Since I expect some people to be a bit confused as to what exactly was the bad thing that has happened after reading this post, I think it would be great if the community health team could write a post explaining and pointing out exactly what was bad here and in other similar instances.
I think there is value in being crystal clear about what were the bad things that happened because I expect people will takeaway different things from this post.
Since noone else has, I’ll try, downvote if you think this isn’t worth reading. The badness is broken up into a number of different factors.
Most interactions don’t lead to upset. So If we trust Owen’s narrative, then he misread social cues in a way that upset his accuser by talking about masturbation when she didn’t want to and so upset her. If you are a consequentialist, upsetting people is bad. If you are a deontologist, not taking time to understand boundaries such that you overstep them is bad.
If we trust his account, which I guess I do, they had talked about this kind of thing before. But she still didn’t want to and she is still upset about it 5 years later. This caused harm and so was an error.
If there was nothing else at play I guess personally I think this was a bit bad. Worth sitting down and evaluating how one communicates. I think some men you know will have done something like this (though I think it was avoidable and that the costs weren’t worth it). I imagine there is disagreement on his bad this is. I guess some of those reading this aren’t thinking “will I talk about sex despite not wanting to” but instead “will I be as upset as this woman is. I’d like to avoid that”
Next, the woman in question was staying at his house in a foreign country. And she knew that he had the ability to recommend her for jobs and (I sense) figured that he was important to have on her side. This seems to be why Owen thinks she went along with it. Owen was pretty well respected in EA even then, right?
If there was nothing else at play I guess I’m somewhere between a more than a bit bad and very bad. Because he is well known, women who heard of this might think this is the norm or they might just have heard how a well known well liked person upset a woman they know. Perhaps they wondered if sometimes you have to sit feeling uncomfortable (perhaps unsafe/grossed out) to get jobs. Some will leave EA as a result. I hope their fear isn’t reality, but I sense the harms are. “Is this the kind of thing that happens a lot? ” “Can I invite friends to EA if this might happen”. I don’t know how bad this is, but I sense that after the second time I would stop taking these risks as a community leader. And I imagine some people think even this one event is disqualifying. And even if you the reader disagree, would you have been more careful here? If you would, then I think revealed preferences show you don’t think this was wise.
Next, there are four other occasions where something a bit like this has happened. How many of these happened after the main events described here? I guess 2 or 3. So even after upsetting someone like this, this pattern continues. This does make me question a Owen’s judgenent.
For me this is the part that probably makes it fully bad though I guess many were there already. I am not naïve here. I think people often upset eachother in romantic interactions. I sadly guess many men (10-20%?) have at one time seriously upset romantic partners and some women/nb (1-5%) have too. But if one has a pattern of behaviour, one should avoid risky situations. Especially if one is a community leader. Instead Owen seems to keep pushing the boundaries. And I’m not claiming to be perfect, just that this falls short . Again, I weakly sense that the kind of person who thinks Owen did nothing wrong is often an individual who doesn’t seek leadership positions. Should leaders be held to higher interpersonal standards? Well I think their behaviour is taken as what is normal by a much wider group.. so yes.
Finally, after what seems like a possibly unresolved pattern of bad behaviour, Owen is further elevated in the community. Perhaps without this article he would have kept upsetting women at a rate of 1 person every couple of years.
I think a lot of these last two points hang on what has happened in the intervening 5 years. For myself, if the upset caused between now and then was very small, then perhaps a reasonable decision-maker would come to the conclusion that Owen had changed his behaviour and was suitable for community leadership. If an event like the above has been happening once a year then it seems really bad that he became a board member in the first place.
I think reasonable people can disagree a bit here, and there are things we don’t know, and I think it’s worth considering that people might be arguing with different assumptions (“There are probably other bad stories” “Owen is probably being overly scrupulous here” “what would I want if I were Owen/the woman” “how should we judge this specific case” “how do we send a credible signal about this kind of behaviour” “it is good he was honest” “he only admitted this because he had to”). I find it pretty unlikely that Owen wasn’t a bit unkind not to have avoided the later situations in this pattern and unwise given the increased harms from his behaviour as opposed to him being a random community member. But there is some possibility that in 3 months with new information I’ll feel differently.
