Comment by wulfstan

In Jon Pretty's case, if his account is true, it wasn't investigated. It was simply decided in a court of public opinion, quite possibly because of the historical metric you brought up.

The only way you can ensure that it stops happening is strict segregation by sex, but I don't think that's what you'd want.

If this was done bayesian style we could say the priors are man taking advantage of woman. 9 cases out of 10 if there is a rape case you can assume the perp is male and if you don't you are like a born yesterday idiot. And if you're a woman it's super important to keep it in mind, like you think of getting into elevator (or airbnb like in this case) alone with a random man you should not be like "let's not pre judge people".

With wrong cancellation it's different because it's not an urgent situation and people should not ruin someone's life randomly. It would be stupid to force us to think "really there's a 50/50 chance if the rapist is that man or that woman" but if you say "there's a 50/50 chance if the guy is a creep or that woman is scheming something" then it can be not that wrong (depending on country)

But in this case we still don't know who is wrong. This is the original letter https://medium.com/@yifanxing/my-experience-with-sexual-hara... and it was not shown false. All that the courts said was "no evidence was provided". And the guy didn't clearly deny it in the letter as I understand it

>You don't need to worry unless you're having sex with your mentees.

"He exhibited problematic behavior. He touched me inappropriately. He cornered me in an elevator. He used demeaning language and made me feel unworthy."

Zero sex involved, and these accusations can be completely true or untrue, depending on undefinable intangibles and individual interpretations.

Where exactly is the "sexual exploitation" part? He didn't blackmail her, he didn't force her, he didn't offer her favors/status in return for sex. She was not a child, she made her decisions, she regretted them. Yes, there's a power imbalance, but it's not as if this was some sort of Bill Cosby type of situation.

What does "gatekeeper" even mean in this scenario? There was no employment relationship, no ability for either party to fire someone or impact pay or job responsibilities.

And is "exploiting" synonymous with "having sex with"?

You seem to be saying two people in the same community can never have sex, because one or the other will have more power within that community making it exploitative.

If not, are the circumstances where it's not problematic?

At no point was I insinuating that the justice system isn't flawed. It's heavily flawed, for all to see.

The alternative however, is unjustifiable. Mob law is worse than no law.

The justice system is pretty terrible, but it's still better than mob justice.

> and that no personal judgment should be made without

I think it's fine to make personal judgements about things that have little impact on other people. For things that have a big impact, a more formal approach is called for. I think TFA makes a strong case that the impact here is big.

> No - and in fact in my view this is the core problem with these kinds of situations - there isn't a long established process validating a set of accusations, that if true, fall short of criminality but should result in your exclusion from a community. > Individual communities have to establish ground rules for these sorts of things to protect the vulnerable.

You can never sue anyone for ostracizing you from an open community, or for the consequences of that ostracism. There's no limit on who global communities might choose to ostracize. It's so fundamental to how we group together; you always have to know the norms.

British law is famously friendly to wealthy litigants, and the High Court for awarding ruinous damages. The OP took an opportunity to sue four signatories who (from my understanding of the court order) put their name to harmful allegations that they didn't know the truth of. The four defendants paid £20,000 in costs and damages.

Unfortunately for the OP, the ostracism clearly still stands, and despite going to the High Court to sue for libel, the first-hand reports of his conduct are still online.

I don't see this as a lesson in the terrifyingly and unpredictable consequences of Cancellation - seems like more "don't shit where you eat".

You seem to think that the fact that

> 1 in 100 rape accusations MADE TO THE POLICE in the UK leads to a charge being made against the accused

backs up your claim that

> To make these kinds of accusations as a woman tears your life apart in unimaginable ways

But this is not the case at all, unless you intended "these kinds of accusations" to mean both making formal charges and writing accusatory blog posts -- but the whole reason for this article is to point out the massive amount of damage that the latter can do at almost no cost to the accuser. Absent further evidence, it's clear that in this particular case, the two accusers' lives were not at all "torn apart" by making these life-destroying accusations -- do you agree?

> I do not accept that this happens with nearly the regularity that people, usually men, claim it does.

That you chose to ignore inconvenient facts that do not fit your narrative is only _your_ problem, no one else's.

Figure out how to remedy this lapse in judgment, then come back to the conversation.

