Regardless of what you think of Jon Pretty, how is this justifiable? Telling people they can't unsupport something because you're not open to issues, but also not removing it?!
Good apologies require more than memory-holing an injurious attack.
Yes.
I have no involvement in this drama (it's the first I've heard of it actually), but signing your name to something matters.
Choose carefully what/who you support.
A repo owner is not obligated to accept contributions.
All of those people are free to create their own repo, post on social media, or write an article recanting their support if they choose to do so.
Morality is subjective (that's why we have courts; which don't respect the individual and differing moralities of the parties involved, it has its own moral bar, for better or worse).
In this case, I feel it is more moral to record all the members of the mob. Maybe this would cause them to think twice before joining the next mob.
I mean, if we are going to have witch-hunt mobs, then the lesser evil is to not allow anonymous mobbers.
Not necessarily, plenty of projects have been put in an archive state because they are 'finished', superseded, forked, etc. This isn't code nor a living document, it was a one-off operation.
So I think pull requests are still accepted, but issues are not.
- Upon reflection, I don't think this letter was the right approach for this situation. Although I cannot retract my initial decision to sign it, I would appreciate having my signature removed from the document.
- We had good intentions and reasons for concern, but there was no due process, and the consequences of that can be awful. Please accept my withdrawal.
- The goal of providing safe spaces is laudable and necessary, but I expected to see further process outcomes from this effort. Perhaps some sort of SIP or scalarum iustitiae processus.
- I no longer believe the way this letter was the right way of dealing with the situation. And while I cannot undo signing it, I would like to request removing my signature.
It takes work to protect the integrity of our justice system. This applies to the members within it and for those outside of it--neither should sacrifice or attack its credibility for short term political or personal gain. It also requires proper education that focuses on the good, not just the failings.
You might say "this will have a chilling effect on legitimate accusations" and you might be right, but the situation is bad enough now that it's created a pretty extreme chilling effect on socialization in general.
EDIT: I don't normally do this but argue your point. If you continue playing games like down voting very reasonable ideas that you disagree with eventually all of us are going to come together and leave you out of the discussion entirely.
Are you aware that here you are arguing for criminal sanctions on the order of 10 years in prison, for writing a letter?
You probably should expand on that.
Edit: some people seem to be okay with this notion! Would love to hear thoughts on how stiff criminal penalties for what is in the end expressing are at all compatible with societies that claim to value free speech.
Note that the author of the post does not present any proof that the allegations are false. Similarly, the other side likely cannot prove its allegations are true. So we are here discussing long prison sentences for unprovable opinions. I would love to hear how people justify that.
You can downplay any action by breaking it down to its foundations and stating it that way.
None of this is obviously accurate. More to the point, no court can adjudicate the "predictable outcome" of a letter or whether the reasons were malicious.
In fact, that’s a fundamental facet of a libel claim.
It's about writing a letter that can result in someone else receiving criminal sanctions on the order of 10 years in prison, when that someone might not have even written a letter.
Provably false is essential here.
As far as I can tell, nobody has offered (or likely can offer) proof of anything on either side and yet people are talking about long prison sentences for speech.
Free speech is not the same as freedom to falsely accuse. Libel is absolutely illegal and has been since before the US was a country. Allowing things like this to happen means men and women formally socializing with eachother except in really limited or alternatively psychopathic ways isn't practical. It needs to stop and the only possibilities are
a) Just exclude women entirely like we used to.
b) Punish them very harshly for lying.
I think most people would be more upset by a than b. I hope the feminists and egalitarians realize that this is the pro feminism argument as the only practical alternative is to return to a formally patriarchal society. If people can't appreciate the point I'm making then I suppose we'll end going with a which is unfortunate. Everyone who doesn't will eventually be cancelled by the same group of people they're aiming to support.
What is being discussed here is adding harsh criminal liability ultimately for expressing opinions, since we know that two people can experience the same event in very different ways.
A lot of people are understandably low on trust for a legal system that doesn't do anything about multiple highly-public sexual offenders.
Well, then you'd presumably fall back onto the old witch hunt; plenty of puritanical mobs are still around to say something like "What about when the courts don't do the job".
Good thing we don't live in those unenlightened days, eh?
A functioning justice system for sex crime accusations would be amazing; for valid reasons, a lot of people do not trust that this exists.
They are not some core, universal rights that every individual must respect when interacting with other individual.
The accused in this case absolutely still has the citizen rights of association and speech. He can gather with people and he can publish his thoughts. The fact that a bunch of individuals have decided they don't want to gather with him is in no way a reduction of his rights.
There's no right to being accepted, and no right to make people approve of your actions.
It's not actually a problem in society that needs fixing if people decide not to associate with someone on the basis of their behaviour.
> A functioning justice system for sex crime accusations would be amazing; for valid reasons, a lot of people do not trust that this exists.
They have no valid reasons. No system is perfect. Claiming that the system getting it wrong 1 out of every 1000 times is a valid reason is just stupid; no system is perfect.
Our justice system doesn't fail 1 in a 1000 times, particularly when talking about sex crimes. It fails far more frequently than that, given the prevalence of sexual assault and the rarity of convictions [1]. Additionally, there's an aspect that justice must be seen to be done: high profile repeat offenders walking free damages confidence in the system out of proportion to their frequency.
As above, if you want people to use a system, the system has to work.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/07/the-s...
What makes you think I'm okay with the current system? Upthread I even said "if you are unhappy with the way things are, petition to change them instead of mobbing".
Just because I hold the opinion that evidence matters does not mean that I am a bad person.
People aren't required to only critique a system using the tools that system provides; progress is often made when people step outside of the system (e.g. Rosa Parks) rather than quietly accepting it. There's evidence for that in countless civil rights campaigns.
Not saying people should leap to letter signing, but it also misses the mark to suggest that the US legal system will resolve the issues these kinds of actions cause.
it seems that the author lives in Germany and that he went to court in Britain: https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
- "the BBC let this person get away with this for years" and also "cancel culture has to stop",
- "there's too much filth on the internet" and "don't you dare demand I tell you my age",
- or the most complex and culturally nuanced one: "children are being groomed" but "she's 18 now, she's an adult and she can make up her own mind about posing nude in a tabloid".
As difficult as it is, any invitation to treat a subject with less nuance is better considered misbegotten until scrutinised much, much further.
If I've missed an implication that limited their suggestion to specific regions, them I'm happy to retract. But what I'm seeing is a general suggestion, so I've extrapolated that out and tried to apply it to a hypothetical where the advice might be appropriate.
Feels like maybe you've assumed that the thread starter was scoping the suggestion to the regions where this offense occurred. Again, I don't see that implication in the text, but I feel like it's an entirely reasonable assumption. That being the case, I don't fault anyone for thinking only in those terms. But I also don't think I was out of line to engage with the thread starters points in the way that I did.
It's a matrix: a perfect system would always punish the guilty and refuse to punish the innocent.
Without perfect information, you have to choose: will you bias the outcome punish the innocent, or to not punish the guilty?
If someone was accused of murder, or theft, in most cases, social stigma would be part of that. An admittedly sometimes unfair, but baseline thing we're gonna do as humans to protect ourselves.
If your child was at a preschool, and a teacher was accused (but not convicted) of molestation, you wouldn't "be a good person and wait for the justice system to sort it out". You'd either demand the teacher be fired, or you'd take your kid out of the school.
Main issue with investigating child abuse is that the victim's account is unreliable as they might not yet even have the language to describe some things, so we err on the side of caution.
In an environment where all participants are adults it makes sense to at least ask the alleged perpetrator if they're guilty and analyse their reaction.
There was a notorious case in my corner of the world where a locally famous YouTuber was accused by his ex of sexual abuse. He lost a significant number of followers and of course revenue so he took her to court and won, as her story didn't add up.
Undeterred, she continued, but with increasingly wild accusations and even attempting to rope in other people.
I occasionally see a new post about this drama and it serves as a remainder that some people are just out to destroy others.
Besides, there may not be a criminal case / the police may do nothing. One of the accusers only came forward three years after the end of the two-year relationship; it's not unheard of for someone to realise that what happened was wrong years much later, at which point the police is less likely to do anything because any physical evidence will be gone by then, and it's one person's words against another's.
The #metoo movement gave victims the push, visibility and protections they needed to stop hiding their abuse / protecting their abusers, sometimes decades after it happens.
Most victims of CSA are minors. No wait: all of them. CSA is a crime precisely because the victims are not able to understand what happens to them and not able to react appropriately. That's the distinction between minors and adults.
Adults are considered able to navigate sex & relationships and should take responsibility for what they do and what they don't do. There might be exceptional cases (e.g. cults) but I still think that public accusations of abusive behaviour in adult relationships, when they come with such delay, should be put under the utmost scrutiny.
There was one high-profile trial, of a man who was definitely guilty. A bunch of other accused people faced zero consequences. In total, the #metoo movement raised awareness and was dwarfed by its own backlash.
An overcorrection would be what people fear-monger about: men arrested for innocently holding doors open, etc. None of that happened.
EDIT: Though I'm not suggesting people should sign letters about people they don't know based on allegations by other people they don't know.
The problem is with people not being willing to decide for themselves whether someone's behavior meets this threshold, and letting the mob substitute their own judgement.
Yes -- additionally there's also the situation where they try repeatedly to act collectively on this for themselves but the individual in question (or a compromised individual) has power over the resulting action, right?
