Persistent attacks and criticism causing worry and distress or deliberate pestering or annoying.

   The making of unwanted and offensive sexual advances or of sexually offensive remarks or acts, especially by one in a superior or supervisory position or when acquiescence to such behavior is a condition of continued employment, promotion, or satisfactory evaluation.

I can talk about the many bizarre and fascinating parasites that exist in the world that many people will find far more unwanted and offensive than any casual sexual joke. Surgeries, the making of some foods, the history and ongoing saga of torture, and other topics all fall in the same category. However, you will not be accused of harassment for constantly talking about how people contract Noro virus although people will generally ask you not to talk about it during a meal.

Pop culture from the states often looks like a role model for sexuality across the rest of the world. Don't those K-pop music videos with gyrating women kind of remind you of Britney Spears? I don't think they got the idea from Europe.

I will admit we have a confusing relationship toward sex here, where a non-sexual image of a nipple is unacceptable, but suggestive gyrating and sexual symbolism (commercials where beer is spraying out of a can like an orgasm, I don't know) are normal to the point that we don't even notice. We can see this as suppression in a way, where we can only talk about sex in metaphors, and only "the media" (Hollywood, advertisers) is allowed to do it for the rest of us.

Nudity is still rare but not really like it was 20 years ago. Religious nuts will protest "think of the children" and no politician will want to seem like they dislike children so they play along to get votes.

Not going to touch breastfeeding, media fuled firestorm. Who cares?

Goes back further than that; I'm pretty sure in 80s it was likely Madonna or something - I also know there was a frenzy around 2 Live Crew in the late 1980s/early 90s.

But I'd be willing to bet that there was also talk about Elvis in congress back in the day...

How many of those kids are now adults who voted for Donald Trump?

But what you've said rings true: there's something really wrong here, and it has to do with the internet.

I've come to the conclusion -- and I may certainly be wrong -- that good policy and good laws depend on a logical and unemotional view of things. As a human being, you can and should acknowledge and feel for people in pain. You should not, however, make decisions based on how you feel about things. And I mean that in the extreme: whether something makes you personally happy or disgusted shouldn't play any role at all in which polices you support or advocate.

The problem is, that's not how the internet or public discourse happens. The internet is all about the feels - the mob, the pain, the sadness, the outrage. Everybody is a publisher and emotion sells eyeballs. There's simply too much attention to be gained by having some outrage-of-the-week. Now that we're all instantly connected, this means that any public discourse that has the potential to manipulate people emotionally will manipulate people emotionally. That's great for publishers, but not so much for trying to have a just society.

The only solution I've come up with is to simply disengage from public conversations about things people get really upset about, which is kinda the default stance on HN. Or at least it used to be. But even that approach is problematic, because the larger your audience, the more topics and subtopics become off-limits.

In this area, how to have a fair, just, and decent society, the internet is not helping things. Just the opposite, in fact.

For example, in case of this "sexual harassment in tech", I really think it's a matter of significant lack of understanding between the parties involved. Apparently it's not the case that most women would agree to have sex with just any random dude, but nevertheless some men seem to expect exactly that. OTOH, I very much doubt that they would be willing to take them by force, but nevertheless women end up worrying about all the possible things that may have happened.

> good policy and good laws depend on a logical and unemotional view of things

That's plausible. Good policy probably benefits from understanding, which seems to be improved by familiarity, which reduces emotional reactions, particularly the negative ones.

> You should not, however, make decisions based on how you feel about things.

But OTOH, if for whatever reason you can't obtain familiarity and understanding, it probably may be safer to follow your gut feeling. I think that's what guides many people and they probably don't think about it much.

> The internet is all about the feels - the mob, the pain, the sadness, the outrage.

THB, you could equally well describe Bolsheviks or Nazis that way. And they have this curious property of predating the Internet by several decades ;)

Can you elaborate on this? Did I miss part of the story—did one of the accuser actually do that?

[1] https://www.axios.com/500-startups-partner-elizabeth-yin-res...

[2] https://cherylyeoh.com/2017/07/03/shedding-light-on-the-blac...

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/20/the-long-term-cost-of-sexu...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/technology/women-entrepre...

[5] https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/23/dear-tech-dudes-stop-being...

but also if merely (awkwardly trying) being nice is considered harassment bosses will be less willing to hire (attractive) women.

Did you notice that the false accuser is also a man?

Because it appears that there are simply no women anywhere in your "equation".

