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Comment by HideousKojima | Hacker News Reader

The Billy Graham/Mike Pence rule is your best bet: don't let yourself be in any situation where a false accusation could arise. Of course you'll be accused of being a sexist/misogynist/whatever instead but that's easier to ignore or overcome than false accusations of sexual harassment.

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Hard disagree. If I decide I can have a closed-door 1:1 or a lunch 1:1 with some of my direct reports but not with any that are female, I’m inherently discriminating against them.

I’d way rather treat all employees fairly and fade a <1% chance of a false accusation than to treat employees unequally and cut that chance in half.

At what percentage risk would you change your mind on that?

Not sure. Probably 5% or so, at which point I’d pass on a leadership role rather than discriminating against some employees.

"Odd that sokoloff only has private lunches with the new kid that just graduated."

You're not saving yourself from any false accusations. The people you have closed door sessions can accuse you of SA regardless if you're attracted to them.

>I’d way rather treat all employees fairly and fade a <1% chance of a false accusation

It's a lot larger than 1%< depending on how long your career is and how many individuals you encounter over its course.

Huh? You think 1/100 people who make it to retirement have had a false sexual claim made against them publicly?

I had a Professor in college who refused to meet with me behind a a close door, and we were both male. He kindly explained that he picked this up from a former professor of his. He wanted zero possibility of a student accusing him of sexual misconduct. At the time I thought it was a bit strange, but I agreed and left the door open. 20 years later, it doesn't sound so strange anymore.

Everyone knows you can’t sexually assault someone if the door is open good rule of thumb though

> Everyone knows you can’t sexually assault someone if the door is open good rule of thumb though

It means that it's far less likely that you could do so unobserved, which makes it harder to explain away the lack of observations for a false claim.

Also, it sends a message that might be a deterrent to a false claim.

In the end, no amount of evidence will save you when they have it out for you because you're a man. There is the famous case of the German train conductor Ralf Witte and his friend, who were both falsely accused of rape by the friend's daughter. They were falsely imprisoned for a combined 10 years before the ridiculous verdict was overturned, even though the daughter was a known liar, frequently submitted contradicting testimony and they had alibi for several of the dates where the supposed rape took place. Among other things, the daughter claimed that Mr. Witte took her virginity, then later claimed that she had been enslaved in a human trafficking ring years earlier, directly contradicting her earlier statements. Any evidence not fitting the story that the judge and DA wanted to hear were simply explained away as the victim "misremembering".

That’s game theory for you. It pushes the world to shitty equilibriums like this one.

Would it be a viable solution to always have a third party present, whether your direct report is male or female?

It's one of the "possible, but not really viable" solutions I think. I'm probably not going to coordinate schedules in order to have a chaperone present for all of my meetings, not going to cancel meetings when the chaperone is sick/on PTO, not going to take the chaperone on all of my business trips, and probably not going to discuss confidential business topics (upcoming mergers, divestitures, or budget problems brought on by carrying 1/4 of our headcount as chaperones in the company, etc).

Most of these places have seccams every so many feet from each other. Team rooms could have them w/o audio so people can feel at ease to express themselves while also having a silent witness in the event of any physical aspects of the meeting were to come up --obvs there are some limits as most have a def retention of 30 days.

Don't close the door.

Had so many problems in one office that they re-architected it so every office had (at least) a large window. Complaints of hanky-panky dropped to zero.

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