I think it worth considering that many, if not most, of these "cancellations" occur long after serious attempts have been made to privately act that have been thwarted, often by commercial interests.
What I object to is the social dynamics of cancellation, where people feel compelled to e.g. sign an open letter, lest they themselves be viewed as siding with the accused, without fully considering the claims and counter-claims for themselves. I also object to creating a false sense of urgency, in order to to encourage this behavior.
A few years back I criticised someone (without naming them) online (since the egregious, thoughtless conduct itself was online) and triggered something of a pile-on that I thought was a bit too much.
Subsequently I realised that I had under-read the situation myself, and the conduct wasn't simply thoughtless at all, it was repeated, self-interested and very calculated; people finding that out was actually the accelerant of the pile-on.
So I wasn't really so guilty of it after all. But I definitely witnessed what you talk about -- the "you're with us or with them" of it all, the social compulsion to join the pile-on.
I will probably still openly criticise people if I think it is very merited, but any criticism needs to be tempered with as much of an antidote for a simple pile-on as it can.
Maybe there should be a public list of slanderers, defamers, mob justice participants and cancellers in general so we can all avoid them like the massive liabilities they are.
Do you have stats on this?
Every law, no matter how well meaning, can and will be abused. Women are not saints. Be especially wary when lies could provide secondary victories such as favorable child custody outcomes.
Feminist discourse is overwhelmingly in favor of disregarding false positives: they would rather see thousands of innocent men suffer than watch a single guilty man go free. They cast a wide net and hope to catch the guilty men within it. They care not for the suffering they cause to the innocent. Quite the contrary, in fact: I've seen them try to justify it as historical reparation.
I don't think we can say that this is what happened here. The allegations were public; some signatories may not have read them and just gone along with the "mob", but many would have read them and made their judgements based on that. This isn't "letting the mob substitute [for] their own judgement."
2) A lot of sexual misconduct happens behind closed doors and is (I would imagine. IANAL) difficult to prosecute. I’m not saying that one should believe everything at face value but if multiple people make such allegations it’s more likely than not that such allegations have weight.
3) Not all sexual misconduct is “illegal”. But it doesn’t mean that communities should not attempt to censor people who engage in problematic behavior.
With all respect, that's nonsense. Where do you draw the line? Your morals? My morals? The victim's morals?
This is why we have a justice system, so that there is one place where you can say "that is wrong" and "that is right".
Forming a mob because "well, that person didn't akshually commit a crime, but we don't like the way they think about sex" is a primitive and regressive viewpoint.
The correct way would be to petition to make a law against whatever act you don't like. Not to say "let's leave it legal and instead simply punish the person".
No one should be facing a societal punishment without due process.
It's not at all. The law doesn't cover all forms of community or personal misconduct, sexual or otherwise.
And everyone -- especially businesses in Silicon Valley -- understands this.
Same with various forms of cheating - adultery is illegal in some states; but not all. And even then rarely prosecuted.
Yes, and those rules are enforceable contracts with penalties for breaking clauses in those contracts.
I want to know why, if those penalties are insufficient, is it better to join a mob than to petition the parties drawing up those contracts for stiffer penalties.
Further, legality does not imply correctness.
For example, it’s probably legal to call somebody a transphobic slur in many parts of the world but to suggest that trans people shouldn’t attempt to avoid or “cancel” such people is ridiculous.
And if you sincerely think that the only acceptable action to take is make a petition to change the law, I would suggest you go out and touch some grass. The law doesn’t work that way.
This sounds great in theory - where "community" means the small town that you live in. In practice, "community" often means "terminally online social media users", and many of the members of this "community" have little interest in looking for context, facts, or the truth and are instead invested in pushing their worldview or just getting a rage boner.
Edit: A great example of this in action was the "bike Karen" incident: https://archive.is/j0Yr8
How much of the online "community" was all-in on the narrative that she was trying to take the teens' bike until more information came to light?
That's not what we're talking about here, are we? We're talking about a public dogpiling.
And, TBH, your example is a poor one; while it's not illegal to slur/slander someone, there are legal remedies that dont' involve a global request to followers of a specific ideology to pile on.
Avoid people you don't like? Certainly. Join a campaign to ostracise someone you never met and never knew existed until your ideologues extended an invitation to mob them does not leave you on the right side of history.
Especially in countries where "free speech" means I can basically say anything I want short of defamation, no matter how hateful, profane, sexually inappropriate, or otherwise offensive, it only makes sense that a community should go beyond the limits of the law to maintain a non-toxic environment.
You need to explain what you mean by "that way", because I did not express any opinion on speech, free or otherwise.
Your comment sounds like a pre-prepared one, for any occasion that someone is performing wrongthink.
“Communities censuring people for problematic behavior” has been an important human behavior since way before we had states and laws.
> “Communities censuring people for problematic behavior” has been an important human behavior since way before we had states and laws.
That's not what we're talking about here, though. We aren't talking about voluntarily ending out association with someone, the specific context is about forming a group and going after someone.
Presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of society since at least Roman times and is recognized as a fundamental right by the UN.
If you cost me my ability to make a living, I should be able to take you to court for damages.
In most (all?) Western countries, cheating on your spouse is not illegal. But 99% of the people would say that "it is wrong".
Well that’s why so many cases are civil and not criminal. The bar is much lower (“preponderance of evidence” versus “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt”). A man can be accused of some sexual act that occurred decades ago without any substantive information like what day it happened on, and if a jury says “well I believe her”, it’s a wrap.
And you know full well that the whole range of sexual harassments is entirely legal.
… and it usually ends badly when this happens. One kind of injustice is replaced by another. But this is what people will do.
Epstein? Jimmy Savile? The massive and still ongoing sex abuse scandals in not just the Catholic Church but many faiths? Those are high profile ones but there are so many examples of people getting away with sex abuse for years and years with dozens or even hundreds of victims. The wealthier, more powerful, or more famous and “loved” the abuser, the longer they can get away with it.
I remember back in college being personally shocked at how many women I dated who had been raped or at least harassed in disgusting ways, as children or adults. It was like half. They told me the details and I had no reason to disbelieve them. I’ve since heard many similar and worse things from people I know.
Part of why lynch mobs are so easy to form around allegations of sexual harassment and abuse is that it's so incredibly common. The allegations are easily believed.
- If it's not something you can at least sue over or is not illegal, it's not misconduct we should care about.
- If no one was at least prepared to sue, we should all just let it be.
I think perhaps you don't understand that quite a lot of persistent unwanted behaviour never rises to that standard (or perhaps no individual victim was willing to put their head above the parapet).
Anyone who has worked in education can tell you about someone whose unwanted behaviour escaped scrutiny for decades because each individual incident had enough deniability. I have never worked in education and I can identify at least two such cases from my own experiences. (Very likely a third, and there is no way that third person would ever have seen any kind of censure for what they were doing, because it was so deniable and because their victims would not even have classified themselves as victims)
There are plenty of occasions where a community quietly agreeing that someone's behaviour is unacceptable has kept them from a situation where the harms they cause can escalate.
In this situation you have an accusation of misconduct made by 1) young 2) women 3) new to a community 4) who don't speak English well. These are all big red vulnerability flags.
I would ensure that every accusation of this nature is treated with respect and investigated by a trusted authority figure in a given community.
Edit: okay, vastly different experience on phone vs desktop. Looks normal enough on the monitor except, as someone points out, the weird f and j
So, as observers, what we're left with is two people accusing someone of something and the accused saying they're innocent.
You don't need to prove accusations of criminal conduct false. The onus is on the accusers to prove the allegations true.
> It doesn't seem like the accusing parties were asked or agreed to take any action retracting their claims.
In theory there are punitive measures for false accusations, in practice no one ever bothers with them.
There's a difference between listening to someone's story and assuming truthfulness... and joining a mob going after someone.
He's not naming his accusers or asking the reader to go after them.
This is the point though, isnt it. He's writing a retrospective about the impact of public condemnation and ostracization as a result of such proof-less, process-less accusations.
Neither the accusation nor the denial come with proof. This is not exactly about what should we do in this circumstance. Its about what peiple did fo in these circumstances.
You can doubt his innocence. But... and this is the crucial point... this post is not attempting to punish the accusers. So to me... normal rules apply. Assumption of good faith and honesty, to some extent, apply.
If I read the other side's story, then I'd probably read it from the same perspective.
That's ok... because we aren't hanging someone at the end of this conversation. If we are, different standards apply.
OK, now prove you didn’t.
A really sad story, but also a cautionary tale.
Like, why did they really get together and do this to this poor guy?
Edit: From the downvotes I’m guessing this isn’t actually resolved? This is the first I’m hearing about this saga.
Niche
As if the job was all that mattered.
We are social creatures. Shunning and ostracism have a significant impact, even when happening by people we don't know, especially when it's a pile-on.
I'm not saying there's never a reason to shun someone. If people do something terrible, cut ties with them. I don't think that's what a lot of this is, though. If it was, it wouldn't happen on such flimsy evidence and it wouldn't happen to people others don't even know.
Most cancellations are a blood letting, where people are trying to feel powerful and the cancelled (or even the wronged) don't really matter.
How many replies are about how the apology sounds hollow, or how a PR person must have written it?
There are some challenges with media-based apologies because they can only be done at all through media PR systems, of course, and there's an impact therefore on the shape and style of an apology that Marshall McLuhan might have written about if he were still here.
So there's an element of apology fatigue that will prompt some of those replies.
