I'll speak up with an example from a man's perspective; it has nothing to do with attraction or religion, it's just not worth the risk.

If I'm one-on-one with a woman and a misunderstanding makes her feel uncomfortable or threatened and she accuses me of misconduct or sexual harassment I'm at an enormous disadvantage without any witnesses. When even being accused could be career ending it's best to bring someone else along.

I have absolutely no problem going one-on-one with my friends who are women but I can't say the same for strictly co-workers.

I understand your PoV. I would say it would be extremely rare for a woman (or man) to make baseless accusations from uncertain interpretations. People who bring forward accusations are typically people who've had the same untoward thing done to them repeatedly.

That said, one has to acknowledge there are genuinely malicious people --but they typically have a pattern and it will not be their first time making false accusations.

>> People who bring forward accusations are typically people who've had the same untoward thing done to them repeatedly.

Sounds like you've already pre-inclined towards a guilty party then, before you even heard evidence from both sides. And if there is no evidence, the man is in a world of trouble.

I have personally witnessed a man in the office be fired for "sexual harassment" shortly after escalating an accounting audit issue. Convenient timing and very effective way of dealing with an accounting issue.

Sure. I know one person who claimed sexual assault to try to get a better business deal. But in my experience, the opposite is way more common. Among my wife's circle of friends, several have been literally raped without consequence for the perpetrator. Nevermind things like groping, now you're looking at a 100% hit rate.

I don't doubt that can happen --there are vindictive, retributive people out there. That kind of person would not need a 1:1 or drive home, etc., to bring forward an accusation.

This is true, but it would be more difficult for the mud to stick if it hard for that person to prove you spent large amounts of time alone with them.

note: I don't believe that many people would be vindictive like that, but the impact of such an accusation is so large means that even a very small chance of it happening is something worth protecting oneself against.

You are right, most people are not like that. How many people are? 1%? 2%? 0.5%? I work with hundreds of people, we have dozens of meetings a month, we might meet with over a thousand people a year in a large company.

Not throw in tough situations. People trying to cut legal/ethical/accounting corners to make their numbers. People hoping not to get caught. People doing whatever they need to to prevent getting fired. People trying not to be in the bottom 10% (and thus let go.) In the context of all this -- yes, people start using every tactic and social weapon in their toolkit. It takes 1 accusation and you are done.

So when there is no evidence one way or the other, you're saying you'd believe the accuser. This pretty much supports the grandparent's statement.

I know of a woman who has made a successful career of extorting "settlements with mutual confidentiality agreements" out of a succession of positions as a PA to multiple high level executives, with each exec settling for tens of thousands to avoid this person leveling damaging public accusations against them. She can get away with it because there is a general consensus that without evidence, the "victim" should be believed and that men are probably guilty.

I don' think you understood what I said.

My point is that a woman (or man) will not come out of a 1:1 or a drive home or talks over dinner and take an ambiguous statement or thing they thought they saw or heard and run to HR. People are rather loath to make the wrong conclusion and will give other the benefit of the doubt.

Now, bad, vindictive, extortionists, etc., will not need you to take them out for drinks or have a 1:1 to get their way. So it's beside the point. I'm speaking of interpersonal communication, work relationships, etc. with normal people. We need not fear normal people.

> Now, bad, vindictive, extortionists, etc., will not need you to take them out for drinks or have a 1:1 to get their way.

This is the key. It is so foreign to me the idea that I would be afraid to be alone in a room with a woman. In the rare case that someone is actually that crazy and malicious, they will fabricate a private meeting entirely if need be, and as was said before, the accusation can be enough to damage a career. How is it even possible to avoid brief periods of private communication with the opposite sex all day every day?

The problem - of course - is that bad, vindictive, etc, people can appear completely normal.

They can even be unusually charming and disarming.

I was responding to the part of your comment where you wrote:

> "I would say it would be extremely rare for a woman (or man) to make baseless accusations from uncertain interpretations. People who bring forward accusations are typically people who've had the same untoward thing done to them repeatedly."

To me, this sounds like your default position would believe the accuser over the accused where no evidence exists. Apologies if this is not what you were trying to convey.

I do agree that vindictive individuals are probably rare, but I do believe that they are out there and I also believe that there are lot of people in the world who look to take offense in innocent situations as I have been confidants of such people in the past and things that I interpret as innocuous can easily be interpreted in a poor light if the person has their "default" mindset to interpret things in a negative light.

And yes, your point about vindictive people is a good one, but I still think that avoiding 1:1 situations would make it much more difficult for such accusations to have as big an impact.

Risk = Probability x Severity x Exposure

This is elementary risk analysis. While the probability might be low, the severity is super high (career end). So to mitigate, you reduce exposure to as close to zero as possible.

I'm not even considering the case where the woman is being malicious; even in the case a misunderstanding her feelings could be completely valid. For example, she could take me buying her a drink as an advance when I'm really just getting the next round. Or I could be venting or speaking passionately about something and have it come off as scary; I'm a pretty big dude and I have a hearing problem so I talk too loud sometimes.

Then just say that's what you're doing. Ask her if she feels uncomfortable and say you want to have a productive but professional working relationship.

I dislike the use of the word 'just' in these kinds of discussions. If it were 'just' a matter of doing x, we wouldn't be discussing it.

