Something about this comment rubbed me the wrong way. EA is not meant to be a dating service, and while there are many people in the community who are open to the idea of dating someone within EA or actively searching for this, there are also many people who joined for entirely different reasons and don’t consider this a priority/don’t want this.
I think that viewing the relationship between men and women in EA this way—eg. men competing for attention, where lonely and desperate men will do what it takes to to get with women—does a disservice to both genders. It sounds like a) an uncomfortable environment for women to join, because they don’t want to be swarmed by a bunch of desperate men, and b) an uncomfortable environment for men, because to some extent it seems to justify men doing more and more to get the attention of women, often at the cost of women being made to feel uncomfortable. (And many men in EA do not want women to feel uncomfortable!)
Let’s zoom out a bit. To me, it’s not that important that everyone in EA gets a match. I find the gender imbalance concerning for lots of reasons, but ‘a lack of women for men to match with’ is not on my list of concerns. Even if there was a perfect 50⁄50 balance of men and women, I think there would still be lonely men willing to abuse their power. (Like you said, many women come into the movement already in relationships, some men/women do not want to date within the movement, and some people are unfortunately just not people others want to date.) So the problem is not the lack of women, but rather the fact that men in powerful positions are either blind to their own power, or can see their power and are willing to abuse that power, and there are not sufficient systems in place to prevent this from happening, or even to stop it once it has happened.
Something about this comment rubbed me the wrong way. EA is not meant to be a dating service, and while there are many people in the community who are open to the idea of dating someone within EA or actively searching for this, there are also many people who joined for entirely different reasons and don’t consider this a priority/don’t want this.
I think that viewing the relationship between men and women in EA this way—eg. men competing for attention, where lonely and desperate men will do what it takes to to get with women—does a disservice to both genders. It sounds like a) an uncomfortable environment for women to join, because they don’t want to be swarmed by a bunch of desperate men, and b) an uncomfortable environment for men, because to some extent it seems to justify men doing more and more to get the attention of women, often at the cost of women being made to feel uncomfortable. (And many men in EA do not want women to feel uncomfortable!)
Let’s zoom out a bit. To me, it’s not that important that everyone in EA gets a match. I find the gender imbalance concerning for lots of reasons, but ‘a lack of women for men to match with’ is not on my list of concerns. Even if there was a perfect 50⁄50 balance of men and women, I think there would still be lonely men willing to abuse their power. (Like you said, many women come into the movement already in relationships, some men/women do not want to date within the movement, and some people are unfortunately just not people others want to date.) So the problem is not the lack of women, but rather the fact that men in powerful positions are either blind to their own power, or can see their power and are willing to abuse that power, and there are not sufficient systems in place to prevent this from happening, or even to stop it once it has happened.