Does Louis C.K. deserve a comeback? Evidently, it doesn’t matter.

Seemingly from the very first moments of #MeToo, survivors and women were made to answer the same questions, over and over and over again, always asked with an air of accusation.

How long must an accused abuser suffer? What does redemption look like for them? What is the correct punishment? How much time is enough? What does an accused abuser need to do to redeem themselves?

The answers to those questions, which many women gave in abundance, appear to have been irrelevant.

Though it is not our jobs to do the emotional labor of fixing the problems abusers created — though we would rather have focused on what redemption looks like for those who suffered the abuse — we did it anyway.

We answered your questions, even when it wasn’t always clear they were being asked in good faith. We told abusers exactly what not to do, how to apologize better, and gave actionable steps they could take to begin the process of atoning for misconduct and maybe earning back our trust.

They did not listen. They ignored our advice. They made no effort at atonement.

Instead, what it looks like they did was fuck all of nothing, bided their time, planned their return, and most insidiously, distorted allyship into a defense of continued abuse. And the prevailing questions these abusers and their apologists still seem to be asking is: Wasn’t that enough?

No. It sure was not. But that doesn’t seem to matter to them anyway.

To the surprise of no one, the Fuck All strategy worked flawlessly for Louis C.K. 

Less than a year after the comedian admitted to sexual misconduct against several women in comedy (some of whom left the field because of his actions), his comeback is underway.

On Sunday night, Aug. 26, C.K. made his triumphant return to stand-up at the Comedy Cellar with a fifteen-minute set that failed to even mention his misconduct. He was rewarded with a standing ovation for bravely ignoring everything and doing the same old shit. 

So I guess this is how an abuser is redeemed: Not with the whimper of even a half-hearted attempt at reconciliation, but with the bang of thunderous applause.

This is how an abuser is redeemed: Not with the whimper of even half-hearted attempts at reconciliation, but with the bang of thunderous applause.

As if that wasn’t insult enough to the comedians who Louis C.K. harmed, his heroic apologists have started coming forward to show how little they, too, have bothered to learn, listen, or care over the past year.

“OMG! Can you believe that guy went on with his life?! Yes, I can,” SNL cast member Michael Che wrote on his Instagram account.

Che lamented that the comedian who pulled out his penis in front of unsuspecting women and ruined many of their careers in the process had been “shamed, humiliated, [lost] millions of dollars, [lost] all of his projects, [lost] the respect of a lot of his fans and peers, and whatever else that comes with what he did.”

Further expressing his sympathies for millionaires who actually experience consequences for their actions, Che continued, “Just because it looks to you like someone is ‘getting off easy’ cause they still have the perks you would kill to have, doesn’t make it so.”

To finish, Che said, “I don’t know any of his accusers. I don’t know what he’s done to right that situation, and it’s none of my business. But I do believe any free person has a right to speak and make a living.”

To be clear, we’re not questioning Louis C.K.’s legal right to attempt a comeback, or speak, or earn a living. That’s a conversation seemingly of Che’s own invention, and an effective way to belittle and delegitimize the actual conversation we’re trying to have about this.

No, what we’re demanding is answers to questions like: What has Louis C.K. done to earn our trust back? What has he done to deserve a comeback? How has he worked to correct the situation he created for himself and the women he abused?

Comedian Michael Ian Black also valiantly declared he’d take the heat for applauding Louis for trying to move on after serving his time.

Let’s make something else clear: Louis C.K. served no time. No one was calling to put him in prison, though it’s worth noting that what he admitted to can arguably fall under the umbrella of indecent exposure — which is, in fact, a crime men who aren’t famous comedians do go to jail for.

No one’s rallying around the rights of those offenders to get a second chance, though.

Louis C.K. temporarily put his career on hold. And frankly, it’s the women of comedy who lived in fear of working with him and had their careers affected by his actions who “did their time” by putting up with his presence in their community in the first place. They are the ones who should be allowed to move on with their lives, without him.

Black followed up his tweets expressing joy at an abusers return to the field with a blog post. Under the declarative headline, “The Way Back,” a man in comedy offered a guide to asking questions that women have already been answering for months now about letting abusers come back.

Once again seeming to fail to even consider the experience of the women C.K. abused, Black deemed C.K.’s misconduct “somewhere in the middle” on the “scale of horribleness.” 

Because, you know, that’s totally his place to determine. 

