Former Scientific American editor Bora Zivkovic still doesn't understand why he lost his job over those sexual harassment allegations.

In 2013, three women—Monica Byrne, Hannah Waters, and Kathleen Raven—spoke out against him, saying he had a habit of reaching out to young female writers, complimenting their work and talking about sex.

According to them, Zivkovic routinely made sexual jokes, referred to one woman as a concubine, gave "lingering" hugs, and told one woman he loved her in a Twitter DM. He generally admitted to the allegations, apologized and promptly "resigned voluntarily"—first from his website ScienceOnline and then Scientific American, which had investigated some of the charges the year before.

This February, Zivkovic spoke out about the allegations for the first time, telling Cosmopolitan they were just social misunderstandings.

"This is a small community, and we were all friends or trying to become friends," he told the magazine. "We were all together building a new, more egalitarian world of online science writing. We all met in social settings and had drinks together. Nobody felt this was a working environment."

Zivkovic says the "concubine" comment, for example, was an "innocuous joke." He says he and Waters were smoking outside a bar when he bought a rose for his wife, who was inside. When the salesman gave him two, he says he joked—to the salesman, not Waters—"What's that, one for the wife, one for the concubine?" As for the Twitter DM, Zivkovic says the word love can convey many things, including admiration and friendship. Hugs, he notes, were common in the community.

There was nothing outright sexual, he's saying, just jokes that could be taken the wrong way, if one were so inclined. What Zivkovic neglects to address, and indeed, fails to comprehend, is how uncomfortable that grey area made those women feel.

"What makes this so hard to talk about—my experience and Monica's—is that it may not look like sexual harassment. There was no actual sex or inappropriate touching. Bora wasn't vulgar toward me, nor did he even directly announce his interest," Waters wrote in 2013. "It was all reading between the lines, which made it easy for me to discount my own experience. Instead, I did my best to ignore my discomfort to avoid conflict, or otherwise convinced myself that I was reading too far into it. How vain! To imagine all men want to have sex with me!"

How vain! To imagine all men want to have sex with you!, Zivkovic says in 2015.

Image via Twitter. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com