Like many women, I’ve found myself flashing back to some unsettling memories in the fallout of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal.

In fact, there has been one particular act that Weinstein allegedly perpetrated on women that struck me as disturbingly familiar, because a man did something like that to me.

Back in my 20s, when I was living in San Francisco, I was headed to the gym early one weekday morning. A burgundy sedan pulled up alongside me, and somehow the driver got my attention. I turned, looked and saw him through the window: a balding, middle-aged man. He was dressed in a polo shirt and apparently nothing else. He was fully exposed and looking right at me as he masturbated.

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By the time my brain registered what I was seeing, he had driven off.

I hadn’t thought about that incident for more than two decades until I read stories coming from some of Weinstein’s alleged victims. They shared how the once powerful indie movie producer trapped them in his hotel suite or in some other room and exposed himself to them while masturbating, sometimes to climax.

One scene in the Weinstein chronicles has stood out. A former TV reporter recounted to the Huffington Post that about a decade ago he cornered her in the vestibule of a New York City restaurant that was closed to the public. She said that after she rejected his kiss, he masturbated in front of her until he ejaculated — into a potted plant.

It turns out that Weinstein isn’t the only powerful man in Hollywood who has recently been accused of forcing women to watch them masturbate — an act that experts say is a form of exhibitionism and is a harmful, disordered behavior when it involves non-consenting witnesses.

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Other men who have faced allegations that they forced women to watch them include comedy auteur Louis C.K. and director-writer James Toback.

C.K. has been dogged by rumors for several years that he has trapped female comics and other women in rooms and masturbated in front of them. This particular scenario, whether or not it actually occurred in real life, is now making cameos in two new works of fictional storytelling, one created by C.K. himself.

Perhaps C.K. is trolling the American public about these rumors, especially with his new film “I Love You Daddy.” Set for release Nov. 17, the film includes a scene in which a TV writer/producer’s assistant pretends to masturbate when a female production manager walks into the room.

Meanwhile, one of C.K.’s female colleagues, comedian Tig Notaro, features a curious scene in Season 2 of her Amazon series “One Mississippi.” During the scene, a female radio host is forced to watch her boss pleasure himself as he sits behind his desk during a pitch meeting. According to the Decider, the rest of the season explores the emotional impact of sexual misconduct in the workplace.

Notably, Notaro brought the C.K. rumors out of comedy circles and into the mainstream when she told the Daily Beast in August that it’s time for her one-time mentor to address these allegations in a serious way and not brush them off, as she said he had done in the past.

Indeed, C.K. still hasn’t full-out denied the allegations, though he told the New York Times last month that he won’t address them because they are just rumors.

As for Toback, the writer-director has been accused by more than 200 women of sexually harassing or assaulting them. One common theme in the Toback accusations, according to the Los Angeles Times, is that his encounters with women often ended with him rubbing himself against them or masturbating in front of them, ejaculating into his pants or onto their bodies.

Perhaps because of my experience with.the man in the burgundy sedan, these stories involving powerful Hollywood men engaging in similar behavior have prompted some interesting conversations with male friends and colleagues, as well as with my husband and my 19-year-old son.

Actually, more than me, these men are scratching their heads and saying they don’t get it. How can this sort of act in any way be a turn on, especially in front of women who are totally unwilling, grossed out, terrified?

And why would a man like Weinstein even need to go there? Wouldn’t his wealth and power give him access to enough women who might actually find him charming and sexually desirable?

Certainly, such behavior with a non-consenting witness wouldn’t be appealing to any man whose sexual tastes lie within the spectrum of normal and healthy, according to Frederick Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the founder of the Sex and Gender Clinic at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

I called up Berlin this week to better understand the thinking that motivates these situations.

Berlin also had noticed the exhibitionism and masturbation apparent in the Weinstein allegations. Exhibitionism, he explained, is a mental health disorder that is marked by the strong urge, fantasy, or behavior of exposing one’s genitals to non-consenting people, including strangers.

“Most men would find the idea of exposing themselves in that way to be uncomfortable not arousing,” he said.

But the sex drive can be incredibly powerful, he said. People with these sorts of sex disorders, known as paraphilias, have intense urges that prompt them to engage in fantasies and behavior that can become repetitive, excessive and drive them do things that are physically or emotionally harmful to themselves or others.

He mentioned men who lose their marriages because they can’t stop going to prostitutes or looking excessively at internet porn.

But he also distinguished between exhibitionism and what healthy consenting adults might watch each other do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

And contrary to a common perception, Berlin said most exhibitionists aren’t turned on by shocking or upsetting their victims. They are more likely moved by an obsessive, as well as delusional fantasy that, this time, their witness might somehow respond positively, he explained. When she doesn’t or once a craving is satisfied, exhibitionists often feel intense regret, shame and self-disgust — until the craving hits them again and they go looking for the next opportunity for release.

Still, while Berlin has never evaluated Weinstein, he found some aspects of his alleged behavior to be atypical of most exhibitionists — notably that he was said to have physically assaulted some of his victims.

“That’s unusual,” he said.

In a study he did of more than 100 exhibitionists, not one crossed over into actually putting their hands on their victims, Berlin said. Weinstein has been accused of groping women, and forcing himself on them in other ways, including rape. Many would say that such actions are less about sexual desire, and more about violence and exerting power over victims.

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“There’s a domination component to it,” Berlin agreed, though he said you can never take the sex drive out of it.

He explained that he wanted to talk about this issue, in part because he says that men can get help for controlling exhibitionism and other harmful sexual disorders. Treatment can involve a combination of psychotherapy and medication.

Of course, most men don’t seek it out, he said, largely because of the shame involved in admitting they have a problem that society labels criminal and reprehensible.

“We as a society need to talk about how we can help these people, so we don’t wait until they destroy their own lives and so we can’t stop them from hurting more people,” he said.