On November 10, about a month after The New York Times published an investigation exposing Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuses against women in Hollywood, the comedian Louis C.K. issued a statement apologizing for his own alleged misconduct. “These stories are true,” he began, admitting his behavior and attempting to address the dynamics that allowed it.
After the Louis C.K. news broke, I noticed a shift in the conversations I had been having with my partner, friends, and peers about the workplace abuses against women (and some men). Though the Weinstein story was horrifying, the movement it ignited felt uncomplicatedly energizing, enraging, empowering. A month later, as more allegations emerged about men in the public whose work I admired—even identified with—the work became harder. It required more grappling. As Rebecca Traister wrote in a November 12 piece for The Cut (that I’ve returned to many times since), “It’s wild and not entirely fun...In the shock of the house lights having been suddenly brought up—of being forced to stare at the ugly scaffolding on which so much of our professional lives has been built—we’ve had scant chance to parse what exactly is inflaming us and who."
In this new state of shock after the stories about Louis C.K. came to light, I found myself returning to the text of Louis C.K.’s apology statement for clues about how to process this individual case and those surrounding it. There, he admits responsibility (good), but he names admiration, not the nuanced amalgam of gender, fame, or industry status, as the source of the imbalance in the rooms in which he abused his power (bad); he promises to listen (good), but never actually says he’s sorry (bad); and the PR pressure that propelled the apology in the first place undermines its integrity (bad), but the authenticity that Louis conveys in his writing—part of what makes his art so compelling—manifests here, too (good).
I wasn’t alone in this close-reading exercise. In the process of grappling, I stumbled upon an article in Quartz in which the authors edited the apology statement “to make it a real apology.” Later, someone directed me to the erasure poetry of Isobel O’Hare, which reduced this and other apologies to strikingly simple lines such as, “My dick wielded power irresponsibly.” It seemed many of us have been asking ourselves similar questions: Could these textual artifacts help us figure out how to cope with this moment? Instruct us about what to do with the body of artwork of these men? Point us to the root causes of sexual misconduct and power abuses? Anger us? Sooth us? Activate us?
To try to reckon with these questions, I started collecting apology statements as data.
Data reflects and represents power, as do its absences. As Mimi Onuoha says in her project, “On Missing Data Sets,” “That which we ignore reveals more than what we give our attention to...Spots that we've left blank reveal our hidden social biases and indifferences.”
This is certainly the case with cases of sexual misconduct in the workplace. For years, women have remained silent or were silenced in a system that rendered them powerless. The act of stepping forward is an act of empowerment. It is also an act of creating data. In addition to the apology statements, this moment has produced a collection of other artifacts: Shitty Men in Media list</>, many articles with an expanding collection of names, lists of brave women who have shared their stories. All of these are data sets, and all of them are an act of filling .
TO COME
TO COME
Using data to count words: https://lauraykerr.github.io/apologies-data/index.html