The world is bigger than US. And for the rest of us, we don't really seem to have this problem.

I repeat: you didn't read the article.

First, the heuristics. If it would be extraordinarily awkward and/or conceivably career impacting for someone to decline a romantic advance then that advance should not be made, period, because it represents exploiting a power imbalance (even if unknowingly!) and throwing sex and romance into the situation. The only time in any scenario related to the workplace that romance or sex should see the light of day is if every party is fully empowered to decline with not even the slightest hint of impact to the workplace, career, employment, etc.

A good rule of thumb: unless a coworker is inarguably already a personal friend outside of work then introducing even the hint of romance into an otherwise entirely professional relationship could be not just awkward but potentially compromising. In every situation, the balance of doubt should always fall on the side of not engaging in romantic behavior with coworkers. Another good rule of thumb: if there is a level or authority imbalance (enormously more so if there is a direct superior/inferior relationship between two coworkers) then everyone should tread ten times or a hundred times more carefully than they would with any other relationship.

Whoever is making a move should be hyper conscious of any signs of discomfort on the part of the recipient and should go the extra mile (or ten miles) to provide many more easily available "outs" than normal. In normal dating situations if an advance is not welcomed that's fine, two peers had an interaction, someone made a minor mistake, and probably no one will get hurt. In a dating situation with all the complexities, minefields, and pitfalls of a work environment if an overture is made that is unwanted that almost certainly means that the person making it fucked up royally. They failed to read the other person, and they made them uncomfortable, and they complicated their professional relationship.

The 500 startups thing is a near perfect case of the sort of sexual harassment that many get away with because it has just the thinnest thread of deniability[1]. People should not be inviting themselves into the room or home of a coworker, period. People should not be trying to get cozy, let alone try to date, people they have only casually met, especially if there is a power imbalance between them or if there is absolutely anything at stake in the professional relationship.

If this sounds like a lot of restrictions, it is, but it's the only way to make sure that people feel safe and comfortable in their workplace and in their career. The workplace is not a dating service. If you happen to make a friendship at work that turns into a romance, congratulations, but that's not what it's for.

If the first, or only, thought you jump to when thinking about a workplace where romantic overtures are a lot more difficult is "that sucks, how are dudes even gonna get with any ladies ever?" instead of "it would be nice if we could get to a workplace that wasn't so toxic it kept hemorrhaging female talent by the day" then you are part of the problem.

[1] https://cherylyeoh.com/2017/07/03/shedding-light-on-the-blac...

Yet the majority of marriages after college are formed exactly that way - a guy asks an acquaintance (not generally a friend) from work on a date.

If women want to fix the fact that men do all the legwork in starting relationships, and don't like that men do so in a way that offends them personally (even though most women seem OK with the system) then they're free to demand other women take up a bit of the slack.

Do you have any evidence of that at all? Because to me it sounds simply made up. A quick google, and the first link I got back also seems to disagree.

https://mic.com/articles/112062/the-way-most-people-meet-the...

It amazes me how much people push for responsibility for their actions - but for some reason when it comes to this topic its: I can't help myself, this isn't fair. I must impose a sexual relationship on my co-workers when the feeling strikes me.

And this alternative false excuse of pretending like these are "just misunderstandings". The absolute vast majority (even going by whats been in the news) are completely blatant, repeated, inappropriate approaches.

Nevertheless, even this shows that the work place is a significant factor to meet a partner - even if it has lost relevancy. Which leads to the question why. Is it because the other places somehow got more effective for that purpose, or is it fear of being perceived as crossing boundaries which makes people hesitant to try. Both (or other) explanations seem imaginable to me.

Most of the time an acquaintance is fully empowered to tell you to fuck all the way off if you make an unwanted advance. And their life goes on as normal afterward. The equation is vastly different if people are coworkers, especially if there is any sort of difference in authority, seniority, connectedness, or anything whatsoever on the line (deals, employment, career advancement, mentoring, opportunities, etc.)

Even something seemingly as banal as interactions between coworkers who are perfect peers with the same level of seniority and authority in a company and work under widely separated management structures is potentially problematic. Because of the pressure to "not cause a scene" or "not hurt anyone's feelings". As I said, it's not about not doing it, it's about being absolutely, positively ensuring that everyone is 100% fully empowered to respond to an advance with absolutely zero fear of any negative repercussions no matter how minor.