> To make these kinds of accusations as a woman tears your life apart in unimaginable ways.

Salient. I do not doubt that false accusations happen, but the world is generally set up to disincentivize women from leveling accusations at anyone. If you're a woman who speaks up, you may be perceived as "damaged goods" (by others or even just yourself), it turns your identity into that of a victim, your successes get attributed to pity, it may lead others to believe you're easy to manipulate, etc. It's generally very unlikely for women to wield this as as a tactic, even if they were Hollywood-style sociopathic villains, because there's almost never anything to gain.

I hadn't even read the original accusations when I wrote this, just this fragment, so I don't think I got exposed to any tricks by the accusers (except maybe indirectly by the author).

I am only saying that even the person being accused does not directly confront the accusers about any facts.

What evidence do you have that anyone here is lying? Given my priors I am inclined to believe everyone involved here is a reliable reporter of their lived experience, just their lived experiences of the same events are wildly different.

If you are claiming it's more likely that these women are lying because they want to punish men for the crime of being men than it is likely that everyone here is a victim of a culture that encourages men to behave this way and pressures women to accept it silently you're delusional or acting in bad faith.

You are right - here is the document: https://pretty.direct/consentorder.pdf

A Statement I am a Scala developer and speaker who was cancelled three years ago. Yesterday I attended the High Court in London to hear an apology from several prominent members of the Scala community for making untrue claims about me on 27 April 2021. I sued them for libel, and they admitted fault and settled, paying me costs and damages. Their allegations were sensational and squalid, but unfounded. Their source was the resentment of one woman following a relationship in 2018, which I ended against her wishes. She fabricated or was offered an alternative narrative, which developed into claims of a pattern of behaviour, and culminated in the defendants' publication of an open letter, which they now agree is defamatory. In two years of legal action, the defendants never presented any evidence to support their allegations, and admitted in court that they had no proper reason to make them. They have given undertakings to the court not to publish further or similar defamatory statements, or have anyone else do so on their behalf. No signatory contacted me about the allegations before publication. I received no warning, and had no knowledge of the claims' substance. I only discovered what I was accused of at the same time as I learned of my indefinite exclusion from the community; at the same time everyone else found out. I had no opportunity to defend myself. It is no coincidence that the absence of due process led tp an abject injustice. The experience of cancellation and enduring the online hysteria was traumatic, I responded by withdrawing from the life I knew. Its consequences hurt me and people close to me, and have been immiserating. My employment opportunities were obliterated. My charitable and educational projects, and my small business, could not continue. Despite my transferable skills, the allegations were a transferrable red flag recognised across programming communities and industries, and I have barely earned a living since. It has taken two years of legal action to receive fair scrutiny in a forum reliant on facts.

> What specific advice would you give young women in such a situation?

If you have been sexually harrassed, don't blog about it, report it to the correct authorities.

The Government is literally campaigning against people to stop prejudicing the judicial process via social media:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/attorney-general-launches...

Everyone who hopes to seek justice needs to read this advice

> Are you suggesting that if Pretty were found liable for sexual harassment against two different women that he would not have also faced similar negative social outcomes?

My point is that the legal system might have weighed up the evidence and considered this case inadmissable, or ruled in Jon's favour. In which case he would have been exonerated in public view by the authorities, and he might have been able to piece his life back together. As it stands, he is in an awful limbo situation where hearsay prevents him getting any gainful employment.

Is that how you would characterize the situation as described by one of the women?

(Yet, perhaps that type of mismatched set of assumptions is at the core of this situation in the first place)

> In our conversations, he also mentioned a few times where he helped other women to attend conferences that they otherwise couldn’t have attended by sharing Airbnbs with them to reduce their travel costs. He asked if I wanted to share an Airbnb on my trip to the Typelevel conference in Berlin. He also mentioned that he planned to invite others. As a student with limited financial resources, I accepted the tempting offer and felt grateful that, once again, he helped me. At first, he mentioned that I could invite others to join our Airbnb. Having attended only two conferences, I did not know many people at the time. When I thought of a person to invite, he stopped me and asked if I was not feeling comfortable sleeping in the same apartment as him, and if I was trying to get a chaperone for us. I felt bad that I made him feel untrusted and stopped asking others to join.