I assume there's nothing magical about a conference environment. In some cases the alleged harassment is occurring at bars where everyone is drinking alcohol. In another case it's a long-standing online chat relationship.
Where is the Harvey-esque influence peddling? I mean in that case is was more like straight-up blackmail.
Sometimes a guy will flirt with a girl and the feeling is not mutual. This happens quite frequently and it's not illegal or even wrong. Being an influential or powerful man (or woman!) doesn't make this wrong or illegal unless there is something more to it...
Q: Would I do $thing if this were at my office?
A: No.
Done.
What you do and don't do should not be tied entirely to work relation situations.
This is why we go to the trouble of defining a "sexual harassment" standard in the workplace, which holds coworkers to a higher standard of care than what is expected outside of the workplace.
Obviously we are not supposed to live our lives interacting with every other human purely professionally.
Dating is messy, complicated business. People get hurt. There is no magic ritual or length of time that will prevent that.
But I think the ivory tower condescension that if only men would follow this or that prescriptive approach is extremely damaging and even perpetuates the problem.
Really that's it. It applies everywhere. It applies to non-sexual harassment as well.
How far outside your social sphere are you supposed to be meeting or getting introduced to actual people who are interesting to you as a peer and potential romantic partner?
So it sounds like it's back to what I said earlier -- there's basically no social environment related to the tech industry where you think it would be alright for someone who happens to be influential in the tech sector to flirt with someone? But this seems to absolutely not be the definition of sexual harassment under the EEOC.
To try to remove some of the moral righteousness from it, lets assume we're talking about a single male, no wife or girlfriend, who is a well-known tech executive and blogger.
Literally three comments up from your own comment:
> If you are the keynote speaker of a conference, DO NOT flirt with other attendees or other coworkers, regardless of the line of report.
It appears like that moment had a lasting and significant impact on Michelle. [1] The repercussions as Michelle tells them are certainly terrible. I feel badly for Michelle and want to understand better what she experienced from her perspective.
That was certainly unwanted sexual contact. Was it sexual assault? Possibly. Was is sexual harassment? Possibly! All unwanted sexual contact is not actually automatically sexual harassment. [2]
[1] - https://www.buzzfeed.com/doree/woman-accuses-robert-scoble-o...
I feel like there's something I'm missing because, as recounted, his actions had such a strong and lasting impact to Greer.
Maybe this Scoble dude is just a nuclear style creep and just having to sit next to him is torturous. But that seems highly unlikely. I've never met the guy! I don't recall ever hearing him speak or watching a video of him even. So...
If I'm understanding the story, 4 people at a hotel bar drinking, one touching someone's leg. And what that led to, or possibly even caused -- I think it's fair to describe it as incredibly damaging? Obviously we want to avoid people being hurt like that. So, we construct social mores and civil law to try to prevent it from happening, and punish a small subset of offenders very harshly.
I'm a little stunned by all of it.
I think it would be great if it did. But then you would have to significantly restructure conferences to conform. Many of the official events of a conference are blatant violations of workplace behavior.
Now of course this is an absurd statement, but are their elements of truth in it? Quinn's account is Scoble and another woman were "making out" and that both were drunk. There was no question at all of Scoble's capacity to consent but Quinn felt she or her friend was able to determine the woman (who she doesn't know and apparently didn't talk to) was not able to consent, and claim that Scoble was minutes from raping her.
So, in short, a dumpster fire.