Sure, many marriages are made between people who met through work, but many people already follow these rules, it's the people who don't that are the problem. Ask all of your female friends, if you have any, how many of them have been sexually harassed in some way at work. I don't have a single female friend who has not experienced it, because it's absolutely ubiquitous. That doesn't mean every guy in the workplace is doing it, it means that it continues to be tolerated and ignored enough in the workplace to make the few who do it be able to harass a huge number of people. It has to stop, and the way it stops is with changing the norms of what is expected behavior.

She finally had to resort to flashing her boobs at the guy to get him to acknowledge and fulfill her desires.

Me personally, it would take that level of chutzpah from a female co-worker before I'd even consider and I still might be worried about the whole thing ending badly. Kind of funny where we're at with male/female relationship dynamics these days.

[1] I don't like the idea of coworkers dating because if they break up, it can be messy and cause all sorts of problems for them and for their other coworkers. Having said that, if I really liked a coworker and she was interested in me, I probably wouldn't let that stand in my way either, but it is something I'm conscious about. If she were on my team, I would at least ask to move to another team.

Presenting a coworker with a long legal document giving consent to be propositioned, signed with a notary present of course, wouldn't work. It would be sexual harassment to even present the contract for consideration!

They would have to use something like Tinder where they could be both unaware of the others interest until both parties had signed the legal agreement consenting to be propositioned by the other. They would then be directed to do some sort of custom secret society hand sign in the others presence to verify that they had actually consented. The hand sign would be innocuous when seen by someone who hadn't actually signed the contract via the app and seen the secret hand sign the other would display to acknowledge they had signed the contract.

The next billion dollar startup idea?! A cross between Linkedin, LegalZoom and Tinder. The idea would at least make for a hilarious episode of "The IT Crowd" or "Silicon Valley".

Well, there has been this Slack app[0].

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/slack...

"He gave several very obvious hints to the woman he was interested in with no response. He finally had to resort to flashing his muscled chest at the woman to get her to acknowledge and fulfill his desires."

Or they rarely report it (partly because they afraid they won't be believed)?

So easily said than done. You make it seem that "making a move" is so clear, but it isn't. Many times people are not even "making a move" and someone will think they are "making a move" and then get uncomfortable. It is very hard to realize that you are making someone uncomfortable when you aren't even thinking in that direction and the recipients (for a lack of a better word) aren't being vocally clear. In such a case, I'm siding against the one that wasn't vocally clear.

The fact is we live in a society that is still in an extended hangover from a multi-centuries long binge of incomparable misogyny. There is a burden on those who still hold positions of privilege from that legacy to make everyone in society feel safe, wanted, and free. Do the work or it's not going to get done.

If people are feeling uncomfortable but not speaking up, they are going to have to come to terms with the fact that a large segment of the programmer community is going to be incapable of identifying their discomfort when interacting with them. Getting them to speak up might be a more tractable problem than trying to teach everyone to identify non-verbal subtext.

(I agree with your comment insofar as it applies to people who are capable of doing it, and I aspire to being able to interact with people so fluently.)

Second, those who find it harder to read social cues may just need to follow the rules more carefully. For example, don't try to make romantic or sexual advances towards someone who is in some way (directly or indirectly) subordinate to you.

Implicit in this statement is that your view on this issue is the truth, and anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant. If you want to have a genuine discussion with people, that attitude does not invite dialogue. You're not going to change anyone's mind.

I (and I think everyone else) is strongly disagreeing with you that your unvoiced emotions are my responsibility.

But, you're right, in that it's a chicken-and-the-egg style scenario; how do you voice the emotion that you're not comfortable voicing your emotions? And, how does anyone (including yourself) tell if that discomfort is all in your head, or real?

Actually. It really is. It really is. You can't brush the enormous complexities of life, human perception, self-image, misunderstanding, varying life experiences and social norms under the carpet with a wave of the hand.

It really, really is hard for normal decent human beings to get this right even if you don't throw bad actors and out-and-out sociopaths into the mix.

The problem is that sexual harassment does exist. But so does horrific misunderstand or outright false accusation. The latter two are probably an order of magnitude less common than the former but they are potentially life-destroying and shouldn't be brushed aside.

Also - it fuels the crazy men's rights types and lends credence to their sense of persecution. If you vacate the center of the debate then the other side will claim it.

1. Be attractive.

2. Don't be unattractive.

Two simple rules to not commit sexual harassment.

I'd avoid it generally, as you just failed both your stated rules by repeating it.

That's an interesting and incendiary interpretation. Do you know for a fact that this person views women as prizes to be won or are you perhaps ascribing more meaning to the comment than can reasonably be inferred?

