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.)