Although you haven’t asked for advice, and imply that you’re on your way out of the EA community, I am going to offer some advice anyway. I don’t think the issue you describe is particularly uncommon here, and individuals with somewhat similar issues may be reading this thread.
This isn’t the advice I would give after most first or even second complaints, but I think it is warranted after a string of incidents significant enough to warrant a year-long EAG ban (and probably at least some version of it was warranted at some juncture before that).
I submit that, if you were to return to in-person EA spaces,[1] you really need to employ some bright-line rules to prevent future harm while in those spaces. For instance: No flirting. No touching women.[2]
Based on your narrative, it seems that your best efforts at avoiding harm while employing more flexible standards are not succeeding. If following judgment-based standards are not avoiding harassment,[3] then I don’t see another viable option other than bright-line rules. And those will have the usual downside of bright-line rules—they will rule out some behavior that would actually have been OK.
Although you characterize the situation as the community deciding “to value the comfort of some subset of women over guys like me” (emphasis added), I would characterize it as the community valuing fellow community members’ right to bodily integrity and right to a harassment-free experience over your interest in continuing to interact with women in ways a number of them find inappropriate and/or offensive enough to have reached out to Community Health.
These sorts of rules are necessary in some professional spaces for some actors (for instance, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals). It seems that they would be necessary for you in EA spaces.[4] While I’m not suggesting that a bright-line rule against flirting is necessary for EA spaces in general, I think it may often be necessary for those who have a history of harassing behavior.
I recognize that creates a burden for you that others do not have to bear. But it does not impair your ability to participate in the core of what EA is. And some differential burden is unavoidable in life.
For example, there are a number of reasons that are not a person’s fault that nonetheless can make them unsuitable to drive a motor vehicle (or do so only under limited conditions) -- extreme clumsiness, severe anxiety disorders, blindness, seizure disorders, etc. People are morally culpable (and expose themselves to criminal liability) if they recklessly [5] keep driving even after it is clear that their condition renders their continued driving an unacceptable risk to other road users. Ultimately, it is not enough that these individuals care about avoiding harm, they have to stop driving at least once it is clear enough that no lesser alternative will protect other road users’ rights.[6] Based on your post, I think you may be in a roughly analogous situation here.
I recognize that it may be difficult to discern exactly what counts as an “EA space,” and am cognizant of the downsides of extending EA “jurisdiction” as it were too far into people’s private lives. I’d suggest that anything that happens in the city of an out-of-town EA event, or on the day of an in-town one, is very likely to involve an EA space. This definition is doubtless underinclusive. For instance, I would consider most parties with a bunch of people who are EAs to be “EA spaces,” similar to how I would usually treat a party with a bunch of people from the same office/employer as a work-related event for harassment purposes.
I also recognize that the question of interactions with EAs outside out “EA spaces” is outside the scope of this response.
What rules you should follow outside EA spaces is largely beyond the scope of this comment. It is likely that you should follow similar rules in at least some contexts—e.g., where the other party is on the job, and thus their ability to extricate themselves from an uncomfortable situation is limited by that status. On the other hand, certain other social spaces may warrant less restrictive rules.
Lightly adapting from the Model Penal Code, recklessness exists when an individual “consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that” a certain kind of harm “will result from his conduct.”
Readers who live in areas with good public transportation may underestimate how severe the impact of losing the ability to drive is for most people in the United States.
Yes, I agree. And I did this, but I still got several complaints. At this point, I am not sure how I could be more careful than I was at the end. I’m not exaggerating. I wasn’t flirting at all or touching people (I asked my friends before I did, and didn’t touch anyone else).
“I recognize that creates a burden for you that others do not have to bear. But it does not impair your ability to participate in the core of what EA is. And some differential burden is unavoidable in life. “
Although you haven’t asked for advice, and imply that you’re on your way out of the EA community, I am going to offer some advice anyway. I don’t think the issue you describe is particularly uncommon here, and individuals with somewhat similar issues may be reading this thread.
This isn’t the advice I would give after most first or even second complaints, but I think it is warranted after a string of incidents significant enough to warrant a year-long EAG ban (and probably at least some version of it was warranted at some juncture before that).
I submit that, if you were to return to in-person EA spaces,[1] you really need to employ some bright-line rules to prevent future harm while in those spaces. For instance: No flirting. No touching women.[2]
Based on your narrative, it seems that your best efforts at avoiding harm while employing more flexible standards are not succeeding. If following judgment-based standards are not avoiding harassment,[3] then I don’t see another viable option other than bright-line rules. And those will have the usual downside of bright-line rules—they will rule out some behavior that would actually have been OK.
Although you characterize the situation as the community deciding “to value the comfort of some subset of women over guys like me” (emphasis added), I would characterize it as the community valuing fellow community members’ right to bodily integrity and right to a harassment-free experience over your interest in continuing to interact with women in ways a number of them find inappropriate and/or offensive enough to have reached out to Community Health.
These sorts of rules are necessary in some professional spaces for some actors (for instance, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals). It seems that they would be necessary for you in EA spaces.[4] While I’m not suggesting that a bright-line rule against flirting is necessary for EA spaces in general, I think it may often be necessary for those who have a history of harassing behavior.
I recognize that creates a burden for you that others do not have to bear. But it does not impair your ability to participate in the core of what EA is. And some differential burden is unavoidable in life.
For example, there are a number of reasons that are not a person’s fault that nonetheless can make them unsuitable to drive a motor vehicle (or do so only under limited conditions) -- extreme clumsiness, severe anxiety disorders, blindness, seizure disorders, etc. People are morally culpable (and expose themselves to criminal liability) if they recklessly [5] keep driving even after it is clear that their condition renders their continued driving an unacceptable risk to other road users. Ultimately, it is not enough that these individuals care about avoiding harm, they have to stop driving at least once it is clear enough that no lesser alternative will protect other road users’ rights.[6] Based on your post, I think you may be in a roughly analogous situation here.
I recognize that it may be difficult to discern exactly what counts as an “EA space,” and am cognizant of the downsides of extending EA “jurisdiction” as it were too far into people’s private lives. I’d suggest that anything that happens in the city of an out-of-town EA event, or on the day of an in-town one, is very likely to involve an EA space. This definition is doubtless underinclusive. For instance, I would consider most parties with a bunch of people who are EAs to be “EA spaces,” similar to how I would usually treat a party with a bunch of people from the same office/employer as a work-related event for harassment purposes.
I also recognize that the question of interactions with EAs outside out “EA spaces” is outside the scope of this response.
I am assuming from your framing that all the complaints have involved women.
Given the number of reports to Community Health, I feel confident that this is the correct characterization.
What rules you should follow outside EA spaces is largely beyond the scope of this comment. It is likely that you should follow similar rules in at least some contexts—e.g., where the other party is on the job, and thus their ability to extricate themselves from an uncomfortable situation is limited by that status. On the other hand, certain other social spaces may warrant less restrictive rules.
Lightly adapting from the Model Penal Code, recklessness exists when an individual “consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that” a certain kind of harm “will result from his conduct.”
Readers who live in areas with good public transportation may underestimate how severe the impact of losing the ability to drive is for most people in the United States.
Yes, I agree. And I did this, but I still got several complaints. At this point, I am not sure how I could be more careful than I was at the end. I’m not exaggerating. I wasn’t flirting at all or touching people (I asked my friends before I did, and didn’t touch anyone else).
“I recognize that creates a burden for you that others do not have to bear. But it does not impair your ability to participate in the core of what EA is. And some differential burden is unavoidable in life. “
Yeah I don’t totally disagree here.