I think you explained this really well! Thanks for writing this.
I agree: Detailed feedback from survivors is not the only way for perpetrators to improve their behavior. (I think this also applies more broadly with social skills; direct feedback from people you’ve hurt is definitely not the only way to get better.)
You already provided some good ideas in your post, but here are more ideas on how non-survivors can improve the situation.
For perpetrators
Here are things that perpetrators could do besides soliciting direct feedback from those they’ve harmed:
Describe what happened to your friends (especially female friends) and ask for ideas on what went wrong. (Understand that your side of the story won’t capture all relevant details!)
Solicit anonymous feedback on your behavior from anyone who is happy to give it (not just people who were harmed by you).
Spend more energy paying attention to how people are feeling. (Read facial expressions and nonverbal cues. Verbally check in, but know that’s not foolproof.)
Become comfortable with rejection. Make people feel safe turning you down at any point.
Read books or online materials on consent, power dynamics, and how to avoid making people uncomfortable.
Exercise great caution with romantic/sexual advances (or halt them entirely) until you’re certain that these advances can be made without harm.
These ideas could also be helpful for people who are concerned they’ve caused harm but aren’t sure of it. Or for people who are concerned they might cause harm.
For EA event organizers
Contact CEA’s community health team for info on any local people they’ve received reports about.
Pay attention to people’s behavior (and pay attention to gossip about their behavior). Seek out additional information on anyone who seems to be behaving poorly.
Explicitly state that you are happy to receive reports of harmful behavior regarding local EAs. (Even if the bad behavior is minor! Minor bad behavior should not result in a ban, but it can form a serious pattern.)
Consider talking to attendees about their behavior if they’ve made others uncomfortable, even if their behavior is far from ban-worthy. (But protect the privacy of reporters.)
Have a woman on your organizing team.
Here’s an anecdote: I’m female and I used to organize local EA events. One time, one of my attendees made a weird flirty comment towards me, and it seemed suspicious, but not that bad on its own. But it inspired me to contact CEA about this attendee. I heard other (worse!) reports about him. So I banned him.
Oftentimes, when I’ve gotten sketchy vibes from a guy, later info has revealed that he treats women poorly. Sketchy vibes aren’t sufficient for a ban, but they are a good indication that you should pay attention and ask around.
For non-perpetrators and non-organizers
If you see someone in the community behave inappropriately towards someone else, consider talking to them about it or reporting it.
Be a supportive friend and a good listener to others in the community. Show that you can be a trustworthy confidant; keep sensitive information private unless you are told you can share it.
Offer to help people report information to local event organizers and/or CEA and/or police. You can help them stay anonymous, if that’s what they wish. Or you can just help them explain the situation to others and field questions. Or they might just need validation that what happened is worth reporting! (I think that even relatively minor things are worth reporting — as I said earlier, minor incidents can form a pattern.)
Report incidents of people behaving inappropriately towards you — even if it’s not bad enough that you’d call yourself a “survivor.”
For those who have caused, may have caused, or feel they may cause harm, I’d add:
Critically examine your use of alcohol and certain drugs, and whether you should reduce or stop any use of them. To be clear, the use of alcohol or drugs is not in any way an excuse for misconduct. But you should consider whether your use of alcohol or drugs may have an adverse effect on your agression, impulse control, judgment, or other factors that increases the likelihood of future harm.
I think this is potentially very good and helpful advice if quite controversial. Alcohol is endemic in our society, but it seriously compromises your judgement! I say this as someone who has historically benefited a lot from alcohol as an aide to getting over social anxiety—it can be useful but it’s a very double-edged sword.
That suggests another possible suggestion for community leaders: organise more dry events. Most meetups would probably be totally fine without alcohol, even social mixers (controversial!).
I really like the below list of advice. I mostly endorse it. But I don’t think calling these people “perpetrators” will lead more to read this useful advice. For people whose behaviour causes harm feels like a frame that a reader could look at and say “yeah, that’s me”.
For perpetrators
Here are things that perpetrators could do besides soliciting direct feedback from those they’ve harmed:
Describe what happened to your friends (especially female friends) and ask for ideas on what went wrong. (Understand that your side of the story won’t capture all relevant details!)
Solicit anonymous feedback on your behavior from anyone who is happy to give it (not just people who were harmed by you).
Spend more energy paying attention to how people are feeling. (Read facial expressions and nonverbal cues. Verbally check in, but know that’s not foolproof.)
Become comfortable with rejection. Make people feel safe turning you down at any point.
Read books or online materials on consent, power dynamics, and how to avoid making people uncomfortable.
Exercise great caution with romantic/sexual advances (or halt them entirely) until you’re certain that these advances can be made without harm.
These ideas could also be helpful for people who are concerned they’ve caused harm but aren’t sure of it. Or for people who are concerned they might cause harm.
I just meant to use the same language as the OP, but that is a reasonable point. If someone writes a more polished guide for this kind of thing, different wording could be used.
I think parts of this could be turned into a list of general advice for people who initiate romantic/sexual relationships. And then there could be a sublist within that for people who think they may have caused harm. Does that sound better? (Glad to hear other feedback on this!)
(separate reply to allow separate [dis]agreevoting)
I think I’d like to see a system where community members who have caused, may have caused, or feel they may cause harm could anonymously self-refer themselves for services from an appropriate professional (with community financial support to the extent necessary). I don’t have much to say about what those services would entail, and it would presumably depend on the situation—but I suspect challenging beliefs associated with toxic masculinity would be a major component in many cases.