If you disagree, I suggest you write a version. But I think mine is better than nothing. I have tried to be evenhanded but I imagine I’m prone to both avoiding supporting Owen and avoiding empathising enough with the accuser.
I’m not sure if this is actually a point of disagreement, but just to be clear:
Next, the woman in question was staying at his house in a foreign country. And she knew that he had the ability to recommend her for jobs and (I sense) figured that he was important to have on her side. This seems to be why Owen thinks she went along with it. Owen was pretty well respected in EA even then, right?
If there was nothing else at play I guess I’m somewhere between a more than a bit bad and very bad.
I think the “if there was nothing else at play” is doing a lot of work here.
My view is that choosing to offer his room and confirming this with the hiring organization first, instead of checking in with the friend first about the situation and asking her what she options she would feel most comfortable with first, while this was being arranged on the day of her flight rings serious alarm bells to me, and suggests a significant lapse in professional judgement, awareness of power dynamics and a lack of empathy to his friend (or at least poorly communicated).
I’m not excluding the scenario that she in fact was given multiple options and had a fair chance to consider these options and the opportunity to say no, but this isn’t how I interpret Owen’s description of events.
If this interpretation is accurate, even one such event would be sufficient (for me) for a vote of no confidence in Owen’s ability to appreciate professional boundaries and the power he may wield. In this case, being a better established / more “central” EA, being older, being a man (possibly physically stronger), being in his home, being in his country, being partly responsible for her job interview (to whatever extent the recommendation played a role). There was also a lack of consideration for the context here, that this was done with such urgency, when she might be stressed about the flight, going to a different country, the interview itself, things she might have put aside at home for this trip.
Given someone acting in good faith has to be oblivious to all of these aspects in order to grossly misjudge the extent this would be accepted by the other party, it makes it difficult for me to rule out the possibility that he was acting opportunistically in his self-interest when offering the room. The masturbation comments in this light would be even worse.
While many have appreciated his apology and response, the fact that these actions were taken only in response to being found out/being outed as a result of the TIME article also does not inspire confidence in his claim that he wants to “never repeat these mistakes”. Nor do his four other potentially harmful incidents (in fairness, these were much less “egregious” than this one. This is welcome news, but a pretty low bar to clear). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
Similarly,
Again I’ll make decisions about when to resume these in consultation with my therapist.
Shows a continued lack of insight into the impacts of his actions to the community around him, and whether it’s appropriate for him to be the arbiter around continuing activities that gives him power and exposes him to potential victims.
A minor comment:
I have tried to be evenhanded but I imagine I’m prone to both avoiding supporting Owen and avoiding empathising enough with the accuser.
I don’t like how this is phrased, as it implies we should be optimizing to support Owen to the same extent as supporting the victim.
The only things I’d say is that I don’t personally think he needed to publicly apologise for this thing 5 years ago. But I want to know if there is stuff that’s much more recent and what he’s done to break the pattern. I think CH has done worse there for not reporting it to the board.
On supporting Owen Vs the accuser I think that there is some right amount to support each and I’m comparing to that. Though that said it’s not clear to me that I should support the accuser loads more because she’s the accuser. I guess I should a bit to account for bias, but mainly I should be supportive because she is mostly harmed and he has a pattern of this behaviour.
Next, there are four other occasions where something a bit like this has happened. How many of these happened after the main events described here? I guess 2 or 3. So even after upsetting someone like this, this pattern continues. This does make me question a Owen’s judgenent.
To me, Owen’s post reads like he didn’t notice at the time that he upset her. Owen writes: “She was in a structural position where it was (I now believe) unreasonable to expect honesty about her experience”.
It’s unclear how long it took for Owen to know how uncomfortable he made her.
Rereading this, I sense that also, if none of the other cases were junior community members (say only involved for a year or 2) I’d would feel Owen’s actions less bad overall.
I get the impression you are trying hard to do good here, and I appreciate that. I also find this comment extremely disheartening, as even a thoughtful attempt to try to work through the harm of this behavior minimizes the harm and leaves out a big portion of the harm. I’m guessing many, many others in EA share a similar perspective to you, and that is just bumming me out right now. I love so many parts of EA, but I’m being reminded about how, as a women, my entire existence will be swimming uphill against these sorts of perspectives. It’s demoralizing to me, and even though I found the original TIME piece to be extremely uncharitable, I also newly believe that oppressive perspectives about gender and a failure to recognize these perspectives is a major contributor to why the gender ratio is so imbalanced.
