From a poly woman in EA (I initially wrote the question asking about local community confusingly, the language has been clarified now):
Thank you SO much for this post!
I’ve been surprised at how few people have been defending polyamory from the recent attacks, but I guess a lot of them are scared and/or particularly busy right now. It sounds like a lot of people have been pressuring each other to change their relationship style—either from polyamory to monogamy or vice versa—and I think that’s bad.
I also really like your advice for dating in EA. Posts that see both sides of a debate seem to not be the norm on this forum any more, but I think it’s very valuable to acknowledge both that it’s not always bad for EAs to date and that it sometimes is and to offer advice on distinguishing one from the other. It’s unfortunate that EA is still so small and people change roles so much that having lots of conflicts of interest is practically unavoidable if EAs often date each other, but our worldviews are still kind of niche and it’s important for a lot of people that a partner has a similar worldview. I expect no one wants to go as far as e.g. my local church where people are ONLY allowed to date other Christians, but I can understand how sharing a worldview often makes for a much deeper, smoother relationship.
I especially like your guidance on how status can affect things. EA is quite a nerdy community and I think a lot of people are still getting used to how their new-found high status affects things. Plus it’s the kind of learning that I expect moves slowly because it’s not that amenable to direct feedback, so I imagine indirect feedback / general guidance like this is particularly helpful.
A few things I wanted to add:
1. I’ve seen a lot of reasoning recently that starts “Because polyamory means a lot more relationships / sex / flirting etc...” and I don’t think it’s fair to assume that. My non-poly years involved a much higher rate of these things, for example. The jokes in my family seem to assume that seeing ~7 people at once is typical, but in my experience the mean average seems to be about 2 and I personally hit on people a LOT more when I was single. Sure, maybe people are more likely to hit on you if you’re not wearing a wedding ring, but I know married people who are poly and unmarried people who are monogamous and I’m not sure if there’s much correlation. Maybe people are more likely to continue hitting on you if you can’t (truthfully) say, “Sorry, I’m in a monogamous relationship”? I just don’t think it’s obvious that that’s more effective than “I’m flattered, but no thank you.” You could argue that the first one leaves room for you still being interested (for instance, the person I’ve had most trouble with in my life knew I was in a monogamous relationship), but OTOH the second one is more likely to make them angry at you and therefore assault you? I don’t know what leads to less harassment/assault on balance, but I don’t think it’s clear.
2. Even if polyamory does mean a lot more relationships etc, I think Amber Dawn’s comparison to celibacy is illustrative; I don’t think someone else was right when they called it hyperbolic (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y9ELNXmLDSDi8Z6RX/in-mild-defence-of-the-social-professional-overlap-in-ea). A lot of people on the EA forum recently seem to think that as long as they’re not saying “Polyamory is inherently bad” then they can say what they like. But I don’t think many of those people would think it’s completely fine to say “I’m not saying sexual relationships are always bad, but they do lead to more harassment and assault, so it’s important for us to weigh up the pros and cons of whether EAs should be celibate” or “I’m just saying this wouldn’t happen as much if EAs were celibate” or “EA is about helping the world, not about making your life more fulfilling or protecting your feelings, so it’s fine for me to publicly ask whether you should be celibate.” (If your defence is that polyamory is “greedy”—I’ve had family tell me this before—I think it’s still arbitrary to draw the line at “more than one at the same time” when it comes to relationships, you could retort that monogamy is “greedy” because you want your partner “all to yourself,” and people seem to think it’s not appropriate to call me greedy for being bisexual and I don’t think they would if I remarried after divorce.)
That is, I wasn’t saying that a comparison to celibacy was fundamentally hyperbolic, but that the specific analogous claim (break up with your partner to have more time for research) was out of place as a response to my comments.
But I don’t think many of those people would think it’s completely fine to say “I’m not saying sexual relationships are always bad, but they do lead to more harassment and assault, so it’s important for us to weigh up the pros and cons of whether EAs should be celibate”
I do think that’s completely fine to say, fwiw. After taking a bit to weigh the pros and cons I expect we’d decide that trying to build a norm of EA celibacy was a bad idea, but I don’t see anything wrong with doing that weighing?
From a poly woman in EA (I initially wrote the question asking about local community confusingly, the language has been clarified now):
This is getting kind of nitpicky, but while Amber did write “which my interlocutor Jeff Kaufman fairly called out as unreasonably hyperbolic” what I wrote was “I’m confused by your analogy to celibacy because the analogous statements seem really different from anything I’ve said or think?”
That is, I wasn’t saying that a comparison to celibacy was fundamentally hyperbolic, but that the specific analogous claim (break up with your partner to have more time for research) was out of place as a response to my comments.
I do think that’s completely fine to say, fwiw. After taking a bit to weigh the pros and cons I expect we’d decide that trying to build a norm of EA celibacy was a bad idea, but I don’t see anything wrong with doing that weighing?