It is an impossible argument to make it you assume that the other party has a right to make a choice about who continues to pursue them for whatever damn reason they please.

How? There's no connection between what was said and the conclusion you drew from it.

arkh's post observes that women often apply different standards to men's behaviour based on whether they find them attractive or not. That's not really in dispute, it's the origin of the "hot women being attracted to asshole boyfriends" cultural cliche.

I'd dispute it in this sense: women, like humans of any gender, are more likely to apply different standards based on pre-existing status (e.g. whether they're friends already or not) but not to the degree that as a rule they'd welcome a sexual advance from one co-worker and not an identical one from another based simply on attractiveness, or that they'd consider the unwanted one harassment.

This isn't hard: women are humans and capable of rational thought, just like men. Your comment diminishes them.

This would directly translate to welcome a sexual advance from one co-worker but not an identical one from another based simply on attractiveness. Social setting (e.g. workplace) may drive the lower limit below skirting board for some individuals, but that does not make certain social settings universally irrationality free grounds where evaluation as potential mate has no effect on social (and even professional) interactions.

While both men and women are capable of rational thought, likewise both are not individuality, emotion and desires free.

Your comment reads to me as asserting that women are basically incapable of moderating their behavior based on sexual desire.

Viewing social interaction as a series of rules/steps to follow in order to "succeed" or "win" is how you view being attractive as a form of "cheating" or unfairness. This doesn't account for the other party having agency, since the only perspective taken is that of one side of a two sided issue.

Even in your post you say "women often apply different standards to men's behaviour based on whether they find them attractive or not".

Let's be damn clear: there are no different standards at play, there are two completely different behaviours at play - welcome romantic advances and unwelcome romantic advances.

Where did you read the word women in my post? I wrote about sexual harassment which can come from a person of any gender unto a person from any other gender.

The attractiveness also mean a lot of things to different persons.

A man who does not like tattoos may react differently to the same behavior coming from someone with a face tattoo or someone without.

But I hope you can reflect on how many things you unconsciously assumed from one comment and where it was posted and how it can relate to its content (double-standard due to bias).

We can move on, and now you know that this is a rather famous thing to say among people who are angry that women are allowed to choose who they wish to pursue them romantically.

I wonder if people who believe that prostitution should be legalized consider sexual harassment in the workplace to be a lesser problem, since one of the arguments is struck from the table. #2 doesn't seem to be a major concern, since you claim it's already in the existing system and isn't important(or is that just a matter of degree? That would imply it's more wrong to hit on someone shy than someone outspoken)

If exploiting a power imbalance is wrong, I wonder if employing a homeless person is wrong because you profit off of the labor of the helpless.

I don't think so, and I don't believe the 3rd argument is struck at all. There's a gaping difference between accepting an advance fully willingly (whether the motivations behind acceptance are romantic, sexual or economic) and feeling pressured into accepting the advance (regardless of whether such pressure is intended or accidental). A happily employed prostitute in a perfect well-regulated industry will still never feel that they can't turn down a prospective client, no matter how well they're paying. In any workplace, if accepting an advance is necessary to succeed professionally, that's a systemic problem.

> If exploiting a power imbalance is wrong, I wonder if employing a homeless person is wrong because you profit off of the labor of the helpless.

Again, this comes down to pressure. A homeless person might be under disproportionate economic pressure to take a job they would otherwise decline, so I'd say that from a purely moral standpoint this needs to be taken into account and if you're not ensuring the job is taken willingly, then yes, it is wrong to profit from that labour.

Why do people not see men as victims? His reputation could be ruined for the rest of his life, even if he is innocent. People take the law into their own hands and could physically hurt him as a result of a false accusation amid a system that disregards due process.

This community -- Hacker News -- is considering creating a list to name people accused of harassment without due process -- in other words, a vigilante system that could lead to innocent people, generally men, being victimized like this man, a real victim.

... so he needs protection in case his lawsuit fails for lack of evidence and the defamer maliciously counter-sues him for defamation.

That's exactly parent's point. "Real" victims refers to victims of crime that actually happened and wasn't just made up, not some classification of crimes as serious or not.

Basically, the OP forgot to mention that harsh punishment should be reserved for cases where it can be solidly proven that allegations were made up and people started to nitpick on it.

    > Why do people not see
    > men as victims?

> This has the side-effect that real victims are put off from filing charges, which is generally thought to be not a good thing.

