Klaire Randall, I hope you have a marvelous 2019.
Randall is now famous for being the woman who actually took a stand when supposedly-disgraced-but-now-on-a-redemption-tour comedian Louis C.K. made a surprise appearance at the Comedy Cellar. She and her boyfriend were attending a show and were shocked when the emcee announced the next guest.
“My boyfriend and I were just dead silent, but the rest of the crowd is—it’s thunderous applause, they are loving it, they laugh at all of his jokes,” Randall told Vice. “As I’m sitting there, my heart’s racing. I am seething mad that this, at that point, had ruined my night. I was pissed off that I had to sit there and see someone that I don’t support have a platform like that.”
Randall recounted some of the material C.K. used, including jokes about putting thermometers up your butt and material about eight-year-old girls thinking about having sex—great stuff from a man who’s owned up to sexually harassing women, am I right? Randall became angrier and angrier as the set went on, and finally pulled out a heroic move.
“I am four feet away from him, and I yell, ‘Get your dick out!’” she continued in the interview. “He looks at me and makes direct eye contact and says, ‘What?’ And I say, ‘Get your fucking dick out.’”
Good. For. Her.
Randall says she was booed by the crowd and told to leave by the Comedy Cellar; the establishment has since said that she left after being told she couldn’t yell at C.K., but that she was never told to leave. Since the event happened, Randall has drawn mass praise on Twitter and even received money from devoted fans.
Hello from your friend who just got asked to leave Comedy Cellar for telling Louis C.K. to get his dick out on stage.
— Klaire Randall (@killer_klaire) December 3, 2018
Randall concluded her interview by saying, “If Louis C.K. wants to keep performing, if he wants to give people notice, that’s his right as a human being. Be my guest. But I want him to know—and that’s why I said what I did—you might take this platform, but it is not going to be a platform that is unobstructed. People are going to say what they have to say to make it hard.”
Listen, Randall is now my personal hero for doing this. Men like C.K. do not deserve the right to go back into spaces they made unsafe for women and not face consequences. If the Comedy Cellar wants to have him back, that’s within their right, but getting called out for it is something that comes with that decision. Similarly, C.K. doesn’t just get to glide back onstage without dealing with repercussions.
Men like C.K. have made spaces in all professions unsafe for women. The problem is is that many get to bounce back after a period of self-imposed isolation (basically, a timeout), because their “art” or “contributions” supposedly matter more than the women they’ve hurt. Randall taking a stand matters, because if the people in power won’t call these guys out, then we the people will have to do it ourselves.
Randall is brave for doing this. She’s opening herself up to hate from the internet, and indeed risked confrontation with those at the event, but she used her voice for good, and for that, we salute her. It takes guts to speak up, and she’s clearly got those in spades. Let’s follow her example and, without risking anyone’s safety, of course, keep making life hard for shitty men in 2019.
(via Vice, image: Rich Fury/Getty Images)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
