Adding to the points here... we're supposed to feel bad if someone "just doesn't know better", and you know what?

Frequently I do feel bad, thinking that may be the case. But that's not a defense and not a reason to not protect people.

But, moreover... https://twitter.com/seananmcguire/status/1275649843407532034

...I would point out that someone who "doesn't know better" and who is isn't corrected, firmly, about the behavior that is tolerated, learns exactly the wrong lesson, and instead of being a first-time violator who doesn't know better they are now a pattern abuser who knows wrong.

Guys who "don't know better" are a mixture (and I mean, frequently within the same individual) of confused, awkward guys who picked up a lot of bad lessons from their peers and pop culture, and dedicated harassers who have observed that what they do is tolerated and accepted.

Oh, we are so quick to worry about those pesky "mixed signals" that may be sent by a woman touching her hair, exhibiting a facial expression, or doing anything friendly in the vicinity of a guy, but the real mixed messages are what we send by tolerating the intolerable.

Now if we remove first-time harassers from spaces where they transgress, is it going to be the case that gee, we wind up kicking out a guy who really would do better if you just told him? Sure! But ten other guys watching just learned the same lesson without getting kicked out.

And if we do this regularly enough that it becomes normal and expected, we stop getting new people coming in who are confused about is accepted.

Everybody hates the Affluenza Defense, where some gawdawful rich prick who never met a consequence in his life stands before a judge and his lawyer argues "My client had no reason to think he'd be held accountable so it wouldn't be fair to hold him accountable now, would it?"

We all, everybody reading this, WE ALL get how that leads to both a miscarriage of justice in the case in which it's applied and also creates future injustice as it normalizes the notion that if someone doesn't already know better then it's no fair teaching them.

We get it when it's some rich prick but a lot of us immediately forget that logic when it comes to interpersonal interactions in professional or hobby/fandom circles.

And you know, if we manage to successfully shift norms from letting things slide "because maybe they don't know better" to enforcing decent behavior *so that people can't help learning better*... the transition period will leave some people feeling cheated.

Too bad.

They feel cheated because they are sure they never would have behaved the way they did if they had had any reason to believe they'd suffer consequences for it. Some combination of fear and also recognizing that what the community is serious about punishing is probably bad.

Grant that they're right, though, and that's still not a reason to let things slide, because letting things slide only exacerbates the situation which, according to them, led to their abusive behavior. The argument that they wouldn't have done it proves the need for the change.

TL;DR - harassers who wouldn't have done it if they had known there would be actual consequences are an argument for those consequences, not an argument against them.