I was responding to the part of your comment where you wrote:
> "I would say it would be extremely rare for a woman (or man) to make baseless accusations from uncertain interpretations. People who bring forward accusations are typically people who've had the same untoward thing done to them repeatedly."
To me, this sounds like your default position would believe the accuser over the accused where no evidence exists. Apologies if this is not what you were trying to convey.
I do agree that vindictive individuals are probably rare, but I do believe that they are out there and I also believe that there are lot of people in the world who look to take offense in innocent situations as I have been confidants of such people in the past and things that I interpret as innocuous can easily be interpreted in a poor light if the person has their "default" mindset to interpret things in a negative light.
And yes, your point about vindictive people is a good one, but I still think that avoiding 1:1 situations would make it much more difficult for such accusations to have as big an impact.
This is true, but it would be more difficult for the mud to stick if it hard for that person to prove you spent large amounts of time alone with them.
note: I don't believe that many people would be vindictive like that, but the impact of such an accusation is so large means that even a very small chance of it happening is something worth protecting oneself against.
So when there is no evidence one way or the other, you're saying you'd believe the accuser. This pretty much supports the grandparent's statement.
I know of a woman who has made a successful career of extorting "settlements with mutual confidentiality agreements" out of a succession of positions as a PA to multiple high level executives, with each exec settling for tens of thousands to avoid this person leveling damaging public accusations against them. She can get away with it because there is a general consensus that without evidence, the "victim" should be believed and that men are probably guilty.
> "I would say it would be extremely rare for a woman (or man) to make baseless accusations from uncertain interpretations. People who bring forward accusations are typically people who've had the same untoward thing done to them repeatedly."
To me, this sounds like your default position would believe the accuser over the accused where no evidence exists. Apologies if this is not what you were trying to convey.
I do agree that vindictive individuals are probably rare, but I do believe that they are out there and I also believe that there are lot of people in the world who look to take offense in innocent situations as I have been confidants of such people in the past and things that I interpret as innocuous can easily be interpreted in a poor light if the person has their "default" mindset to interpret things in a negative light.
And yes, your point about vindictive people is a good one, but I still think that avoiding 1:1 situations would make it much more difficult for such accusations to have as big an impact.