Because it needs to be said

I'm familiar with the incident (I current serve as the co-chair of the PyCon Program Committee, as well as a board member for the Python Software Foundation). I'm just curious if the OP was implying that anything would have been better without a CoC?

And yet frighteningly effective; here's an anecdote that includes a thought exercise to consider, and let me preface the thought exercise by making clear that I am not accusing anyone of lying in the situation linked here and intentionally have no opinion on it, for reasons that shall become clear. (In fact, I wish I hadn't read it.)

Let's introduce Bob (not his real name). Bob is a mid-level engineering manager. Single, handsome, mid-30s. Bob is a friend of mine from school and I've known him for 17 years. At work, he has a handful of direct reports, all developers. One of these reports is Ashley (not her real name). The entire time Ashley has reported to Bob, she never made any display of personal affectation, never so much as having a cigarette with Bob on a break.

Early this year, Ashley and Bob represented the company at a conference. Bob was having a drink at the hotel bar when Ashley materialized and asked to join him. Bob agreed, and they were alone in a dark corner of the bar for more than a couple hours. Bob tells me that the conversation was light, cheerful, and fun. At the end of the evening, Bob walked Ashley back to her room, said good night, and went back to his room. That's what Bob told me happened. I pressed him; "are you being truthful with me?" He indicated that he was, and I believe him because I've known him for the better part of my adult life. If he needed to maintain a lie publicly, he would have confided it to me. He has no reason to lie to me and I can safely say that he never has.

Ashley isn't the best employee and knew it. Bob was, in fact, preparing to hit Ashley with negative performance, which would have prevented transfer and a bunch of whole other terrible things. It just so happens that this conference was two weeks before her annual review, which is salient because Ashley attempted to blackmail Bob. She showed him a Tumblr draft that claimed that Bob had attempted to rape her when he walked her back to her hotel room, in enough detail to sell the story. The implication was clear: be good to me on my review or I publish this.

Bob confided this to me because he had no fucking idea of what to do. He had no proof either way, and as the alleged victim would be a report, things would look bad if he attempted to terminate her. And then, if he did, she'd potentially revise the draft to make it look like Bob fired her to cover up his alleged misdeeds. This happened in the last six months, and I am legally prohibited from knowing how it resolved. Bob cannot tell me, but he still has his job and a career, so the shoe hasn't dropped yet.

Clearly, Ashley is quite aware that when stories like this are published on Hacker News or other media, a sweeping majority of the audience will immediately interpret what is presented as hard fact. In this case, there are two witnesses, but in others there have not been. Bob's ordeal gave me a thought exercise and made me think of all the times I've been alone with people at conferences: if someone wrote this exact post and substituted all the details for me, instead, what recourse would I have as the accused? The answer is none. Even walking away with the lesson of "don't be alone with someone" doesn't really help, because by the time witnesses step forward to defend you and say a blog post is completely fabricated, it's already bounced off the moon and come back.

And yes, I realize sociopaths like Ashley are rare. But given how demonstrably effective blogging like this is, do you really think they will remain rare in the long-term?

The only solution to this is to be suspicious of everything you read that is one-sided. Be suspicious of my anecdote, even; I could be making it up, for all you know. The thought underlying it, that the Internet's talent for rushing to conclusions on one side of a story is extremely dangerous (Sunil Tripathi, anyone?), is the important part of the story that I want to convey. Imagine if this blog post appeared on the Internet with your name and a conference you've been to substituted in. As Twain said, how long would it take you to get your boots on? Would you ever recover from that kind of damage?

We can't foster this environment in our industry, and I'm saddened that it just continues to get worse. It's going to get worse because time after time after time, the Internet makes clear that understanding both sides of a story is a historical artifact, and events of the future will be determined by who blogs about them first. Scary shit. Imagine sharing a name with the accused, even! My mom just got denied an apartment because a woman of a different race shares her name and has a felony conviction. And that's a government system, not a social network.

A pile of folks have made clear, too, especially some well-known names in the industry that are already all over this thread, that if you express the opinion that I just did you are enabling rapists to completely gut our industry, blaming and/or silencing victims, and so forth. I made the mistake once of sharing this opinion in another high-visibility disclosure similar to this one, the thrust of which was "let's not blog about someone's guilt or innocence on any topic until they've been convicted of something regardless of gender or offense," and I was directly accused of being a rape apologist because of the context. The only reason I'm even sharing this opinion is because I'm on a throwaway, but my identity is fairly deducible if you follow my history. Another commenter was right: there is really no talking about this. It really chills me on the industry, to be entirely honest, and I've had exiting the industry on my mind since the PyCon incident involving dongles.

The story is heart wrenching, but the fact is, it may not be true. Anyone can literally say anything they want about someone and the internet will believe it without a moment's hesitation. It is downright scary.

If you were the accused and the story was contrived, you would not have much recourse.

"You agree to a body shot or a pole dance to show them "hey look I'm not homophobic, I can roll with you guys I can go along with the joke, I'm comfortable around you". "

As a straight person, I can't imagine allowing a drunk 'muscle bear gay' to do a body shot (I had to look 'body shot' up- I'm not American) on me just to show a gay crowd that I can "roll with you guys"(!!). Licking salt off someone's body seems (to me) to have sexual overtones, but this maybe different in US culture. Honest question: Do straight men/women take body shots off one another? (which should happen if this were a non sexual thing).

Seems like a very overstretched scenario, but I'm not sure if this is ok in some cultures (again, not an American, though I've lived in the USA, and so could be missing cultural nuance).

I have no comment on the original event, and I appreciate your attempt to create a scenario straight men would understand. Just saying(fwiw) that your analogy seems to be fairly unrealistic, and may end up conveying (to straight men) that this is a fairly unrealistic scenario in the first place, which would be precisely the opposite of what you intended.

Has any straight person here actually done things like this? (again, just curiosity, not arguing about the rightness of various parties' actions in the reported event).

That said, I totally agree with your (well made) "don't make sexual moves unless you have confirmation that they would be well received" point.

Personally, I wouldn't want to have a sexual relationship with anyone who works with or for me. Yes, I know it is a little bit extreme, but (imo) not worth the hassle if/when things go wrong.

Those who have been long-time HN news commentators may remember that I myself was on the receiving end of a Hacker News and Reddit 'lynch mob' for a mistake I made. It was terrible for me. Yet, I also made someone else feel terrible. Mistakes get made. I have to deal with remembering that for the rest of my life. I think about it often.

Yet, equivocating "harass you in comments, emails, and sometimes phone calls" with being sexually assaulted is... yeah.

Note that Joe has specifically said that he's radio silence on this issue. No apologies, no rebuttal, no his side of the story.