Have you been thinking about the recent spate of convulsions over sexual bad behavior? The Harvey Weinsteins et al? I have. Here's a thought on that topic.
What do they all have in common? The perpetrators are men "at the top of their game". Without attempting to excuse or rationalize such behavior, we could posit that there is a biological, perhaps hormonal, psychological or neurological component. A man (maybe a woman, too; I don't know) who is successful and feeling that rush of achievement becomes like a teenager who has delusions of immortality and omnipotence. My teenage kids (and no doubt I, too, at that age) exhibit irrational overconfidence. With that rush may come an exaggerated sense of appeal to the opposite sex. Could this be what told those bad men that their bad behavior would be ok? If we can understand the biology of the teenage brain, can we also understand the biology of the workplace sexual abuser?
I am not the first to ask this question. Our local paper published Power is not only an aphrodisiac, it does weird things to some of us many years ago. Crazed schmuck Henry Kissinger famously said that power is "the ultimate aphrodisiac." My own parents (RIP) observed that limousines are for sex. Not that they got to have it that way.
Maybe the sensation of power and that "top of the game" feeling turns us back into teenagers. In his witless way, the ultra-schmuck Trump with his "grab 'em by the pussy" comment expressed this. Even so, exploitive, misogynistic and abusive behavior is under no circumstances acceptable. My unremarkable theory -- shall we call it a "postulate of the alpha male?" -- may help us understand what drives it, recognize it when it could occur, and prevent it. Let's have no more #MeToos!