But even then, apologies that sound hollow or sound written by PR generally are somewhat hollow or written with help from, or experience of, PR. Usually the PR of a law firm, right?
It is wholly possible to apologise in ways that do not have those qualities, and wholly possible for people to recognise them.
I can not understand at all how you got that from my message.
As for the rest of what you're saying. Yes, there's a way to apologize in a way that don't have those qualities, and it's apologizing directly to the people you've wronged, if you have. Apologizing to a faceless group is pointless.
Well... it might be at least pragmatic. Apologising to the wider community for wronging a member of the community is normal; it's also expected.
And I guess apologising to one's audience for not being who they think you are is essentially, the same thing, just with a parasocial twist.
Parasocial "communities" exist (fandoms) and they do rather complicate things.
Thank god society got more mature since then and didn't participate in imagine some kind of doxing app for this purpose :)
But shame is also incredibly important in that it causes self-policing of social norms. There is no way that society would work if everyone just did things that benefited them with no regard to others, in ways that weren't actively harmful but just annoying. That's why we have norms and enforce them with shame. If this gets broken down because people use shaming inappropriately then it will be used as a reason to do away with shaming completely. We see this trend happening and its continuation can only lead to bad outcomes.
This discussion of far more nuanced than many of the comments in this post address. It's true people are often swiftly found guilty in the public eye without due process - see most true crime - but it's also true such sanctions have their place.
Go read about the psychology of forgiveness. There are some pros to "letting it go", when appropriate.
(Caveat: I have no idea what happened with this particular person.)
So he just left his job for no reason? This seems compeletely self-inflicted. The following paragraphs are about he "had to" drop various projects - Why would you just drop everything?
Real monsters are walking free of consequence, while innocents are ruined. Society is so obsessed with moral puritanism, and completely blind to the absurd corruption at the top.
If all that energy expended on cancelling people was instead used on genuine political action, we wouldn't be in the trouble we are now at. If more people were reasonable at the time and didn't jump to conclusions, they would still have the high ground. Instead they became the boy who cried wolf.
If someone really wants to ruin your life, they will find a way. The most effective way to avoid that is to screen your partners aggressively.
Yes, being policed by the mob is terrible.
All people are imperfect. Many people act in ways that don’t make sense to me. But labeling someone “crazy” and refusing to associate with them is a big judgment to make.
I have learned to fight the instinct to judge because many times I judged very very sure of my conclusions, only to find put some time later how completely wrong I was. It's scary, how a rational person can feel so righteous and yet be so wrong. As a rule I try never to make a decision on the same day I receive information. You'd be surprised how much your opinion can change once you digest your info.
I doubt that's the case here. People just love maltreating someone for a "good cause". It's the most delicious of moral treats.
My theory is that people do it (hey I do it too) to get the kick of "look at that piece of shit, I'm glad compared to them I'm a better/smarter/etc person.".
I mean, that’s the entire basis of human ego. That’s never going away. It’s the reason we have in-groups and out-groups. Nations and foreigners. We had slaves and free people for this very reason.
If the requirement is to get rid of that kind of thinking, then get ready to simply deal with this forever. Because that type of thinking is human nature, and it’s never going away.
We need fixes that acknowledge and align with human nature.
...No, it's not?
Plenty of people make the basis of their ego "look at me, at the things I'm capable of," with no reference to anyone else's capability.
If your ego is reliant on not merely being good yourself, but on being better than everyone around you, then it sounds like you've got some serious insecurities to work out...?
So the loneliness epidemic is making assholes out of all of us.
I also think that feeling prosperous means you're friendlier to the less fortunate (e.g. refugees). Europe suffered austerity under the Merkel/Schaüble regime and they don't see themselves as prosperous, so they have bile against the people who had to abandon their properties and communities, fleeing bombs and bullets.
I wish I could find surveys to prove that idea, I just have the feeling that rich Norway is more welcoming towards refugees, compared to e.g. less rich Poland (citation needed...).
This is such an important idea to me. We all really only live in our own lives, and even if we read and talk to others endlessly, it's very hard to learn the full scope of the world and others' struggles. So there's some hubris to thinking that you fully understand things and can judge them absolutely.
Not saying there's no right and wrong, just that maybe reserving judgment has its place. I mostly think about this to coach myself, but I think it has use for others as well.
Both my father and I have excellent “gut feelings” to the point that “I hate being right” is the family motto.
It would be so easy to believe I’m always right in my judgement of people. But I’m extremely wrong at least 5% of the time.
If nothing else, that 5% helps me learn to read people better. If I didn’t reserve judgment, that 5% would quickly become 50%.
Otherwise one mistake or the malignant intent of another can cause irreparable damage to my personal reputation.
But - it is worth stating very clearly that history is replete with examples of men who have used their senior position in communities to take advantage of women, and if what these women say is true, it would be utterly unsurprising to me. The High Court judgement in this situation is a civil matter; nobody has been "cleared" of anything.
In the absence of an investigation, you can read the original statements made by the women who made the accusations of wrongdoing [here](https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...) and [here](https://killnicole.github.io/statement/), and you can form your own opinion about who is telling the truth based on what little there is to go on.
EDIT: s/judgement/opinion/
We have some truth-discovering methods... but they are hard, expensive, and often return empty handed. Science. Courts. Fact finding commitees. Etc.
So... you can't have that. What we have is heresy, and a "how to act" dilemma in circumstances where truth isn't known and will not be known.
Im going to encourage you not to form your own opinion on who is lying. Read the accusations of you want.. but don't pretend you are in a position to judge... only to execute.
I wouldn't read much into the settlement.
I don't know if they'd consider this a problem, though, given the life-destroying outcome meted out by the Scala community may actually exceed the punishment the legal system would have deemed appropriate.
>I don't know if they'd consider this a problem, though, given the life-destroying outcome meted out by the Scala community may actually exceed the punishment the legal system would have deemed appropriate.
Are you suggesting that if Pretty were found liable for sexual harassment against two different women that he would not have also faced similar negative social outcomes?
If you have been sexually harrassed, don't blog about it, report it to the correct authorities.
The Government is literally campaigning against people to stop prejudicing the judicial process via social media:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/attorney-general-launches...
Everyone who hopes to seek justice needs to read this advice
> Are you suggesting that if Pretty were found liable for sexual harassment against two different women that he would not have also faced similar negative social outcomes?
My point is that the legal system might have weighed up the evidence and considered this case inadmissable, or ruled in Jon's favour. In which case he would have been exonerated in public view by the authorities, and he might have been able to piece his life back together. As it stands, he is in an awful limbo situation where hearsay prevents him getting any gainful employment.
2. It's unclear to me that any of the behavior alleged to have happened in the US (where the accusers reside) is considered criminal behavior in the US. The usual remediation in the US for sexual harassment is civil, so there are no authorities to contact.
"It was like reading a fiction about me concocted from benign fragments of reality, transplanted into new context to make them sound abominable."
makes it sound like the accusations weren't based on totally made up facts. It was rather a biased (is the author's view) interpretation thereof.
I am only saying that even the person being accused does not directly confront the accusers about any facts.
If you are claiming it's more likely that these women are lying because they want to punish men for the crime of being men than it is likely that everyone here is a victim of a culture that encourages men to behave this way and pressures women to accept it silently you're delusional or acting in bad faith.
Therein lies the danger. An outsider with little knowledge cannot make a good judgement. Their judgement will be based on intangibles, such as "something similar happened to somebody I know, so I tend to believe X's account over Y's account".
But that's not proof, or evidence, or anything really. It's just naked bias from a different situation applied to an unrelated one. Saying "history is replete with examples" is exactly that. If that is going to be used as a metric, then it is well worth it for men to consider that mentoring women carries with it a high degree of risk. No matter how you behave, a single accusation from somebody willing to lie or exaggerate--for whatever reason--will be supported and amplified using this same historical rationale.
If the accusations are true, then this is yet another example of a pattern of behaviour played out so regularly, across cultures, centuries and communities, that it is boringly predictable: "Senior community member, almost always a man, sexually exploits vulnerable women seeking acceptance into that community."
When a possible situation arises you should investigate it and, if there is reasonable evidence that it is true, do what you can to stamp it out and ensure it stops happening.
The only way you can ensure that it stops happening is strict segregation by sex, but I don't think that's what you'd want.
With wrong cancellation it's different because it's not an urgent situation and people should not ruin someone's life randomly. It would be stupid to force us to think "really there's a 50/50 chance if the rapist is that man or that woman" but if you say "there's a 50/50 chance if the guy is a creep or that woman is scheming something" then it can be not that wrong (depending on country)
But in this case we still don't know who is wrong. This is the original letter https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara... and it was not shown false. All that the courts said was "no evidence was provided". And the guy didn't clearly deny it in the letter as I understand it
> then it is well worth it for men to consider that mentoring women
You don't need to worry unless you're having sex with your mentees. If you do, then yeah maybe you need to think twice about that, and maybe that's not such a bad thing?
"He exhibited problematic behavior. He touched me inappropriately. He cornered me in an elevator. He used demeaning language and made me feel unworthy."
Zero sex involved, and these accusations can be completely true or untrue, depending on undefinable intangibles and individual interpretations.
That's the point I was trying to make. One person's interpretation can be wildly different than another's interpretation of the same event. If we are going to assign preference to the interpretation that is the most damaging to both parties involved--she is traumatized, he is fired--then perhaps it is better to completely separate the sexes.
