> At the beginning of the year, a coworker on my team asked me out on a date. I was hesitant, as I knew better than to mix my professional and romantic life, but in an effort to not step on any toes inadvertently, I accepted the invitation. The date went fine: a bit awkward, mainly just small talk, but nothing notable. Afterwards, she texted me saying that she had decided that she wasn’t comfortable seeing me outside of work, which I said was fine.

Agreeing to a date that you're hesitant about in order not to step on any toes strikes me as incredibly female-coded behavior. Learning that the writer went on a date with a woman updates me more in the direction that they're a lesbian than that they're a man.

Anyway, the rest of the story does seem like a pretty standard account of an unscrupulous woman manipulating white-collar workplace HR anti-sexual-harassment procedures in order to get the system to harm someone they dislike. I've certainly heard plenty of accounts of this kind of weaponization of HR happening to men, and of course the ideological basis behind HR anti-sexual-harassment-policies is feminist advocacy intended to protect women from predatory (or perceived-as-predatory) men. But American civil rights law is generally worded in a gender-neutral way and there's nothing preventing a woman from bringing malicious sexual harassment accusations against a woman they went on a date with.

On the other hand, the fact that at the end of their account they mention "credible legal theories on retaliation, gender-based disparate treatment, and disability retaliation" but not some kind of queer-related disparate treatment, updates me back toward thinking they might be male rather than a lesbian. I'm willing to be agnostic about the OP's gender, and it's not morally relevant anyway.

(And of course, I'm aware that we're only seeing one side of the story; I honestly do find this account to be a plausible instance of a malicious sexual harassment accusation, and a lot of American sexual harassment law as applied to corporate environments really does encourage kafkaesque treatments of the accused. Still, if I were actually passing judgement about this rather than just commenting on a forum thread, I'd want to hear what the other person had to say.)