I think education/training helps in general—eg, I think I’m seeing a lot of fear of false accusations or men’s lives being ruined. Getting real information about the reality of rape, how it effect survivors, how common it is...all helps.
In the spirit of education/training, I’m sharing my low-confidence model around this so others can critique it.
I think in addition to false accusations, our society’s rules around consent are inconsistently defined and inconsistently enforced. So when a man hears about a case like the ones you handle, it’s natural to wonder whether it represents some sort of misunderstanding or super-draconian enforcement. Most guys are paranoid about being caught in a situation like that, so the possibility occupies a lot of mental real estate for us.
I think for most/all of the cases you deal with, this paranoia is unjustified, and the complaint is being made in good faith. And if it were somehow possible to demonstrate this in a convincing way, people would believe survivors more readily.
There is a tension because on the one hand, we don’t want survivors to blame themselves. On the other hand, to address the paranoia fully, you’d want to explore and eliminate the possibility that there was some kind of misunderstanding (due process to determine culpability, essentially). But the very process of doing that exploration could cause the survivor to blame themselves, which could worsen their mental health. (Being believed could also be important for mental health by itself.)
“Misunderstandings” are also a tricky category because they allow the possibility of continued boundary pushing, and create a shield for bad actors to hide behind.
Assuming this model is true, I’m not exactly sure what the solution is.
One piece of the puzzle might be: Even in the hypothetical where you dotted every possible i and crossed every possible t, getting affirmative verbal consent for every individual muscle movement as though you were in some sort of parody video—if she feels violated afterwards, something went wrong.
Not necessarily in the sense of you being culpable, but in the sense that “feeling violated” is by itself a very bad outcome, and you want to learn from this to avoid causing bad outcomes in the future. An analogy would be a civil engineer who follows every regulation when building a bridge, and then the bridge falls down anyway. A good engineer’s first thought is to study the heck out of that collapsed bridge, not protest that they followed the regulations.
Maybe it’s a Kathy Forth type situation where your post mortem ends up finding that everything you did was fairly reasonable—but the post mortem was still worth doing.
I think this mental model could be useful for spotting bad actors. If someone is clearly not “studying the heck out of that collapsed bridge”, and their bridges keep collapsing, it’s time suspend their license as an engineer, even if there’s a possibility they are following the regulations.
It’s also helpful to keep in mind if someone shares their story with you. A collapsed bridge is always something to take seriously, regardless of whether regulations were followed.
I additionally think it would be helpful to make the consent rules more consistently defined and enforced, and more consistent across time, but that seems less tractable.
(Again, I appreciate critical feedback, I realize this topic is fraught)
I’m really sorry to read about your experiences and the experiences of the people you’ve helped :-(
Women don’t want to feel that they were violated, we’re not chomping at the bit to call misunderstandings rape.
This is useful to hear, thanks.
I’m sorry so much of your mental real estate is taken up by what I believe to be an irrational fear, but given how much I personally suffered...it’s hard for me to be sympathetic.
Understandable! I wasn’t trying to garner sympathy. My goal was to address the paranoia problem because I thought it would be instrumentally useful for addressing various problems you’ve brought up in this thread, related to self-blame and being believed. You mentioned education/training could help, so it seemed relevant.
All else equal, win/win solutions seem best. I think people tend to reflexively frame this issue in terms of zero-sum conflict, but I suspect there are actually significant positive-sum opportunities.
Sorry for clarity, there are 40 − 50 people who if you had to guess you’d think are sexual assaulters/rapists who you think are likely to do it again who are part of the EA community? That’s what you’re saying?
Does being non-publicly banned from events meet your criteria?
How does a decentralised community manage this? ie if CEA bans people from events but they still go to parties, what’s the recourse there?
Thank you for your time, please don’t feel obliged to answer this, I know it’s your job and this is effectively free work.
Thanks for your insight. I probably think your comments have been some of the most concerning to me in this whole set.
Can I ask some questions?
What concrete changes would you recommend?
It sounds to me like you think that sexual harassment in the bay area EA/tech scene is 10-100x worse than you’d expect. Is that about right?
Do you see patterns of bad behaviour that you think could be corrected with certain resources?
In the spirit of education/training, I’m sharing my low-confidence model around this so others can critique it.
I think in addition to false accusations, our society’s rules around consent are inconsistently defined and inconsistently enforced. So when a man hears about a case like the ones you handle, it’s natural to wonder whether it represents some sort of misunderstanding or super-draconian enforcement. Most guys are paranoid about being caught in a situation like that, so the possibility occupies a lot of mental real estate for us.
I think for most/all of the cases you deal with, this paranoia is unjustified, and the complaint is being made in good faith. And if it were somehow possible to demonstrate this in a convincing way, people would believe survivors more readily.
There is a tension because on the one hand, we don’t want survivors to blame themselves. On the other hand, to address the paranoia fully, you’d want to explore and eliminate the possibility that there was some kind of misunderstanding (due process to determine culpability, essentially). But the very process of doing that exploration could cause the survivor to blame themselves, which could worsen their mental health. (Being believed could also be important for mental health by itself.)
“Misunderstandings” are also a tricky category because they allow the possibility of continued boundary pushing, and create a shield for bad actors to hide behind.
Assuming this model is true, I’m not exactly sure what the solution is.
One piece of the puzzle might be: Even in the hypothetical where you dotted every possible i and crossed every possible t, getting affirmative verbal consent for every individual muscle movement as though you were in some sort of parody video—if she feels violated afterwards, something went wrong.
Not necessarily in the sense of you being culpable, but in the sense that “feeling violated” is by itself a very bad outcome, and you want to learn from this to avoid causing bad outcomes in the future. An analogy would be a civil engineer who follows every regulation when building a bridge, and then the bridge falls down anyway. A good engineer’s first thought is to study the heck out of that collapsed bridge, not protest that they followed the regulations.
Maybe it’s a Kathy Forth type situation where your post mortem ends up finding that everything you did was fairly reasonable—but the post mortem was still worth doing.
I think this mental model could be useful for spotting bad actors. If someone is clearly not “studying the heck out of that collapsed bridge”, and their bridges keep collapsing, it’s time suspend their license as an engineer, even if there’s a possibility they are following the regulations.
It’s also helpful to keep in mind if someone shares their story with you. A collapsed bridge is always something to take seriously, regardless of whether regulations were followed.
I additionally think it would be helpful to make the consent rules more consistently defined and enforced, and more consistent across time, but that seems less tractable.
(Again, I appreciate critical feedback, I realize this topic is fraught)
I’m really sorry to read about your experiences and the experiences of the people you’ve helped :-(
This is useful to hear, thanks.
Understandable! I wasn’t trying to garner sympathy. My goal was to address the paranoia problem because I thought it would be instrumentally useful for addressing various problems you’ve brought up in this thread, related to self-blame and being believed. You mentioned education/training could help, so it seemed relevant.
All else equal, win/win solutions seem best. I think people tend to reflexively frame this issue in terms of zero-sum conflict, but I suspect there are actually significant positive-sum opportunities.
Thanks for your critical feedback!
Sorry you’re feeling tired and overwhelmed—please take care of yourself!
Sorry for clarity, there are 40 − 50 people who if you had to guess you’d think are sexual assaulters/rapists who you think are likely to do it again who are part of the EA community? That’s what you’re saying?
Does being non-publicly banned from events meet your criteria?
How does a decentralised community manage this? ie if CEA bans people from events but they still go to parties, what’s the recourse there?
Thank you for your time, please don’t feel obliged to answer this, I know it’s your job and this is effectively free work.