The people who actually do this shit are scumbags, but there's plenty who will take advantage of this when things don't go their way, and reputation damage is worse than physical for a lot of people.
Ahh--if only this were ever true.
Are you saying they're false accusations?
Rape and sexual assault (of women) is seen as one of the worst possible crimes[0] a man can commit in most Western societies[1]. These crimes are so heinous that even accusations are enough to destroy someone's career and social status, even if the accusations are dropped or proven false.
This is further complicated by these crimes generally being very difficult to prove without recorded evidence and eyewitnesses, creating a dilemma of either treating the accusation as fact (foregoing "innocent until proven guilty") or risking that a criminal can avoid consequences and may go on to repeat his crime. The media often favors the former, people close to the accused often prefer the latter, although even a disproven allegation can sow permanent doubt.
There aren't many crimes a VC could be falsely accused of that have the possibility of such dire consequences and such a low burden of proof.
[0]: The only crime I can think of that society treats as worse than sexual abuse of women is sexual abuse of children.
[1]: This isn't about the relative severity of legal punishments, or in any way a judgement on what crime is "less bad" than another, just how people (and the media) generally react to people being charged with these crimes.
It is so damaging for the women involved (career, socially, and withstanding the barrage of slander, misogyny and distrust that they always seem to face) that it is very hard to step up and simply tell the truth, and you are part of the problem here, with your needless insinuations about false accusations and talk of a low burden of proof.
For all of the VCs described in this story - this was a pattern, corroborated by independent sources, and with details in writing. There is in fact a very high burden of proof before anyone even gets blasted in the mainstream media, let alone fired.
It's true that society is ridiculously "tolerant" of gross misconduct of some people more than others but there are enough examples of lives being ruined by false allegations to validate my original point.
As a sibling comment pointed out, Trump was elected despite his "locker room talk" and multiple women alleging sexual abuse (plus the actual chauvinism he has displayed on numerous occasions). However I would wager that similar allegations would be far more damaging if leveled against someone like Sanders.
There's also the effect that successive allegations sometimes even reduce the credibility of the allegations because of suspected bandwagoning ("Oh, she just wants some of that attention to make herself interesting").
Humans are fickle and irrational, especially when in a group. Individuals tend to be treated differently but this tends to be more about social status than gender itself.
Donglegate was less than five years ago, did you already forget about it?
Her accusations were factual, although there was discussion about whether they were valid.
Also, the people who agree that her accusations were valid, are also likely the people who think that their behavior was indicative of them being serial harassers.
>The people getting in trouble right now are not the borderline cases of someone saying an awkward comment here or there.
>Also, the people who agree that her accusations were valid, are also likely the people who think that their behavior was indicative of them being serial harassers.
Which is completely unreasonable. Do you remember what she complained about them saying? Dongles and forking repos? They were discussing among themselves, it wasn't targeted at anyone, and any reasonable person wouldn't believe it was sexist.
But cases like are few and far between.
And IMO the majority of people on the internet were supportive of the guy who got fired, and also thought it was bullshit.
The woman who started the whole drama received way worse retaliation from the Internet mob (which was partially deserved) and got fired as well, so it was tit for tat at least, although that of course doesn't fix the damages.
Of course they are. There is opportunity, therefore it is possible.
Of course there are false accusations out there. It's not the majority of them or even a significant number. But it's not zero.
[0]http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-1-in-5-campus-rape-...
Or are you saying these will be seen as false accusations and thus it'll scare off VCs who aren't run by mysogynist pieces of sh-t?
Because I'm not sure what the alternative is. If a VC is not in the habit of harassing women, they have nothing to fear. In fact, it'll give them an opportunity to court talented entrepreneurs driven away from the immoral part of the VC spectrum.