Sorry, but this is part of a pattern. You may feel OK with treating this as an isolated incident, but it's not. It deserves to be lumped into a category of common responses to stuff like this: victim blaming and derailing.
It does approximately nothing to prevent a situation like this from happening. It puts the onus on a woman to deal with other people's utterly unacceptable behavior. It erases the responsibility not just of the aggressor, but everyone else in the room with her who did nothing.
I'm sure it's pure coincidence this also divests the commenter from any obligation to talk seriously about these issues.
How many more caveats do I need? I even specified that the concept was up for debate and that it wasn't the victim's responsibility to do anything.
everyone else in the room with her
Unless everyone else in the room was attending to the interaction of her and that one guy, this is hyperbole and doesn't help. If I'm in a conversation on one side of the room, do you really expect me to run over and forbid someone putting their hand on someone else's leg, despite not being aware of their previous conversation?
Anyway, if you want to talk about derailing, how about we talk about how this stupid large thread is focusing almost entirely on the preamble of the essay, and not the core theme that women aren't treated as being intellectually capable by the group? A large thread that is inflamed by throwing abuse around? How does this help the author resolve her article's thematic problem, being that her mind isn't respected?
I'm addressing the fact that merrit's comment has no merit, and it's safe to pigeonhole it as worthless. The debate in this thread is whether or not it's helpful, and I weighed in, trying to talk about it at a somewhat higher level.
As far as "everyone else in the room" is concerned, that's absurd— it's a false dichotomy, excluded middle, etc. Rather than just write it off, think about it in good faith for like five minutes. How you would approach an ambiguous situation like this?
How about you ask? Apologize if you've intruded? You can all laugh it off — "ha, sorry, I thought you might be one of those guys" — and now you've broken the ice.
Nobody's asking you to be Superman zipping around the room, let alone the entire world. But there's a world of difference between that and just keeping an eye out once in a while.
Incidentally, in my mind, this counts as a productive conversation and not derailment— if more dudes showed less tolerance for this kind of bullshit, the world would be a better place.
On the 'everyone else in the room', you're effectively blaming some people for not responding to something they were unaware of, is my point.
In any case, look at what happened. There was the initial hug, and a subtle signal 'no' was sent'. There was the hand on the leg and a clearer 'no' was sent, at which point it stopped. What is there to intrude upon? As an observer, at want point do you launch into the defense? Stop your conversation because two people over there have initiated flirting, and you have no idea one way or the other that one of them isn't into it?
Breaking into the start of other people's nascent flirting makes you an arsehole. And "I thought you were one of those guys" isn't going to help the mood - it's basically saying to the other party "hey, I thought this guy was a creep". Wait until you have more information that one party isn't interested.
Similarly, with the encounter in the article, jumping in at a point before she was able to resolve it in the article is also robbing her of her own power. She resolved it pretty quickly and moved on to other things. Stepping in with an "is this guy bothering you" before she's even had time to send a clearer nonverbal 'no'? Someone has to be pretty helpless before you jump the gun that quickly.
It does approximately nothing to prevent a situation like this from happening. It puts the onus on a woman to deal with other people's utterly unacceptable behavior. It erases the responsibility not just of the aggressor, but everyone else in the room with her who did nothing.
I'm sure it's pure coincidence this also divests the commenter from any obligation to talk seriously about these issues.