“Owen expressed sexual and / or romantic interest in women who were younger and less influential than he was.”
“In at least one case, Owen did not stop making repeated unwanted attempts at contact after being asked to do so”
I’ll address 1 here and 2 in another comment.
For 1, why is expressing romantic or sexual interest unethical? Why is this worthy of a two-year ban?
I imagine that the power difference is an important thing to the OP. I imagine, given that this is a common argument, that it’s because they felt uncomfortable saying no because he was powerful and if they said no, he could then harm them with his power.
I’d first like to say that this particular dynamic, let’s call it the Scorned Powerful Lover dynamic, totally does happen, and we should figure out ways to prevent it.
However, never expressing romantic or sexual interest if there’s a power difference seems like a poor solution. Lots of people would like to date somebody who has more power than them (e.g. wouldn’t it have been horrible for the world if Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz or Bill and Melinda Gates couldn’t have dated because there was a power difference?).
Also, it will lead to essentially classism. Lower power people are going to be scared to ask the higher power person out because of exactly the same fears. Higher power people can’t ask people out for the above described reasons. This will then lead to not being able to date outside of your class. Poor people can’t date rich people. Less successful people can’t date more successful people. This seems bad.
I don’t know the particular solution, but the current solution of banning people who’ve asked out somebody with less power and didn’t exhibit any Scorned Powerful Lover dynamics seems suboptimal. I think we can find something better.
Especially given that in this particular case, nobody is claiming that Owen was retaliatory. So that’s direct evidence that he didn’t do the Scorned Powerful Lover dynamic, so there was nothing bad, consequentially, that happened.
I’ll write another argument about this in a separate comment so people can vote on particular arguments instead of the whole package. I wrote other reasons for believing that expressing romantic interest is not unethical, even if there’s a power difference, here and here
“Owen expressed sexual and / or romantic interest in women who were younger and less influential than he was.”
That seems like it’s missing important components? Going back to where this originally became public in the Time Magazine article:
A third described an unsettling experience with an influential figure [1] in EA whose role included picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs. After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel. When she arrived, she says, “he told me he needed to masturbate before seeing me.”
In this case, going just on the claim in the article, it’s not just that the woman was younger and less influential, but also that the job she was interviewing for put her up at Owen’s house.
I agree that this is part of what was problematic.
[Edited to remove an attempt to give a little further context on the error … I’m torn between a desire to provide transparency, and a desire not to repeat the original errors of oversharing, and on reflection I think this was veering a bit too much to the latter compared to the amount of value it was providing on the former.]
I view power differentials, workplace dating, etc., as something that’s risky/delicate, but it can be fine if done carefully. Even if something goes poorly in one instance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a person did something immoral.
However, when there’s a pattern of several people complaining, that’s indicative of some kind of problem.
It means likely that either a person was particularly likely to make people really uncomfortable with their advances when they made them, or that the person made a ton of advances in professional contexts (and a small portion of them left people unusually uncomfortable). I think both of these would be bad, for different reasons.
(Why is bad to make tons of careful advances? I feel like it’s bad because it reflects not taking seriously the view that one’s prior should be against it being a good idea, especially if your professional context is about having impact rather than a means for getting romance or sex.)
There seems to be two main accusations here:
“Owen expressed sexual and / or romantic interest in women who were younger and less influential than he was.”
“In at least one case, Owen did not stop making repeated unwanted attempts at contact after being asked to do so”
I’ll address 1 here and 2 in another comment.
For 1, why is expressing romantic or sexual interest unethical? Why is this worthy of a two-year ban?
I imagine that the power difference is an important thing to the OP. I imagine, given that this is a common argument, that it’s because they felt uncomfortable saying no because he was powerful and if they said no, he could then harm them with his power.
I’d first like to say that this particular dynamic, let’s call it the Scorned Powerful Lover dynamic, totally does happen, and we should figure out ways to prevent it.
However, never expressing romantic or sexual interest if there’s a power difference seems like a poor solution. Lots of people would like to date somebody who has more power than them (e.g. wouldn’t it have been horrible for the world if Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz or Bill and Melinda Gates couldn’t have dated because there was a power difference?).
Also, it will lead to essentially classism. Lower power people are going to be scared to ask the higher power person out because of exactly the same fears. Higher power people can’t ask people out for the above described reasons. This will then lead to not being able to date outside of your class. Poor people can’t date rich people. Less successful people can’t date more successful people. This seems bad.
I don’t know the particular solution, but the current solution of banning people who’ve asked out somebody with less power and didn’t exhibit any Scorned Powerful Lover dynamics seems suboptimal. I think we can find something better.
Especially given that in this particular case, nobody is claiming that Owen was retaliatory. So that’s direct evidence that he didn’t do the Scorned Powerful Lover dynamic, so there was nothing bad, consequentially, that happened.
I’ll write another argument about this in a separate comment so people can vote on particular arguments instead of the whole package. I wrote other reasons for believing that expressing romantic interest is not unethical, even if there’s a power difference, here and here
That seems like it’s missing important components? Going back to where this originally became public in the Time Magazine article:
In this case, going just on the claim in the article, it’s not just that the woman was younger and less influential, but also that the job she was interviewing for put her up at Owen’s house.
[1] Confirmed in the EV UK board statement on Owen’s resignation to be referring to Owen.
(Disclosure: married to Julia Wise.)
I agree that this is part of what was problematic.
[Edited to remove an attempt to give a little further context on the error … I’m torn between a desire to provide transparency, and a desire not to repeat the original errors of oversharing, and on reflection I think this was veering a bit too much to the latter compared to the amount of value it was providing on the former.]
I view power differentials, workplace dating, etc., as something that’s risky/delicate, but it can be fine if done carefully. Even if something goes poorly in one instance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a person did something immoral.
However, when there’s a pattern of several people complaining, that’s indicative of some kind of problem.
It means likely that either a person was particularly likely to make people really uncomfortable with their advances when they made them, or that the person made a ton of advances in professional contexts (and a small portion of them left people unusually uncomfortable). I think both of these would be bad, for different reasons.
(Why is bad to make tons of careful advances? I feel like it’s bad because it reflects not taking seriously the view that one’s prior should be against it being a good idea, especially if your professional context is about having impact rather than a means for getting romance or sex.)