I think there are real societal costs to encouraging the removal of anonymity, especially using less than ethical methods and more especially when it causes real harm to people. In this case it was perhaps just losing a job, but often it results in significant risks of real physical harm.
how and why?
we all hold crazy opinions. as long as “Frank” has a proven record of successfully working with women, what exactly is the problem? throughout my career i’ve been working with some crazy individuals. their opinions were expressed in non office settings. then at work they were basically the antithesis of what they were preaching in private.
the gist is easy to understand: as long as your opinions don’t affect your work, why should anything like this matter?
> how and why?
My post specifically mentions how social media makes this difficult, so that's one way. Rumor is another, but that has existed for as long as we've had workplaces and has not had the same effects, so I presume most people are worried about, again, social media.
> as long as “Frank” has a proven record of successfully working with women, what exactly is the problem?
Feelings are not always rational, knowing he holds those opinions will make many people viscerally uncomfortable and they will act on it. Whether you think they should react that way, people do, moralizing the issue doesn't solve it. If you disagree with that, I don't think it's a difference we can resolve here.
I also think whether Frank has had a proven record of successfully working with women isn't something we can know, and I think others share this view. For example if Frank is in a hiring position he may have passed on female candidates because of his views, or he may not have. No one can verify the details. Frank knows we can't verify the details. Frank may only be acting on his views when he's confident no one can credibly accuse him.
This all sounds overwrought, but people really do get caught in these game theory thought experiment quagmires wondering whether Frank or someone like him have or will hurt someone and decide "I don't want to deal with this person". Which leads back to the social dysfunction I described above.
This doesn't really answer your question of "why does it matter," but I bet that if some of the crazy individuals you worked with had posted their opinions somewhere that people could see them, they would have been fired too.
Someone on twitter tells them?
And that our culture of 2 income households and every woman wants to be in STEM to build ad products is a flawed concept. We want all genders to be technically competent but we want a resilient, self sufficient world, that doesn’t have to ‘capitalize’ on every human ambition/potential.
Except we live in a world where me saying that makes me sexist. And worthy of doxxing.
Let's say someone, call them Frank, expresses on twitter that he thinks women aren't fit for work outside the home and his coworkers discover he said this. At the very least, Frank's female coworkers will almost certainly not feel comfortable working with him anymore knowing his opinions. They're unlikely to believe he respects them, and since they don't believe that they likely won't want to collaborate with him. If Frank's work requires collaboration (as most does), he's now hamstrung himself at work.
From the employer's perspective: Frank is now less effective at work. Frank's coworkers who are uncomfortable may try to leave teams Frank is on, or avoid work that might force them to collaborate with Frank. The result is organizational chaos and Frank becomes a drag on the company.
The natural response here, I think, is to let Frank go. It's hard to avoid it because there aren't just social pressures to fire him, but economic ones.
The above isn't a thought experiment, I've watched more than one version of the above happen. I just don't really see how this separation can be maintained.