[wpietri]

I don't think it's fair to hold witnesses and reporters responsible for the consequences of telling the truth. The only person responsible for the speech that was reported are the people speaking.

I can't quite understand your last sentence, but if you are looking for people telling women that they are irresponsible for not speaking up, just read the comments on this recent discussion of the Steubenville rape:

http://www.underthegunreview.net/2013/03/18/henry-rollins-co...

There are quite a number of people there telling women that they are morally obligated to speak up when something bad happens.

[camelite]

Of course it's fair to hold "witnesses" and "reporters" responsible for the consequence of what they say.

The person responsible for the speech that was reported are the people speaking; the person responsible for the reportage of the speech is the person who did the reporting. The former resulted in a woman being uncomfortable while the latter lost a father of three his livelihood.

You've got a problem with apposite context and proportionality. A techie at a conference making a dongle joke is not a gay biker in a bar telling anal virginity jokes, is not the frat-boy gang rape of an unconscious teen girl.

True, they are all "bad things happening" - but that is such a large category that to act as if or argue any specific response is justified due to it belonging in that category is likely to lead to damaging over-reactions.

In the context of corporate public relations and harassment lawsuits in the workplace, which became relevant the second the tweet was sent, what she did was an extremely damaging over-reaction - which given the woman's background and role we can conclude was committed with malice aforethought. Your entire argument is based upon wildly inappropriate contextualisation.

[wpietri]

I see. So in your view, she should have inquired how many children he had?

Is she also obligated to consider that in reporting the incident to conference staff? Or mentioning it to a friend? After all, either one of those could also conceivably result in the guy losing his job.

For the record, I should say that I agree that dongle jokes are not rape, and have never said otherwise.

[camelite]

i) The children don't come into it because she should have known that her actions were wildly disproportionate even if there were no dependents involved. Do you agree or disagree that her response lacked proportionality?

ii) Again, I'll point out that she did not in fact just report the incident to the conference staff. Any hypothetical scenario in which her response was not to publicise her grievance misses the main reason she deserves the harsh judgement she is receiving.

iii) You're presenting completely irrelevent scenarios as if they're relevant. Is the standard for responsible behaviour in the case of the gang rape of an unconscious teen different from the standard for responsible behaviour in the case of hearing a mildly risque joke by a guy in the row behind you at a tech conference? Is it very different? Is is very very very different? Is is perhaps so very different as to be utterly irrelevant?

Like I said, you have a problem with presenting apposite context and addressing proportionality. Try talking about what actually happened.