A comment on my Instagram photo had been escalated to an unexpected situation. I am not sure if I handled it correctly. Need advice.

So I am a member of a gay fitness group of my local town. In the group there are people from all age ranges.

During thanksgiving, I posted a photo of me in swimming trunks at the beach on my Instagram. Immediately, a member from the fitness group, who is like 70 years old man, commented under my photo as “with a chest and muscles like that, you should walk around without clothes all day, we need more exotic muscle boys in this country”. (Yeah he referred me to exotic because I’m Asian)

I am not an online influencer or anything close to that. So my instagram connections are mostly friends from real life. A few of my friends (including both straight and gay) shared that screenshot with me and joked about me “thirst trapping online”. Of course, that’s not my intention. At some points, I decided to archive the photo.

However, the people who are in charge of the fitness group contacted me in private and asked me if I wanted to bring this incident to a serious level (sexual harassment). They had told me that old guy had always been doing this to young minority members in the group. Through the process I also learned that looks like many people in this fitness group had beef with him. Some are felt he was creepy. Some thought he was objectifying minority members for his own sexual fantasy all the time. The managers of the group told me if I want they can treat it as cyber sexual harassment and according to the group’s rules, his membership would be officially terminated.

I knew this guy personally and i did notice he seemed to have a fetish to young asian guys. I did not realize that he was so unpopular in the group and so many people isolated him. Thus I told the owner of the group that i knew he was feeling lonely and don’t want to make a gay member feel more isolated and I decided not to escalate. But some other managers made comments like “he is lonely because he always chases guys much younger and much more attractive than him. And he is so creepy. He deserves it. You should NOT let him escape the punishment for sexual harassment this easily”

I don’t know if I’m being “too nice” for not escalating this. But I also feel that a 70 years old man probably has generational gaps with today’s culture, and it’s kinda sad to kick an old man out of a community.

What’s your guys’ thoughts?