I have no idea who is telling the truth in this situation, and unless you are the person who has been accused or those who are the alleged victims, neither do you. For situations like this where the allegations fall short of criminal misconduct, a thorough process run by someone independent of the situation needs to a) to evaluate the claims made b) determine whether they are justified c) issue a clear and open report on what took place for the benefit of the community involved. As far as I can tell no investigation has been carried out to verify or falsify claims made by the individuals concerned.
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/
>you can form your own judgement about who is telling the truth based on what little there is to go on
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.
I do not accept that this is "naked bias".
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.
In Jon Pretty's case, if his account is true, it wasn't investigated. It was simply decided in a court of public opinion, quite possibly because of the historical metric you brought up.
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.
If this was done bayesian style we could say the priors are man taking advantage of woman. 9 cases out of 10 if there is a rape case you can assume the perp is male and if you don't you are like a born yesterday idiot. And if you're a woman it's super important to keep it in mind, like you think of getting into elevator (or airbnb like in this case) alone with a random man you should not be like "let's not pre judge people".
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
> 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
Just as a reminder, it's: "Innocent until proven guilty."
The accuser has to provide proof that what they say is right and until that happened the person is considered innocent.
You are quoting law concepts. If there was proof enough for legal action then "cancellation" would be not necessary right? Just go to jail for rape.
Often problem behavior is not criminal enough OR there is no proof to make it criminal enough.
If you were the victim what proof do you imagine your will have in this case? There would be no incriminating text messages. Everything is fine until he gets your college ass drunk in the privacy of own airbnb. The cards are stacked. A mature perp picks situation when there is no proof and no witnesses. And it is statistics that 9 out of 10 times it is a man.
Maybe the only proof if any after this would be STDs. Do you want to announce to the world you have some incurable virus that you will spread to new partner who you would want to have kids with? etc
Yea it sucks that fixing this mess makes men uncomfortable. If you are scared about getting drive by cancelled, you know who to blame. Other men.
> You are quoting law concepts
It's a concept based on the historic lesson that pushing innocent people is worse than not punishing guilty people. You seem to disagree though.
> Yea it sucks that fixing
This is shuffling which innocent gets to suffer, but is not fixing anything.
The historic lesson is that men and especially men in power commonly abuse their position ranging from harassment to rape and legal system will fall over itself to serve them. That lesson led to metoo and stuff. Look it up.
> This is shuffling which innocent gets to suffer, but is not fixing anything.
Bro I really really hope you are not trying to compare wrongful cancellation and rape.
It's not as easy as some people make it out to be to create a believable story about abusive behavior.
> 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?
>You don't need to worry unless you're having sex with your mentees.
"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.
I know someone who was written up at work for what (after the investigation) amounted to "brief, unwanted eye contact" with a co-worker. It's kind of a minefield and casual, innocent behavior can easily be misinterpreted.
If you read the blog posts of at least one of the women it's very clear that in her story sex was involved. And I doubt he's contesting that part of the story.
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.
There's plenty of sex mentioned in https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara...
All of those things are far worse than having (consensual) sex with your mentees.
What if "he cornered me in the elevator" was actually "he talked to me while we were alone together in the elevator, but I have background trauma that made this extremely uncomfortable for me".
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.
But has this ever in the history of time happened? In the "elevatorgate" scandal you're referencing here:
* 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.
The thing is, /both people are telling the truth!/ If you read their accounts, they're not especially contradictory. It's not as if she's saying, "he raped me" and he's saying, "no I didn't."
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.
If both people are telling the truth, then it sounds like you're saying that although very sad, a community "gatekeeper" sexually exploiting a vulnerable newcomer is just part of life and we should move past it.
I'm not sure I agree with this, and I think we can and should do better.
Where exactly is the "sexual exploitation" part? He didn't blackmail her, he didn't force her, he didn't offer her favors/status in return for sex. She was not a child, she made her decisions, she regretted them. Yes, there's a power imbalance, but it's not as if this was some sort of Bill Cosby type of situation.
I'm not sure if you can't see the power imbalance posed here, or if you just can't see it as a problem, but I don't really care. You need to improve.
