[Dalkore]

Two words: Personal Responsibility. The fact she admit she froze up would in my mind maybe give the person the benefit of the doubt that he was not trying to be purposely malicious. That is the real issue here when we want to throw around terms like "sexual assault". What matters is the intent of the person when they commit these acts not that technical some sexual contact was made that was not invited when two adults in a bar that are drunk are engaging in personal contact. Nothing in this article tells us the Joe intended to assault her, only that he made a very bad decision in making a move like that before being invited to. Maybe he felt that was were it was leading from the fact that she never pulled away during 3 personal contacts that were progressive. Maybe she froze or maybe she was just too drunk to be fully aware. You have to evaluate both sides to see if the evidence points to specific motives. That is the real issue here.

[gregd]

What was Joe's personal responsibility? Why do people insist on bringing Justine's personal responsibility into this equation but not Joe's?

He was in a position of power over her which most firms with an HR department are very specific about.

Two words: Rape Culture. Rape culture exists when we continue to question the motives of the victim. The fact that many of you continue to excuse his behavior and question hers, leads me to believe that we're going to see way too many cases of this in our lifetimes. It's no fucking wonder these things continue to happen. The sexual assault apologists in this thread is really disheartening and frankly, appalling.

[chris_wot]

Not to mention there seems to be this ridiculous misconception that if you didn't know you were assaulting someone it's not sexual assault.

That's so very, very wrong. Anyone who argues this in court has a bad lawyer, or isn't listening to their good lawyer. Sexual assault can occur even if you don't know you are doing it. It is your responsibility, as the initiator, to know whether consent has been given or not!

Groping someone in a drunken stupor is very likely to get you into a LOT of trouble. The sooner this misconception is cleared up, the better. Both for those poor unfortunates that encounter the one with the misconception, and for the person with the misconception themselves, otherwise they might find themselves in jail!

[pearjuice]

So now Joe is responsible? For her? When did she shift from being a strong independent woman who needs no man to having someone be responsible for her? I thought she was a grown up woman able to make her own choices and stand for her own actions but now she isn't responsible? I know her writing doesn't really lie about the quality of that responsibility (pouring yourself drunk in a work week, que) but she IS responsible for her own actions and everything which is achieved by this blog post is due to her own actions.

Please don't tell me that her not ever able to obtain a job is Joe's fault. Look at what she writes and smears on the Internet for the public view. Unless she goes to work at some feminist induced Ruby startup where this is accepted and even stimulated, this trail of shit smearing will haunt the search engine index pages for years.

[chris_wot]

Yeah, as the boss he does have some responsibility. And he sure as hell is responsible for his own actions.

You just don't get it, do you? If you don't ask for explicit consent, and rely on mixed signals to evaluate consent, if you get I wrong then you are still responsible. That's the personal responsibilty of the one initiating the unwanted sexual advances.

I don't care if she stripped down naked and paraded up and down the bar. This doe s not give any man the right to engage in unwanted sexual activity. Full stop. A court of law would find the same, and in fact there are quite a few surprised men who have found this out, to their cost.