Woody Allen once quipped that his brain was his second favourite organ. Most men would agree with him. And that’s the problem. How many successful, powerful and otherwise intelligent men have been laid low because his thinking organ didn’t gain better control over them? Sex scandals are endless and happen everywhere. The latest? Alibaba, the owner of this newspaper, has fired a senior manager accused of rape, and condemned an “ugly forced drinking culture” in corporate China. Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu, who has been detained on the mainland, is facing rape charges. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced his resignation after trying to suppress for months a ballooning sexual harassment scandal. Allen himself has long faced allegations of molestation against one adopted daughter and was roundly criticised for marrying another. Who says Chinese and Americans are different? When it comes to bad behaviour, we men are so much alike. The problem of men preying on other people sexually has always existed everywhere. There is a bit of science behind that. Many studies over decades have shown that testosterone helps men focus on the task at hand; paradoxically, it can also distract them from focusing on the task at hand. Patriarchy has tried to protect men from the consequences of the latter. That’s why most societies have had laws, norms and/or mores that explicitly or implicitly tolerated such behaviour. But some societies are evolving – we must count that as social progress – and their laws, norms and mores have changed accordingly. Just a decade or two ago, Harvey Weinstein, whose sex crimes helped launch the now global #MeToo movement, would still be one of the most powerful Hollywood producers instead of sitting in a jail cell with many more years to go. One of Hong Kong’s most famous commentators – I won’t name him here but you can probably guess who if you are from the city – once defended Weinstein in a column for saying the women who went to his hotel rooms at midnight “to discuss business” knew exactly what they were getting into. Well, that may be so but if I knowingly walked into a situation in which a crime was committed against me, the perpetrator would still be guilty. Despite some excesses, the #MeToo movement may well be the greatest feminist advancement of this century so far. I certainly hope it will benefit and protect my teenage daughter.