I follow ESR on G+, but a distressing number of his posts are of the paranoid conspiracy type. I loved the jargon file and his general championing of Open Source, but he seems to have gone off the deep end.
esr has been knocking at the door of the laughing academy for nearly twenty years now. He's always been firmly in the "use his code, do not read his blog" camp.
Just because he’s paranoid, it does not mean he never (even if accidentally) hits on the truth. This may be a case. It certainly feels like that, see donglegate and the last high-profile defection from the Linux (kernel) development.
You know what would make this whole thing more productive for better or for worse? Data.
How hard would it be to calculate risk of harassment lawsuit by industry/position? We could even compensate for different proportions of gender in those positions and find the ones where people are more likely to file against a coworker.