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What's that saying, "everything old is new again"? You will always get drama where people are involved, where sex is involved, where the tangles of attraction and current rules and what is or is not permissible are involved. I think all parties in Elevatorgate were to blame to some extent - the guy should have the basic cop-on to recognise that was not the time or place to chance it (the next day when all parties were rested and he could make an attempt at getting to know her a little would have been better), Watson should not have blown it up to the extent she did.
"I am fucking sick and tired of going to conferences and getting hit on by guys who think atheist women are sex-mad because atheist spaces are majority male, men do want sex more than women, and their basic unevolved view is that atheist women will have dumped the attitudes to casual sex along with all the religious rules around sex" is probably the background to her reaction which explains why she took it so far, but this was part of a wider and longer problem than the "guy hit on me in the elevator way too late at night when all I wanted was some sleep" occasion.
Here's some quotes from a random internet search:
None of these are from sites that detail sexual harassment or abuse. So I think the assumption that it doesn't happen is not entirely correct. It is rare, though, and it is true most males and females are at the conference for different reasons. Same as they also in many other places for different reasons, and still couple meet and form relationships at the same place. I don't think there's any place outside of specially designated blind date meetups where a low-rank male could timidly approach a high-rank female and not be forcefully repulsed with strong disgust reaction. And since high-rank females have zero reasons to visit such designated places, there's no place at all.
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Watson was entirely in the wrong. As long as it is the case that men, by and large, must initiate in sexual or romantic encounters for them to happen, it must not be ipso facto wrong for them to initiate such encounters (unless perhaps you are a Shaker). At the time Watson made her complaint, conferences were absolutely not places where such approaches were categorically off limits. And as long as men are not mind-readers nor even perfect body-language readers, approaches will happen when the woman is not receptive, and the man has not done anything morally wrong by making such an approach; his punishment should be limited to rejection. Not public shaming, not shaming of the entire community (as happened here), and certainly not ejection from a venue, firing, blacklisting, and all the rest of things that have come along since.
He did do something "wrong", in that the flirting game with strangers has guidelines and he skipped the first half. If he had approached her in a bar in public to start the interaction he is doing so with other people around. Then you can go through the flirting dance while your target has some safety. Its why first online dates should always take place in public places and the like. This is not new information. You escalate but allow easy safe outs. Some pressure yes, but with a safety valve. If at the bar after buying a drink, flirting, reading her body language and so on, he offers to walk her to her room, then in the lift asks her up for coffee he has built the social edifice his sexual request can lean on. At each step both parties are signalling interest.
He didn't do anything criminal but he did make a social faux pas and being shamed is an appropriate response. That's how social conventions become social conventions in the first place.
This is what the flirting game is for, to gauge and slowly escalate interest, you might be able to short circuit that and jump to the end, but you are taking a risk in doing so. Whether you are publicly shamed by having a drink thrown in your face or something else, it is a risk you take when trying to speed run.
Sure you might be in bed with her in 5 minutes flat, but you also might mistime the lift glitch exploit and doom your entire run.
It is also necessary to do things like this to encourage the others...
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