I’m not saying you in particular are bad here, or that you are particularly bad. I see that you are being very thoughtful and trying to work through this. It’s just disheartening to see someone who is so thoughtful and operating in good faith still continue—in my view—to get it wrong. I know that this is inevitable in communities, but I also do not enjoy the process of going up against this sort of thing. My impulse is just to go seek refuge and security in a group that understands this sort of thing more, likely a group of mostly women.
For my explanation (though I could’ve gone into more detail) about the harm done, see this comment I made in reply to another one of your comments.
This is a pretty emotional comment, and I’m not sharing to make you feel bad or anything. Or even to say that you’re wrong to share your explanation. I’m sharing my emotional response to your comment to help people imagine what is maybe a cause for the gender imbalance/women feeling demoralized about EA.
Yeah as an extroverted male reading this makes me wonder if I’m supposed to be threatmodeling that I’ll be promoted and gain movement power some day? Because being around for longer than someone else is informal power (?) and I’m responsible for futures in which that becomes formal power?
Everyone is confused and there’s not a clear takeaway, IMO.
I don’t think the only reason the women felt uncomfortable here is because of power dynamics. The power dynamics just made the situation much worse. But you should generally try to avoid making people uncomfortable, particularly in a way that touches on their membership in part of a marginalized group.
So, one way I think all men, not just those in power, should modify their behavior is to refrain from making sexual comments. Especially with people you don’t know well yet. If you know someone quite well, and they seem to be making these comments themselves, and you have a level of trust and security with each other, you can be much more open with what you talk about. But for people you don’t know that well, for people who haven’t initiated this sort of thing themselves, just don’t make sexual comments.
I think he was relatively well known and respected in a much smaller community 5 years ago. So I think it’s a bit different. But if you have power over job apps and someone stays at your house without any other options, yeah, probably be more careful.
You need to make sure you never make anyone around you at all uneasy or uncomfortable.
OP easily solved this in 2020 by “not being edgy anymore.” Perhaps you could change your personality like OP and not be an extrovert anymore. Ideally do not speak unless spoken to, and only then if it’s because your silence is making others uncomfortable.
Since I expect some people to be a bit confused as to what exactly was the bad thing that has happened after reading this post, I think it would be great if the community health team could write a post explaining and pointing out exactly what was bad here and in other similar instances.
I think there is value in being crystal clear about what were the bad things that happened because I expect people will takeaway different things from this post.
Since noone else has, I’ll try, downvote if you think this isn’t worth reading. The badness is broken up into a number of different factors.
Most interactions don’t lead to upset. So If we trust Owen’s narrative, then he misread social cues in a way that upset his accuser by talking about masturbation when she didn’t want to and so upset her. If you are a consequentialist, upsetting people is bad. If you are a deontologist, not taking time to understand boundaries such that you overstep them is bad.
If we trust his account, which I guess I do, they had talked about this kind of thing before. But she still didn’t want to and she is still upset about it 5 years later. This caused harm and so was an error.
If there was nothing else at play I guess personally I think this was a bit bad. Worth sitting down and evaluating how one communicates. I think some men you know will have done something like this (though I think it was avoidable and that the costs weren’t worth it). I imagine there is disagreement on his bad this is. I guess some of those reading this aren’t thinking “will I talk about sex despite not wanting to” but instead “will I be as upset as this woman is. I’d like to avoid that”
Next, the woman in question was staying at his house in a foreign country. And she knew that he had the ability to recommend her for jobs and (I sense) figured that he was important to have on her side. This seems to be why Owen thinks she went along with it. Owen was pretty well respected in EA even then, right?