Well, this man appears to be a victim who is filing charges. You seem not to consider him a real victim. Don't we want victims such as him to defend themselves? As I understand your quote, you can answer your question better than I can: why didn't you consider him a victim?

You may have other reasons not to consider him a victim than that he is male, but I'm just using your quote to illustrate. A quick search returned this page at the top -- http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/men.htm. I don't know its credibility, only that it suggests a trend, cites many sources, took less than 1 minute to find, and there seemed plenty more such pages.

    > You seem not to consider
    > him a real victim

Nonsense.

Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse?

There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought. The idea that those people should be let off with a polite smile of "we don't want to put off the real victims" is horrific.

You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."

That claim is provably false. I explained why, using examples.

> You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."

That cannot possibly be concluded from what I said.

My claim is that when it's proven that people lie (i.e. fraudster, as I said), ignoring those lies is corrupting the justice system.

The thing is, perjury is a criminal offence. I don't think you'd disagree.

The mistake you're making is assuming that because I say some people are proven to lie, you think I'm claiming that all people lie. That's a logical fallacy, and basically assumes I'm an asshole or an idiot.

Your claim seems to be that we should never prosecute liars, because it will dissuade real victims from coming forward. I think that claim is horrific, for reasons I explained.

To counter your next comment.. no, I don't think claimants should be charged when their claims cannot be proven to be true. Again, making an unsubstantiated claim is not legally perjury, and is not a criminal offence.

My claim is that provably false claims should be punished.

Is that really so difficult to understand?

> That claim is provably false. I explained why, using examples.

No you didn't. You gave some examples where the proposed policy would not have the side effect. You didn't show that it would never have the side effect.

> That cannot possibly be concluded from what I said.

"The exact opposite of this policy", in context, would be letting people off for false accusations. Why were you talking about "the idea that those people should be let off" if you agree that peteretep never suggested letting people off?

I used the example of insurance fraud. Please pay attention.

Do we prosecute insurance fraud? Yes. Do such prosecutions dissuade victims from making real claims? No.

Or maybe you think that sexual assault is somehow magic. That prosecuting proven fraudsters in that case will somehow dissuade real victims from making claims. If so, you have to prove your position.

I've already proven that no such correlation exists in other situations.

> Why were you talking about "the idea that those people should be let off" if you agree that peteretep never suggested letting people off?

He did implicitly. If he's against charging fraudsters (for whatever reason), he's for letting them off.

> Or maybe you think

I'm deliberately avoiding taking an object-level position.

> If he's against charging fraudsters

You're still turning a descriptive statement into a prescriptive one. peteretep did not advocate any policy in the comment you replied to. Among the policies he did not advocate is "we should never charge any fraudster". Another policy he did not advocate is "we should be extremely careful which fraudsters we prosecute, to avoid of chilling effects".

He did not advocate a policy, but you took his comment as advocating an extreme policy.

That's pedantically true, and more honestly false.

Are you honestly going to claim that his description of "putting off victims" advocates for no position? That's ridiculous. He explicitly said ... which is generally thought to be not a good thing.

Are you next going to claim that he thinks putting off victims is not a good thing... but he isn't really advocating against punishing fraudsters even if it "puts off" victims?

And this is all ignoring the point that his claim was false.

Honestly, I find this nit-picking to be utterly ludicrous, to the point of irrational.

No specific policy, certainly. There are many policies consistent with what he said. I gave one already; another would be we should punish false accusations of sexual assault, but not as severely as sexual assault itself.

But you leapt to the most indefensible one. And you didn't even seem to notice that you were making this leap. I don't think it's nitpicking of me to point this out.

Nonsense.

His position was that any punishment of false claims was "putting off" victims from making real claims.

Which is what I reacted to.

Given the upvotes for my position and the downvotes for yours, I suspect the majority of people came to the same conclusion I did.

Please stop grasping at straws. Your insistence on taking me at an extreme position while accusing me of the same is unsupported by facts.

Not true. He was replying to a post that said "False accusations should be punished with the same penalty as the accuser tried to put upon the innocent." He said "This has the side-effect..." The referent of "this" is clearly not "any punishment of false claims".

And even if true, that is still not a policy proposal. I've given two alternative interpretations of the original comment. Here's a third: I have no particular policy proposal myself, but I wonder whether you've thought through the implications of yours?

> downvotes

Not that it matters, but right now my comments are all upvoted/neutral.

