Why? Your no smoke without fire argument relies on the lady in question not being touchy or unresonable. I'd argue donglegate shows that, despite having an army of men willing to defend them, sometimes this is the case.

It's also poor form to skip the context like that.

Dunno, I'd kinda assume people are being reasonable by default. That's how societies are built by the majority so that a minority of cynics can find the luxury to make sexist remarks within that established framework.

You're focusing on one bad outcome, while ignoring another.

I am trying to convey the notion that with this line of thought, anyone could be doing anything because they are unreasonable or selfish. The original poster could be experimenting on us to mine text and find differing levels of consensus per time when HN faces controversy. I could be a bot trying to be more human. Without taking evidence into account, most of society is garbage.

Self-interest/motivation has its own MO. Also, sometimes motive isn't so important - physical behavior is. This is the evidence which can be collected. Otherwise you can't really assume much. Your original comment seemed to imply a conspiracy though through "built by".

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".

Well, no. You're assuming the woman is reasonble by default and thus the man must be at fault. This is actually a sexist point of view.

Except I wouldn't ignore textual evidence "because women can be unreasonable" or "men can be assholes".

Straw-man. Or possibly framing the original argument stereotypically/in bad-faith.

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?

I did not make up the phrase, just read the comments and the memes and the rhetoric by the OP. They are exactly what you disagree with. OP didn't just say "listen to his side" which is reasonable (albeit dangerous and should be handled by legal rather than personal means)

Actually the only point I've really made is you shouldn't automatically assume the woman is being resonable whilst also assuming the man is unresonable. I'll happily admit that the converse is also true, but since 90% of the thread has jumped to the conclusion the guy should be fired, it hardly needs to be said.

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.

Ambiguity and rhetoric does that.

You forgot "actually" after your "Well"