* The guy _followed_ her onto the elevator.
* The guy explicitly invited her to his room for a 4 AM coffee.
* She didn't identify the guy at all, just mentioned this as an offhand example of something it would be nice for men to avoid doing.
Point I was trying to make is it's not actually that hard to be outside of the risk zone for being cancelled.
If you're mentoring a young woman, don't suggest to share Airbnb together, don't drink alone and then initiate sex. Not doing those things makes it extremely unlikely to ever be accused of taking advantage of someone.
Almost sounds like there'd be a long established fair-as-possible process for dealing with these situations, doesn't it?
> But - it is worth stating very clearly that history is replete with examples of men who have used their senior position in communities to take advantage of women
And now history is replete with examples of woman destroying the lives of men with no process or consequence.
> Almost sounds like there'd be a long established fair-as-possible process for dealing with these situations, doesn't it?
A fair-as-possible process that is only fair if you have enough money to afford a lawyer, the time to fight for your case, are not part of a community that has been systematically discriminated against by the people enforcing the process, that the laws are in your favor, that you are not victim of a difficult to prove crime, ...
I will never advocate for vigilante justice, but let's not kid ourselves, the justice system has many, many flaws and bias, and acting as if it should be the only source of truth, and that no personal judgment should be made without, is very naïve.
> and that no personal judgment should be made without
I think it's fine to make personal judgements about things that have little impact on other people. For things that have a big impact, a more formal approach is called for. I think TFA makes a strong case that the impact here is big.
Absolutely, but there is a space between mob justice and the legal system. Most community do self police in some form or another. It is also far from perfect, and mistakes happen just like in the other system. But it is a middle ground between the heavier burden of proof and long process used by the legal system, and the lack of usually any proof and visceral reaction of mob mentality.
Member of a community usually have more information about the other member of the community, which inform their judgment. They have also more at stakes.
> I think it's fine to make personal judgements about things that have little impact on other people. For things that have a big impact, a more formal approach is called for. I think TFA makes a strong case that the impact here is big.
If we choose to believe him. If we choose to believe the accuser, then we could reason that by "exposing" him they may have prevented other victim. Something a long and legal process might not have prevented. I am not saying this is the case. I know personally neither the accuser nor the accused, and have no real way to make an informed decision in this case.
Where do you see the line between community self-policing and mob justice? I agree that community members often have information about each other, but I think it's often low-grade and commingled with vague popularity and "office politics". I interpreted the situation in TFA to be that many people signed the letter who had little information either way.
>> I think TFA makes a strong case that the impact here is big.
> If we choose to believe him.
Here I was only talking about the impact it had on him, not whether or not he was guilty of something. I think we can believe that it had a big impact on him. Or do you suspect that he is exaggerating for effect?
The alternative however, is unjustifiable. Mob law is worse than no law.
Individual communities have to establish ground rules for these sorts of things to protect the vulnerable.
> And now history is replete with examples of woman destroying the lives of men with no process or consequence.
I do not accept that this happens with nearly the regularity that people, usually men, claim it does. To make these kinds of accusations as a woman tears your life apart in unimaginable ways.
By way of example, 1 in 100 rape accusations MADE TO THE POLICE in the UK leads to a charge being made against the accused. That is what we as a society are up against, and why we have to take creepy, exploitative behaviour that falls short of criminality so seriously.
You can never sue anyone for ostracizing you from an open community, or for the consequences of that ostracism. There's no limit on who global communities might choose to ostracize. It's so fundamental to how we group together; you always have to know the norms.
British law is famously friendly to wealthy litigants, and the High Court for awarding ruinous damages. The OP took an opportunity to sue four signatories who (from my understanding of the court order) put their name to harmful allegations that they didn't know the truth of. The four defendants paid £20,000 in costs and damages.
Unfortunately for the OP, the ostracism clearly still stands, and despite going to the High Court to sue for libel, the first-hand reports of his conduct are still online.
I don't see this as a lesson in the terrifyingly and unpredictable consequences of Cancellation - seems like more "don't shit where you eat".
> 1 in 100 rape accusations MADE TO THE POLICE in the UK leads to a charge being made against the accused
backs up your claim that
> To make these kinds of accusations as a woman tears your life apart in unimaginable ways
But this is not the case at all, unless you intended "these kinds of accusations" to mean both making formal charges and writing accusatory blog posts -- but the whole reason for this article is to point out the massive amount of damage that the latter can do at almost no cost to the accuser. Absent further evidence, it's clear that in this particular case, the two accusers' lives were not at all "torn apart" by making these life-destroying accusations -- do you agree?
Absolutely not! Assume the alleged victims are telling the truth, and read their statements again, carefully. Do they sound to you like people whose lives weren't torn apart by the experience? They needed counselling, therapy, time off work. These sound to me like traumatised people. You can argue that what they had to deal with wasn't "as bad" as what the accused had to deal with, but I don't accept that women make public accusations of sexual exploitation casually without any personal consequences, and certainly not in this case.
The "1 in 100" statistic is to remind people of a few things: firstly, knowing that you will have to expose your sex life to the police and there is only a very small probability that anything will actually be done about it, some women are still brave enough to try, and secondly, that underneath these 1 in 100 accusations are many others who just cannot bring themselves to the point of talking to the police about what they have experienced.
I think we should give women who make these accusations the benefit of the doubt while establishing the facts, acknowledging that coming forward to raise your voice about these things is extremely difficult. If men can by and large rape women - commit a crime against them - with relatively little risk of successful prosecution, then I think it's pretty obvious that non-criminal sexual exploitation is even less likely to have any consequences for the perpetrator.
I was talking about the experience of making the accusation, not the (clearly harrowing if true) experiences they had leading up to that.
I remind you that almost the entire community immediately sided with them, despite the person they accused being prominent in the community.
The claim that "almost the entire community immediately sided with them" is accepting the accused's account of what happened in favour of the accusers. At least one of the victims started to raise concerns in the community several years beforehand and their concerns were not taken seriously:
"I have reported all of my experience to the ScalaCenter in 2019. I was hoping to see concrete actions, such as building a reporting mechanism, to protect minorities in the community. Unfortunately, I am not aware of such actions taken."
I'd also be very, very deeply skeptical that two public claims were the only claims made. We should bear that in mind. If the accusations are true, the public ones are usually the tip of the metaphorical iceberg.
And I'm not sure some random software engineers contributing to open source projects have the proper expertise to build a sexual harassment reporting mechanism and a mechanism for fairly enforcing consequences.
Do we need to make sure there all those kinds of structures are in place for every permutation of human interaction?
That you chose to ignore inconvenient facts that do not fit your narrative is only _your_ problem, no one else's.
Figure out how to remedy this lapse in judgment, then come back to the conversation.
Salient. I do not doubt that false accusations happen, but the world is generally set up to disincentivize women from leveling accusations at anyone. If you're a woman who speaks up, you may be perceived as "damaged goods" (by others or even just yourself), it turns your identity into that of a victim, your successes get attributed to pity, it may lead others to believe you're easy to manipulate, etc. It's generally very unlikely for women to wield this as as a tactic, even if they were Hollywood-style sociopathic villains, because there's almost never anything to gain.
Super curious what the stats are that support a statement like this. Scale matters with everything.
Which doesn't really say anything about this specific scenario. History is also replete with theft, arson, and murder but that doesn't mean it's a good argument when accusing a specific person of a specific instance of theft.
Two things can be true at the same time:
- many women have been, and continue to be, sexually abused and often fail to get justice, and
- sometimes some accusations are made by bad faith actors and/or confused people
are not in conflict. They can both be true at the same time.
I also have no idea who is telling the truth here; just saying that "these things happen" is not really an argument here.
Actually, because these things actually do happen makes the accusations so powerful. History is also replete with false accusations; remember the whole "Satanic panic" from the 80s and 90s where everyone and their dog was engaging in sexual Satanic rituals? Or QAnon today.
The man gets the wrong idea that the woman is interested in sleeping with him, whereas the woman just wants to have a nice conversation in the enjoyable environment of a hotel room.
If the man then invites the woman to a hotel room, 99.9% of women will strongly assume that the man is trying to advance a sexual agenda if the most likely alternative motivation for the invitation is that the man "just wants to have a nice conversation in the enjoyable environment of a hotel room."
(Yet, perhaps that type of mismatched set of assumptions is at the core of this situation in the first place)
> In our conversations, he also mentioned a few times where he helped other women to attend conferences that they otherwise couldn’t have attended by sharing Airbnbs with them to reduce their travel costs. He asked if I wanted to share an Airbnb on my trip to the Typelevel conference in Berlin. He also mentioned that he planned to invite others. As a student with limited financial resources, I accepted the tempting offer and felt grateful that, once again, he helped me. At first, he mentioned that I could invite others to join our Airbnb. Having attended only two conferences, I did not know many people at the time. When I thought of a person to invite, he stopped me and asked if I was not feeling comfortable sleeping in the same apartment as him, and if I was trying to get a chaperone for us. I felt bad that I made him feel untrusted and stopped asking others to join.
Having not read the OP (still), I believe that most women -- most extremely young women even -- would expect a sexual advance in the situation described in your quote.
I'm not commenting in any way on whether the man deserves any consequences that might have befallen him for any sexual advance or sexual behavior after having made the invitation described in your quote.
I'm commenting only on, "Maybe there's mismatched expectations," which I (still, after reading your quote, and not having read the OP) consider quite unlikely.
