The issue here is that power not exercised is power lost, and power fundamentally comes down to either perceived or actual consequences.
All people have some degree of racist tendencies - regardless of gender, sex, color, etc. And criminal tendencies. And other tendencies.
And what actual consequences will be applied that impact one group or another tend to go in cycles/pendulum back and forth (and hence impact what percent of the population is going to do x, and how many will see real consequences for those actions).
That is because when one group overdoes it (or is perceived to), enough people get tired of that group/outraged, and then things shift. And these patterns tend to be on coarse criteria like gender/sex/color/race/language, etc. because the most brazen users of any sort of shitty force/violence/shaming/whatever are exactly the type of people who are the shittiest. And every group of people have a percent that is shitty.
For instance, for many years now shame has been a major consequence, along with legal action.
So eventually, we end up with a group/leader essentially immune to shame and legal action, who is now going to use do all sorts of shameless and illegal things. Really, a large group of people like that. And who don’t mind violence (or the threat of it) as a potential consequence.
Eventually, being a shameless crook will fall out of fashion (or will have finally hurt/pissed off enough people), and another counter group will rise to take it’s place.
Often, when it gets particularly ugly/strong in one direction or another, there is also a corresponding backlash against the particularly strong users of the prior ‘fashion’ of power.
Sometimes beheadings, or ostracizing, or legal harassment, or whatever.
Weinstein getting what he got (as deserved as it was), was one swing. We’ll see who gets this next counter reaction.
Why do you think the dems and tech companies are going out of their way to be as friendly to the incoming admin as they are? They know the score, and are trying to avoid getting whacked.
Or, to quote an old western - ‘Deserve has nothing to do with it’.