Presumably lacking access to Google any of the endless thinkpieces and Twitter threads of women discussing these exact topics in granular detail, Black went back to those same old questions:    

No matter what happens from this point forward, each of these men will wear always their scarlet letter. Is that enough, or do we need more? Do we need a better public apology than the one Louis offered? Rehab? Reparations of some sort?

Offering no answers, he continued with more strawman questions already asked by the likes of Matt Damon, Bill Burr, Bryan Cranston, Woody Allen, and countless others:

 But what is the right way [to find redemption]? Maybe you think it’s too soon. When is it long enough? What is the correct penance? What is the way forward? At what point do we show some grace? What do we need for somebody to come back in from the cold and find a little warmth?

It is the privilege of men like Black and Che to not have been part of the on-going conversation where women and survivors litigated these questions. It is the privilege of men like Black and Che to consider Louis C.K.’s return with the distant indifference of men who won’t have to worry about whether his comeback will mean a retaliation against the women who spoke out against him.

It is the privilege of men like Black and Che to give Louis C.K. the benefit of the doubt. And it is the privilege of men like Black and Che to ask these questions without considering the harm they do to the abused and #MeToo movement overall.

But those of us who’ve actually been paying attention to what’s happening do not have the luxury of giving admitted serial abusers our trust and sympathy without question. Because those of us who have been victims to this kind of systemic abuse know better than to assume the consequences will stick.

Did the standing ovation he received not offer a hint at how they won’t? 

While the cries for redemption and forgiveness have grown louder by the day over the past year, we’re still waiting for even a single modicum of evidence that abusers like C.K. and their apologists have learned a goddamn thing.

In fact, we’ve only seen evidence to the contrary.

Instead, we just recently saw CBS boss Les Moonves, who was a vocal champion of the #MeToo movement, get ousted in a New Yorker expose — revealing his allyship to be a preemptive defense against his own litany of allegations for enacting and protecting abuses of power in his company. 

Moonves has yet to suffer a single consequence for the mountain of allegations against him.

Again, none of us are surprised that Louis C.K. is trying to come back, and being welcomed with open arms by audiences. And most of us aren’t even arguing that there should never be a way back for certain people who have made mistakes.

What’s more devastating is the unbelievably low bar being set for abusive men, who apparently need to do literally nothing to earn back their spot. And amid the endless pleas for us to consider the rights of abusers, none of these apologists have bothered thinking about the rights of the women who risked their careers, reputations, and wellbeing to speak out against them.

The odd thing is that the person I’m least upset with right now is Louis C.K. It is far more depressing to watch his apologists (Black, by the way, claims his concern for C.K. is actually a concern for the #MeToo movement) prove their inability to comprehend any of what we’ve been fighting for.

Asking rhetorical questions that are all in essence, “Hasn’t he suffered enough?” is only to invite the answer of, “Yes, he has.”

What C.K.’s apologists have effectively done is infect the conversations about what to do with abusers by asking questions that do nothing but sow doubt in a public that’s already shown to be more than willing to forgive and forget.

What Che and Black have done by asking rhetorical questions that are all in essence, “Hasn’t he suffered enough?” is only to invite the answer of, “Yes, he has. Let him come back.”  

Meanwhile, those questions leave no room to ask if the women he abused and made working conditions unlivable feel like they’ve healed enough. 

Even then, the onus of reconciliation is not on them. But the total lack of public consideration for them goes to show how ineffective the conversations around #MeToo have been. 

We don’t care how much Louis C.K. has suffered or not. We are not interested in abusers’ suffering. We are demanding change, not blood. We are crying out to be heard, not screaming for execution. 

And the god’s honest, awful truth is that, more and more, it’s starting to look like we won’t be heard. It won’t change.

Because apparently, abusers don’t even need to seek redemption before getting a standing ovation. So why did we even waste our breath telling them how to earn the right to come back? Why would we waste any more of our time trying to explain it again, and again, and again, and again if it always falls on deaf ears? 

Why did we even waste our breath telling them how  to earn the right to come back? Why would we waste any more of our time trying to explain it again? 

Abusers and their apologists do not seem to be interested in listening. Their lip service to those concerns appears to be a roundabout way of reaffirming the status quo. Because whether their intentions were good or bad, the only thing Louis C.K.’s apologists have succeeded in doing is raising the question of whether our culture needs to change at all. 

We are tired of working overtime to answer the questions that they will never seem to understand. We are tired of trying to convince them that victim’s lives and wellbeing matter more than their abusers.

Does Louis C.K. deserve a comeback? Who cares. He’ll get one anyway.