It is extremely difficult to determine base rates for something like sexual harassment, because it’s an offence that allows for ambiguity and plausible deniability, because there’s room for retaliation, etc, and it will strongly depend on how much people trust the bodies they are reporting to.
What we can do is look at the responses to the incidents that do get raised, and the experiences of victims, and judge whether or not they live up to the standards we want to see in a group that takes sexual harrasment seriously. I do not think the grades are very good on this front.
Only 3 months ago we had a writeup detailing a shockingly terrible response to sexual harrassment by one of the most prominent EA orgs out there. The response is far worse than anything I’ve ever seen at any organisation I’ve ever been in. This indicates to me that the environment is nowhere the high standards that should be aimed for.
Regardless of the actual base rates, the question that matters the most is whether there is room for improvement, and I think it’s blindingly obvious that the answer is yes.
I disagree. The community response to that case was pretty unified. Were there any comments saying that the organisation behaved well? So while it may tell us things about the specific organisation, I don’t think it should cause us negatively update us on the community.
Do you think that mosts orgs are like the org in that case? [I said i wouldn’t comment on individual cases, so I retract this]
As an aside, do you thin that EA is unusually bad here? Or would you expect this kind of thing to happen in many orgs/workplaces, but be unacceptable there too?
There is the wider community, and then there is the professional ecosystem. I would put forward the following: at the point where you are reading a detailed account of sexual harassment supported by two independent investigations and a settlement, it is very easy to write a supportive comment. Especially for those with approximately nothing to lose by offering support. The real test isn’t “when presented with a publicly documented case that has strong evidence, can you say something nice?” It’s “within the professional ecosystem, if instances of potential or substantiated sexual harassment occur in your own organisation, can you respond appropriately.” The second is much harder, but it is also the thing that actually matters for the health of the community. And then we can try to extend this to wider community-building (what happens within your city group? What happens at your events?), these things also matter a lot, but it can really vary by location, group, time, etc.
I hope this doesn’t come across as ungrateful! I’m eternally thankful for the kind words I received, and those words did help me a lot. But the thing that would have helped much more was if the incident had been handled correctly by the appropriate people. The fact that it was handled poorly by so many people for so long has to indicate a systemic issue. The question is then whether CEA is uniquely bad here, or whether their systemic issues echo something that is also true of other organisations in the space. In my personal experience, it really depends and it really varies. I do think CEA is weirdly/uniquely bad, for many reasons (including its convoluted org structure and the complicated process of dissolving EV over the past year or so, and its other unique histories), but I’d also guess some organisations have similar issues and know of some that have had worrying incidinces. Others don’t, to my knowledge and they are just very well run from what I can tell. There are also many exceptional organisations in this community! It all gets quite complicated, really.
In terms of off-line actions taken: Personally, I was very touched by the incredible response of some organisations to my post behind the scenes. While I can’t talk about them, there were some legitimately exceptional and above-and-beyond responses. So anyways, I think regardless of the forum’s debates, there are people who are very sad about this problem the community has (whether or not it is better or worse than baseline), and there are people putting in significant effort to improve things. There are a lot of people who care.
It is extremely difficult to determine base rates for something like sexual harassment, because it’s an offence that allows for ambiguity and plausible deniability, because there’s room for retaliation, etc, and it will strongly depend on how much people trust the bodies they are reporting to.
What we can do is look at the responses to the incidents that do get raised, and the experiences of victims, and judge whether or not they live up to the standards we want to see in a group that takes sexual harrasment seriously. I do not think the grades are very good on this front.
Only 3 months ago we had a writeup detailing a shockingly terrible response to sexual harrassment by one of the most prominent EA orgs out there. The response is far worse than anything I’ve ever seen at any organisation I’ve ever been in. This indicates to me that the environment is nowhere the high standards that should be aimed for.
Regardless of the actual base rates, the question that matters the most is whether there is room for improvement, and I think it’s blindingly obvious that the answer is yes.
I disagree. Thecommunityresponse to that case was pretty unified. Were there any comments saying that the organisation behaved well? So while it may tell us things about the specific organisation, I don’t think it should cause us negatively update us on the community.Do you think that mosts orgs are like the org in that case?[I said i wouldn’t comment on individual cases, so I retract this]As an aside, do you thin that EA is unusually bad here? Or would you expect this kind of thing to happen in many orgs/workplaces, but be unacceptable there too?
There is the wider community, and then there is the professional ecosystem. I would put forward the following: at the point where you are reading a detailed account of sexual harassment supported by two independent investigations and a settlement, it is very easy to write a supportive comment. Especially for those with approximately nothing to lose by offering support. The real test isn’t “when presented with a publicly documented case that has strong evidence, can you say something nice?” It’s “within the professional ecosystem, if instances of potential or substantiated sexual harassment occur in your own organisation, can you respond appropriately.” The second is much harder, but it is also the thing that actually matters for the health of the community. And then we can try to extend this to wider community-building (what happens within your city group? What happens at your events?), these things also matter a lot, but it can really vary by location, group, time, etc.
I hope this doesn’t come across as ungrateful! I’m eternally thankful for the kind words I received, and those words did help me a lot. But the thing that would have helped much more was if the incident had been handled correctly by the appropriate people. The fact that it was handled poorly by so many people for so long has to indicate a systemic issue. The question is then whether CEA is uniquely bad here, or whether their systemic issues echo something that is also true of other organisations in the space. In my personal experience, it really depends and it really varies. I do think CEA is weirdly/uniquely bad, for many reasons (including its convoluted org structure and the complicated process of dissolving EV over the past year or so, and its other unique histories), but I’d also guess some organisations have similar issues and know of some that have had worrying incidinces. Others don’t, to my knowledge and they are just very well run from what I can tell. There are also many exceptional organisations in this community! It all gets quite complicated, really.
In terms of off-line actions taken: Personally, I was very touched by the incredible response of some organisations to my post behind the scenes. While I can’t talk about them, there were some legitimately exceptional and above-and-beyond responses. So anyways, I think regardless of the forum’s debates, there are people who are very sad about this problem the community has (whether or not it is better or worse than baseline), and there are people putting in significant effort to improve things. There are a lot of people who care.
As I’ve said, I don’t intend to discuss individual cases in the comments to this piece.
You said, “The community response to that case was pretty unified,” which was my jumping off point.
You’re right. My bad. I retract it.