But we are reading that whole sequence at once, whereas in reality a journey elapsed to get there and I think the context matters.
If I'm in a hotel bar and I get invited up to a hotel room, that's a fairly clear signal (though maybe she's Canadian and just being polite [0]).
But if I want to attend a conference recommended by an advisor/mentor, and they suggest we share an Airbnb and that we can include additional attendees, that framing would be very different to me. At that point in the story I do not have the same expectation.
So I agree that ending is a red flag, but I think it's different when you've built up a context from prior information--one that specifically dissuades that interpretation--vs. getting it all at once as we do here. Now instead of starting at zero, you have to actively change your mind and overcome the inertia of that initial interpretation.
I'm also going to go out on a limb and suggest that participants in a programming conference, in aggregate, might not have exceptional emotional development. That casually explained is tongue in cheek but, I'm sure it resonates with a lot of people.
[0][https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xa-4IAR_9Yw]
I'll also point out that this is written in hindsight, when the author clearly does have a different understanding now, and is framing it accordingly.
I mean I got red flags just from reading this.
It's somewhat subjective, but if you read between the lines, it's clear, and sad all around:
pretty.direct is borderline incel, incapable of forming meaningful romantic relationships. But he's not being malicious -- in his view, he's acting in good faith, trying to at least get some consensual action.
yifanxing is young and not yet sure how to exist in the world. She believes what people tell her.
They had sex, as humans do. She was friendly with him for a time thereafter, but eventually came to regret the act, and then came to see herself as a victim.
This was understandably unforseen by him, and the whole episode, though unfortunate, is not really worth all the anguish it has caused everyone.
I'm not sure I agree with this, and I think we can and should do better.
Too many people (of all genders) see the value that men provide to their potential sex partners as being status and power, and therefore they believe that men should seek to acquire status and power and use these things to bargain for sex.
This leads to all kinds of shitty problems like the potential (I don't want to assert that the proposed situation in this comment thread is the actual ground truth) miscommunication we're seeing here where a man has done what society expects of him and a woman comes to be abused and we can't even agree if that's a bad thing. We focus on her "regret" as if consent were ever possible in such a lopsided situation and she's retracted it after the fact.
When people talk about the rape culture, this is exactly what they mean. If you see no problems here, you're lost in it.
:) Did you read the part of my comment where I said, "Yes, there's a power imbalance..." ?
> as if consent were ever possible
To say that she could not consent is to infantilize her. At the age of 21, we are responsible for our own decisions and their consequences.
You actually think it's justified for an older man to recruit a younger woman, hold his influence in a professional community over her head, suggest that they share a hotel room (making her feel bad for trying to invite a chaperone), suggest that she become intoxicated, and suggest that they have sex? Simply because she accepts this slow erosion of her boundaries and autonomy?
Anyone who seeks to be accommodating and accepting by default, who harbors doubts about the intent of others is "responsible for the consequences"? This exact attitude is why women are choosing to default to assuming malice on the part of men, so they don't fall into traps like this. It's extremely ironic when men hold both positions of "they went along with it so it's not my fault" and "it's not fair that women don't trust men".
What are your boundaries for what constitutes inappropriate behavior here? Merely the law? Do you not understand that people can decide to create consequences in their social communities that go beyond what is prescribed by law? Law provides free speech but doesn't provide consequence-free speech. That you've chosen a throwaway here is telling, knowing your comments here would have consequences if you were to associate them with your public figure.
Consent must be enthusiastic and sober. I'm sorry for men who've never had a woman be excited to have sex with them and who feel that a kind of begrudging intoxicated acceptance is the closest they'll ever get to that. If you're in that category I suggest sex work is significantly more ethical (and less effort).
Well, I agree it's morally questionable, but it's all a big spectrum. I'm not really trying to say what is or isn't "justified" in the abstract. Both of these people made bad decisions in different ways, and both suffered mighty consequences.
> Consent must be enthusiastic and sober
If two people each drink a beer and then have sex, did they rape each other? It's just not so black and white.
That's too concerned with post-facto labels.
Better framing:
If I am sexually interested in someone and value their consent, should I ensure that our first sexual encounter is negotiated while both of us are entirely sober?
My answer to this question is unequivocally "yes". I understand that's not broader culture's answer, I am suggesting that this is a problem with the broader culture.
And before you deem me prudish, I regularly attend BDSM or other kink events where power is exchanged and sex occurs, regularly explore altered states of consciousness via controlled substances for fun and philosophical insights. It is exactly because of this openness to and experience with these ideas that I confident that most people lack discipline around sexuality, power exchange, altered states of consciousness and are unskilled in how they combine them.
And it's not a sexism thing either, I'm not misandrist, I actually think men suffer from this cultural deficiency more than they benefit from it. It might feel unfair but the stakes of "I got canceled for not being careful" or "everyone assumes I'm being a predator until I prove I'm not" or "I don't know how to walk the tightrope of expressing interest in women but not also creeping them out" which has been ramping up in modern times just simply do not register in a context of the consequences women experience around it for all of human existence that includes everything up to and including being murdered.
You'll just call it something other than marriage.
The OP, pretty.direct, is almost certainly guilty of SOME social "crime"—some kind of a failure to understand and adhere to a responsibility, as you are describing; a responsibility which derives from the status he held in that community, and the power that status grants, whether or not he recognized it at the time.
If accused of THAT crime, in an appropriate "court", he would almost certainly have been able able to recognize the part of the harm that was his responsibility, and would hopefully have made appropriate amends, or at least would have learned not to repeat the harm.
At the same time: this is not what happened, and it's almost never what happens—because the impulse to make such harms seen and known and to force the people who caused them to take responsibility is not really an instinct for justice, and is unable to see with any grace, or to distinguish what part of the onus to "learn" from the harm falls on each person involved.
Instead the instinct to make things right overreaches, attempting to get satisfaction not only for the present case but for the whole cumulative history of similar cases, leading to a punishment (the complete destruction of a life, with no appeal) far exceeding any which a clear-eyed judge would deem appropriate to the actual crime, that being closer to: learning not to repeat the harm, and recognizing his responsibility.
Note that it is an "overreach" in the sense that it exceeds what the hurt person actually wants or needs—usually to be seen, to be feel heard, to feel safe, and to feel that others in comparable cases are safe. Destroying a life doesn't accomplish this, and also produces no learning at all in either the defendant or in any other onlookers.
In fact it is counterproductive. What tends to happen is:
- when men within rape culture repeatedly get away with things, the prosecutions grow more fervent, to the point where they regularly overreach
- when such overreaches get out of control, there's a backlash, discrediting such prosecutions in future cases of all degrees. (This is where we are now.) But then this lets the men get away with all kinds of things, and prevents any of them from ever learning from their errors.
A feedback loop. The way out is for "justice to be served"—for such cases to be resolved fairly, such that neither the defense or prosecution is left with the feeling they were treated unfairly, which is what drives the feedback loop. Historically it has almost always been the prosecution (broadly, the women) who were treated unfairly, but to treat the defense (the men) unjustly also fails, and perpetuates the loop, in the long run, serving no one. Apparently that is what has happened in this case.
The antidote to the cycle you describe is to do as I have done, to point out people acting in bad faith and for people with privilege to hold other people with privilege accountable. We must create consequences for bad behavior but it's more important that we must create consequences for the people that promote or condone the behavior.
I actually dislike when professional circles or other social groups "solve" the problem they create by permanently exiling individuals in the way of "cancellation" because in many ways the cancelled individual is also a victim of the culture of the group. It's often a performative way to be seen not to have whatever problem the individual exemplifies without addressing how that person came to be an example. It also, from a game-theoretical point of view removes any incentive for those individuals to improve. The individual may not understand that they've done anything wrong, because the culture clearly expects and promotes this behavior. I feel neurodivergent people in particular are likely to fall into the trap because they'll interpret the rules as shown to them by the cultures of oppression they exist in and then not read the room that while the way people behave suggests the behavior is overtly permitted, "everyone knows" it's actually horrible and you're supposed to be covert about it to not get caught.
And is "exploiting" synonymous with "having sex with"?
You seem to be saying two people in the same community can never have sex, because one or the other will have more power within that community making it exploitative.
If not, are the circumstances where it's not problematic?
As an established member of the community, especially one who routinely organizes events for it, your actions heavily guide that process of absorption. So you can't sleep with anyone in the community until they've been around long enough to understand that the sex has nothing whatsoever to do with community norms. It's not just about whether they think they have to; they have to know that it's not a default, that it's not something a typical community member would do in their shoes, that nobody's going to think they're weird or a prude for turning you down.
"Why would anyone think that in the first place?" There really are communities, including big ones that organize events, where sexual access is part of the norm. Everyone knows what's up when a rock star invites you to share his hotel room. You and I understand that the analogy to a programming conference is ridiculous - because we're deeply acculturated into what a programming conference is and what kinds of things are or aren't normal at them.
There was in fact a judgement.
The apology came from four people who signed the Open Letter who live in a special jurisdiction (the UK) where the burden of proof for libel is on the defense. The costs and damages were £20,000.
This exposes the narrator as unreliable. When I first read his paragraph, I read it as implying that a court judged the veracity of the women's claims. The words seem deliberately constructed to provide that impression.
In fact the court judgement is merely an acknowledgement that the UK defenders can't possibly prove the truth of the accusations and therefore they fold. Whether or not you prefer the UK system or the US system (which requires the plaintiff to prove falsehood), there's no vindication here. I feel lied to.
