[azernik]

The cultural context is pretty much the exact opposite. The cultural context is that men with power tend to get away with sexual harassment of subordinates for years before anyone gets caught. Only when there is a mountain of evidence and a small army of accusers does the world actually believe them.

For all of the VCs described in this story - this was a pattern, corroborated by independent sources, and with details in writing. There is in fact a very high burden of proof before anyone even gets blasted in the mainstream media, let alone fired.

[pluma]

I think the distinction that can be made is that allegations of sexual abuse of women are less damaging in some cases than others. That the people in question were able to "get away with it" says more about how their character is generally perceived from the onset than about society in general.

It's true that society is ridiculously "tolerant" of gross misconduct of some people more than others but there are enough examples of lives being ruined by false allegations to validate my original point.

As a sibling comment pointed out, Trump was elected despite his "locker room talk" and multiple women alleging sexual abuse (plus the actual chauvinism he has displayed on numerous occasions). However I would wager that similar allegations would be far more damaging if leveled against someone like Sanders.

There's also the effect that successive allegations sometimes even reduce the credibility of the allegations because of suspected bandwagoning ("Oh, she just wants some of that attention to make herself interesting").

Humans are fickle and irrational, especially when in a group. Individuals tend to be treated differently but this tends to be more about social status than gender itself.