Not well researched at all, but it seems there is some issue in the EA community with unwanted romantic/sexual advances. What I do not get is how people get into these situations. I thought it was common sense not to make a romantic/sexual advance until you have pretty strong evidence that it might be welcomed? Before one makes a sexual/romantic suggestion, at least one, and ideally several of the below should be true:
The person repeatedly seeks you out and initiates contact
The person either looks intently into your eyes or acts shy (not scared—it should not be hard to tell the difference!)
The person touches you
The person has said yes to hang out on several occasions non-romantically (e.g. coffee, lunch, going for a walk during the day, etc.)
You have asked a common friend if the person might be interested and gotten a probability >70%
This is a non-exhaustive list, probably lots of other signs I am missing—this is just off the top of my head there is tons written about this (unsurprisingly)
Also, this person is not someone you have much power over. If you do have power, you need to act much more carefully and ideally not act at all—it might be net negative in expectation. This is because some of these signs might appear because of the power differential and not the attraction (although that can get more complicated!).
If you make a romantic/sexual advance despite none of the above being true you are asking for trouble. Especially in a mostly professional space like EA I think people should think hard about making advances without any of the “established” signs. And even if you get rejected if some of the signs are there, you are less likely to face backlash as the person probably likes you as a friends or something and will give you leeway.
This is inspired by a lot of recent discussion on “but isn’t it ok for people to make an advance—if they didn’t nobody would even be in romantic relationships”. Others might have raised it but what I see missing is discussion of this crucial, pre-romantic stage and how that should update one’s romantic priors.
Not well researched at all, but it seems there is some issue in the EA community with unwanted romantic/sexual advances. What I do not get is how people get into these situations. I thought it was common sense not to make a romantic/sexual advance until you have pretty strong evidence that it might be welcomed? Before one makes a sexual/romantic suggestion, at least one, and ideally several of the below should be true:
The person repeatedly seeks you out and initiates contact
The person either looks intently into your eyes or acts shy (not scared—it should not be hard to tell the difference!)
The person touches you
The person has said yes to hang out on several occasions non-romantically (e.g. coffee, lunch, going for a walk during the day, etc.)
You have asked a common friend if the person might be interested and gotten a probability >70%
This is a non-exhaustive list, probably lots of other signs I am missing—this is just off the top of my head there is tons written about this (unsurprisingly)
Also, this person is not someone you have much power over. If you do have power, you need to act much more carefully and ideally not act at all—it might be net negative in expectation. This is because some of these signs might appear because of the power differential and not the attraction (although that can get more complicated!).
If you make a romantic/sexual advance despite none of the above being true you are asking for trouble. Especially in a mostly professional space like EA I think people should think hard about making advances without any of the “established” signs. And even if you get rejected if some of the signs are there, you are less likely to face backlash as the person probably likes you as a friends or something and will give you leeway.
This is inspired by a lot of recent discussion on “but isn’t it ok for people to make an advance—if they didn’t nobody would even be in romantic relationships”. Others might have raised it but what I see missing is discussion of this crucial, pre-romantic stage and how that should update one’s romantic priors.