For many of C.K.’s fans, he’s been not just a creative figure but a role model, specifically because he tells the kinds of stories that are taboo and shameful. Photograph by Angela Lewis / NYT / Redux

Here’s one thing that I’m not concerned about right now: the question of what today’s revelations do to the artistic legacy of Louis C.K.

For certain fans of C.K.’s work, and I include myself among them, the stories that just appeared in the New York Times are not entirely a surprise. Those rumors, in particular the ones about him masturbating in front of younger female comedians, have circulated in various forms, online and off, and through extended private conversations in what we’ve all been calling the “whisper network,” for many years. And those waves got much stronger when Tig Notaro, a hugely talented comedian who has a professional relationship with Louis, began speaking publicly about her break with him. A few months ago, Notaro filmed an episode on her Amazon series “One Mississippi” that felt inspired by the C.K. rumors, a decision that was particularly unusual because Louis C.K., his partner Blair Breard, and his manager, Dave Becky, were all producers on the show, their names in the opening credits. I wrote about all of this in my review of “One Mississippi,” in which I praised the scenes, described the rumors—and added, “A TV review can’t investigate rumors; that’s a job for other forms of journalism.”

Now, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, those rumors have been investigated. Melena Ryzik, Cara Buckley, and Jodi Kantor reported on several stories involving C.K. The first is about Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov, comedy partners who appeared at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, in 2002. The two comedians went to C.K.’s hotel room after their set to hang out in a collegial way; to their shock, he pulled out his penis and masturbated in front of them. When they ran out of the room after he ejaculated, he called out, “Which one is Dana and which one is Julia?” Soon after they began telling other people the story, Becky, C.K.’s powerful manager, allegedly told them to keep their mouths shut. (Becky told the Times that he “never threatened anyone.”) The second story is about Rebecca Corry, who did a TV pilot that C.K. appeared in, in 2005. C.K. asked to masturbate in front of her, too—and after she said no, disgusted, she reported it to her producers, including Courteney Cox and David Arquette. (C.K. apologized to Corry, as he did to several of these women, saying he was sorry for pushing her into a bathroom—which Corry says never happened, and suggests that there are other stories that haven’t been told.) A comedy writer, performer, and illustrator named Abby Schachner also describes hearing C.K. masturbating on the phone, without her consent, as the two talked. And an anonymous woman describes him asking to masturbate in front of her when he was a producer and a writer on “The Chris Rock Show”—which she said yes to but came to question later. “I think the big piece of why I said yes was because of the culture,” she said. “He abused his power.”

As a result of this exposé, the New York première for C.K.’s new movie, “I Love You, Daddy”—which is a black-and-white homage to “Manhattan,” has a character based on Woody Allen, and is, spoiler alert, an absolutely terrible movie—has been cancelled.

We are all going to be writing pieces about how these scandals change the way we look at art—at Louis C.K.’s comedy, but also at the movies that were produced by Harvey Weinstein, or that star Kevin Spacey, or are directed by James Toback, as well as the TV shows and albums created by Bill Cosby. That’s a critic’s issue; it’s an issue for fans and philosophers. It’s certainly a particularly pungent question when it comes to a show like “Louie”—an auteurist sitcom on FX in which the main character is explicitly based on its creator, or C.K.’s independent streaming project “Horace and Pete,” which had a whole episode devoted to a female character talking about exposing herself in front of a man whom she wasn’t certain was consenting. C.K.’s standup is not merely confessional, it’s also focussed on sex and ethics, as well as on questions of decency, fatherhood, masculinity, and, at times, feminism. That’s why, for many of C.K.’s fans, he’s been more than a creative figure. He’s been a role model, too, specifically because he tells the kinds of stories that are taboo and shameful—his brand was telling the stories you weren’t supposed to tell.

As it turns out, other people have those stories, too. As far as I’m concerned, before we talk about art, we should listen to them. And we should talk about something else, something bigger, that extends far beyond today’s news story: we should talk about the many ways in which comedy itself (in sitcoms, in standup, on the tour scene) is a deeply sexist world, and not only because some people within it act in predatory ways. Back to the age of Johnny Carson and the Borscht Belt, aggressive misogyny has been a central ingredient to standup, a phenomenon that was difficult to speak openly about because it would make any woman who tried to do so sound uncool, like a prig and a censor—like the comedy-killer, not the comic. Tell the wrong story and you might lose a rare opportunity to be one of the guys, as all of these stories make clear.

It’s a satisfying irony that as these stories begin to get told, some of that telling is happening in art. There’s another television episode that came out this year that also struck me as based on the rumors about Louis C.K.: an acute, nuanced episode of “Girls.” Although I tried to hint at that fact in my response (in which I wrote that the character “feels like a familiar figure”), I didn’t want this vague I.D. to swamp my bigger point, about how much the episode captured these deeper questions about storytelling. In “American Bitch,” a brilliant artist pulls out his penis in front of a younger woman. She’s been sedated by his praise, and by a complicated mind game, a manipulation in which she ends up feeling complicit, despite all her best attempts to stay above the fray. She knows that if she tries to tell anyone the details of what happened, it will expose her more than it would him. Maybe, these days, that story could end in a different way.