Livre d'Or

Although I say that no-one DOES seem to be arguing he was clueless, in fact, that seems to be a lot close to it. Making sexually charged conversation and physical touching is bad, but the harassee was willing to let that slide, it was following her around trying to apologise and get forgiven that was what brought the matter to everyone's attention. GValentine explained exceptionally clearly and succinctly why this is not ok, but I also suspect that LOTS of people would fuck up and do something similar if they were in the wrong, they're just fortunate enough to usually not be in the wrong. And I can see why if you know and like someone who's story is "I did something stupid and tried to apologise and now everyone hates me" you will listen to that without checking how many sins are hidden under the details of "bad" and "tried". But when I first read the links, I'd assumed this was a case of "someone who will always take advantage when they can hiding in plain sight because they're popular and well-liked", which is a giant problem, especially because people with that mindset ARE unlikely to ever change. And in a case like that (eg. GoH blatently gropes GoH on stage), people are likely not to feel safe if he ever comes back, whether he knows better or not. But it's also possible for something to fall into "he SHOULD know better, but once 'don't touch people even if it's a joke' has been explained again and he gets a two year suspension, I don't actually feel less safe with him than most other people at the con". So I don't know where the flamewar started, but I wonder if it was more with "the committee had to vacillitate because they didn't have time to decide whether to enforce their policy or not", not with the original harassing.