Reflection and Analysis

11/13/19 - Presuming Guilt Without Proof

I recently came across a comment on one of the blogs I follow about how Aaron Ehasz was accused of misconduct by three women. I was shocked at how many people jumped to the conclusion the accusations are true without any proof beyond the word of these women that something happened, so I decided to do my own digging. This led me to the reddit thread "Aaron Ehasz's Response/Harassment Allegations Megathread II".

The first thing I want to address is the fact – yes, it is illegal to record private conversations in the state of California. However, this isn't the only type of proof a person can offer – the other is to offer up specific circumstances, something these women have not actually done. More importantly, one of the women openly says, "being suspicious of multiple women stepping forward would never make sense to me no matter how you sliced it, sorry."

Except, the reason I'm suspicious comes down to the fact they've not offered up any specific circumstances whereas the other cases I've come across actually did. Their testimonies consist of, from what I can tell...

Woman 1: My feelings got hurt a lot. Proof: I cried in the bathroom a lot.
Women 2: Aaron didn't respect my opinion as an LGBT+ woman. Proof: He didn't do what I wanted. (Of course, they also claim that he made jokes putting down her opinion, yet she never once says what these jokes were.)
Women 3: He was a mean boss: Proof: I had to watch his kid.

Regarding the whole watching the kid thing, RingofThorns said in the thread, "okay, I will say this, the whole watching his kid thing is that not a normal thing in other parts of the States? I have had loads of jobs where a boss will ask me to keep an eye on a kid or a nephew or niece or whatever while they had to step out of the office or something. That really doesn't seem like a big deal, I mean if you really want to push it maybe a slight abuse of power but in the grand scheme not really a terrible one 'oh no I have to entertain a child for a while!'"

What this person says is actually true when we're talking small businesses and start up companies. Of course, let's talk about the two double standards involved here.

The first is, the person most likely to be asked to take on this task is going to be a female employee. Is this a form of sexism? Not when there is an engrained fear in our society of sexual predators of children, but the narrative of the sexual predator almost always focuses on the male predator. I'm also hard pressed to say this is a form of sexism when the act of asking someone to keep an eye on the kid for a bit also means said person trusts you to do so.

The second is, would this behavior have been called out if this were a female boss in the same circumstances? I think the answer to this one is no; it would not have been called out. After all, we want to be supportive of women of small businesses and startup companies, but one of the things which holds women back is that they're typically the one expected to drop everything for the kid. However, it is okay to bash the man who actually drops everything for the kid for doing just that.

Since that's all I can find regarding the third woman whose come forward at this point, that leaves us with the other two.

One of the first things I noticed regarding the comments made by the two is – well, something someone else pointed out in the thread, Rockina. The first woman was in an emotional state which led to her crying in the bathrooms, but she didn't think anything was wrong with the behavior until woman two joined the company and pretty much told her – as the other person put it "that she's being abused by the men at the company and being gaslit." This in turn resulted in her believing that person unquestionably.

Actually, can we really call this multiple woman coming forward?

Even if we ignore the fact the first woman's testimony is obviously influenced by the second woman, two women don't count as multiple women. Even three don't count as multiple women, yet – there's also doubt due to there not being any specifics.