If there was nothing else at play I guess I’m somewhere between a more than a bit bad and very bad. Because he is well known, women who heard of this might think this is the norm or they might just have heard how a well known well liked person upset a woman they know. Perhaps they wondered if sometimes you have to sit feeling uncomfortable (perhaps unsafe/grossed out) to get jobs. Some will leave EA as a result. I hope their fear isn’t reality, but I sense the harms are. “Is this the kind of thing that happens a lot? ” “Can I invite friends to EA if this might happen”. I don’t know how bad this is, but I sense that after the second time I would stop taking these risks as a community leader. And I imagine some people think even this one event is disqualifying. And even if you the reader disagree, would you have been more careful here? If you would, then I think revealed preferences show you don’t think this was wise.
Next, there are four other occasions where something a bit like this has happened. How many of these happened after the main events described here? I guess 2 or 3. So even after upsetting someone like this, this pattern continues. This does make me question a Owen’s judgenent.
For me this is the part that probably makes it fully bad though I guess many were there already. I am not naïve here. I think people often upset eachother in romantic interactions. I sadly guess many men (10-20%?) have at one time seriously upset romantic partners and some women/nb (1-5%) have too. But if one has a pattern of behaviour, one should avoid risky situations. Especially if one is a community leader. Instead Owen seems to keep pushing the boundaries. And I’m not claiming to be perfect, just that this falls short . Again, I weakly sense that the kind of person who thinks Owen did nothing wrong is often an individual who doesn’t seek leadership positions. Should leaders be held to higher interpersonal standards? Well I think their behaviour is taken as what is normal by a much wider group.. so yes.
Finally, after what seems like a possibly unresolved pattern of bad behaviour, Owen is further elevated in the community. Perhaps without this article he would have kept upsetting women at a rate of 1 person every couple of years.
I think a lot of these last two points hang on what has happened in the intervening 5 years. For myself, if the upset caused between now and then was very small, then perhaps a reasonable decision-maker would come to the conclusion that Owen had changed his behaviour and was suitable for community leadership. If an event like the above has been happening once a year then it seems really bad that he became a board member in the first place.
I think reasonable people can disagree a bit here, and there are things we don’t know, and I think it’s worth considering that people might be arguing with different assumptions (“There are probably other bad stories” “Owen is probably being overly scrupulous here” “what would I want if I were Owen/the woman” “how should we judge this specific case” “how do we send a credible signal about this kind of behaviour” “it is good he was honest” “he only admitted this because he had to”). I find it pretty unlikely that Owen wasn’t a bit unkind not to have avoided the later situations in this pattern and unwise given the increased harms from his behaviour as opposed to him being a random community member. But there is some possibility that in 3 months with new information I’ll feel differently.
If you disagree, I suggest you write a version. But I think mine is better than nothing. I have tried to be evenhanded but I imagine I’m prone to both avoiding supporting Owen and avoiding empathising enough with the accuser.
I’m not sure if this is actually a point of disagreement, but just to be clear:
I think the “if there was nothing else at play” is doing a lot of work here.
My view is that choosing to offer his room and confirming this with the hiring organization first, instead of checking in with the friend first about the situation and asking her what she options she would feel most comfortable with first, while this was being arranged on the day of her flight rings serious alarm bells to me, and suggests a significant lapse in professional judgement, awareness of power dynamics and a lack of empathy to his friend (or at least poorly communicated).
I’m not excluding the scenario that she in fact was given multiple options and had a fair chance to consider these options and the opportunity to say no, but this isn’t how I interpret Owen’s description of events.
If this interpretation is accurate, even one such event would be sufficient (for me) for a vote of no confidence in Owen’s ability to appreciate professional boundaries and the power he may wield. In this case, being a better established / more “central” EA, being older, being a man (possibly physically stronger), being in his home, being in his country, being partly responsible for her job interview (to whatever extent the recommendation played a role). There was also a lack of consideration for the context here, that this was done with such urgency, when she might be stressed about the flight, going to a different country, the interview itself, things she might have put aside at home for this trip.
Given someone acting in good faith has to be oblivious to all of these aspects in order to grossly misjudge the extent this would be accepted by the other party, it makes it difficult for me to rule out the possibility that he was acting opportunistically in his self-interest when offering the room. The masturbation comments in this light would be even worse.
