Some stuff that frustrates me about the ‘dating within EA’ conversation
This post is related to ‘Consider not sleeping around within the community’, to the smattering of (thankfully heavily downvoted) posts unironically saying there should be less polyamory in EA, and to various conversations I’ve had about this, both in public and private. It’s less polished and more of an emotional snapshot. I feel extremely triggered/activated by this and I’m a bit wary that I’m earning myself a reputation as the unhinged-rants-about-polyamory woman, or that I’m sort of arguing against something that isn’t substantively “there”.But I also think that emotions are information, and since these conversations are nominally about “making EA good/safe for women”, my perspective as a woman matters.
The meta-level
-We are all talking past each other. Some people are talking about power dynamic relationships. Some are talking about conflicts of interest. Some are talking about polyamory. Some are talking about casual sex or dating within EA. I’ve even seen one comment saying ‘no-one should date anyone within EA’. I’m likely part of the problem here, but yeah, this is aggravating.
-I’m generally very wary of somewhat-vague admonishments addressed to a large group, with the assumption that the people who “need to hear” the admonishment will accurately self-select in and those to whom it doesn’t apply will accurately realise that and ignore it. Like, consider a feminist inveighing against vaguely how men are “trash” and/or need to “do better”. I’m pretty against this kind of rhetoric (unless it comes with a *hyper-specific* call to action or diagnosis of the bad behavior), because I think that this will cause anxiety for conscientious, neurotic, feminist men who wouldn’t hurt a fly (and sometimes queer women and NBs, if it’s relating to attraction to women), whereas abusive and/or misogynistic men are just not going to care.
Similarly, I do not think men will correctly self-assess as socially clumsy or as having lots of power. Owen Cotton-Barratt’s statement is instructive here: he completely failed to see his own power. (Also, incidentally, if I understand right he was monogamously partnered and wasn’t deliberately trying to hit on the women he made uncomfortable, so a ‘don’t sleep around in the community’ norm wouldn’t have helped, here). I think the advice ‘avoid hitting on people if you’re socially clumsy’, if taken seriously, would lead to lots of kind, reasonable men neurotically never hitting on anybody—even in appropriate social contexts when those advances would be welcome—whereas boundary-pushers and predators won’t care.
This sort of thing is especially dangerous in an EA context, since EAs take moral injunctions very literally and very seriously. I think this is why I feel defensive about this.
-These conversations are supposed to be about “making EA better/safer for women” whereas (a) it’s not clear that most of the posts are even by women (some are anon, and lots of the comments are from men) and (b) as a woman who dates people in the community, this just feels deeply counter-productive and Not Helpful. It’s possible that there are norms that are good for women overall but not me specifically, but I think this is far from established and I’m still not crazy about being collateral damage.
The object level
-I do think that if I had taken some people’s views about dating within the community seriously, I wouldn’t have the relationships I do. I want to defend the attitudes and behaviours that led to me and my partners forming positive relationships with each other.
-I think this kind of critique implies a view of the world I disagree with. (I) it implies that a large part of the problems in EA come from social clumsiness, or maybe social clumsiness + power. I’m just more cynical about this: while I don’t want to minimize the harm done by ‘off’ comments and awkward advances, I’m more concerned about stuff like rape, assault, or ongoing abuse (in workplaces, homes or relationships). And there have been plenty of allegations of those things!
I don’t subscribe to an overly black-and-white view of people where the are either bad villains or good well-meaning citizens, but I don’t think that you end up raping or abusing people through ‘social clumsiness’.
(Ii) it implies that power is inevitable and relationships are not. Like, one way to prevent the unsavory interaction of power + relationships is to dissuade relationships. Another is to try to distribute power more equitably and give more power to people who are newer to the community, lower within organisational hierarchies, and who are structurally disadvantaged by things like gender. Similarly, in situations where a relationship conflicts with a professional role, I’d strongly want to prioritize preserving the relationship over preserving the role, just because for most people romantic relationships are very important and meaningful, whereas work relationships are instrumental.
