It seems like everyday a new powerful man is publicly shamed for alleged sexual harassment. I'm curious what the steemit community thinks about this phenomenon. I think mistreatment of women is awful, but I wonder how many of these incidents caused actual harm and how many are motivated by a desire to teardown a celebrity or gain fame for the alleged victim. Many of the stories that have come out lately range in severity from rape to off color comments, while I understand the motive to bring this issue to light it is all over the board and directed to famous powerful men.
I am not saying this behavior is acceptable, but how does this solve the problem?
I think this is also indicative of a pervasive belief that past behavior many times decades or centuries back is judged by modern social norms. Can someone be held to blame for behaving as the social norms of their time dictate when those norms are no longer held. Imagine a future where most people are vegan and they claim anyone who ate meat in 2010 was an animal murderer. Any achievement including what we would now call virtuous like feeding homeless would be shamed based on their totally normal present behavior of eating animal flesh. It might seem a bit ridiculous to you now, but not outside of the realm of possibilities. Sorry for getting off topic to try to illustrate my point.
Thinking of my own behavior as a younger man many things I had done I feel shameful for. However I am no longer my younger self. I have grown and learned from my mistakes and would not do the things I was shameful of in my past. It would be unfair to assume that I would do those things now and that I did not learn from them or to fire me from my job for those things. Making mistakes is a large part of being a human being, sometimes you don't know behavior is inappropriate until the results of that behavior come to light.
I think the spotlight on this issue can be good for a few reasons. Young men who have not learned certain behavior towards women is inappropriate will not need to do harm in learning this lesson. Older men especially powerful men who have never seen the consequences of their inappropriate behavior and therefore might believe it to be ok are learning otherwise.
Ladies and gentlemen of steemit I'd like to hear your opinions.