I appreciate the thoughts from the comments below, but I don’t think I misunderstood the core issues. SpeedyOtter does say he continues being “touchy” and “flirty” outside EA—he’s just (mostly) stopped attending EA events. My concern is that he’s not saying “I’ve recognised this behaviour is harmful and stopped,” but rather “I’ve moved it to other communities.”
I did read the “Evidence of caring” section, and I can see he feels genuine sadness about the situation. However, planning to continue behaviours that repeatedly make others uncomfortable, even after seeing the harm they cause, seems concerning to me. And throughout I still felt there was a general framing of boundary issues as an inevitable trade-off between different social styles, e.g. with the comment “but also, sometimes things go really well”. This comment gave me the vibe of “yes I sometimes hurt people, but sometimes my behaviour goes well, and some amount of this trade-off is acceptable”, which in theory is correct, but many men have healthy relationships with women without sometimes hurting them as collateral damage.
I acknowledge that he says he tried to stop flirting/touching but complaints continued. This raises questions: either there’s a significant gap in understanding what constitutes appropriate behaviour, or there were other problematic behaviours not being addressed. And my guess is that part of what’s needed isn’t just behavioural tweaks, but a fundamental shift away from viewing others’ discomfort as acceptable collateral damage for personal expression.
(And to clarify, I did use LLMs to help draft this and its parent comment, but I don’t see that as problematic, and I have consistently used em-dashes for years, so I wouldn’t take that as a signal of anything.)
I asked a couple of questions in reply to your message. I don’t think this can really be a dialogue if you respond to your own questions rather than mine.
I appreciate the thoughts from the comments below, but I don’t think I misunderstood the core issues. SpeedyOtter does say he continues being “touchy” and “flirty” outside EA—he’s just (mostly) stopped attending EA events. My concern is that he’s not saying “I’ve recognised this behaviour is harmful and stopped,” but rather “I’ve moved it to other communities.”
I did read the “Evidence of caring” section, and I can see he feels genuine sadness about the situation. However, planning to continue behaviours that repeatedly make others uncomfortable, even after seeing the harm they cause, seems concerning to me. And throughout I still felt there was a general framing of boundary issues as an inevitable trade-off between different social styles, e.g. with the comment “but also, sometimes things go really well”. This comment gave me the vibe of “yes I sometimes hurt people, but sometimes my behaviour goes well, and some amount of this trade-off is acceptable”, which in theory is correct, but many men have healthy relationships with women without sometimes hurting them as collateral damage.
I acknowledge that he says he tried to stop flirting/touching but complaints continued. This raises questions: either there’s a significant gap in understanding what constitutes appropriate behaviour, or there were other problematic behaviours not being addressed. And my guess is that part of what’s needed isn’t just behavioural tweaks, but a fundamental shift away from viewing others’ discomfort as acceptable collateral damage for personal expression.
(And to clarify, I did use LLMs to help draft this and its parent comment, but I don’t see that as problematic, and I have consistently used em-dashes for years, so I wouldn’t take that as a signal of anything.)
I asked a couple of questions in reply to your message. I don’t think this can really be a dialogue if you respond to your own questions rather than mine.