Also, for being an “unreliable” narrator he sure seems charitable to the people who ruined his life, no? I would expect someone with an axe to grind wouldn’t ask that they be forgiven.
but this isn't enough to draw conclusion. everyone is not Count of Monte Cristo, and can devote multiple years and money into revenge.
life is short,some people just want to move on.
Insofar as the letter signed - UK law has it so the letter worded as it was, with the burden of proof on the signers, could be held as libel if signed - so the UK signers got caught up in their country's law, due to the accused being litigious.
One pleasing thing to me is, however casual some people's attitudes to all of this is, out of control behaviors can cause legal and PR problems for corporations, and that is a move forward that, despite ebbs and flows, will not be moved back in any substantial sense. Woe be the CEO or HR director who thinks they can ignore bad behavior.
The OP article was so vague i didn't even realize i had already read about it.
I can't comment on this particular case, other than by acknowledging that, sadly, this won't be the first or last mobbing. I hope that Pretty does well and that the people who rushed to condemn him never again get laid.
He was able to figure out where the rumor came from. I’d bumped into a girl during gym class and since I was a sheltered Christian kid new to public school, I didn’t know “second base” had another meaning.
I’ve also had a friend who struggled with depression kill himself after there was an accusation of him having illegal images. I don’t know if it was true. I just knew I couldn’t mourn his death while everyone I knew was celebrating it.
I also know a friend who stopped doing foster care after a child with a long history of compulsive lying and false accusations accused them of sexual abuse and CPS believed the child.
Out of curiosity, what's the other meaning? I assume the primary one has to do with baseball bases.
2nd,3rd base can vary a bit, but Home Run analogy has been around for a long time.
However there were some key details about the accusation that didn’t add up. The accuser tried changing the details of the story once they realized others were noticing the problems with the claims. It also became clear that the accuser had an ulterior motive and stood to benefit from the accused being ostracized. The accuser also had developed a habit of lying and manipulation, which others slowly began to share as additional information.
This was enough to make the situation fall apart among people who knew the details. However, word spread quickly and even years later there are countless people who only remember the initial accusation. Many avoided the accused just to be safe. The strangest part was seeing how some people really didn’t care about the details of the situation, they viewed it as symbolic of something greater and believed everyone was obligated to believe the accuser in some abstract moral sense.
It remains one of the weirdest social situations I’ve seen play out. Like watching someone drop a nuclear bomb on another person’s social life and then seeing how powerless they were to defend against it. In this case it didn’t extend to jobs or career. Their close social circle stuck with them. However I can still run into people years later who think the person is a creep because they heard something about him from a friend of a friend and it stuck with them.
It's what happens when we see people as stand-ins for their group, but we can't see the individual behind it.
I didn't see anyone (with one exception) pick sides immediately; although most people's "picked" side was "not involved". (The one exception was a community organizer who definitely has Been Through This Before).
For three of those, I did my own homework - a lot of asking around, and then a lot of conversations with both people. In the end, most of that didn't matter: the accused ended up damning themselves (or not!) pretty immediately when I talked to them about it.
Similarly, r/scala condemned Jon and when the defending testimonials from his female friends were posted there they were removed.
Once my parents were visiting me and we took my kids to a playground. While there, my dad noticed a girl sitting on the ground crying, and seemed to be hurt. He looked for a moment to see if anyone was coming, and then went over to her and asked if she was alright, if she needed help, and where her parents were. He didn't get a clear response from her so he started walking around to the various adults around the playground inquiring if the hurt girl crying was theirs. Finally he got to one group of women and after asking one of them said something along the lines of, "yeah, I saw you over there bothering her" in an accusatory tone. Seeing where it was going, he put his hands up and just walked away without saying another word. The girl remained there crying, alone.
It was actually kind of a scary because later that day I realized how in that moment that woman, who my dad had never met before, could probably have destroyed his life right then and there if she wanted to.
These days, in the back of my mind I'm always considering how my actions, particularly towards women and children, could be misconstrued. When I'm at the playground with my kids, I don't talk to kids I don't know, at all, for any reason, even if they talk to me. I just smile and make myself busy with my own kids.
My wife, on the other hand, is the parent who will go over and play with all the children while the parents are on their phones. But she’s a woman, so it’s different.
Also, to be clear, the accusations the article is about are false and unsubstantiated according to the author. It's a "he said, she said".
He's managed to agree with a small number of signatories of the Open Letter that they acted on no evidence (in a jurisdiction where the burden of proof for libel is on the defense, so if they had decided not to agree they'd have had to prove this wrong), but not e.g. the original accusors. The fact that he wrote an epic blog post without being clear on this doesn't really make him look great, though I acknowledge he wanted to focus on a different aspect.
The court case (ending in a consent order, not a judgement) is an interesting story about "as a UK citizen, should you be signing an Open Letter if you merely believe accusers, but don't know them to be right, and can demonstrate how you know", but it has little to do with the accusations themselves.
These stories were all over Reddit for years. I remember a thread asking for examples of things Reddit led them to believe that weren’t true, and the top voted comment was that Reddit made them think that going to the playground as a lone dad would cause women to view them as a predator. In reality, going to the playground as a dad in most places is a non-event. It’s common for dads to be there alone with their kids. When I go, it’s a mix of moms and dads and we all talk and interact.
Yet to a non-parent reading Reddit it seemed like going to the park as a dad was asking for trouble. The story was repeated so often.
I’m sure these events do happen some times. When it does, I wouldn’t be surprised if the accuser was reading their own Reddit equivalent social media website where stories about men being creeps at the playground get passed around as fact. To them, it’s just how they see the world working because they’ve heard it repeated so often.
Before my male friends had kids, they were tense and apprehensive around toddlers. They worried they would hurt them, etc.
Now, they act like Dads, even with kids who have nothing to do with them.
These guys weren't bad people to begin with. They just didn't radiate "dad energy" for lack of a better phrase.
That’s not what I was saying. I admitted that these things must happen somewhere.
The Reddit issue is that those isolated incidents were presented as common occurrences. It was talked about like any dad going to any park was going to attract dirty looks.
Instead, it’s a rare thing that happens when you come across someone problematic who sees problems where they don’t exist.
The problem is is that a lot of guys walking around that haven't had it happen to them assume it hasn't happened to them because they've been doing everything right when really you've just been lucky so far.
Suburban East Coast US.
I still try to find those few people around me who aren't garbage, but it's a tough job.
I know what you mean, but he could also have said "fuck off, lady; that's a kid crying, so grow up" and thereby have made clear he was worried about the kid, not some creeper who she hoped to have just told off.
Just one comment thread up there's a person rushing to believe her and distrust the dad:
> "And don't get me wrong, I'm strongly inclined to believe women and I generally distrust men."
^ from the other comment thread above this one
If he called the cops and said "hey there's a crying kid and I can't find the parents" what power does she have over him there?
If she called the cops and said "I saw a man bothering this girl" what's going to happen in practice for the supposed crime of "talking to a kid who was crying at a playground"? Any asshole can make any false accusation against anyone at any time, here there's not even the slightest evidence of any harm, how seriously would it be taken? Cops drive out, see no man bothering anyone, drive off?
If she posted a video online of "man talking non-aggressively/non-threateningly to girl, then walking around talking to other adults" how much outrage is that going to generate?
The videos that generate huge amounts of outrage and get re-shared have disturbing contents, not just headlines.
I see so many online accounts of these "must walk on eggshells" worldview stories. Smells like an echo chamber, especially because when people self-report to things like "I avoid encounters with women because of this" then I'm not sure how much credence to put into the psychology of womens' behavior from someone with self-professed much-more-limited-interaction-with-them than I have.
This is a Dad who also frequently goes to playgrounds. Tbh, in my experience, most moms are super kind and generous to a man who's out alone playing with his kid because it's the sort of thing they want to encourage/reward.
The only times I've ever felt discriminated against as a male parent by female parents is in group play settings where the women form a clique and don't really want you to talk to them, but even then they're usually mature enough not to have the kids feel any of this, and nobody owes me letting me socialize with them, so it's whatever.
Because it's so uncommon is why my dad was even going around trying to help this girl in the first place, because he never imagined something like that happening. But then we got a hint of it, and decided to just disengage and not risk it.
The insinuation was, "stay out of my business or I'm going to tell a lie that could ruin you". He was clearly not bothering the child, anyone could see that, she could saw it herself. Whatever her game was, it was completely deliberate.
Since the child wasn't actually in any real danger, we chose to simply remove ourselves from that situation and not involves ourselves with a crazy person. Unfortunately being a shitty parent isn't illegal.
Then do it. Call 911, say there's an injured, unattended child at the playground, and you're getting a hostile response from folks as you try to locate the guardian so you'd appreciate it if a social worker collected the kid until the parents can be found.
There is nothing illegal about speaking to a child, and when you soft play people like this you empower them. Let them have to show a cop a DL to get their kid out a squad car to learn their lesson if they can't handle polite help.
(Also, what is this narrative around HN about being accused of nefariousness at playgrounds? I used to eat my lunch at one near me because it was the only park with a trash can nearby and I didn't want to lug my trash back to my apartment before going on my way towards the city -- nobody ever said a word to me aside from asking for a ball if it rolled over.)
If you never found the child's parents, you'd have to call CPS. Being prevented from finding the child's parents, just necessitates you move that step forward.
