I largely agree. I think the thing to do is to poll a representative sample of women in EA regarding when they would / would not want a guy to flirt with them (and how), then formulate some guidelines based on the poll results and publish the guidelines.
Julia Wise previously expressed skepticism, saying:
My sense is that pre-specified criteria for what constitutes something like “offensive actions” or “unwanted sexual attention” and what the response should be isn’t realistic or a good idea. A lot of factors play into what constitutes a problem — words, body language, setting (the career fair vs. an afterparty vs. a deserted street outside the venue at night), power and status differences between the people, etc.
However, I don’t think this has to be an obstacle in principle. It’s easy to imagine separating these factors out into a point system or rubric—some sort of checklist, decision rule, or decision tree that I can memorize and go through in my head before flirting with someone.
As a side note, I see this as more of an issue with society than with EA. I’d love to see the poll idea done for the general population as well, and given the place we’re at right now as a society, I’m not sure I would expect anyone to reliably forecast the results of such a poll. (As an intuition pump, consider the massive standard deviation values found in Aella’s rape spectrum survey.)
EDIT: I did some introspection on this, and it seems to me like positive “do this” guidelines (like “prioritize ensuring that the other person is comfortable”) could be a lot more effective than negative “don’t do this” guidelines.
I think it can be somewhat useful to talk explicitly about factors likely to make flirting welcome or unwelcome. But a problem I have with this is that it’s wrong to interact with people based on averages, basically. If 70% of EA women like or dislike being flirted with in X way, what do you do? Do the 30% minority just have to put up with discomfort (or, less seriously, a lack of enjoyable flirting)? Are you 70% flirtatious (pleasing no-one fully)?
I think the problem with checklists is that fundamentally, negotiating social interactions so that everyone is happy and comfortable, and flirting and appropriate escalation, are social skills. And social skills tend to be fuzzy and involve very different types of thinking than analysis, or rule-following. So when people throw their hands up in despair, or ask for explicit rules, it feels a bit like they’re getting annoyed that they can’t just throw their technical skills at a social-skills problem. (Written as someone who finds some social skills hard, including in the areas of flirting/romance)
But most professional contexts outside of EA have more explicit norms/rules than EA does. Those professional cultures presumably developed those more explicit norms/rules for a reason (most likely learning from experience). So I think one has to be careful with assumptions about why people want clearer rules. Maybe, for instance, they don’t trust other people’s social skills.
But a problem I have with this is that it’s wrong to interact with people based on averages, basically. If 70% of EA women like or dislike being flirted with in X way, what do you do? Do the 30% minority just have to put up with discomfort (or, less seriously, a lack of enjoyable flirting)? Are you 70% flirtatious (pleasing no-one fully)?
I agree this is a problem, but I don’t think we solve this problem by ignoring it.
Right now men are choosing to flirt with women/not flirt with women based on some mishmash of: past experiences, flirting intuitions, cultural conditioning, etc. My claim isn’t that the approach I suggested is perfect. My claim is that it’s likely an improvement on this baseline.
I’d suggest getting the community health team to analyze the survey results and generate some guidelines that are acceptable to, say, 95% of women surveyed. Publish the guidelines and say “if you don’t like the guidelines, we recommend you avoid EA events”.
I think if EA has a major problem with sexual harassment, an approach like this could be really effective. On the other hand, if sexual harassment is not actually much of a problem in EA, we may as well continue with the current approach.
I think the problem with checklists is that fundamentally, negotiating social interactions so that everyone is happy and comfortable, and flirting and appropriate escalation, are social skills. And social skills tend to be fuzzy and involve very different types of thinking than analysis, or rule-following. So when people throw their hands up in despair, or ask for explicit rules, it feels a bit like they’re getting annoyed that they can’t just throw their technical skills at a social-skills problem. (Written as someone who finds some social skills hard, including in the areas of flirting/romance)
First, I suspect there are cultures in which romantic interactions are much more ritualized than our current culture. Flirting doesn’t have to be this super fuzzy thing if we don’t want it to be.
I also think there’s room for social skills in the approach I suggested. People seem to believe there are situations where you shouldn’t flirt with someone even if you think they’re trying to flirt with you—some examples might be: when you’re interviewing them for a job, when you’re in a confined space, when you’re on a deserted street late at night, etc. Basically, social perception can just be another factor on the list of factors to consider. But, as you state, it’s an inherently fuzzy factor, so it probably shouldn’t be as load-bearing as it currently is.
I don’t know Owen that well—I’ve probably interacted with him for half an hour or something—but he never struck me as particularly deficient in social skills. My guess is if he had read this situation accurately, and the woman in question appreciated his edginess, we never would’ve heard about any of this. People seem to favor a really punitive approach to Owen’s actions, but the problem is that even if you’re really good at reading social situations, say 99% accurate, there are always going to be those 1% misreadings which show up if you have a large enough number of social interactions.
Speaking for myself, I don’t think I am notably deficient in social skills. I enjoy social deduction games, acting classes, etc. In my mind, the issue has more to do with differing moral intuitions, especially regarding when harsh punishments are appropriate. (My own moral intuitions would be along the lines of: “First, there is no such thing as a romantically or sexually successful person who has never ever creeped anyone out. Give yourself permission to be creepy. I am not saying that you should go around trying to creep people out… [but, stuff happens].”) I’m usually comfortable trusting my social intuitions, but when so many condemn so harshly based on a short description of a situation with very little social context, that’s when I wonder if social intuitions are really enough.
