Back then, I thought it was a troubling accusation — but not in the way it was meant to be. Aggressive arguing is now a crime against womanhood (and somehow related to sexual misconduct)? Are we back to the notion that women are too fragile for rough verbal combat with men and must be handled with special care?

But it turns out that the Machado story is a bit more complicated. There is, indeed, a recording of her interaction with Díaz (33 minutes into the audio of the event). It was posted on an anonymous Twitter account on June 3 as evidence that Machado “lied” about her encounter with Díaz.

Whether or not Machado knowingly lied, there is no doubt that the audio contradicts her account. There is no “bullying,” misogynistic rage, or public humiliation. In a feature on Machado and the Díaz controversy on New York magazine’s Vulture blog, Lila Shapiro wrote that colleagues for whom she played the recording “thought Díaz sounded perfectly polite; didactic, but appropriately so, for a lecture.”

There are two possibilities here. The first is that Machado blatantly, deliberately lied in order to smear Díaz and/or support Clemons. The second is that Machado sincerely believes Díaz was verbally abusive to her, which means that her perception of their interaction is, to put it charitably, unreliable. (Given that Machado herself mentioned that “there’s a recording” in her tweetstorm, the second seems more likely.) Either way, Machado is in the wrong, and in a sensible world she would apologize.

Instead, Machado has dug in her heels (albeit conceding that she is “not a victim of Junot Díaz” but merely “a female writer who had a weird interaction with him”). In a new tweetstorm on June 6, she complained about being “gaslit” by people who said the audio did not verify her account, and suggested that those who think so “aren’t the best at reading subtext.” She insisted that “the audio doesn’t reflect body language or atmosphere” or capture the tension in the room, evidenced by “the occasional nervous laughter that pops up from the audience.” There is in fact laughter from the audience at a couple of points, but “nervous”? If anyone here is “gaslighting,” it’s Machado herself (“who are you going to believe, me or that lying audio?”). Imagine the derisive reaction if, say, Sarah Huckabee Sanders had tried “it’s the body language” spin to explain away an audio that blatantly contradicted her claim of abusive behavior by a journalist.

At this point, it should be obvious that whatever the merits of the sexual misconduct claim against Díaz (about which I have decidedly mixed feelings: I’m not sure what “forcibly kissed” means these days, beyond “kissed without asking for explicit permission”; I don’t think hitting on a grad student while presenting at a workshop is very professional or commendable, but I also don’t believe it merits Weinsteining; lastly, I hate the infantilization of grown women encapsulated in the phrase “wide-eyed 26 year old”), the charge that he verbally abused Machado is utter nonsense.

But that’s not how it has been treated.

Machado’s June 6 Twitter thread defending her story, for instance, got a lot of sympathetic responses (and only a few critical ones). On Vulture, Shapiro tiptoed around acknowledging that Machado’s story was untrue, but then fell back on parallels to Machado’s fiction to suggest that sometimes, a truth visible only to one person is still true and that Machado was trying to “unearth the misogyny hidden in plain sight.” A Vox piece by Constance Grady about Díaz’s exoneration by MIT hedged and hid behind weasel words:

Díaz’s response is lengthy (about 15 minutes long) and defensive, but in audio form it seems to come across as slightly exasperated and coolly condescending, rather than the “blast of misogynist rage” Machado described.

The tone of the article, starting with the headline (“A month after accusations of sexual misconduct, Junot Díaz is more or less unscathed”), also strongly implies that Díaz is not an innocent man who has restored his good name, but a guilty man who got away with it.

Meanwhile, the New York Times report on Díaz being cleared briefly mentioned the audio and the “accusations that [Machado] lied about the nature of the exchange,” but quoted Machado as saying that “she stands by her characterization of the back and forth as ‘contentious and fraught.’”

So, kids, what have we learned today?

Assuming that Machado was sincere in her account of her interaction with Díaz, this incident confirms a fact highly relevant to #MeToo: people’s memories of emotionally charged encounters are filtered through personal and ideological biases and grievances. (Machado told Shapiro that at the time, she had just begun to “radicalize” as a feminist and “had a super-tightened awareness, a heightened level of anger, and an increased sensitivity to male bullshit.”) And those filters can be substantially distorting. The Machado brand of feminism is absolutely deadly to intellectual engagement between women and men. How can such engagement happen if men know that any polemical sparring with a woman could open them up to charges of “misogynist rage” or at least sexist condescension?

3. Apparently, the new post-#MeToo rules when women accuse men of sexist misconduct are:

If it’s he said/she said, believe the woman.

If there is actual evidence refuting the woman’s account, treat it as “he said/she said” or as “her truth.” (Or maybe put your hands over your ears and chant very loudly: believe the women believe the women believe the women.)

And if the man is investigated and cleared, always treat him as an abuser who got a break.

Update, 6/22:

There is some interesting new material on the New Pop Lit News blog on Monica Byrne, the novelist, playwright, and activist who has accused Díaz of “verbal violence” toward her at a dinner. First of all, it looks like there’s no corroboration from people who should have witnessed the incident. Second, Byrne is a serial accuser who has made charges of sexual harassment against three other men, all under murky circumstances. Most recently, in a June 6 thread lamenting Boston Review’s leniency toward Díaz and discussing her history of harassment by seemingly progressive men, Byrne posted a screenshot of a Twitter direct message in which Duke theater studies professor Jaybird O’Berski (who produced one of her plays in the past) joked about her “shaved up bush”; she claimed that her production opporutnities with O’Berski’s stage company were contingent on willingness to put up with such abuse. Byrne conveniently omitted the fact that she had engaged in, and initiated, equally raunchy banter with O’Berski in open Twitter exchanges.

In the same thread, Byrne also begged Díaz’s presumed victims to come forward and claimed that she already had dozens of accounts of his bad behavior — including unwanted touching, groping, and propositioning of students. She asserted that those accounts, some of which she admitted were “secondhand” or “hearsay,” could not be made public for various reasons. So far, no one else has come forward to accuse Díaz.

In other words, according to Byrne, it is the responsibility of institutions to remove a man from his post on the basis of second- and third-hand reports from accusers who will not come forward with their stories — not even with their identities protected.

You be the judge.

Update/correction, 7/10:

The original version of this article included a reference to a tweet by Carla Trujillo recounting an experience in a workshop in which Diaz got furious at her after she politely challenged “how he was allowing a male to critique a woman.” I took that to mean that Trujillo felt it was inappropriate to allow a man to critique a woman; a reader, George Locke, pointed out that she was probably taking an issue with the manner in which the man was allowed to critique the woman. I contacted Trujillo to clarify, and she replied that it was in fact the latter. I regret the error, and thank George for the correction.