Documentary Review: 'Sorry/Not Sorry' The Case Against Louis C.K

Sorry/Not Sorry (2024)

Directed by Caroline Suh, Cara Mones

Written by Documentary

Starring Jen Kirkman, Abby Schachner, Megan Koester, Andy Kindler, Michael Ian Black, Michael Schur

Release Date July 12th, 2025

Published February 1st, 2025

I have a pet peeve. Every time I hear some boomer a****** talk about how such and such behavior was okay 'at the time, I get seriously annoyed. NO IT F****** WASN'T! There was never a time in recorded history where sexual assault was okay. There was never a time in human history when a man could pull out his penis in front of other people and begin masturbating and it was okay. There has never been a time when inflicting your sexual perversion on other people without their consent was okay. Racism, sexism, homophobia, Transphobia, these things were never okay. They should never have been treated as if they were okay.

The documentary, Sorry/Not Sorry is about what Louis C.K did to a series of women. Using his position as a powerful star in the industry, he would invite his fellow professional comics, who happened to be women, to his dressing room, where he would proceed to masturbate in front of them. He has not denied doing this. And yet, his fans and enablers can't stop whining about 'cancel culture.' How about we forget about cancel culture and focus on the fact that what Louis C.K did was creepy, weird, and above all, wrong. It was wrong. I was under the impression for many years that we all agreed that this behavior was criminal. Somehow, just because Louis C.K makes some people laugh, we're supposed to look the other way.

It was a different time they say. They say this because they want to avoid being judged for engaging in this unacceptable behavior or for condoning it, or turning a blind eye to it. It's shameful and you should be ashamed. I should be ashamed. When we allowed this unacceptable behavior to be treated as okay, we were wrong. When my friends and I encouraged another kid to show his penis to some girls as a prank, we were wrong. And when our parents found out, we all got in trouble. And why? Because it was wrong.

I feel like I should not have to tell groups adults this. One of my earliest memories of attending kindergarten contained the admonition not to go around touching other people. Literal children are taught to keep their hands to themselves, and grown adults still have to be told the same damn thing decades later? What Louis C.K did to unsuspecting women was wrong. This isn't a discussion. He was objectively wrong. If you defend his behavior, you're wrong. Why am I having to tell you this? I am a 48-year-old cis-het male and I have NEVER shown my penis to anyone without their explicit consent. Never outside of the boundaries of an honest, intimate relationship. I assumed that I was normal but life continues to disabuse me of this notion. In fact, I am apparently some kind of White Knight-Feminist hero simply because I don't randomly show women my genitals.

I grew up in a world where I thought that I was normal. I grew up under the misguided notion that NOT showing my penis to people via unsolicited photos or outside the context of the bedroom in a consensual situation, was normal. Then, in the midst of the Me-Too movement and what happened with Louis C.K, my bizarre, apparently heavily curated reality, came crashing down. I was working at a radio station, and I had my very first female co-host. I had worked with women as co-workers for years, but this was the first time that I was working with a female partner on the same show.

What I learned from my co-host broke my brain. Side note, I probably was fully aware of how many of my male friends were perverted a*******, but I had pretty good blinders. I kept my eyes on my paper. So, talking with my co-host, we began talking about all of the horrors that she's witnessed and been subjected to, and my blinders came off. On one occasion, she joked that if she were to show me her Facebook DM's, I would see several normal messages from her female friends, and a folder full of unsolicited photos of penises. She went on to joke that she and her friends would get together and compare the dicks that they received via various social media sites.

I moved on to another job and there I was working with a brilliant female co-worker who had the same folder filled with unsolicited photos of penises. We began a dark running joke in the office about men who came to our building and whether or not they would be the kind of man to send a dick pic to a woman. On more than one occasion, people who visited our offices actually had sent a picture of their penis to my co-worker. We laughed about it because we didn't know what else to do. In hindsight, I should have done more for her, but the reality is, if I had tried to do something, she would have been the one to pay the price.

It's shockingly inevitable that when some piece of s*** man does something awful to a woman, without fail, other men will say, why didn't she say something? Why didn't she remove herself from the situation? Why didn't she do this or why didn't she do that? It's never that the man should not have done what he did, it's always on the woman to have prevented his behavior. We are not that far removed from a time when people in power, those entrusted with upholding the law of the land, would, with a straight face, and a complete lack of self-awareness, ask a woman what she was wearing that might have led to her being sexually assaulted.

The fact that we are all not horrified enough by that fact is exactly why documentaries like Sorry/Not Sorry get made.

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