I think it goes beyond just fabricated allegations of rape and sexual assault. A lot of men are worried that their words will be twisted or misinterpreted into meaning something sexist or demeaning, and then they get a call from HR. Rumors and a bad professional image follow... After work socializing has to be particularly troublesome now... If you do include [women], you have to be extremely careful about what you say and do so as not to offend. Not always that easy when alcohol is freely flowing...
True incident:
Company hired a regional sales executive effective on a Monday. We will call him John Doe. I was asked to meet with him and two other recently hired regional sales executives to get them all up to speed, and to generally get to know each other because we would all be part of the east coast team. On that Friday, we met at one of our offices in the conference room, and then later I took them to lunch.
During the office meeting, we went around the table introducing ourselves. Each of us gave our names, short career background, and where we were originally from. Miami, New York, Chicago, California... John Doe proceeds to single out the other woman in the room, DL, to ask her where she was from "before California". She said, "I was born in California"; so he followed up with, "OK, but where are your parents from?" It was obvious to all of us why he was asking, but she simply said again, "California."
A little bit later, as John Doe was telling us his ideas for getting started in his territory, I joked that he was going to give JK (one of the other sales executives attending this meeting) competition for top producer; to which John Doe replied that he was also going to crash all of JK's events and bring "dancing girls" to sit on all of the men's laps thereby stealing JK's business.
A bit after that, as I was discussing Fair Housing laws, John Doe announces that people from Chicago don't pay any attention to Fair Housing laws. I ignored this aside & continued, but he wouldn't let it drop until I had to sharply tell him that in Florida & in this position, he WILL follow Fair Housing laws.
On our way to lunch, during the general chit-chat, John Doe announces that the only reason he took this job was to find a rich Realtor wife.
At lunch, after he made a lame joke about none of the rest of us ordering an alcoholic drink, he again asks DL about her ethnic background. Then he asks her if her husband is also Korean. She said "no". He then comments that hopefully her husband drinks a lot at least, to put her parents at ease. I could feel her entire body just stiffen next to me as she told him very coldly that her parents don't drink at all.
We made it through lunch and went our separate ways, but before I was even out of the parking lot I was on the phone to my supervisor, who in turn called HR. I and the other two employees at the meeting were interviewed by HR; and John Doe was promptly fired.
I am 100% sure that John Doe really believes (as he claimed to HR) that his "words [were] twisted or misinterpreted into meaning something sexist or demeaning".
What do you think?