While many have appreciated his apology and response, the fact that these actions were taken only in response to being found out/being outed as a result of the TIME article also does not inspire confidence in his claim that he wants to “never repeat these mistakes”. Nor do his four other potentially harmful incidents (in fairness, these were much less “egregious” than this one. This is welcome news, but a pretty low bar to clear). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
Similarly,
Shows a continued lack of insight into the impacts of his actions to the community around him, and whether it’s appropriate for him to be the arbiter around continuing activities that gives him power and exposes him to potential victims.
A minor comment:
I don’t like how this is phrased, as it implies we should be optimizing to support Owen to the same extent as supporting the victim.
Mostly seems fair.
The only things I’d say is that I don’t personally think he needed to publicly apologise for this thing 5 years ago. But I want to know if there is stuff that’s much more recent and what he’s done to break the pattern. I think CH has done worse there for not reporting it to the board.
On supporting Owen Vs the accuser I think that there is some right amount to support each and I’m comparing to that. Though that said it’s not clear to me that I should support the accuser loads more because she’s the accuser. I guess I should a bit to account for bias, but mainly I should be supportive because she is mostly harmed and he has a pattern of this behaviour.
To me, Owen’s post reads like he didn’t notice at the time that he upset her. Owen writes: “She was in a structural position where it was (I now believe) unreasonable to expect honesty about her experience”.
It’s unclear how long it took for Owen to know how uncomfortable he made her.
Rereading this, I sense that also, if none of the other cases were junior community members (say only involved for a year or 2) I’d would feel Owen’s actions less bad overall.
I get the impression you are trying hard to do good here, and I appreciate that. I also find this comment extremely disheartening, as even a thoughtful attempt to try to work through the harm of this behavior minimizes the harm and leaves out a big portion of the harm. I’m guessing many, many others in EA share a similar perspective to you, and that is just bumming me out right now. I love so many parts of EA, but I’m being reminded about how, as a women, my entire existence will be swimming uphill against these sorts of perspectives. It’s demoralizing to me, and even though I found the original TIME piece to be extremely uncharitable, I also newly believe that oppressive perspectives about gender and a failure to recognize these perspectives is a major contributor to why the gender ratio is so imbalanced.
I’m not saying you in particular are bad here, or that you are particularly bad. I see that you are being very thoughtful and trying to work through this. It’s just disheartening to see someone who is so thoughtful and operating in good faith still continue—in my view—to get it wrong. I know that this is inevitable in communities, but I also do not enjoy the process of going up against this sort of thing. My impulse is just to go seek refuge and security in a group that understands this sort of thing more, likely a group of mostly women.
For my explanation (though I could’ve gone into more detail) about the harm done, see this comment I made in reply to another one of your comments.
This is a pretty emotional comment, and I’m not sharing to make you feel bad or anything. Or even to say that you’re wrong to share your explanation. I’m sharing my emotional response to your comment to help people imagine what is maybe a cause for the gender imbalance/women feeling demoralized about EA.
Yeah as an extroverted male reading this makes me wonder if I’m supposed to be threatmodeling that I’ll be promoted and gain movement power some day? Because being around for longer than someone else is informal power (?) and I’m responsible for futures in which that becomes formal power?
Everyone is confused and there’s not a clear takeaway, IMO.
I don’t think the only reason the women felt uncomfortable here is because of power dynamics. The power dynamics just made the situation much worse. But you should generally try to avoid making people uncomfortable, particularly in a way that touches on their membership in part of a marginalized group.
So, one way I think all men, not just those in power, should modify their behavior is to refrain from making sexual comments. Especially with people you don’t know well yet. If you know someone quite well, and they seem to be making these comments themselves, and you have a level of trust and security with each other, you can be much more open with what you talk about. But for people you don’t know that well, for people who haven’t initiated this sort of thing themselves, just don’t make sexual comments.
I think he was relatively well known and respected in a much smaller community 5 years ago. So I think it’s a bit different. But if you have power over job apps and someone stays at your house without any other options, yeah, probably be more careful.
It’s really quite simple.
You need to make sure you never make anyone around you at all uneasy or uncomfortable.
OP easily solved this in 2020 by “not being edgy anymore.” Perhaps you could change your personality like OP and not be an extrovert anymore. Ideally do not speak unless spoken to, and only then if it’s because your silence is making others uncomfortable.