I wish I could remember what I read that shifted my thoughts about this, it was something when I was building a community restoration process for a housing co-op. It was a piece by a group who was doing the same work my org was doing and they had written about why they stopped considering people who perpetuate harm as "perpetrators," like people who've committed something and instead frames them as people who perpetuate harm, which is an attempt to recognize the systems that we live in as causal to the harm this person did.

We've all been enculturated in these systems of harm and community restoration is supposed to be a process to help undo that enculturation to bring the person back into community with a better understanding of the positions of privilege they hold, a greater awareness of the power that affords them, and hopefully the ability to understand the ways that they've recreated these harm cycles in their own life.

Of course Joss Whedon isn't going to do any of that. And I don't personally enjoy his work anymore, knowing what I know about him. But I don't know that we can and always should dismiss an entire person because they've been party to some horrific things. I don't know how restorative justice works then.