(CW: seriously do not read this if you are at all worried about sexual assault triggers)
So, there’s a dynamic around things like this that’s been bugging me for a while. A powerful person will do a horrible thing, so of course the correct thing to do is to spread the word and demonize him. The concerned people will talk about how the evil powerful person is both evil and powerful, and rally together to condemn him, resulting in things like the plaque pictured above.
The Powerful Evildoer’s obvious response, then, is “You bet your ass I did!” This plaque is a *mark of pride* to people like that. In their minds, they’ve had their power and dominance commemorated forever. They will be remembered for generations while the good everyday people who chose not to become powerful assholes are quickly forgotten. And this isn’t a fixable problem, because the only realistic alternative is to just not fight back.
So whether you fight back or not, the Powerful Evildoer gets validation. Even if you win, the Powerful Evildoer still gets to say “I got to be president while the women I took advantage of spent years trying to get their lives back, and probably misses out on a ton of awesome sex because of their newfound trauma. Some of them probably even have new fetishes at a result that will be with them forever! Who cares if you brought me down ten years before I was gonna die anyway?”
Yup.
This is a generalized problem. No form of attack is infinitely versatile. You can defeat your enemy, sometimes, but you can’t prevent him from becoming an icon / feeling like he’s won on his own terms / being happy with the way the story played out.
I mean that. You can’t. This is not a thing where a new, clever strategy is going to help you. And, while it can be super aggravating to be on the wrong side of the dynamic, overall it’s a good thing – victory doesn’t correspond to righteousness by any means, and it would be unimaginably terrible if powerful assholes got to say “not only am I beating you, I’m going to make sure you don’t get anything good out of the experience, I’m going to make sure that there is nothing for you but misery and humiliation.”
The only answer here is the psychological / meditative one. Win the battles you have to win, set up the incentives that the world needs, and don’t let yourself get worked up over the psychological state of the bad guys. If they never end up feeling as sorry as they should…who the hell cares?