metoo, or if it was something else…I had multiple replies how he should never act/direct/do standup again. Ok I asked…so why is he irredeemable and someone else is? When a gang banger is busted for murder one person screams “lock him up and throw away the key!” and another person says, “Wait…let’s see if he can condone and reform and move on with his life.”
Who decides who gets which treatment? Is either right or wrong? fair or unfair?
I love the example given here…
I know someone who killed someone in a drunk driving accident. She cannot resuscitate the victim or directly take away the pain she caused. But to this day, she is dedicated to helping other alcoholics get sober, not only through telling her story, but in time spent working with alcoholics one on one. My life is an example of one she changed.
It illustrates perfectly that while recovery may begin with forgiveness…redemption begins with selfless action. I am one who thinks Louis CK can be given the opportunity to redeem themselves while ensuring boundaries are in place to not allow them to repeat their transgressions, but they do need to do the heavy lifting (as the author states).
Ultimately I hope there is someone like the contributor who has the ear of anyone like him…someone who can help guide them…someone who’s words of wisdom could help them down a path of redemption.
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Thanks for writing that. I like the concept of living amends. It’d be nice to hear he was spending his time trying to advance the careers of people who were derailed like Abby Schachner. Either the people he had a hand in derailing, or others who had gone through similar experiences. There’s the issue that they may not want his help, but it feels self-serving if his re-emergence is poking his head up and seeing if everything might have gone back to normal.
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Thanks. Got it. I think you really capture that voice. That’s why I quoted you. Then I read down & appreciated the rest of what you had to say.
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And it’s super easy to just put your name on the bill for performances you’ll be at. That is a super low bar and should be pretty straightforward.
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I really don’t care if he or people like him never get their careers back. They had an opportunity to become rich famous and powerful and they messed up by abusing that power. Most people never have the opportunity that they have. Why are we so worried about the fact that he can’t be rich and famous anymore? Let me get out my tiny violin. Worrying about a sexual abuser or harasser not being a rich powerful man any more is not where the focus of the result of abuse should be. Redemption would not be on focusing on publicly resuming their careers but focusing on helping victims or privately working on their own issues.
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I didn’t recognise the author’s name, Maureen Herman. Then I looked her up & realised she’d written another really excellent BB article:
And another:
Yes, well done, Maureen.
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The underlying question is critically important: the overwhelming majority of women I know have been sexually assaulted or raped (and let’s leave out "harrassed, 'cause that’s very close to 100% as near as I can tell). Given this, and given that it’s not a tiny fraction of men (or only men) who perpetrate sexual assault (and not only women are sexually assaulted), where do we go with the vitally important #MeToo movement if the logical consequence is most sexual abusers are ostracized? (Of course, the assumption in that hypothetical is the, say, universal success of #MeToo which is not remotely a foregone conclusion.)
Where do we ‘put’ them? What does society look like after they’ve been “put?” What are the economic ramifications? What happens to parenting?
Part of me is really happy to say fuck rapists, and fuck sexual abusers, they can crawl into a grimy societal hole and die alone. But damn that is a lot of people. But another part of me—both as an individualist and as a collectivist—wonder how we will redeem ourselves? We should make better people, that seems clear… so there’s something about children and young adults and education formal and informal.
Where do we ‘put’ them? How long do they stay there? What is redemptive? What is reparation? What is restorative?
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This was the most powerful part of the piece to me. Such a crucial reminder that when you lament the loss of power and opportunity of a public figure, you are ignoring the successes they may have crushed in their wake that you can’t mourn because you didn’t even get a chance to see them. I once got in a ridiculous argument about a guy who imprisoned women and tortured them in his basement. The commentor’s point was “we need to redeem this guy, everyone deserves redemption, what if he has the cure for cancer?” Biologists aren’t that rare (basement torturer wasn’t even a biologist…) that we can’t also give basement-torture victims support, solidarity and justice, and instead focus on the incredible loss of what those women might have been able to achieve if he hadn’t destroyed their lives.
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Dear Louis CK;
Go fuck yourself… but this time, do it far away from everyone else.
Sincerely,
Women who are tired of this bullshit
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interesting it now has her name on it. At first it just had “contributor”. Thanks for the added info.
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Or maybe they can learn to amend their behavior and not rape/assault women? I have no problem with people being redeemed. I do have a problem with people being “redeemed” while still parading themselves around as victims of a hashtag.
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Yes. It’d be nice to think that everyone deserves redemption, but there’s so many walking wounded in the world, who never hurt anyone, who deserve more help. When we’re done getting them all the help they need, we can maybe get around to helping the abusers.
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Maybe there’s just a big misunderstanding when folks lament, “Can nothing redeem these men?” Tone, you know.
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