Of course, it's not 'your job' so technically you could abandon the child at any point but it does feel a bit heartless to give a kid hope, then say 'meh you're on your own, this is too troublesome'. As for just leaving the child with others who are complaining, I doubt that's a good idea. They were making no move to help, and bystander effect will probably keep them from ever doing a thing.
I'm not even saying you're wrong necessarily, but the whole situation is fucking cooked.
How do we learn to trust each other again?
Don't try to out-crazy a crazy person. That's not a game I'm going to play.
That's factually incorrect.
> Then do it. Call 911, say there's an injured, unattended child at the playground, and you're getting a hostile response from folks as you try to locate the guardian
That is the same thing, though! ... very quickly escalating a probable mundane situation to very serious accusations!
I'm the father of a 3 year old daughter, who I take to the playground multiple times per week. This is in Brooklyn, NYC. I haven't had any issues. But I believe the horror stories, there are just a sufficient number of crazy people out there, overly concerned "karens", or reddit warriors, or whatever. People overly confident in their judgement based on a cursory one-sided description of events. It seems you want to "fight fire with fire" or "play hardball" because that seems fair or necessary, but ... jeez. This is why guys are cautious and disengage.
Absolutely, 100%, no.
A child could be playing out of sight of a parent, maybe a block away with friends, and get mildly injured in a way that requires minor treatment. Or just crying because of a negative interaction with a peer.
This DOES NOT mean children at a certain age and maturity level cannot be trusted to gain some independence and leave their parents line of sight for short but increasingly longer periods of time.
Perhaps the parents had clocked-on to this, and were just letting the girl self-soothe so she could learn resillience. Then, on-cue, in steps some member of the public with their own opinion on the child they're trying to raise. This would be kind of tiring for the fatigued parent of a toddler, and the frustration of the parent in the above scenario is justifiable, particularly as encounters like this could happen multiple times daily with a child like that.
Now they could also just be a shitty parent. There's plenty of them. But it's difficult for us to judge and make hard rules in cases like this.
Our society is not as safe as I would like, but it is probably safer than ever before, when children roamed, played, and did errands over wide ranges.
My world was orders of magnitude smaller than my parents'; despite my efforts, my children's world is orders of magnitude smaller than mine. In part, this is because of attitudes like yours, where a child being unwatched is not okay under any circumstance.
When I was a child, me and my friends were gone unattended all day every day.
What a terrible way to live life, always watched over.
I agree. If you think the child is in danger and you’re unable to find their parents after looking around then do what you need to do for the child.
But the other parent’s reaction shouldn’t be a factor. There’s no reason to call 911 and tell them you’re getting a “hostile reaction” from someone who isn’t involved.
This isn’t how serious people operate in the real world. It’s keyboard warrior talk and it’s very unhelpful.
My friend was devastated, he had to stop going to his classes and feared that nobody would hire him, professors would hate him (since students already did), and that his life had ended. I spoke with him and assured him that wasn’t the case but to be honest I wasn’t sure either.
I don’t know the details but one year later she was suspended for a year for falsely accusing him, my friend graduated and promptly found a job.
All this to say I’m awfully scared now of the risk of my interactions with women being used in the future as a false narrative to cancel me. I’m happily married and due to life stuff I do have to interact with young girls and women. Because of this I try to be as distant as I can and limit any interaction that doesn’t involve multiple other adults.
I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be at risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I possibly can.
> I don’t know the details but [...]
> I learnt that even if you do nothing wrong you can always be at risk, so I just try to minimize that risk as much as I possibly can.
I'm sorry to hear that you've seemingly adapted your life based on someone else's "petty" experience with an ex-girlfriend, as you put it. Do you feel that this is a healthy and realistic way to live, though? Do you drive a car, walk around your neighborhood, or eat meat?
Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty more serious and realistic risks that getting randomly cancelled by your social circle.
What was false were the claims and I can say that because I was involved in the situations she described to cancel him.
I said “petty political reasons” as a summary for conciseness sake. But if you want more details:
- after they broke up she joined a certain left wing political party (student federation elections are a big deal here)
- during the election cycle my friend was part of the opposing team and they were doing quite well
- so the girl was approached by her party leadership to cancel him. They had this whole “cancel the opposition” operation
- Turns out everything was false and was done to benefit the left wing candidates and end the candidacy of the opposing party. which worked. They had to take down their candidacy to deal with all the problems that come from being cancelled.
> Depending on what kind of person you are, there are plenty more serious and realistic risks that getting randomly cancelled by your social circle.
I’m not so sure about that. Being cancelled is pretty serious, and quite risky. I’ve seen it quite a few times (this one being the closest I’ve been to people involved), and it’s so easy to avoid that I prefer to just do it. For example if I could avoid driving a car I would, but I do it because otherwise it is prohibitively expensive time wise.
Not to digress, but really, if you’re not involved with politics and you’re not espousing hatred towards people, your risk of getting cancelled is truly and realistically low. But if you’re not talking to roughly half of the entire population because of that incident, visit a therapist. You’re missing out on some great connections.
So from the outside we have no way of knowing who is telling the truth.
Yes, exactly.
His life was upended because he was assumed guilty until proven innocent. Even here in the threads.
Many rapists and abusers do not face social ostracism because they contribute more than they take away.
Many people are ostracized because they do not contribute enough in proportion to accusations.
Justice is the idea we can ignore social status, but this is only ensured by due process, because following a consistent set of rules removes status from the equation.
Having been in a similar situation myself as a teenager, it is truly abhorrent how quickly people are willing to jump to conclusions against someone based on the most limited information, and without giving the accused any chance to tell their side of the story or defend themselves. Not even a single one of my so-called friends asked me what happened, and almost all of them disappeared from my life permanently.
What I learned from the experience was that none of the people who jumped on the cancel bandwagon had ever been worth even a second of my time. It was their loss, and I became much more careful about who I choose as friends after that.
I can certainly say that if I encounter any of the 300+ individuals listed in the letter in my personal or professional lives, I will be giving them a very wide berth indeed.
Even if the allegations are true, his life should not have been ruined over this.
On the other hand, when I read the accusers' accounts someone else linked in the comments, they sound credible. It fits behavior patterns we've all seen before.
I don't know who to believe.
You don't have all the information. You weren't there. You don't even know the people personally. You are not in a position to make any judgement either way.
Something sounding credible doesn't make it true. It doesn't automatically make it false, either. You don't have to believe the accuser or the accused. The only thing any of us should do is mind our own business.
I didn't personally participate in cancelling this person. In fact, I agreed with the point he made in the article. I'm just not sure he didn't do it.
Are you saying I shouldn't have an opinion on that part?
So far, I see that this post caused quite a few forks, the opposite of what the author asked for.
I don't have a solution.
I think as a man who runs conferences you shouldn't sleep with people who attend them. Or any other things like that, for that matter.
Should you be cancelled for that? No. But humans are humans.
There is no solution to this. Courts are also wrong all the time (look at OJ) and victims of SA almost never see justice.
The answer is: we don't know the truth.
There is a subtle, but worthwhile, difference between "plausible" and "credible". Lots of stories are plausible. Few are credible.
In emotion laden cases like this we tend to want to believe stories we already agree with, or have some investment in. I'm no exception to that.
We need to not be misled by what is plausible, or confuse that with what is credible.
In general I think this was quite a reasonable comment section. I see a lot of "damn this sounds awful" (and it does), discussion about the general phenomenon of sexual harassment (which is obviously real) rather than that specific case, and some uncertainty about what actually happened. I don't see much "this guy should be jailed immediately" in the top comments. I certainly wouldn't call it a mob and I don't see anything that deserves to labelled as insincere virtue signaling.
Basically, while it's totally fair to hold people accountable, it needs to work both ways.
Additionally, there's a line between boycotting someone (your collective actions) vs attacking others for supporting. If you didn't like what a musician did, you and others could stop buying their albums. That's different than issuing death threats to radio stations that play that musicians music.
So in this case, we seem to have -one sided accountability, a coordinated effort around one side of facts -a boycott vs attack. The open letter makes it clear that only the signatories will be engaging in these actions. Others (such as organizations that employed him) are requested to cut ties but not threatened
So I would say this is only a partial "cancel". It would have been better if he could have "had his day in court" before he was thoroughly condemned, though I'm not sure how.
Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As ‘Entirely Willing’
Which is 100% false. Another false one[1]:
...Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein...
This is even worse as it is pure fabrication.
Did Gano ever apologized? Did any of these media outlets even thought about apologizing and making up for everything RMS had to go? It's really, really sad.
[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/famed-computer-scientist-ric...
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard...
> The Defendants accept that they have never had any evidence to support the allegations apart from the two unverified claims published in coordination with the Open Letter. They were never in a position to make any informed judgement on the truth of the allegations, and did not seek clarification on any of the allegations from the Claimant.
He won £5,000 plus costs.
[edit - the defendants here appear to be signatories of the open letter]
https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...
I don't believe the women entirely made it up, or that Jon Pretty is entirely guilt-free. Likely he is a narcissist who took advantage of his status to pursue sexual relationships where there was a huge imbalance of power. Maybe this strayed into manipulative gaslighting, I don't know. But it also seems entirely plausible that the women in question desired a relationship with a powerful older man and that the relationships were essentially consensual. It's a mess of power, sex, alcohol, a lack of shared social norms, and overlapping social and professional relationships. Quite where the truth lies between "totally non-consensual gaslighting" and "consensual relationship with large imbalance of power" I don't claim to know.