I also think this kind of attitude takes responsibility and agency away from men? It assumes that drama and offence is just a necessary consequence of sexual interaction, rather than *something that can be mitigated* when people develop a feminist consciousness (and other progressive consciousnesses like anti-racism) and work on their empathy and social and emotional skills. The view ‘to solve gender problems we need to stop/limit sex’ seems both very pessimistic and kind of sexist against men. Rather than telling men not to date or even not to have casual sex, I’d rather tell men (and other genders! Other genders aren’t exempt from this!) to try to build the maturity to handle these encounters well, while empowering women so that they feel they can push back directly against minorly-inappropriate behaviour, and be supported in the case of suffering majorly inappropriate or harmful behaviour.
This whole controversy reminds me a bit of the different approaches that governing bodies have taken to minimizing the risks that people run if they use financial instruments that they don’t fully understand.
The US government, maybe in particular the SEC, have historically taken the approach of banning poor people from using them under the assumption that rich people must’ve gotten rich somehow, so they probably know how to use any and all financial instruments. Also they can afford to lose more money.
Some crypto sites instead use quizzes that you can try as often as you want but where you have to get all answers right before you can use a product. People could just answer at random, but I suppose the effect is that most people actually read the questions and memorize the answers. Some of these quizzes fall short in quality though.
I’ve heard that you can now become accredited investor by passing similar tests rather than just by being rich. That seems amazing to me!
I don’t know if this will really work in practice, but perhaps it’s worth a try? Some EAs who are expert in this develop informative high-quality quizzes. To be accepted into conferences and such you have to pass the latest version of the quiz. (Unchanged questions can be saved and prefilled the next time.)
That’ll probably not filter any strategic predators, but the people who were just always too busy with their jobs to read up on feminism will learn the basics and adjust their behavior.
Plus, there is the hypervigilant group who read about these controversies and then feel so insecure about their social skills that they hardly dare to meet new people anymore or try anything new at all. If they ace the quiz, it can give them some confidence that the conference is not going to be a minefield of unknown unknown rules that they might trip over at any moment and traumatize others and end their own careers.
I strongly agree with you: that kind of discourse takes responsibility away from the people who do the actual harm; and it seems to me like the suggested norms would do more harm than good.
Still, it seems that the community and/or leadership have a responsibility to take some collective actions to ensure the safety of women in EA spaces, given that the problem seems widespread. Do you agree? If yes, do you have any suggestions?
Some stuff that frustrates me about the ‘dating within EA’ conversation
This post is related to ‘Consider not sleeping around within the community’, to the smattering of (thankfully heavily downvoted) posts unironically saying there should be less polyamory in EA, and to various conversations I’ve had about this, both in public and private. It’s less polished and more of an emotional snapshot. I feel extremely triggered/activated by this and I’m a bit wary that I’m earning myself a reputation as the unhinged-rants-about-polyamory woman, or that I’m sort of arguing against something that isn’t substantively “there”.But I also think that emotions are information, and since these conversations are nominally about “making EA good/safe for women”, my perspective as a woman matters.
The meta-level
-We are all talking past each other. Some people are talking about power dynamic relationships. Some are talking about conflicts of interest. Some are talking about polyamory. Some are talking about casual sex or dating within EA. I’ve even seen one comment saying ‘no-one should date anyone within EA’. I’m likely part of the problem here, but yeah, this is aggravating.
-I’m generally very wary of somewhat-vague admonishments addressed to a large group, with the assumption that the people who “need to hear” the admonishment will accurately self-select in and those to whom it doesn’t apply will accurately realise that and ignore it. Like, consider a feminist inveighing against vaguely how men are “trash” and/or need to “do better”. I’m pretty against this kind of rhetoric (unless it comes with a *hyper-specific* call to action or diagnosis of the bad behavior), because I think that this will cause anxiety for conscientious, neurotic, feminist men who wouldn’t hurt a fly (and sometimes queer women and NBs, if it’s relating to attraction to women), whereas abusive and/or misogynistic men are just not going to care.
Similarly, I do not think men will correctly self-assess as socially clumsy or as having lots of power. Owen Cotton-Barratt’s statement is instructive here: he completely failed to see his own power. (Also, incidentally, if I understand right he was monogamously partnered and wasn’t deliberately trying to hit on the women he made uncomfortable, so a ‘don’t sleep around in the community’ norm wouldn’t have helped, here). I think the advice ‘avoid hitting on people if you’re socially clumsy’, if taken seriously, would lead to lots of kind, reasonable men neurotically never hitting on anybody—even in appropriate social contexts when those advances would be welcome—whereas boundary-pushers and predators won’t care.
