The news that Louis C.K. is attempting to “return” to comedy less than a year after admitting to masturbating in front of nonconsenting peers enraged people all over the internet. Among those most upset by the news (no surprises here) are the women in comedy who have and will have to continue to put up with a toxic industry that is once again reinforcing how little it cares about them.
Kathy Griffin is one of the latest, but probably the most thorough, to lay out all the ways and reasons the industry fails to make comedy a safe space for women. “You’ll never hear a successful male comic say that dealing with women in the business is just exhausting and that they have reached their limit. Or that they’re tired of years of having to beg to be treated the same as women or that they’ve had enough of the emotional abuse,” she wrote in a 26-tweet thread. “[W]hat I’m discussing in this thread can be applied to any industry.”
The thread eventually gets into how Louis C.K.’s return highlights the huge double standard between women and men in comedy, and what they get ostracized for.
“You know how many women I know who have had their careers effectively ended because they asked for the same amount of money as a man or who dared to make script suggestions on a show they were working on? How quickly they were labeled as ‘difficult’ and thus un-hirable? Louis [C.K.] can go jerk off in front of women [without] their permission [and] then his management destroys their careers and he just gets to waltz back in without any accounting for his behavior and what he’s done to fix it?” she tweeted.
Kathy is far from the only woman in comedy who thinks it’s too early for C.K.’s comeback. “I’m still on the same shampoo bottle as when Louis C.K.’s time out started,” tweeted New York comedian Sarah Lazarus on Sunday.
Comedian Jenny Yang also shared a long thread that serves as a “how-to” for men who have admitted to sexual abuse. “Atoning for Sexual Assault in Comedy Idea #1: Privately apologize to each of your victims,” she wrote.
A) There's also something we're not talking about...general abuse of/retaliation against women in the workplace that isn't in the sexual misconduct department. I got a message from a famous woman comedian the other night that broke my heart....(cont)
Still there are others, like Michael Che and Marlon Wayans who are defending the abuser’s “right to make a living.”
In her thread, Griffin explains why she thinks men are sticking by Louis C.K. “[T]he boys club closes ranks and protects its own. And many men in the business [w]ant to see Louis come back because deep down inside they know they’ve also done fucked up shit to women,” she wrote. “[T]hey want to know that it’s not going to hurt them on a permanent basis. Louis is their test case.”
You can read it in full below.