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.
> I'm not sure if you can't see the power imbalance
:) 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.
I did miss that, I suppose I should have said "underestimate the effect of the power imbalance" then. But you've made it clear you do understand but don't care.
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).
> You actually think it's justified...
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.
> If two people each drink a beer and then have sex, did they rape each other?
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.
In the limit you'll end up right back around to where we were a few centuries ago with sex outside marriage effectively being illegal.
You'll just call it something other than marriage.
I don't follow. I don't practice monogamy so I'm really unclear how my arguments promote monogamy.
Based only on this comment thread—because I have no interest in adjudicating the actual dispute here—I see playing out in your post, for about the 1000th time in my life, the motte-and-bailey of "prosecuting rape culture".
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.
Everyone is part of rape culture, the same way that everyone is part of racism. I am not trying to point out certain people as criminal but rather certain behaviors and ideas as perpetuating the situation and others as being disruptive to it.
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.
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What does "gatekeeper" even mean in this scenario? There was no employment relationship, no ability for either party to fire someone or impact pay or job responsibilities.
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?
When you're a new member of a community, you're dedicating a lot of effort to working out its norms and customs. How frank are you in giving feedback? Is it OK to swear? When is it appropriate to go out with the group for dinner or a round of drinks? There's no right or wrong answers to these questions, so you can't reason about them from first principles; you just have to learn by absorption what the community finds normal.
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.
She didn’t accuse him of sexually exploiting her though. She accused him of making her uncomfortable after she tried to end their relationship. Having consensual sex is not exploitation.
Well... unfortunately the world does not come equipped with a "figure out the truth and report back" button.
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 have no idea who is telling the truth in this situation, and unless you are the person who has been accused or those who are the alleged victims, neither do you
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.
> > I have no idea who is telling the truth in this situation, and unless you are the person who has been accused or those who are the alleged victims, neither do you
> 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.
At no point was I insinuating that the justice system isn't flawed. It's heavily flawed, for all to see.
The alternative however, is unjustifiable. Mob law is worse than no law.
The justice system is pretty terrible, but it's still better than mob justice.
> 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.
> The justice system is pretty terrible, but it's still better than mob justice.
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.
> 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.
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?
No - and in fact in my view this is the core problem with these kinds of situations - there isn't a long established process validating a set of accusations, that if true, fall short of criminality but should result in your exclusion from a community.
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.
> No - and in fact in my view this is the core problem with these kinds of situations - there isn't a long established process validating a set of accusations, that if true, fall short of criminality but should result in your exclusion from a community. > Individual communities have to establish ground rules for these sorts of things to protect the vulnerable.
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".
You seem to think that the fact that
> 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?
> 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.
> Do they sound to you like people whose lives weren't torn apart by the experience?
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.
I'm afraid I don't accept that you can split this into "experiencing something traumatic" and "making the accusation that you have experienced something traumatic".
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.
I doubt the Scala open source community had an HR department or lawyers on hand to investigate and take action on behalf of the community as a whole.
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?
> To make these kinds of accusations as a woman tears your life apart in unimaginable ways.
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.
> I do not accept that this happens with nearly the regularity that people, usually men, claim it does.
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.
> now history is replete with examples
Super curious what the stats are that support a statement like this. Scale matters with everything.
Maybe both sides are telling the truth. I mean that this fragment:
"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.
Not saying I know the truth here, but you are falling for the oldest trick in the book. Effective lies always work in little tidbits of truth (as externally known/validated by the audience).
I hadn't even read the original accusations when I wrote this, just this fragment, so I don't think I got exposed to any tricks by the accusers (except maybe indirectly by the author).
I am only saying that even the person being accused does not directly confront the accusers about any facts.
What evidence do you have that anyone here is lying? Given my priors I am inclined to believe everyone involved here is a reliable reporter of their lived experience, just their lived experiences of the same events are wildly different.
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.
The high court judgement is against part of the lynch mob, not the original accusers. Given their original statements are still up, I would assume they are still behind their words and neither the judgement nor his side of the story invalidates their experiences.
