> Your only source on this story is Horvath's recounting of it, and she says it was inappropriate. By what means do we have to question her assessment of the events?

You are using "inappropriate" like it's an objective word. Which is false. If she said something like "they were wolf-whistling and throwing dollar bills", that's an objective statement that we can either think is true or false, and form certain opinions about it. The only objective word we have heard so far is "staring". She is saying, "Ah, they were staring at a bunch of women hula-hooping in the middle of the office at a tech company, how inappropriate!", I am not being sexist when I say, "No, that's not inappropriate, stop with your 1800s attitude."

It is just a difference between Horvath's rather prim definition of "inappropriate" and my more liberal one, and I don't see how that is sexist, or marginalizes her opinion. My grandfather would probably agree with Horvath that staring at a bunch of women hula-hooping in the office is "inappropriate", and I would disagree with him too.

When someone tells a story and there's a gap between the events they relate to you and the conclusion they draw from it, it's natural to criticize their conclusions.

Unless you were there, you can't possible know what happened. We are receiving a third-hand accounting--a TechCrunch journalist relating what Horvath told them--of events we didn't experience. For all we know, the journalist editted out a part where the "gawkers" were wolf-whistling and throwing dollar bills. The point is not that they may or many not have done that, the point is that Horvath's (diluted) account is the only one we have to go by, and to dismiss it is literally nothing but marginalizing her opinion just because she's a woman.

She says it was inappropriate, and more importantly, that it made her feel uncomfortable. You have to either accept that, or you have to call her a liar.

If you choose to call her a liar, your basis for calling her a liar is what defines you as sexist. If it's "my vast and varied dealings with the Github staff at all levels never suggested anything unprofessional ever went on there"[0], then you are not sexist. If it's because "women overreact to stuff like this", you're sexist.

And it's one way or the other. You can't say "I am not calling her a liar, but I don't believe her". That's just mealy-mouth calling her a liar. And you can't say, "I didn't experience any of the involved facts for myself, but I'm not basing it on prejudices", because again, that's just speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

[0] which, given how shitty their code is, I can't see how anyone could ever make such a claim.

No one is dismissing Horvath's account as related by TechCrunch. Critically reading that account and then discussing the gaps in the internal logic of the account itself is the opposite of dismissal.

We're not dealing with a court of law here. "Gaps" in the story do not call into question the integrity of the story.

Don't they? But I'm talking more about gaps between the facts as they are being related to us and the conclusions we are being told to draw from them.

We also have this account of the incident, by somebody who claims they were present, has put their name behind their account, and may or may not be a github employee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

This particular account isn't even filtered through a journalist!