Standard disclaimers apply about ‘not all polyamory’ - there are plenty of perfectly healthy polyamorous relationships out there—but its implementation in EA seems to play a significant role in many of the examples cited.
What evidence is provided that polyamory itself played a role? Can you name a single instance that could not be replaced by, say, a single man (or for that matter, married and monogamous man who is willing to cheat) sexually pressuring or harassing women? What is the relevance of polyamory?
married and monogamous man who is willing to cheat
One of the differences is that if someone is doing something they know is illicit they’re likely to be a lot more careful about it because they’re taking a larger risk. If you’re monogamously married and proposition someone you don’t really know at a conference it might get back to your partner.
I wish people would be more careful around relationships in general, and aware of the effects of power dynamics and how their decisions might impact others, but I do expect for many people “your partner might find out, so don’t hit on someone who might not be into it because they might tell” would be a big consideration.
could not be replaced by, say, a single man …
It’s rare for the high-status men to be single, including in communities where polyamory is not practiced.
So in an alternative version of the EA community which was much more similar to the rest of the world in having very low rates of consensual non-monogamy (plus the level of scrupulosity EAs would bring to opposing cheating) I’d expect many fewer cases where someone was using their institutional power for sexual ends. I don’t think this would do much, though, to handle this kind of issue among, say, EA college students.
(Not advocating we prohibit EA leaders from being consensually non-monogamous or otherwise discourage polyamory, but trying to answer “What is the relevance of polyamory?”)
I strongly disagree with both these points. Look at some of the famous recent cases of high profile sexual predators, and many if not most were married—Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Andrew Windsor, etc. are all married. Some of these people divorced and remarried later and I don’t know if all of their accusations were all during marriages (though many clearly were), but if not, then that just undermines your second point, which also strikes me as not an especially strong correlation. Also, look at the very high rates of sexual harassment in communities (economics, philosophy academia, Hollywood, many religious communities) where most people are married.
Suppose your second point about high-status men being disproportionately married was true though. Suppose further that for whatever reason, it seemed slightly less true in EA, with lower overall marriage rates than the general population. What would you think about a post that ended with “Standard disclaimers apply about ‘not all ’ - there are plenty of perfectly healthy single men out there—but its implementation in EA seems to play a significant role in many of the examples cited.”?
(plus the level of scrupulosity EAs would bring to opposing cheating)
I’m confused by this—do you mean that you would expect people involved in EA to be more opposed to cheating than others or that this is what you would hope for in your idealized alternate version of EA? If it is the former, why would you not expect them to be more opposed to sexual harassment in any context?
I strongly disagree with both these points. Look at some of the famous recent cases of high profile sexual predators, and many if not most were married—Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Andrew Windsor, etc. are all married.
I think this is only disagreement with my first point? My second point was that in the broader world it’s rare for high-status men to be single, and giving several examples of married high-status men seems to go in that direction?
On the first point, my claim isn’t “monogamously married men don’t hit on people they shouldn’t or otherwise harass people because of the risk of it getting back to their partner”—that is clearly not true. Instead, I’m saying I’d predict that they’re less likely to, and they’re likely to try to be more attentive to whether their interaction seems to be wanted because of the higher risk to their reputation.
do you mean that you would expect people involved in EA to be more opposed to cheating than others
I think this is currently true: EA has a lot of people who care a lot about strictly following rules and sticking with commitments, and I think EAs would on average judge someone harshly for cheating than non-EAs.
why would you not expect them to be more opposed to sexual harassment in any context?
But I do think EAs are generally more opposed to sexual harassment than non-EAs?
Which again isn’t to say it doesn’t happen or even that it necessarily happens less here than elsewhere—as described in the article and in various metoo posts it does happen, and it happens more than we should accept.
So it seems you think being single is just as likely to result in a high propensity to commit sexual assault as being polyamorous, but it just happens to be the case that most high status men are not single? Is that a fair description of your views?
If so, would you equally supportive of posts about how marriage rates in EA are too low relative (assuming this was true) to the general population and how this is somehow a problem and potentially dangerous for women?
it seems you think being single is just as likely to result in a high propensity to commit sexual assault as being polyamorous, but it just happens to be the case that most high status men are not single? Is that a fair description of your views?
Not exactly, but close enough.
would you equally supportive of posts about how marriage rates in EA are too low relative (assuming this was true) to the general population and how this is somehow a problem and potentially dangerous for women?
As I wrote in my response to Kelsey I don’t think we should be discouraging polyamory. I was trying to answer your “What is the relevance of polyamory?” question, and talk about how this effect on interpersonal harm is one of the considerations in trying to figure out whether discouraging polyamory is a good idea.
Your question also conflates “single” as in “non-married” and as in “non-partnered” in a confusing way.
