By “mob action” he means doing stuff like saying “I don’t think Kavanaugh should be appointed to the Supreme Court.” It means saying stuff like, “Hey, turns out Bill Cosby is a rapist”. It means saying stuff like, “After listening to his ex-girlfriend’s story I’m not going to listen to Chris Hardwick anymore.” It means saying stuff like, “After all the stories about Louis CK jerking off in front of women, I used to like his show but I can’t watch it anymore without getting creeped out.”
You know, mob justice like that.
Of course the anti-anti-harassment forces here are mostly talking about stories that involve public figures, because those are the stories we can all talk about. And the thing about public figures is that in many cases their careers depend on the whims of the public or the voters, or how their bosses perceive the whims of the public or the voters. If people don’t want to listen to Chris Hardwick anymore because they think he’s a jerk, then how is that mob justice? If advertisers don’t want to advertise on Bill O’Reilly’s show any more, then how is that mob justice?
But in reality of course most harassment and assault doesn’t involve public figures. Then we’re not talking about mob justice, are we? Because we never hear about the guy who got reprimanded by HR for making suggestive comments to the interns. We never hear about the guy who got fired for groping the receptionist. Or if we do, it’s because it happened at our workplace.
We’ve already had one person claim that if you can make it your whole career without getting accused of sexual harassment you’re lucky. I kind of doubt that, though. Because I’ve been working for quite a while, and neither I nor any of my other co-workers have been accused of sexual harassment, much less multiple times. And I’ve never seen a woman who files sexual harassment claims against all of her male co-workers either.
The genesis of this discussion was a piece in Bloomberg about how a few Wall Street types have decided that the best way to avoid being accused of harassment by women is to exclude women. Don’t hire them, don’t include them in meetings, don’t do business with them, don’t communicate with them. Freeze them out, don’t do anything with them, and then you’ll never have your innocent comments about their appearance and your innocent offers of foot massages and your innocent discussions of how your wife doesn’t understand you be crazily misinterpreted as some sort of sexual harassment.
Getting reprimanded by HR because your subordinate complained about you isn’t mob justice, is it? Or do workers have some sort of guarantee to a job? Or can HR only reprimand you after a trial? Proof beyond a reasonable doubt? No, that’s not the standard at work. You can be fired from your job because you stole from the company, even though you haven’t been convicted of that theft in court. And if your case goes to trial and there’s a not guilty verdict, does that mean the company is obligated to re-hire you? No they are not. You lost the trust of your bosses, and they fired you. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn’t enter into it. Better that 100 harassers keep their job than one innocent non-harasser get fired for harassment? Is that how things work at your company? Because I guarantee you that’s not how it works at your company.
People keep demanding evidence. Dude, Alice going to HR and complaining that Bob groped her is evidence. Her statement is evidence. Of course, his statement denying it is evidence too. And then you look at both pieces of evidence, and you decide what to do. But you don’t insist that there’s nothing you can do because there’s no evidence. This isn’t even the standard in criminal cases. In many cases the only evidence is the testimony of witnesses. And this isn’t dismissed as “no evidence”. It is evaluated by the judge and jury, and they make their determination based on their opinion of the evidence.
Let me make this as simple as possible. You own a small business. One day your employee Alice comes to you and tells you that Bob has been following her around and threatening her unless she has sex with him.
You’re saying that, since the only evidence of this is what Alice tells you, you tell Alice that there’s nothing you can do? Or I guess the smart thing to do is fire Alice, since you don’t believe her, and how can you employ a liar like that?
This has nothing to do with double standards for men and women, because the exact same standard holds if Bob comes to you and complains about Alice, or if Alice complains about Carol, or if Bob complains about David.
The standard used to be that you’d ignore Alice or Bob’s complaints, or tell them to toughen up and handle it themselves, or fire them for being a troublemaker. And so of course very few people would bother to make such complaints, because it was more likely that the complainer would get punished than the perpetrator. Especially if the complainer is a junior employee complaining about a senior employee.
So everyone complaining about mob justice, we’re mostly not talking about the consequences for celebrities and politicians and other public figures. We’re talking about consequences for the people at ordinary workplaces. Should the standard at your job be that 100 harassers are better than 1 false accuser? That senior staff should be able to threaten, harass, and assault junior staff with impunity? What’s your ideal standard here? That it’s not your business until and unless someone gets convicted of a crime in a court of law?
“On these forums”?