This sort of thing is especially dangerous in an EA context, since EAs take moral injunctions very literally and very seriously. I think this is why I feel defensive about this.
-These conversations are supposed to be about “making EA better/safer for women” whereas (a) it’s not clear that most of the posts are even by women (some are anon, and lots of the comments are from men) and (b) as a woman who dates people in the community, this just feels deeply counter-productive and Not Helpful. It’s possible that there are norms that are good for women overall but not me specifically, but I think this is far from established and I’m still not crazy about being collateral damage.
The object level
-I do think that if I had taken some people’s views about dating within the community seriously, I wouldn’t have the relationships I do. I want to defend the attitudes and behaviours that led to me and my partners forming positive relationships with each other.
-I think this kind of critique implies a view of the world I disagree with.
(I) it implies that a large part of the problems in EA come from social clumsiness, or maybe social clumsiness + power. I’m just more cynical about this: while I don’t want to minimize the harm done by ‘off’ comments and awkward advances, I’m more concerned about stuff like rape, assault, or ongoing abuse (in workplaces, homes or relationships). And there have been plenty of allegations of those things!
I don’t subscribe to an overly black-and-white view of people where the are either bad villains or good well-meaning citizens, but I don’t think that you end up raping or abusing people through ‘social clumsiness’.
(Ii) it implies that power is inevitable and relationships are not. Like, one way to prevent the unsavory interaction of power + relationships is to dissuade relationships. Another is to try to distribute power more equitably and give more power to people who are newer to the community, lower within organisational hierarchies, and who are structurally disadvantaged by things like gender. Similarly, in situations where a relationship conflicts with a professional role, I’d strongly want to prioritize preserving the relationship over preserving the role, just because for most people romantic relationships are very important and meaningful, whereas work relationships are instrumental.
I also think this kind of attitude takes responsibility and agency away from men? It assumes that drama and offence is just a necessary consequence of sexual interaction, rather than *something that can be mitigated* when people develop a feminist consciousness (and other progressive consciousnesses like anti-racism) and work on their empathy and social and emotional skills. The view ‘to solve gender problems we need to stop/limit sex’ seems both very pessimistic and kind of sexist against men. Rather than telling men not to date or even not to have casual sex, I’d rather tell men (and other genders! Other genders aren’t exempt from this!) to try to build the maturity to handle these encounters well, while empowering women so that they feel they can push back directly against minorly-inappropriate behaviour, and be supported in the case of suffering majorly inappropriate or harmful behaviour.
This whole controversy reminds me a bit of the different approaches that governing bodies have taken to minimizing the risks that people run if they use financial instruments that they don’t fully understand.
The US government, maybe in particular the SEC, have historically taken the approach of banning poor people from using them under the assumption that rich people must’ve gotten rich somehow, so they probably know how to use any and all financial instruments. Also they can afford to lose more money.
Some crypto sites instead use quizzes that you can try as often as you want but where you have to get all answers right before you can use a product. People could just answer at random, but I suppose the effect is that most people actually read the questions and memorize the answers. Some of these quizzes fall short in quality though.
I’ve heard that you can now become accredited investor by passing similar tests rather than just by being rich. That seems amazing to me!
I don’t know if this will really work in practice, but perhaps it’s worth a try? Some EAs who are expert in this develop informative high-quality quizzes. To be accepted into conferences and such you have to pass the latest version of the quiz. (Unchanged questions can be saved and prefilled the next time.)
That’ll probably not filter any strategic predators, but the people who were just always too busy with their jobs to read up on feminism will learn the basics and adjust their behavior.
Plus, there is the hypervigilant group who read about these controversies and then feel so insecure about their social skills that they hardly dare to meet new people anymore or try anything new at all. If they ace the quiz, it can give them some confidence that the conference is not going to be a minefield of unknown unknown rules that they might trip over at any moment and traumatize others and end their own careers.
What do you think? Could that work?
I strongly agree with you: that kind of discourse takes responsibility away from the people who do the actual harm; and it seems to me like the suggested norms would do more harm than good.
Still, it seems that the community and/or leadership have a responsibility to take some collective actions to ensure the safety of women in EA spaces, given that the problem seems widespread. Do you agree? If yes, do you have any suggestions?