Your question also conflates “single” as in “non-married” and as in “non-partnered” in a confusing way.
Agreed, my bad, I meant non-partnered.
I was trying to answer your “What is the relevance of polyamory?” question, and talk about how this effect on interpersonal harm is one of the considerations in trying to figure out whether discouraging polyamory is a good idea.
I guess my point was that if the community had lower rates of romantic relationships than the rest of society, it would be a very non-remarkable thing and it would be very odd to bring up people who chose to be single or norms that are very accepting of choosing to be single on rates of sexual assault or harassment. It would also feel very offensive to me if I were a single person and there was open discussion of whether my choice to be single was somehow increasing sexual assaults either directly because I was more likely to commit assault or indirectly by promoting it as a norm. I’m all for saying offensive things that need to be said, but in this case there seems to be almost no evidence to back it up.
I get the sense that even though the arguments around polyamory and sexual assault are almost identical to the arguments around singleness by choice and sexual assault, one is treated very differently because it is perceived as weird and deviant.
If our community had elevated levels of people being single by choice, where this was of the “lots of romantic interactions, but no commitment” and not the “few romantic interactions” variety, I absolutely expect people would be pointing to it as a potential contributor to higher rates of unwanted romantic or sexual interactions.
This does not mean I would be trying to discourage people from being single by choice, but I could see us having the same conversation we are now where I talk about how I think it probably leads to a higher level of issues and that is one thing to consider in deciding whether one should discourage it.
One of the differences is that if someone is doing something they know is illicit they’re likely to be a lot more careful about it because they’re taking a larger risk.
This seems like an extremely speculative way of justifying what does indeed sound to me like prejudice. You could just as easily opine that ‘if someone is doing something they know is illicit they’re likely to be a lot more aggressive about it’ or similar.
It did make me wince to see the comment ‘Gopalakrishnan was alarmed at some of the responses. One commenter wrote that her post was “bigoted” against polyamorous people’ unironically in the same article as ‘EA’s polyamorous subculture was a key reason why the community had become a hostile environment for women’.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the full article but I think a common position one could take here is the following:
Polyamory makes sexually promiscuous behavior permissible and some might argue „virtuous“ in a way that it encourages conflicts with conventional understanding of love and sexual relationships. Polyamory might not be „bad“ in principle but could be a contributing factor to people feeling emboldened and morally justified in making sexual advances even when they are not appropriate. So the claim here is not that non-polyamorous people could not have behaved similarly but that the rate of non-polyamorous behaving in such ways is lower because of more „guilt“ and „shame“ associated with sexually promiscuous behaviors.
EDIT: After some rethinking of the formulation of the sentence above, I would change it to: So the claim here is that polyamory might attract some people prone to predatory behaviors who feel like they can justify their own attitudes and behaviors this way. It could be easier to tell yourself that what you are doing is polyamorous and that’s why other people are freaked out by what you do rather than deal with the fact that your behavior may be over-the-line.
I think this line of thinking should not be dismissed outright as I don’t have any data that could back either side on this one. My gut says there could be something to the argument but mostly in the sense that I think that polyamory could cover a heterogeneous group of people who may express more extreme positions on a spectrum here. Some or most polyamorous people may be more sensitive to such issues but a few people may really feel emboldened and justified to behave in predatory ways.
If you downvote or disagree it’s quite helpful to explain why. I think this is a reasonable comment that provides a possible answer to the question that was posed. I would argue it makes a contribution to the discourse here and deserves to be engaged with.
For me it seems really difficult to disentangle whether downvotes are just „soldier mindset“ or actually grounded in deliberate reasoning. Just downvoting without any kind of explanation seems like it should be reserved for clear cut cases of „no contribution“.
I didn’t downvote, but but found your comment (and many like it on this page) uncomfortable to read, because it strongly echoes historical negative attitudes towards other minority subgroups. One could almost rewrite it word for word about, say, gay culture:
Being gay makes sexually promiscuous behavior permissible and some might argue „virtuous“ in a way that it encourages conflicts with conventional understanding of love and sexual relationships. Being gay might not be „bad“ in principle but could be a contributing factor to people feeling emboldened and morally justified in making sexual advances even when they are not appropriate. So the claim here is not that straight people could not have behaved similarly but that the rate of straight behaving in such ways is lower because of more „guilt“ and „shame“ associated with sexually promiscuous behaviors.
...
I think this line of thinking should not be dismissed outright as I don’t have any data that could back either side on this one. My gut says there could be something to the argument but mostly in the sense that I think that homosexuality could cover a heterogeneous group of people who may express more extreme positions on a spectrum here. Some or most gay men may be more sensitive to such issues but a few people may really feel emboldened and justified to behave in predatory ways.
