Uhh... seriously? I hope I'm misreading what you wrote here.
It's also poor form to skip the context like that.
This is a little detached from the original context though, and there's another issue there; People are not random processes, they may choose to pursue selfish strategies conditional on being in a system where it is uncritically "assume[d] people are being reasonable by default".
Concluding you only have one side of the story, is not the same as, nor necessitates ignoring it. One alternative is getting the other side of the story.
I also find the phrasing "because women can be unreasonable" to be suspicious - there is no reason to put it this way rather than "people can be unreasonable"; OP made no claim that only women should be treated with skepticism.
- are you trying to invoke the historical meme of women being dismissed as irrational?
Where you're going wrong, is that you're attributing more to whats actually been said, which is sadly the problem I have with this entire thread.
I think you're dangerously into all women are always resonable logic there. It's entirely possible, that the female employee, as an employee of a startup, is inflected by the same hyper-sensitivity that plagues communities such as ourselves. Conversely it's also entirely possible that male employee is a complete and utter dickhead. I wouldn't bet my life on either one being the truth.
> OP needs to read into their conversation, it's hard to armchair quarterback this over the internet. At the end of the day it's ultimately easier for us to say fire for a multitude of reasons, many of which are likely valid.
Well yeah, the OP hasn't given us enough info to really comment and he'll need to use his own personal judgement on whether the messages were over the line or whether he was just being a guy. I'm just trying to remind people that whilst we should be professional at work, we aren't automatons and normal people are going to continue dating and bonking their colleagues or attempting to do so and whilst that's sexual, it doesn't necessarily constitute harassment.