When it comes to firing abusive men, I have far too many stories. I have at least a story about an exploitative sexist jerk for each job i've had, because I worked with programmers, I worked in PR, in publishing, in management. Everything.
I had one job where a guy would regularly make all the female employees cry once per month, and he was proud of it. He didn't like me because a lot of his insults would bounce off me and i'd report him everytime. Downside is that me reporting it seem to have no effect.
It was kinda like a game to him. He liked to tell me it was nice that I was "smarter than the average female" because I looked "like a hairy jewess" and "people don't like working with ugly women". He was one of the "top guys" at the company according to management.
I had to concede that these guys were very talented, but also, that management didn't see the actual damage they did to the team. Nobody wanted to work with them, you have to be the best when you work alone. They stopped us from getting new talent. They made the turnover massive.
You can defend that a guy is super good if you want, but the point is that they are often "super good" to survive because they aren't part of a team. You know what is stronger then one guy? People who want to work in a team.
Fire the sexist, racist abusive jerks, and hire people who are maybe less talented now, but are motivated. Because those people make teams. Those people have new ideas. Those people want change. Old hat talent makes old hat ideas.
So if you are using "talent" to defend bad behavior, it's not valid. Because it's not real value. It's value that only exists because those guys created a vacuum around themselves.
And this has been something that was true for every. Abusive. A-hole. I. Worked. With. 100% true everytime. They are always loners, and their talent is there to prop themselves up, and they are both talented and lonesome because they dug a grave around themselves.
Real talent is communication skills. It's listening skills. It's compassion. It's the ability to analyse what is presented to you. That's what a leader does. That's your "top guys"
Art and entertainment is by far not the only industries with sexism and abuse, but it is the ones where talent is the most often used to allow bad behavior.