> Your insistence on taking me at an extreme position

I don't think we disagree on what your position is? We just disagree about whether or not you're correct.

That is, I'm accusing you of accusing peteretep of making a specific policy proposal. You insist that your accusation is correct. So I don't think I'm taking you at a position that you'd call extreme; I think I'm taking you at a position that you actually openly hold. If you disagree then we're wildly talking past each other.

Yes, we do. Go back and read the history. I started off with a particular position, that you then misconstrued, and mis-characterized.

> I think I'm taking you at a position that you actually openly hold

No, you're not. You've managed to twist what I say, and my defense of my position, to an extreme position.

My position is that people should be punished for breaking the law. And, that saying such punishment (whatever the form) somehow "puts off" innocent people from making claims is wrong.

And I think you've been pretty explicitly talking about what he originally said. E.g. "His position was that..."

But now you seem to be denying that you said anything about what he originally said, or you seem to think that what you said about what he said isn't relevant, or... I don't know. Your comment does not make sense to me. All I can think is that you seem to be mixing meta-levels.

Anyway, I'm not exactly proud of how easily I get sucked into crap like this, so I'm going to try to tap out after this comment.

So long as enforcement does not perfectly avoid false positives even in beginning prosecution (even if no false convictions occur) it increases the expected cost of a true report, and is a rational disincentive.

It may be that the particular punishment regime minimizes this cost and/or has benefits that offset the cost, but it's implausible that any real punishment scheme could avoid it altogether.

I think the misunderstanding is that you think I'm saying insurance claims are equal in scope to sexual assault. That is (TBH) ridiculous. To the extent of deliberate blindness.

What I'm actually doing is making a statement about the fraudsters. Not the victims.

FALSE sexual assault charges do not involve sexual assault. False sexual assault charges do not have real victims. So false sexual assault charges are, in fact, entirely equivalent to false insurance claims. Both are false. Both do not involve real victims.

Your reaction comes across as an un-thinking knee-jerk "OMFG sexual assault is bad"... to the point where we can't have a rational discussion about anything related to the subject.

Look, there are fraudsters. See "Jackie" at the University of Virginia. Or the Duke Lacrosse case. In both situations, "wishful thinking" people came damned close to lynching the accused, facts be damned. And in both cases, every single aspect of the claimants story turned out to be provably false.

You have an implicit claim that sexual assault is somehow magical, and deserving of different standards than insurance fraud. All possible evidence shows that this attitude is not just wrong, it is actively dangerous. It denies reality. It denies justice. It hurts innocent people.

For the crime of perjury to be proven, you also need more. Substantive proof of lying, not just 'the guy did not get convicted'.

I don't think there is a chilling effect when you use a standard of proof to admit a claim of fraud.

But for matters adjudicated by universities, it's possible that neither of these apply, since official police reports are not necessarily filed, and testimony is not given in a courtroom, under oath.

More generally, you could claim defamation. This is not a crime though — it is a civil matter. If the defamer has no assets, it would be an expensive way to make a point ("I didn't do it!") and could lead to the Streisand Effect.

    > You have an implicit claim
    > that sexual assault is 
    > somehow magical, and 
    > deserving of different 
    > standards than insurance
    > fraud

Specifically I believe sexual assaults are under-reported, and that more assaults happen because they're under-reported.

Taking those back-to-front, an insurance claim that's unreported doesn't endanger wider society, where a serial rapist abusing his position of power does.

As to under-reporting of sexual crimes, evidence is easily Googleable. But even if it wasn't, one looks at cases like Jimmy Saville where alleged victims didn't come out until others did; largely due to their feeling they wouldn't be believed.

Because it didn't happen. But you're free to feel superior to me based on lies about what I said.

> Specifically I believe sexual assaults are under-reported,

Yes... look at the numbers from Statistics Canada for one. In interviews, people claim sexual assault rates that are about 10x the rate of police reports.

Why are those crimes not reported? Statistics Canada asked... the #1 answer is "because the assault was too minor to bother with".

i.e. grabbing an ass in a bar is legally sexual assault. But few people are going to file a police report about it.

> and that more assaults happen because they're under-reported.

No such evidence exists.

There is evidence that there are massive programs to encourage people to report sexual assault. All such programs have not increased the reporting rate to police.

Which makes it look like the rate of police reports of serious crimes is pretty close to the real rate of serious crimes.

Also, note - you mention filing charges. But the problem with sexual harassment cases is, they don't even get to that level. It's usually enough to "file charges" on a blog and post it to Twitter to do 90% of damage.