Maybe a good intuition pump is: Imagine if people could send you to jail if they thought you were being kind of an asshole. Can you see how you would be tempted to stop posting on social media and never leave your room? Even if you’re fairly skilled socially, it’s inevitable that people will sometimes think you’re being kind of an asshole, unless you have an unhealthy obsession with what others think. Now consider that, as far as I can tell, Owen’s crime was essentially “being kind of an asshole”, but in the romantic/sexual domain. If the costs of “being kind of an asshole” in the romantic/sexual domain are much higher than in other domains—I have no particular reason to doubt that—then maybe it’s worthwhile to add in additional precautions beyond just “use social skills”?
I largely agree. I think the thing to do is to poll a representative sample of women in EA regarding when they would / would not want a guy to flirt with them (and how), then formulate some guidelines based on the poll results and publish the guidelines.
Julia Wise previously expressed skepticism, saying:
However, I don’t think this has to be an obstacle in principle. It’s easy to imagine separating these factors out into a point system or rubric—some sort of checklist, decision rule, or decision tree that I can memorize and go through in my head before flirting with someone.
As a side note, I see this as more of an issue with society than with EA. I’d love to see the poll idea done for the general population as well, and given the place we’re at right now as a society, I’m not sure I would expect anyone to reliably forecast the results of such a poll. (As an intuition pump, consider the massive standard deviation values found in Aella’s rape spectrum survey.)
EDIT: I did some introspection on this, and it seems to me like positive “do this” guidelines (like “prioritize ensuring that the other person is comfortable”) could be a lot more effective than negative “don’t do this” guidelines.
I think it can be somewhat useful to talk explicitly about factors likely to make flirting welcome or unwelcome. But a problem I have with this is that it’s wrong to interact with people based on averages, basically. If 70% of EA women like or dislike being flirted with in X way, what do you do? Do the 30% minority just have to put up with discomfort (or, less seriously, a lack of enjoyable flirting)? Are you 70% flirtatious (pleasing no-one fully)?
I think the problem with checklists is that fundamentally, negotiating social interactions so that everyone is happy and comfortable, and flirting and appropriate escalation, are social skills. And social skills tend to be fuzzy and involve very different types of thinking than analysis, or rule-following. So when people throw their hands up in despair, or ask for explicit rules, it feels a bit like they’re getting annoyed that they can’t just throw their technical skills at a social-skills problem. (Written as someone who finds some social skills hard, including in the areas of flirting/romance)
But most professional contexts outside of EA have more explicit norms/rules than EA does. Those professional cultures presumably developed those more explicit norms/rules for a reason (most likely learning from experience). So I think one has to be careful with assumptions about why people want clearer rules. Maybe, for instance, they don’t trust other people’s social skills.
I agree this is a problem, but I don’t think we solve this problem by ignoring it.
Right now men are choosing to flirt with women/not flirt with women based on some mishmash of: past experiences, flirting intuitions, cultural conditioning, etc. My claim isn’t that the approach I suggested is perfect. My claim is that it’s likely an improvement on this baseline.
I’d suggest getting the community health team to analyze the survey results and generate some guidelines that are acceptable to, say, 95% of women surveyed. Publish the guidelines and say “if you don’t like the guidelines, we recommend you avoid EA events”.
I think if EA has a major problem with sexual harassment, an approach like this could be really effective. On the other hand, if sexual harassment is not actually much of a problem in EA, we may as well continue with the current approach.
First, I suspect there are cultures in which romantic interactions are much more ritualized than our current culture. Flirting doesn’t have to be this super fuzzy thing if we don’t want it to be.
I also think there’s room for social skills in the approach I suggested. People seem to believe there are situations where you shouldn’t flirt with someone even if you think they’re trying to flirt with you—some examples might be: when you’re interviewing them for a job, when you’re in a confined space, when you’re on a deserted street late at night, etc. Basically, social perception can just be another factor on the list of factors to consider. But, as you state, it’s an inherently fuzzy factor, so it probably shouldn’t be as load-bearing as it currently is.
I don’t know Owen that well—I’ve probably interacted with him for half an hour or something—but he never struck me as particularly deficient in social skills. My guess is if he had read this situation accurately, and the woman in question appreciated his edginess, we never would’ve heard about any of this. People seem to favor a really punitive approach to Owen’s actions, but the problem is that even if you’re really good at reading social situations, say 99% accurate, there are always going to be those 1% misreadings which show up if you have a large enough number of social interactions.
Speaking for myself, I don’t think I am notably deficient in social skills. I enjoy social deduction games, acting classes, etc. In my mind, the issue has more to do with differing moral intuitions, especially regarding when harsh punishments are appropriate. (My own moral intuitions would be along the lines of: “First, there is no such thing as a romantically or sexually successful person who has never ever creeped anyone out. Give yourself permission to be creepy. I am not saying that you should go around trying to creep people out… [but, stuff happens].”) I’m usually comfortable trusting my social intuitions, but when so many condemn so harshly based on a short description of a situation with very little social context, that’s when I wonder if social intuitions are really enough.
Maybe a good intuition pump is: Imagine if people could send you to jail if they thought you were being kind of an asshole. Can you see how you would be tempted to stop posting on social media and never leave your room? Even if you’re fairly skilled socially, it’s inevitable that people will sometimes think you’re being kind of an asshole, unless you have an unhealthy obsession with what others think. Now consider that, as far as I can tell, Owen’s crime was essentially “being kind of an asshole”, but in the romantic/sexual domain. If the costs of “being kind of an asshole” in the romantic/sexual domain are much higher than in other domains—I have no particular reason to doubt that—then maybe it’s worthwhile to add in additional precautions beyond just “use social skills”?