Kathleen Forth left us with this note in 2018. That was four years ago. It suggests that one reason for her suicide (or at least, her suffering) was the way in which women were treated in the EA/LW community. I wondered whether anyone knows of any concrete steps that have been taken as a response to this.
[Question] What concrete steps have been taken after Kathleen Forths Suicide?
No comments.
As far as I know, not much. But I’m personally very conflicted about what to think about this case and how to respond to it, based on information that came out in the wake of her death, that make the case that she was probably unwell and hurting others, and that she made at least one confirmed false accusation in the past. See this statement from Kelsey Piper in particular:
http://web.archive.org/web/20190319193656/https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/175147222856/im-having-this-horrible-dread-and-confusion-and
The trouble is I don’t know exactly how much this should change how I read her statement, so much of both what she said and what others said about her are too vague to easily work through for me. It would be terrible not to take this seriously enough, and it is a possibility I have to keep in mind that responses like this one in the wake of her death were exaggerated out of motivated reasoning. I suspect something should have been done anyway, but I’m not sure what should have been done, and as far as I know not much was done. Presumably there is still time to change that, but I don’t have any ideas for how in particular. But this is one reason I suspect many people had a hard time reacting.
In case you don’t get adequate responses here, another possibility is to reach out to Julia Wise. She’s both the person who does the most work in this area that I know of, and someone whose work Forth admired. I probably can’t give an adequate response to your question in particular (just the messy reactions I suggest above), but she might have more of a concrete idea of anything that did or didn’t happen at the institutional level.
I couldn’t avoid noticing that TIME didn’t mention her case