I can't think of any recent professional interaction with a woman (I'm a man) where the mere act of 'asking if she feels uncomfortable' or underlining how this is not a outside-of-work-type situation wouldn't be enough to make the whole thing uncomfortable.

It'd a milder form of saying 'I don't want to have sex with you, just to be clear.'

I'm sure there are situations where this can and should be said, and where this might be done in a non-awkward way, I'm just saying that in many cases it's not that simple. Being explicit can be creepy.

> When even being accused could be career ending

I'm surprised by this. Would you really be damaged if someone makes an accusation against you without any evidence?

Well, you could be fired, so it depends on whether you consider that "damaged".

Can you point to an example in the US where someone has been fired based on an accusation without any evidence?

Since the US generally has at will employment and doesn't require identifying the reasons—much less the evidence supporting them—for terminations, you would never be able to point to an example if it existed.

(Also, since the claims of the alleged victim or anyone else are evidence, it would never happen; there's always some evidence.)

I am surprised about this as well: here (EU) people I know have no issues with this at all. Friends are both male and female, for my wife and me, and we meet, alone, with them often. Colleagues as well; I often have lunch/dinner/car rides alone with my colleagues of the opposite sex and never thought about this. They are colleagues and we are there to do a job. I have never, only for highschool teachers, heard anything different than this in NL: my parents did and do the same for instance.

Probably in the group you hang around with, but you can't generalize that. There are definitely people in the Netherlands who will actively avoid situations where they are 1:1 with mixed genders, and not only in work settings. Since I have children, I meet much more people who are 'different' from my 'normal' crowd (which are successful university educated upper middle and upper class professionals) and I havr painfully felt this more than a handful of times the last two years - to the point where I've started to somewhat dread situations where this sort of awkwardness might happen.

Additionally, and this is even worse, it is starting to reinforce some stereotypes in me, and is making me less tolerant of those who are uptight like that about it. And this is not something against muslims either; I've had muslim women excuse themselves from me and I just thought 'oh well, when in Rome, do like the Romans'. It's when people are more 'like me' and behave like this that I get annoyed and think less of them (and their background) for it. As bad as that is.

(Edit: but what I hate even more is that this is making me adjust my own behavior as well. I start to feel 'uncomfortable' (oh what a horrible word) now in those situations because I realize others might be, and I certainly don't want others to feel like they somehow 'have' to be around me. I'm turning into a product of the society that produces millions of precious little snowflakes with the mental resilience and self-awareness of 2 years olds. I hope it's just part of the transition into being part of the 'old people'. At least that would make it 'normal'.)

You are right, cannot generalize. But as it's not a common subject in NL (we usually hear about things that actually happened like the Judo thing); I would find it horrible to have to be careful with everything I do because people might feel 'uncomfortable' (like you I do not like this word; I think uncomfortable is an indigestion type of thing). But this is not at all to belittle people who are generally threatened as yes, that happens, but 'we' (in NL) (and in UK I see it as well) do not have that feeling generally and that's better than this 'let's not go for a drink because I might end up fired'. It widens the gender gap considerably as well as you cannot treat others like equals. You would have that drink with a male colleague, alone etc.

I went (as a white guy) to a mostly muslim highschool in Utrecht (Kanaleneiland in the 80s) and besides guns, knives and streets fights, this feeling wasn't there either. But real (in the much more than uncomfortable range) things ofcourse happened, it just didn't leave this kind paranoia behind. If paranoia at all.

It's very common in all western countries, there's nothing special about Europe, the Netherlands or the UK. Go talk to some male primary school teachers about their experiences - if you can find any.

It helps to understand features of conservative religious communities:

1) sex, marriage, and family are still inseparably linked and are believed to be foundational to life and human flourishing. Thus, breaking marital vows reflects a profound failure of character. 2) individuals within Convervative Christian have a deep mistrust of their own capacity to resist moral failures.

From my conversations, the individual isn't avoiding awkward situations but fears that, should a mutual attraction develop, he would potentially lack the moral resolve to stay faithful.

Interestingly enough, I've talked to a few conservative Christian counselors with 25+ years of counselling experience about this issue. They all responded that they actually felt more strongly than when they started counseling about avoiding circumstances that would allow romantic relationships to develop because they had seen so many people ruin their families, reputations, and careers this way.

Outside Christian communities, sex, family, and marriage are not inherently related so the priorities seem bizarre or sexist. it largely boils down to a different understand of what it means to he human.

From a quick google search surveys show that American's almost unanimously find cheating morally wrong, and 60% of all children in America are born to married parents.

>Outside Christian communities, sex, family, and marriage are not inherently related

I don't think you can say that at all. Looking at the marriage rates in looks like the majority of sex is probably happening in married relationships, even outside of conservative Christian communities. The average American may be OK with sex outside of marriage, but I think they're still pretty related in most people's minds.

It's not easy.

Social relationships where there are strict rules of engagement (e.g., professional environments) and where the other person is different than you (e.g., power, sex, age, familial background, religion, etc.) can be extremely difficult to navigate. Dealing with these relationships isn't "natural," and going into it solely based on gut feeling often ends badly. The good news is that it can be taught and learned from experience, but sadly, many receive neither.

Theres a reason it was easier making friends pre-puberty.

Personal I guess but I see no difference in my life in that aspect between then and now.