I suspect we both find the edited paragraphs a pretty unpleasant lens to look through, even though it doesn’t say anything that is technically false.
Thanks for the response. I agree that this might not be „pleasant“ to read but I tried to make a somewhat plausible argument that illustrate some of the tensions that might be at play here. And I think this is what the comment that I replied to asked for.
Also I would argue that the comment „holding up“ when we are switching to related phenomena (at least sex positive gay culture) could actually be an indicator of it pointing to some general underlying dynamics regarding „weirdness“ in relation to orthodoxy. Weirdness tends to leave more room for deviance from established norms which may attract people with tendencies toward rule breaking. And since being gay has become much more accepted by the mainstream and less „weird“, so has the potential for misuse by bad faith actors.
All of this should not be interpreted as me having anything against polyamory or other practices currently perceived to be weird per se, actually, I find there are very interesting arguments in favor of polyamory and I am many regards holding weird positions myself (e.g., vegan, etc.). I have friends who have polyamorous relationships. But given it’s status in the current environment, it still might be an attraction point for nefarious people simply by virtue of being „weird“ and, thus, more open for misuse.
What evidence is provided that polyamory itself played a role? Can you name a single instance that could not be replaced by, say, a single man (or for that matter, married and monogamous man who is willing to cheat) sexually pressuring or harassing women? What is the relevance of polyamory?
One of the differences is that if someone is doing something they know is illicit they’re likely to be a lot more careful about it because they’re taking a larger risk. If you’re monogamously married and proposition someone you don’t really know at a conference it might get back to your partner.
I wish people would be more careful around relationships in general, and aware of the effects of power dynamics and how their decisions might impact others, but I do expect for many people “your partner might find out, so don’t hit on someone who might not be into it because they might tell” would be a big consideration.
It’s rare for the high-status men to be single, including in communities where polyamory is not practiced.
So in an alternative version of the EA community which was much more similar to the rest of the world in having very low rates of consensual non-monogamy (plus the level of scrupulosity EAs would bring to opposing cheating) I’d expect many fewer cases where someone was using their institutional power for sexual ends. I don’t think this would do much, though, to handle this kind of issue among, say, EA college students.
(Not advocating we prohibit EA leaders from being consensually non-monogamous or otherwise discourage polyamory, but trying to answer “What is the relevance of polyamory?”)
I strongly disagree with both these points. Look at some of the famous recent cases of high profile sexual predators, and many if not most were married—Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Andrew Windsor, etc. are all married. Some of these people divorced and remarried later and I don’t know if all of their accusations were all during marriages (though many clearly were), but if not, then that just undermines your second point, which also strikes me as not an especially strong correlation. Also, look at the very high rates of sexual harassment in communities (economics, philosophy academia, Hollywood, many religious communities) where most people are married.
Suppose your second point about high-status men being disproportionately married was true though. Suppose further that for whatever reason, it seemed slightly less true in EA, with lower overall marriage rates than the general population. What would you think about a post that ended with “Standard disclaimers apply about ‘not all ’ - there are plenty of perfectly healthy single men out there—but its implementation in EA seems to play a significant role in many of the examples cited.”?
I’m confused by this—do you mean that you would expect people involved in EA to be more opposed to cheating than others or that this is what you would hope for in your idealized alternate version of EA? If it is the former, why would you not expect them to be more opposed to sexual harassment in any context?
I think this is only disagreement with my first point? My second point was that in the broader world it’s rare for high-status men to be single, and giving several examples of married high-status men seems to go in that direction?
On the first point, my claim isn’t “monogamously married men don’t hit on people they shouldn’t or otherwise harass people because of the risk of it getting back to their partner”—that is clearly not true. Instead, I’m saying I’d predict that they’re less likely to, and they’re likely to try to be more attentive to whether their interaction seems to be wanted because of the higher risk to their reputation.
I think this is currently true: EA has a lot of people who care a lot about strictly following rules and sticking with commitments, and I think EAs would on average judge someone harshly for cheating than non-EAs.
But I do think EAs are generally more opposed to sexual harassment than non-EAs?
Which again isn’t to say it doesn’t happen or even that it necessarily happens less here than elsewhere—as described in the article and in various metoo posts it does happen, and it happens more than we should accept.
So it seems you think being single is just as likely to result in a high propensity to commit sexual assault as being polyamorous, but it just happens to be the case that most high status men are not single? Is that a fair description of your views?
If so, would you equally supportive of posts about how marriage rates in EA are too low relative (assuming this was true) to the general population and how this is somehow a problem and potentially dangerous for women?
Not exactly, but close enough.
As I wrote in my response to Kelsey I don’t think we should be discouraging polyamory. I was trying to answer your “What is the relevance of polyamory?” question, and talk about how this effect on interpersonal harm is one of the considerations in trying to figure out whether discouraging polyamory is a good idea.