This would be orthogonal to other forms of community response; it is by no means a replacement for either addressing reports or for more generally-targeted prevention efforts. Given how often sexual misconduct and assault goes unreported, there may have been a number of instances before a report is made. I’d just like to find some way to be more proactive in trying to stop additional harm at an earlier point in time.
Differently but same idea: men’s groups. Part of the problem with masculinity is that men don’t actually talk about it. And it’s often easiest to learn from people you feel similar to and respect.
EDIT: I see you suggested the same thing further down so I just agree with you :)
I think you explained this really well! Thanks for writing this.
I agree: Detailed feedback from survivors is not the only way for perpetrators to improve their behavior. (I think this also applies more broadly with social skills; direct feedback from people you’ve hurt is definitely not the only way to get better.)
You already provided some good ideas in your post, but here are more ideas on how non-survivors can improve the situation.
For perpetrators
Here are things that perpetrators could do besides soliciting direct feedback from those they’ve harmed:
Describe what happened to your friends (especially female friends) and ask for ideas on what went wrong. (Understand that your side of the story won’t capture all relevant details!)
Solicit anonymous feedback on your behavior from anyone who is happy to give it (not just people who were harmed by you).
Spend more energy paying attention to how people are feeling. (Read facial expressions and nonverbal cues. Verbally check in, but know that’s not foolproof.)
Become comfortable with rejection. Make people feel safe turning you down at any point.
Read books or online materials on consent, power dynamics, and how to avoid making people uncomfortable.
Exercise great caution with romantic/sexual advances (or halt them entirely) until you’re certain that these advances can be made without harm.
These ideas could also be helpful for people who are concerned they’ve caused harm but aren’t sure of it. Or for people who are concerned they might cause harm.
For EA event organizers
Contact CEA’s community health team for info on any local people they’ve received reports about.
Pay attention to people’s behavior (and pay attention to gossip about their behavior). Seek out additional information on anyone who seems to be behaving poorly.
Explicitly state that you are happy to receive reports of harmful behavior regarding local EAs. (Even if the bad behavior is minor! Minor bad behavior should not result in a ban, but it can form a serious pattern.)
Consider talking to attendees about their behavior if they’ve made others uncomfortable, even if their behavior is far from ban-worthy. (But protect the privacy of reporters.)
Have a woman on your organizing team.
Here’s an anecdote: I’m female and I used to organize local EA events. One time, one of my attendees made a weird flirty comment towards me, and it seemed suspicious, but not that bad on its own. But it inspired me to contact CEA about this attendee. I heard other (worse!) reports about him. So I banned him.
Oftentimes, when I’ve gotten sketchy vibes from a guy, later info has revealed that he treats women poorly. Sketchy vibes aren’t sufficient for a ban, but they are a good indication that you should pay attention and ask around.
For non-perpetrators and non-organizers
If you see someone in the community behave inappropriately towards someone else, consider talking to them about it or reporting it.
Be a supportive friend and a good listener to others in the community. Show that you can be a trustworthy confidant; keep sensitive information private unless you are told you can share it.
Offer to help people report information to local event organizers and/or CEA and/or police. You can help them stay anonymous, if that’s what they wish. Or you can just help them explain the situation to others and field questions. Or they might just need validation that what happened is worth reporting! (I think that even relatively minor things are worth reporting — as I said earlier, minor incidents can form a pattern.)
Report incidents of people behaving inappropriately towards you — even if it’s not bad enough that you’d call yourself a “survivor.”
For those who have caused, may have caused, or feel they may cause harm, I’d add:
Critically examine your use of alcohol and certain drugs, and whether you should reduce or stop any use of them. To be clear, the use of alcohol or drugs is not in any way an excuse for misconduct. But you should consider whether your use of alcohol or drugs may have an adverse effect on your agression, impulse control, judgment, or other factors that increases the likelihood of future harm.
I think this is potentially very good and helpful advice if quite controversial. Alcohol is endemic in our society, but it seriously compromises your judgement! I say this as someone who has historically benefited a lot from alcohol as an aide to getting over social anxiety—it can be useful but it’s a very double-edged sword.
That suggests another possible suggestion for community leaders: organise more dry events. Most meetups would probably be totally fine without alcohol, even social mixers (controversial!).
I really like the below list of advice. I mostly endorse it. But I don’t think calling these people “perpetrators” will lead more to read this useful advice. For people whose behaviour causes harm feels like a frame that a reader could look at and say “yeah, that’s me”.
I just meant to use the same language as the OP, but that is a reasonable point. If someone writes a more polished guide for this kind of thing, different wording could be used.
I think parts of this could be turned into a list of general advice for people who initiate romantic/sexual relationships. And then there could be a sublist within that for people who think they may have caused harm. Does that sound better? (Glad to hear other feedback on this!)
(separate reply to allow separate [dis]agreevoting)
I think I’d like to see a system where community members who have caused, may have caused, or feel they may cause harm could anonymously self-refer themselves for services from an appropriate professional (with community financial support to the extent necessary). I don’t have much to say about what those services would entail, and it would presumably depend on the situation—but I suspect challenging beliefs associated with toxic masculinity would be a major component in many cases.
This would be orthogonal to other forms of community response; it is by no means a replacement for either addressing reports or for more generally-targeted prevention efforts. Given how often sexual misconduct and assault goes unreported, there may have been a number of instances before a report is made. I’d just like to find some way to be more proactive in trying to stop additional harm at an earlier point in time.
Differently but same idea: men’s groups. Part of the problem with masculinity is that men don’t actually talk about it. And it’s often easiest to learn from people you feel similar to and respect.
EDIT: I see you suggested the same thing further down so I just agree with you :)