If you think that it's unfair to fire someone who made "an honest mistake" in exposing themselves on a video call — please ask yourself why you're so confident that the people who made the decision, who actually know and worked with this man, know less about him than you do?

This comes up a lot when harassers face consequences. Folks will hear about one incident. They'll hear there was an investigation. They'll hear the person faced consequences. And some folks will immediately assume they know the whole story and it was an isolated incident.

A few years ago, there was an incident at a conference where two employees of the same company were behaving inappropriately. They were reported; the conference told them to stop.

But then one of them got fired, and certain corners of the internet deemed this a horrid injustice.

They did not stop to ask why only one of the two was fired. They didn't consider that maybe he was already on thin ice, or that his employers investigated and found a pattern. Oh no. Clearly they had the whole story.

They wanted to believe that this guy's employer "ruined his life" over a relatively minor incident that the conference considered handled with a simple warning, because that fit their aggrieved narrative.

Their interpretation of events aligned with their greatest fear, which isn't being harassed or assaulted at work, but being caught harassing others and being shamed for "a mistake."

The same thing is happening here.

Never mind that people who actually know him and have worked with him have said this wasn't an isolated incident. Never mind that his employers, who had every reason to give him the benefit of the doubt, chose to fire him. None of that fits the "metoo has gone too far" narrative.

No responsible employer—let alone a magazine publisher—is going to publicly air a list of grievances against a dismissed employee.

But isn't it curious how when a white man is fired, we assume that list doesn't exist? But when a marginalized person is fired and alleges discrimination, people rush in to say that we don't know the whole story, and to make up possible justifications out of thin air?