From a woman in EA (I initially wrote the question asking about local community confusingly, the language has been clarified now):
I was poly before I’d heard of EA or LessWrong. It felt incredibly liberating and validating to find out there were other people like me. Since joining the EA community, I’ve become monogamous because of how much it’s demonized here, both by the press and by a lot of EAs themselves. I can put up with judgement from family and friends, but if people are going to use what I do with other consenting adults in private as another way to try to trash EA’s reputation, as hard as it is to pretend to be something I’m not, it seems easier than stopping people being so discriminatory.
I obviously really don’t want people to feel pressured to be poly either or to do anything sexual that they don’t want to do, but could we please focus our dialogue on specific problematic behaviours rather than throwing in “poly” with a list of negative descriptors, or publicly debating whether my lifestyle is acceptable, or accusing women who make comments like I just have of being traitors who hurt other women?
From a woman in EA (I initially wrote the question asking about local community confusingly, the language has been clarified now):