> Funny this is cancel-worthy sometimes, and in other times it's treated as a quaint personality trait.

Yeah sometimes you see that in passing. Some famous people seem to get a pass especially if they are not polarizing nor brazen, as opposed to, say, someone like Donald Trump. But in the end, they hurt and abuse people all the same.

For example, almost every bio I've seen on YouTube about Richard Feynman treats his proclivity of banging his colleagues' wives as nothing more than some charming quirk or idiosyncrasy (usually to differentiate him from the bookish physicists of the time) at best, and a peccadillo at worst.

The worst description I've read yet of his behavior was summarized as: "he just loved women."

It's messed up.

If women who were married to people who worked with Feynman had consensual sex with Feynman, what exactly is the problem? It might create a tense work environment, but you should be able separate work from private life.