Your question also conflates “single” as in “non-married” and as in “non-partnered” in a confusing way.
Agreed, my bad, I meant non-partnered.
I guess my point was that if the community had lower rates of romantic relationships than the rest of society, it would be a very non-remarkable thing and it would be very odd to bring up people who chose to be single or norms that are very accepting of choosing to be single on rates of sexual assault or harassment. It would also feel very offensive to me if I were a single person and there was open discussion of whether my choice to be single was somehow increasing sexual assaults either directly because I was more likely to commit assault or indirectly by promoting it as a norm. I’m all for saying offensive things that need to be said, but in this case there seems to be almost no evidence to back it up.
I get the sense that even though the arguments around polyamory and sexual assault are almost identical to the arguments around singleness by choice and sexual assault, one is treated very differently because it is perceived as weird and deviant.
If our community had elevated levels of people being single by choice, where this was of the “lots of romantic interactions, but no commitment” and not the “few romantic interactions” variety, I absolutely expect people would be pointing to it as a potential contributor to higher rates of unwanted romantic or sexual interactions.
This does not mean I would be trying to discourage people from being single by choice, but I could see us having the same conversation we are now where I talk about how I think it probably leads to a higher level of issues and that is one thing to consider in deciding whether one should discourage it.
This seems like an extremely speculative way of justifying what does indeed sound to me like prejudice. You could just as easily opine that ‘if someone is doing something they know is illicit they’re likely to be a lot more aggressive about it’ or similar.
It did make me wince to see the comment ‘Gopalakrishnan was alarmed at some of the responses. One commenter wrote that her post was “bigoted” against polyamorous people’ unironically in the same article as ‘EA’s polyamorous subculture was a key reason why the community had become a hostile environment for women’.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the full article but I think a common position one could take here is the following:
Polyamory makes sexually promiscuous behavior permissible and some might argue „virtuous“ in a way that it encourages conflicts with conventional understanding of love and sexual relationships. Polyamory might not be „bad“ in principle but could be a contributing factor to people feeling emboldened and morally justified in making sexual advances even when they are not appropriate. So the claim here is not that non-polyamorous people could not have behaved similarly but that the rate of non-polyamorous behaving in such ways is lower because of more „guilt“ and „shame“ associated with sexually promiscuous behaviors.
EDIT: After some rethinking of the formulation of the sentence above, I would change it to: So the claim here is that polyamory might attract some people prone to predatory behaviors who feel like they can justify their own attitudes and behaviors this way. It could be easier to tell yourself that what you are doing is polyamorous and that’s why other people are freaked out by what you do rather than deal with the fact that your behavior may be over-the-line.
I think this line of thinking should not be dismissed outright as I don’t have any data that could back either side on this one. My gut says there could be something to the argument but mostly in the sense that I think that polyamory could cover a heterogeneous group of people who may express more extreme positions on a spectrum here. Some or most polyamorous people may be more sensitive to such issues but a few people may really feel emboldened and justified to behave in predatory ways.
If you downvote or disagree it’s quite helpful to explain why. I think this is a reasonable comment that provides a possible answer to the question that was posed. I would argue it makes a contribution to the discourse here and deserves to be engaged with.
For me it seems really difficult to disentangle whether downvotes are just „soldier mindset“ or actually grounded in deliberate reasoning. Just downvoting without any kind of explanation seems like it should be reserved for clear cut cases of „no contribution“.
I didn’t downvote, but but found your comment (and many like it on this page) uncomfortable to read, because it strongly echoes historical negative attitudes towards other minority subgroups. One could almost rewrite it word for word about, say, gay culture:
I suspect we both find the edited paragraphs a pretty unpleasant lens to look through, even though it doesn’t say anything that is technically false.
Thanks for the response. I agree that this might not be „pleasant“ to read but I tried to make a somewhat plausible argument that illustrate some of the tensions that might be at play here. And I think this is what the comment that I replied to asked for.
Also I would argue that the comment „holding up“ when we are switching to related phenomena (at least sex positive gay culture) could actually be an indicator of it pointing to some general underlying dynamics regarding „weirdness“ in relation to orthodoxy. Weirdness tends to leave more room for deviance from established norms which may attract people with tendencies toward rule breaking. And since being gay has become much more accepted by the mainstream and less „weird“, so has the potential for misuse by bad faith actors.
All of this should not be interpreted as me having anything against polyamory or other practices currently perceived to be weird per se, actually, I find there are very interesting arguments in favor of polyamory and I am many regards holding weird positions myself (e.g., vegan, etc.). I have friends who have polyamorous relationships. But given it’s status in the current environment, it still might be an attraction point for nefarious people simply by virtue of being „weird“ and, thus, more open for misuse.