   > It cuts both ways

- true accusation - punish the perpetrator

- false accusation - punish the accuser

- unable to confirm either way - nothing happens

I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept and want to bias towards "guilty until proven innocent" thinking.

And yes, I know that in civil cases in the US, it's "preponderance of the evidence" and not "presumption of innocence". It still means you should get punished only if your deed is proven (in Bayesian sense) more likely to be true than false.

Witch hunts are exciting. It's also empowering to believe that you're one of the "good guys", going after those dastardly "bad guys".

TBH, it's the same thinking behind any pogrom. "Those people" are rich, so breaking in and stealing everything is on the side of justice. "Those people" have secret cabals which rule the world, so it's OK to abuse and attack any individual you see.

The people with that attitude aren't aware of history. That attitude has been tried before in many countries. The end result is genocide.

It doesn't start out that way. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  I still don't understand why some people have so
  much trouble with this concept

From there it's a simple question of our willingness to let the guilty go free vs. our willingness to see the innocent wrongly punished. This is known as Blackstone's Ratio [1] and it dates to the 1760s.

Needless to say, there's a certain political equilibrium here; if you'll let off 1000 guilty people to avoid 1 wrongful conviction, you'll have a thousand victims and their families campaigning for tougher punishments for every 1 wrongfully convicted person campaigning in the opposite direction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation

    > suggests an obvious
    > course of action

It does happen, but it's so rare that it generally makes headlines when it does.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-...

The rate for those sentenced for lesser crimes is likely much higher, due to plea bargaining ("plead guilty to petty theft or we'll charge you with grand theft").

That's not really what we're talking about here, though. We're talking about the rate of conviction of those who are proven conclusively to have lied resulting in someone else being convicted of a crime.

Generally such people receive no consequences at all.

For instance, as far as I know the woman in this case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus

has not been charged with anything, despite falsely accusing an entire fraternity house of rape.

If you locked a person in a cage for 10 years, you would be considered a horrible person. It's no different if you get other people to do it for you. A truly false accusation is a terrible crime that must be punished like any other. But it must be proven false beyond reasonable doubt just like any other crime.

The reason we don't punish people for retracting wrongful allegations is because we want people to retract wrongful allegations.

If you're in jail on a false rape claim, you'd rather the accuser went free and you were released; than that you stayed in jail because the accuser didn't want to take your place.

Another interesting concept during the inquisition was that the accused, before he knew who accused him, had the opportunity to list all his mortal enemies, and if the accuser was among them he was set free.

I'd actually tend to "yes", but it's probably impossible to answer. People react very different, and the prevalence of suicide is actually higher among rape victims than for people sentenced to long prison sentences.

But the real problem is: The penalty in your comparison would be for rape, whereas the accusation was just a failed attempt. Yes, that is usually harmful as well, but it's no longer comparable.

People are quick to throw around guilt, once that's in the room your reputation will be sullied forever as everybody still has this nagging "Well, he could still have done it" thought.

Case in point: The German teacher Horst Arnold. In 2001 a female coworker accused him of having raped her during a break at school. He denied the charges and in 2002 he was sentenced to 5 years in jail.

He served his time and, due to a series of random events, in 2008 it came to light that the female coworker, who got him into jail, has a rather long history of lying and misrepresenting facts.

In 2011 he was declared innocent, but he was denied rehabilitation into his job as a teacher and any monetary compensation for the time spent in jail. He fought for this until 2012, when he was found dead on the street due to cardiac arrest.

I don't think it's cultural. Most men have an innate desire to protect women, and treat them with special favor. This was the historical way women were protected before they had voting rights. Now, they have both political power, and men still tend to give them the special favor they had before. So it leads to an imbalance in society

I would guess this is confounded by the difficulty of committing suicide in prison? (Attempts might be less confounded, but still somewhat.)

The fact is that the justice system is not perfect. Occasionally a guilty person will be acquitted, and it would really be best not to also punish an innocent as a result of that.

"admits" can be a loaded word. The accuser claims. Hopefully, their accusation was not the only evidence in the first place.

Personally I prefer the old system of innocent until proven guilty. You loose the mob justice, and you can't demand a lower standard of evidence, but in return people can report crimes without fear of repercussions. It is a fair trade, with the only drawback that a guilty person will have their punishment delayed until the justice system concludes with a guilty verdict.

I hear it has effectively no privacy.

See for example https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&ar...

