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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Louis C.K. was trending on Twitter because his Madison Square Garden concert was sold out, which some on the left are interpreting to mean that cancel culture is not real, or that it does not hurt people's careers. (link: https://archive.is/ryKrI )

What does it mean to be sufficiently canceled? I think Louis C.K. qualifies as having been sufficiently cancelled. If you look at his Wikipedia page, his sexual misconduct scandal, in 2017, killed off his TV and movie career. His filmography abruptly ends in 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K._filmography

Sure he's still able to sell out, but this reflects individual preferences for his comedy, not the approval of the media establishment, in which he is still damaged goods. Comedians are sorta like contractors in the sense that they have to hustle, not depend on a platform or the backing of a major media establishment. I think this is is what gives comedians an advantage over actors in regard to cancellation, because stand-up comedy can be inexpensively distributed at scale, such as digitally online, without needing the backing of an entire studio or publishing house.

Louis CK was the biggest stand-up comedian before Chapelle came back. MSG was Louis CK's playground, with him doing sets there whenever he wished. He talks about how nervous he was about his MSG set, the amount of work that went into it and how different it felt.

For one, nothing Louis CK did was criminal. From the sounds of it, he never pulled his dick out unless the other person provided consent for it, and he was never in an explicit boss-employee relationship with women he approached. Yes, it was creepy, inept, unethical & sad. But it's amateur hour as far as showbiz goes. After Aziz, Louis CK was cancelled for the least egregious of the #metoo accusations.

Louis CK's entire persona was of a sad lonely dad in a tragic-comedy. If anything, this plays straight into it. If they/them Ezra Miller still gets to play a role model character after doing some actually criminal stuff, then CK's humble image would be expected to be resilient to accusations of being the person his comedy has portrayed him as for 30 years.

In the least woke profession, the greatest practitioner & the least egregious sexual creep, who never put himself on a pedestal can come back after a few years and have moderate success as along as he lives a now sin-free life and keeps performing at his GOAT best.

If that's the claim, then it sounds like the exception that proves the rule.

90s rappers killed people and were embraced by the institution. Now people are losing jobs over suspicions of being republican.


P.S : Just to be clear, no justifying his behavior. It was obviously degenerate. Don't idolize entertainers. IMO, his temporary banishment from institutions & public apology was appropriate punishment. It is probably fair for women actors to not want to work with him again too. It's their choice. But the global scale of bullying & still-continuing blackout are honestly a bit much.

From the sounds of it, he never pulled his dick out unless the other person provided consent for it

Really? Is that true? I didn't follow the story closely at all, so I'm only inferring details. But if he didn't do anything without them saying they were okay with it, then why was he cancelled at all?

My understanding is:

  1. On around 5 known occasions between 2000-2010, he approached women in private

  2. He asked them if he could pull his dick out and masturbate in front of them. In at least 3 cases, this is after he had invited them back to his hotel room.

  3. Some of them were people he had indirect professional relationships with. Afaik, it was never an explicit power dynamic. (they were trying to hire him, he worked with her boyfriend, they were rising comedians in the same industry)

  4. The women gave him some verbal form of consent. (ofc, I dunno if it was an enthusiastic "yes" or a "do whatever you want, you creep"). Louid CK claims he got consent in every situations. Some women say that they didn't say no, not that they said yes.

  5. On one occasion he talked about something sexual with another woman on the phone who was the girlfriend of a coworker who was trying to book him for a show. In this case, she did not give explicit consent to talking about sexual stuff on phone with him. He also started masturbating but afaik, the exchange was purely over phone.

I mean, it is bad. But is it that bad ?

Louis CK should've probably taken his own advice.

“At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true,” C.K. wrote. “But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.”

&

If you ever ask somebody, “May I jerk off in front of you,” and they say yes, just say, “Are you sure?” That’s the first part. And then if they say yes, just don’t fuckin’ do it

The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.

This point highlights a cultural undercurrent I've noticed since the morality of power dynamics has taken center stage in the woke transformation of culture. It's the idea that its not OK for a man with social status to actually gain any benefit from that status, at least outside of vary narrow constraints. Wealth, leadership, talent, etc are all traits that are attractive to women. But there's a growing thought that a man with those traits should not use them for e.g. sexual advantage. The intent seems to be to put constraints on the scale of sexual success of men, in a way that is never analogously applied to women.

I'm reminded of a post on one of the relationship advice subreddits where a woman told of how her fiance found out that she was very sexually promiscuous in college. Aside from just having a large number of partners, she also fucked 4 guys at once, and her fiance was questioning the future of the relationship. The response was near universal support of the woman's behavior and that it was unconscionable that any man should have a problem with one's past sexual history, regardless of how extreme. But on the flip side, a guy with some trait that makes him hyper attractive is supposed to restrain himself for the sake of other women or society or whatever. Case-in-point, all the consternation over Leonardo DiCaprio's relationship history. Another example being all the hate Nick Cannon gets for having so many kids.

I certainly understand historical taboos against sexual promiscuity as it puts serious strain on social stability. But when only one side of this dynamic is being upheld (male sexual restraint) while the other side is being completely freed from all such constraints, it points towards a deeper motivation. Namely, that the trend is towards an anti-masculine, pro-feminine moral standard. To be charitable, perhaps this pro-feminine bias isn't the intent but rather the side effect. A moral standard that is biased towards empowering the weaker party in an exchange will systematically be biased towards women in any male-female interaction. The problem is that the standard ends up removing agency from women in the process. For example, you can't say that DiCaprio or Cannon is doing something immoral unless you also say their partners have reduced agency.

The intent seems to be to put constraints on the scale of sexual success of men, in a way that is never analogously applied to women.

I suppose the constraint was applied by biology: women have less reason to go for maximal competition because they have a limited number of potential total offspring. Men do not.