<story><title>Not Just Mike Pence. Americans Are Wary of Being Alone with the Opposite Sex</title><url>https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/upshot/members-of-the-opposite-sex-at-work-gender-study.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>learc83</author><text>When I was in college I was a team lead at Best Buy for a while. I was in charge of a mostly female team of cashiers, and I was alone with them in the cash office frequently while they counted their tills.&lt;p&gt;I made one of the cashiers mad by reprimanding her, and she decided to get back at me by claiming that I grabbed her and shook her while we were in the cash office.&lt;p&gt;I never touched her, and luckily we still had video from the day she claimed it happened. After my manager reviewed the tape with her, it was clear she was lying, so she dropped her claim.&lt;p&gt;Despite what we might wish, society treats men and women differently, and women are viewed as being particularly vulnerable. If a man had accused me of something similar, no one would have cared. When a woman accused me, without that video, I would have been fired.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a complex situation. In many cases, people don&amp;#x27;t believe women when they really are assaulted, or they&amp;#x27;re force to share the blame when they&amp;#x27;re blameless. But in other cases the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction. Like many things it&amp;#x27;s primarily a function of the relative power of the victim and the accuser.&lt;p&gt;A powerful man can get away with harassing much less powerful women. But a relatively powerless man will quickly find himself in a world of hurt with just the hint of an allegation. A company doesn&amp;#x27;t want to fire their CEO without hard proof (or at least a lot of bad press), but they&amp;#x27;ll drop a low level employee quick just to avoid the 
slight possibility of looking like they aren&amp;#x27;t taking sexual harassment seriously.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not going to let that experience keep me from being alone with a women at work--I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;m very likely to run into another women like that again and avoiding being alone with a women in a modern workplace is just too difficult. But I do  understand the rationale driving people to be cautious.&lt;p&gt;I do want to make it clear that I think that the vast majority of times when a women reports assault or harassment, they&amp;#x27;re telling the truth. But I do think that in some situations where we&amp;#x27;ve started to completely shift the burden of proof to the accused (some employers, certain colleges etc..), we run the risk of creating perverse incentives and punishing an awful lot of innocent people.</text></comment>
<story><title>Not Just Mike Pence. Americans Are Wary of Being Alone with the Opposite Sex</title><url>https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/upshot/members-of-the-opposite-sex-at-work-gender-study.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cbanek</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m really amazed that the data is that close for &amp;quot;having a work meeting.&amp;quot;  (25% of women say inappropriate vs 22% of men)&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a lot higher than I was expecting.  It makes me wonder why as well.  Is it just &amp;quot;inappropriate&amp;quot; (what I imagine Mike Pence thinks)?  Does one side think the other side is trying to do something inappropriate or is trying to lead into something?&lt;p&gt;At least in many jobs I&amp;#x27;ve had, 1:1&amp;#x27;s were basically required time (though, not usually productive time).  It&amp;#x27;s crazy thinking so many working relationships people might be on edge or think of as inappropriate.&lt;p&gt;Of course, the source of the data is &amp;quot;registered voters&amp;quot;, not people who have jobs.</text></comment>