And then you have just singled yourself out as someone with something to hide and in small towns that is usually a problem.

but in some cases when evidence was manufactured the defence can come up with something that implicates the accuser.

That's not how it works, is it? it is not a battle where someone has to be guilty - either the accused or the accuser. Someone can be acquitted without anyone lying, or making false statements, or anything else. Just a few examples: insufficient evidence to prosecute, contradictory timelines.

It is bizarre that anyone thinks that this could be the system - get a conviction or suffer a conviction yourself.

There is a spectrum between provable accusations and demonstrably false claims that includes uncertainty, doubt and poor evidence. It isn't like going all-in in poker!

However, I still think that the kind of 'eye for an eye' approach proposed by the comment I was relying to would have a non-trivial, negative impact on the reporting of crimes. Just as guilty people can be acquitted, innocent people can be found guilty (even if it's not automatic), and this means that the accuser is exposing themselves to risk.

Fundamentally, no one should ever have to worry about the consequences of reporting a crime.

The rub is, they should have to worry about the consequences, if they're making a bad-faith false report. They should have to worry a lot, because they themselves are committing a wrong by reporting a false crime in such a way.

It's an incredibly hard problem, though.

I think you mean crime, not wrong.

That's not how criminal justice works. That's not even how torts work.

it already is. Just visit parts of Mexico

Or, in other words, if you think makeup is intended to replicate visual signs of arousal... then this is the culture you work in forcing women to appear sexually aroused in workplace environments. Which is, of course, also something that feminists have talked about for decades.

I recall reading that if a woman has no other female coworkers, the trend is a decrease use of such signals. With no one to compete with then there is no need to spend energy on it.

Like how "men" are claimed to be responsible for pressuring women into unrealistic body images, despite the fashion industry being run, and chosen by women.

Various celebs will back a "ban bossy" campaign, but millions of women are forced to feign sexual availability against their wishes, and barely any motivation to protests it?

Fact of the matter is, if you employ women who don't wear makeup, your clients and customers will think less of your business. You'll lose money and some positivity associated with your brand. Your managers will think less of your female workers - so will their coworkers, no matter the official policy. This isn't the sort of thing that gets changed by a line in a policy document - this is the sort of thing that needs widespread social change.

On that basis, the idea "women are socially pressured into wearing make-up" falls short. Women, themselves, are rejecting the idea.

> your clients and customers will think less of your business

This isn't all jobs, though.

A doctor, or back-end dev shouldn't feel any pressure to wear lipstick.

If you want to direct criticism at those roles/instances where there is a problem, and maybe suggest solutions, I'm fine with that, but broad strokes don't do much help.

Incidentally, I see fewer women in my own country wear as much make-up as those in America appears to do. I mentioned "doctor" specifically because I am surprised how much american doctor wear. As a further anecdote, whenever an american version of a European series is remade, the american actors are usually more attractive..

I've witnessed this:

  (concerned) Is x OK?
  Huh?
  Is she upset? She looks like she's been crying.
  (realising) No, she's just not wearing any makeup. You normally see her with makeup on.

but you can talk to men how you want, they won't care.

so yes you have to behave differently to both genders.

However, the reasoning for that is interesting - the primary reasons women get more upset when you speak about their appearance negatively when compared to men is that women constantly have it drilled into them that their appearance is one of the most important things about them, from a relatively early age. We have a combination of media and other people who do that - often even other women.

It's something to be solved, but as the situation stands right now, yeah, criticising women on their dress/makeup/haircut only serves to further that - because women have generally already had significantly different experiences than men by the time you meet them.

Yes, but the two sides aren't equal. If you have a knife and we have a nuclear weapon, that we can both hurt each other does not mean that there is a balance, or that both sides need equal protection. Women get sexually harassed or assaulted much more than they fabricate allegations for personal gain (and note that this is not what happened in this case), as a woman rarely gains from making allegations, either true or false. So there may be two problems, both sad, but one is orders of magnitude bigger than the other.

I don't understand the logic here, are you saying that men gain more from sexually harassing women than women gain from falsely accusing men? I think you would have a hard time finding a man who would be in a better position if he just started sexually harassing women.

Edit: Note that I believe that honest accusations are far more common than false ones, I am just criticizing this explanation.

But did any of you notice that the alleged false accuser in this case is actually a man?

Given the evidence, I think you're confused about who actually has a nuclear weapon. Like in real world, "knife attacks" are much more frequent, but a "nuclear weapon" tends to be much more devastating :).