What court judgement? In TFA he says they settled.
You are right - here is the document: https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
Wait, the people who settled are signatories? Neither are the original women who made allegations against him? The post said "people in my jurisdiction" but it didn't click until now that this meant that he never formally challenged the original allegations. I guess that makes sense with the difficulty if international lawsuits... but still, it means his accusers have never actually been challenged in court.
It appears this was filed in Britain. The UK has famously expansive libel laws that place the burden of proof on the defense.
I wouldn't read much into the settlement.
yeah, that's pretty weird. Why not challenge them?
If you’re reading this and wondering what the outcome was I implore you to go read the authors Twitter about it.
There was in fact a judgement.
can you tell us? Twitter is difficult to navigate.
A Statement I am a Scala developer and speaker who was cancelled three years ago. Yesterday I attended the High Court in London to hear an apology from several prominent members of the Scala community for making untrue claims about me on 27 April 2021. I sued them for libel, and they admitted fault and settled, paying me costs and damages. Their allegations were sensational and squalid, but unfounded. Their source was the resentment of one woman following a relationship in 2018, which I ended against her wishes. She fabricated or was offered an alternative narrative, which developed into claims of a pattern of behaviour, and culminated in the defendants' publication of an open letter, which they now agree is defamatory. In two years of legal action, the defendants never presented any evidence to support their allegations, and admitted in court that they had no proper reason to make them. They have given undertakings to the court not to publish further or similar defamatory statements, or have anyone else do so on their behalf. No signatory contacted me about the allegations before publication. I received no warning, and had no knowledge of the claims' substance. I only discovered what I was accused of at the same time as I learned of my indefinite exclusion from the community; at the same time everyone else found out. I had no opportunity to defend myself. It is no coincidence that the absence of due process led tp an abject injustice. The experience of cancellation and enduring the online hysteria was traumatic, I responded by withdrawing from the life I knew. Its consequences hurt me and people close to me, and have been immiserating. My employment opportunities were obliterated. My charitable and educational projects, and my small business, could not continue. Despite my transferable skills, the allegations were a transferrable red flag recognised across programming communities and industries, and I have barely earned a living since. It has taken two years of legal action to receive fair scrutiny in a forum reliant on facts.
Pretty absolutely made it sound like the case was against his accusers in his post. IMO this settlement proves nothing other than that libel laws in the uk are insane.
Thankfully someone posted a link to the document: https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf
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.
I can’t say I came to the same conclusions as you after reading that.
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.
i would certainly drop their names, and probably more illegal things if it happened to me.
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.
Much appreciated!
History is also replete with examples of women who are attracted to men in senior positions in their community.
If the women in question had gone to the actual courts, rather than the Scala community, they might have had an opportunity to see justice (assuming their allegations are true). But because they chose to make very public accusations that were widely circulated, they have now denied themselves the opportunity to use the legal system, because they have prejudiced the process.
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.
What specific advice would you give young women in such a situation?
>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?
> What specific advice would you give young women in such a situation?
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.
1. From what I've read, the majority of the alleged behaviors happened outside the UK (Germany and USA from a quick glance).
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.
Looks like lady that wrote this brought up actual receipts.
The OP article was so vague i didn't even realize i had already read about it.
> 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
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.
Maybe there's mismatched expectations of a women going alone to hotel rooms with the men they later accuse of assault.
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.
Most women can tell fairly easily when the man they are talking to is sexually attracted to them (and signs of attraction is something almost all women watch for whenever they talk to a man they don't know very well).
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."
Is that how you would characterize the situation as described by one of the women?
(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.
I read the parent of the comment I replied to, but I didn't read the OP, and maybe everyone who writes a comment should read the OP.
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.
I understand and to an extent agree with what you're saying--by the end of that quote, I think that's a reasonable expectation.
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.
> 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 mean I got red flags just from reading this.
I agree with you. But it started quite differently, didn't it?
What a dangerous comment. Hopefully you read this important blog post and either revise or remove your post.
I can't imagine not just one, but two women coming forward and making such accusations against me. People here are acting as if he is the victim, not them.
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.