But in the real world, life is uncertain. And bad people take advantage of that fact: Bad men take advantage of the uncertainty to assault women with impunity. And bad women take advantage of the uncertainty to make false accusations.
The rest of us are stuck trying to do the best we can. But certainly the best we can includes more than what the author describes here. There's a reason that in court you have a right to give your side of the story, and to confront your accusers: the law has thousands of years of experience dealing with this sort of thing.
Reading that letter it seems that Jon was being accused of... nothing in particular? I'm not even sure what he could refute. There's no accusations of consent violations. There's really only the one phrase - "sexually harass and victimize women" - but without examples that just sounds like a pot shot. Especially given that they identify a "systematic pattern", which is apparently a pattern with no specific examples of wrongdoing.
And don't get me wrong, I'm strongly inclined to believe women and I generally distrust men. Especially when it comes to their interactions with women. And I believe these women probably had plenty of valid complaints, in part because I know very well how aggressive, oblivious and entitled a lot of men can be, and how many "normal" interactions between men and women do involve consent violations, if not assault or worse. So given what I know about the dangers women face routinely, and the vague and mild allegations in this letter, I'd guess like the biggest crime he committed was being another guy who's god awful at dealing with women, dating and sex.
Unless there is more that I don't know about.
And none of that was shown false. It looks like all that the court said was "no evidence was provided".
Duh imagine being a victim there and providing "evidence". It looks like any text messages would be careful and all the stuff would be IRL (if he did it).
He himself could say "I didn't sleep with a young attendee of a conference I helped her get into, by getting her drunk in my airbnb" on this letter. But he didn't deny it. He just said "fake evidence" and "short relationship". C'mon...
It's clear as mud.
NGL, love this phrase for this situation; I'm reading it as: "utterly opaque but also clearly what it is (mud)"
It's amazing this is an acceptable thing to say in polite society
I'd say it's an OK stance to take (e.g., based on past experience) if one of the conclusions you take from it is that it calls for a process that isn't similarly biased. If you recognize and acknowledge your own bias, you should be able to critically challenge it and/or be interested in neutral fact-finding, due process, and so on.
For myself, I'd say it's less general distrust of men and more the observation that many situations in society greatly favor men in their power dynamics and make it more probable for men to misbehave, i.e. given the option.
I think the neutral acceptable position, which I acknowledge is my opinion, would be to trust the woman enough to seriously validate their claims. And to persecute the other party proportionate to actual evidence. I think that is an extremely difficult line to tow especially to make people feel listened to but to just go all in on little evidence is bad for society and bad for those people who do suffer real trauma
It's amazing the sorts of things men will say to women regularly with frequently no repercussions. Not everyone who's creepy or makes threats ends up raping or murdering a woman, but of the men who DO murder women, you'll see a ton of creepy/threatening past behavior.
It becomes "desperate times, desperate measures."
It's hard, of course, for other men to police other men directly because the creeps are usually smart enough to not say it in front of other men.
So you get to a situation where a lot of us men have:
1) heard men talk amongst themselves when women aren't around after-the-fact about creepy-ass-things they've done
2) heard women talk about men doing creepy-ass things when other men aren't around
so updating your priors to favor "lean towards believing a claim by a woman over a denial by a man" is entirely reasonable until someone can show that false accusations are a big chunk of the accusations. You hear a lot about false accusations on certain parts of the internet; I have seen very few accusations at all in real life and sadly none of them have been false - they've all been the "creep wasn't even smart enough to avoid witnesses" type.
And there's just not a lot of women raping or murdering men happening - some significant physical differences, to start with - soooooo it doesn't seem like something we can be sex-blind about.
Does "believe victims" avoid triggering your feelings better?
It just happens in this case that the accusations flow predominantly one way due to common behavior differences between men and women, and historically it's been one of the areas where the allegations were least believed by the legal system* so "believe women" becomes shorthand for "believe claimed victims of sexual harassment or worse."
Consider the stories around Weinstein or R Kelly. "Open secret" sorta thing where people in the know avoided the guilty party. Yet nobody took it seriously enough to take legal action. There are a lot of other crimes you couldn't get away with in the open like that for so long.
People haven’t trained themselves to do some simple thought exercises such as “what if I reversed the genders/ethnicities/whatever in this claim.”
It’ll get better though. People will mature.
He's worked on some games I enjoyed in my youth (Planescape: Torment is probably the most well known, considered a genre classic) and my reaction to his cancellation was roughly something like "ah crap, another one of my heroes turns out to be a bad egg". The narrative of famous men abusing their end of a power dynamic is generally easy to believe, etc.
As a result, he lost his employment, contracts and so on as well.
But this one had an aftermath a couple of years later. He wrote some elaborate/lengthy pieces defending himself (which struck me as plausible and even convincing, but then I had to keep in mind he's an expert writer) and initiated legal proceedings -- that he eventually won, resulting in a public statement by the accusers that the events they accused him of never took place. I think his posts make for interesting reading.
His career seems to have resumed recently, five years after the accusations were made public.
Even so, if you look at internet comment threads on recent news of his new game involvement, there's a persistent meme that he paid for this statement in the form of a "seven-figure settlement", which is a curious misreading because the seven-figure sum was paid to him by the accusers to make up for damages.
Sadly, the case of another writer I sometimes liked (Warren Ellis; I enjoyed Transmetropolitan back in the day) is rather grim in comparison.
I used to naively believe that people are generally good. I still believe that but with a major qualifier. There are some truly toxic people out there who are seriously mentally fucked up and don't hesitate to screw with others' lives. They seem normal and nice at first, but if you look closely enough, you see the trail they have left behind.
(I'm also discussing this neutral to the actual issue, which I don't know much about and haven't made my mind up on.)
Near as I figure, it comes down to this: Our legal tradition was developed to mediate and resolve conflicts between groups; not within them, which is where this kind of thing happens.
These can be predatory men, or scheming women.
For me, the dichotomy is between people that try to act in good faith, and those that don’t.
1. From reading the two women's statements (and between the lines of his), I believe the guy probably is a bad person.
2. Despite this, he shouldn't be cancelled from his profession.
We as a society need to be able to compartmentalize our lives to some degree. Unless you work in tiny companies your whole life, some of the people you work with will be trumpers, socialists, pro-lifers, had 5 abortions, religious fundamentalists, gay, anti-vaxers, teetotalers, swingers, or maybe even all of the above. Everyone believes something that someone else considers cancelworthy. It shouldn't matter; you're at work, not a social club.
We should be able to narrow our cancellations somewhat. Tell everyone that the OP is a terrible human being, sure! Cancel his dating life. If someone is a terrible employee, cancel her work life! But leave her family alone. You're welcome to kick me out of your religious revival, and you probably don't want me at your AA meetings either.
I get it, especially on the conference circuit in a small tight-knit professional community, the line between personal and professional can get muddy. But this isn't new; something like 20% of Americans met their spouse at work. I think we just have to navigate it ad hoc. People can and do maintain professional relationships while still cutting those people out of their social life.
It looks like this guy leveraged his high status in the community to sleep with young naive starry-eyed women, plus was a dick about it. I guess there are groupies in every scene. Still, these weren't employees. They weren't even coworkers. I think it would be weird to accuse Gene Simmons of "exploiting his position as a rock star to have sex with women". He's said many times that was kind of the whole point!
I guess what I'm saying is... probably the two public testimonials from women were enough to get the job done. Sometimes just word getting around should be enough.
You’re an observer on the internet who knows none of these people and came to a conclusion based on just their words alone. Which is exactly what causes these things to happen.
Let’s be real: absolutely nothing about this situation should lead you to believe them over him.
At any rate, "he didn't do it" is missing the point I'm trying to make: We shouldn't professionally cancel him even if he's 100% exactly as painted.
“Well it’s just their words” is exactly the right reaction to have.
There is no other evidence presented whatsoever. It is quite literally just their words.
What's more, it feels completely counter productive anyway since the impact of a 'cancellation' on someone is inversely proportionate to how powerful/damage their actions are in general.
Because the most dangerous folks around can simply ignore any efforts at such anyway. Someone like say, Elon Musk doesn't need to care how they act or treat others. They're so wealthy and well-connected that they can just shrug off any callouts or exposes or gossip, and keep causing as much damage as they want.
So the end result is that to a degree, it often feels less like 'punishing' bad behaviour and more like sticking the knife in deeper into someone who might already have a hard time as it is. The billionaire or millionaire ignores the consequences, while some random schmuck sees their life torn to shreds.
It also feels like yet another thing that makes life miserable for people struggling with anxiety, who are neuro diverse, etc. Just takes one person misjudging your intentions/being weirded out by your behaviour, and then it seems the internet mob wants your blood. So now you've got someone who already likely has few friends and supporters and few job prospects getting a scarlet letter above their head and their already difficult situation made even more difficult...
Suppose I run a community online. Suppose several women come to me and say they've been sexually harassed by a senior male member of the community. Suppose that male denies it. What do you expect me to do? Call the cops? That doesn't seem very feasible. Just ignore it? Suppose the accusations are true; without the law saying they're true, I'm supposed to just let someone who might be sexually harassing other community members stick around?
cbeach•14h ago
At the time I was taken aback at the lack of due process, and how one-sided accounts from ex-girlfriends could be used to destroy a man.
Now, years later his story still chills me and makes me sad about the divided and sinister state of the Scala programming language community.