Okay, I see where our conversation diverged.

I absolutely agree with everything you are saying. You are speaking about the individual level. About accountability, gaslighting, defensively signing-off on abuse and misogyny. You are 100% correct and that should not be tolerated. There should be total accountability — about the abuse against women and about anyone who tries, in some way, to dismiss or minimize it.

I was actually speaking about the systemic level, not the individual level. Which is a totally different conversation. In that conversation, we are all suffering from trauma (I have written an article about this), and we are either doubly suffering (as being in the group being oppressed) or singly suffering (as being an oppressor). We are all living in a global system that is currently abusing and traumatizing all living things on this planet. No one is truly benefitting from this system. I spent many years as a forensic psychologist and I can tell you that the research is very clear — traumatized people who do not heal from that trauma act it out in all sorts of ways, some of it inward and some of it outward. Individually, I held them fully accountable for their actions while helping them do the work to heal and learn how to behave as kind humans in the world. But I also understood that they were not born that way. They came to be that way. So when I was speaking about the comments, I was recognizing that systemically, those men are enacting their own trauma. I was not trying to excuse it or not hold them accountable individually.

You may disagree with me (again, this is in my article), but I believe if we are to truly change as a society we must, as you are doing, call out and call attention to the ways in which individuals (and corporations, and governments) act that are 1. abusive and harmful, and 2. gaslighting, minimizing, and dismissing. And I also believe that we must have a measure of compassion, to understand that everyone is operating within a system that is traumatic and horrifying. That this system — in families, communities, religious institutions, schools, governments, etc — creates trauma for all of us. If we simply vilify people, we do not give them a chance to change and they become wholly defensive. If we hold people accountable for their words and actions but we also have compassion, we allow space for change.