>You don't need to worry unless you're having sex with your mentees.
"He exhibited problematic behavior. He touched me inappropriately. He cornered me in an elevator. He used demeaning language and made me feel unworthy."
Zero sex involved, and these accusations can be completely true or untrue, depending on undefinable intangibles and individual interpretations.
I know someone who was written up at work for what (after the investigation) amounted to "brief, unwanted eye contact" with a co-worker. It's kind of a minefield and casual, innocent behavior can easily be misinterpreted.
If you read the blog posts of at least one of the women it's very clear that in her story sex was involved. And I doubt he's contesting that part of the story.
Point I was trying to make is it's not actually that hard to be outside of the risk zone for being cancelled.
If you're mentoring a young woman, don't suggest to share Airbnb together, don't drink alone and then initiate sex. Not doing those things makes it extremely unlikely to ever be accused of taking advantage of someone.
What if "he cornered me in the elevator" was actually "he talked to me while we were alone together in the elevator, but I have background trauma that made this extremely uncomfortable for me".
That's the point I was trying to make. One person's interpretation can be wildly different than another's interpretation of the same event. If we are going to assign preference to the interpretation that is the most damaging to both parties involved--she is traumatized, he is fired--then perhaps it is better to completely separate the sexes.
Inviting a person for sex is not harassment unless you keep doing it to a person who told you no, or its done from a position of power, but "elevatorgate" was neither of those.
Women who don't want that sex of course will tell you to stop, but other women who do want that sex will tell you to do it more and that men are too reserved. Men can't read minds so women will just keep having to say no.
Again, "elevatorgate" wasn't anything! A woman discussed one particular elevator proposition that she didn't appreciate. She didn't name and shame the guy who did it, she didn't say that people who do such things ought to be cancelled; she just said that she, personally, thinks it would be nice if guys didn't do it. The original source of the controversy was Internet commentators who were outraged at the idea that there might be a tradeoff between maximizing romantic overtures towards people who might be interested and maximizing your reputation among people who aren't interested.
(Many of those commentators then went on to exaggerate or outright lie about what the original story was, and I wonder whether it wasn't one of those distorted versions you heard, since you seem to agree that it's reasonable for someone to decide they personally don't like this kind of thing.)
"He exhibited problematic behavior. He touched me inappropriately. He cornered me in an elevator. He used demeaning language and made me feel unworthy."
Zero sex involved, and these accusations can be completely true or untrue, depending on undefinable intangibles and individual interpretations.