EA prides itself on quantifying the scope of problems. Nobody seems to be actually quantifying the alleged scope of sexual misconduct issues in EA. There’s an accumulation of anecdotes, often second or third hand, being weaponized by mainstream media into a blanket condemnation of EA’s ‘weirdness’. But it’s unclear whether EA has higher or lower rates of sexual misconduct than any other edgy social movement that includes tens of thousands of people.
In one scientific society I’m familiar with, a few allegations of sexual conduct were made over several years (out of almost a thousand members). Some sex-negative activists tried to portray the society as wholly corrupt, exploitative, sexist, unwelcoming, and alienating. But instead of taking the allegations reactively as symptomatic of broader problems, the society ran a large-scale anonymous survey of almost all members. And it found that something less than 2% of female or male members had ever felt significantly uncomfortable, unwelcome, or exploited. That was the scope of the problem. 2% isn’t 0%, but it’s a lot better than 20% or 50%. In response to this scope information, the society did not adopt the draconian anti-sex, anti-relationship, anti-socializing policies that the activists had demanded. Instead, it allowed its members to treat each other as mature adults capable of navigating their own social and sexual decisions.
If EA is serious about assessing ‘weird sexual come-ons’ as a cause area that’s worthy of attention, then we should apply the usual EA quantification methods, instead of just defaulting to emotion-driven ‘activist mode’. How widespread is the actual problem? How severe are the consequences? How neglected is this issue (given that the EA community team is already actively involved in addressing this issue)?
If we’re not willing do a serious, scope-sensitive, cause assessment of this issue, we’re just reacting as prudish, puritanical alarmists, who are willing to sex-shame, poly-shame, kink-shame, and Aspy-shame whenever it seems like the ‘empathic, concerned’ thing to do.
Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?
Epistemic status/disclosure: I’m an evolutionary sex researcher who teaches courses on ‘Alternative Relationships’, ‘Psychology of Human Sexuality’, and related topics. I’ve recently been doing research on anti-polyamory stigma and anti-BDSM stigma, and I’m on the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on Consensual Non-Monogamy. FWIW, I’m seeing an alarming amount of anti-poly stigma, kink-shaming, and ageism (esp. outrage about age-gap relationships) emerging in EA lately—and in the mainstream media’s oddly well-coordinated attack EA.
Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?
I agree with this. Though the thing I’d want to push for isn’t “treat it as an axiom that poly and BDSM are exactly as socially and psychologically healthy and good as LGBT things, and accuse people of bigotry if they ever criticize those practices”.
The thing I’d push for instead is: Err on the side of treating EAs’ consensual choices in their personal lives as None Of The Movement’s Business. But if topics like “what are the costs and benefits of poly?” come up (either because EAs are trying to make personal decisions, or because they’re trying to understand the world at large), try to make it socially safe for people to express their actual views (both pro and con), as long as they’re civil, willing to provide supporting arguments and hear counter-arguments, and otherwise following good epistemic norms in the conversation.
I’d strongly endorse your suggestion that we should ‘Err on the side of treating EAs’ consensual choices in their personal lives as None Of The Movement’s Business’.
Most EAs are adults who are old enough to vote, drive, join the military, own property, take out loans, invest in stocks, get married, have children, and consent (or not) to sex.
IMHO, we should treat each other as adults, and the EA community should not put itself in a position of policing our social/sexual lives.
Side-note: the OP says “Wildly unusual social practices like polyamory”, but I think poly is fairly common in the Bay Area outside of EA/rat circles.
I suspect it’s fairly common in other young, blue-tribe, urban contexts in the US too? (Especially if we treat “polyamorous”, “non-monogamous”, and many “monogamish” relationship styles as more-or-less the same phenomenon.)
Rob—yes, among under-30s in the US, UK, and Europe, consensual non-monogamy is pretty popular; good reliable data are hard to come by, but it’s certainly NOT the case that polyamory is a ‘wildly unusual social practice’.
The most recent Census-based quota sample (Moors et al, 2021) of single adults in the US (N = 3,438) shows that about 17% of people would like to engage in polyamory, and about 11% have done so at some point. (Compare that to circa 4.5% of Americans being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans). So, polyamory as a relationship orientation is arguably about as common as (or maybe more common than) gay/lesbian as a sexual orientation.
Side-note: the OP says “Wildly unusual social practices like polyamory”, but I think poly is fairly common in the Bay Area outside of EA/rat circles.
I suspect it’s fairly common in other young, blue-tribe, urban contexts in the US too? (Especially if we treat “polyamorous”, “non-monogamous”, and many “monogamish” relationship styles as more-or-less the same phenomenon.)
I’ve heard this argument before but I think it’s quite overstated. I grew up in the SF Bay Area and still am in touch with many friends from childhood. They are generally young, blue-tribe, urban/suburban, etc.
Of that group, I think zero of them are polyamorous, with perhaps one exception (though I’m not sure if this person actually practices polyamory or has merely thought about doing so/been attracted to the idea) -- and that one exception is also the one member of the group, other than myself, with by far the most contact with the Bay Area rationality/EA scene.
(Of course, it’s possible and perhaps indeed somewhat likely that some people I knew in childhood are now polyamorous but I haven’t learned about this, as they keep it quiet or we’ve fallen out of contact or whatever? But it certainly does not seem to be a big mainstream thing.)
Third Generation Bay Area, here—and, if you aren’t going to college at Berkeley or swirling in the small cliques of SF among 800,000 people living there, yeah, not a lot of polycules. I remember when Occupy oozed its way through here that left a residue of ‘say-anything-polyamorists’ who were excited to share their ‘pick-up artist’ techniques when only other men where present. “Gurus abuse naïve hopefuls for sex” has been a recurring theme of the Bay, every few decades, but the locals don’t buy it.
if I’m going to be nervous about anything it’s doing things like poly and kink when you don’t have a good sense of how these things ~typically look. fortunately there is plenty of cultural infrastructure for fixing this in EA/rat circles.
This is a great idea. EA already runs an annual community survey. So it wouldn’t necessary to create a whole new survey to get this data—just add some questions to the existing community survey. If they aren’t already on there it would be great to see them on the next survey.
I am now also very curious about what value the community gets from various kinds of experiences in EA spaces.
For example, I’m curious how most women would weigh being in a community that lets them access healthy professional networks free from the tensions of inappropriate* sexual/romantic advances against being in a community where they are able to find find EA partners. (I am implying that there is a tradeoff here.)
I am also curious if the men in the community have an opposing view—if so, it might be important to think about how the existing state of the community (that may have been shaped by the views of the majority gender) may make it less attractive to women considering joining the community.
(I personally gain a lot from interacting with the EA community in a professional way and would weigh having healthy EA professional networks a lot higher than the chance to date within the community.)
*eg of inappropriate—young EA job seekers being propositioned by potential bosses in their field after making it clear that they are looking for opportunities in that field.
Ben—good idea. I think the crucial thing would be to phrase the questions about these issues as neutrally and factually as possible, to avoid responses biases in either direction.
Ideally EA would ask just about actual first-hand experiences of the individual, rather than general perceptions, impressions based on rumors and media coverage, or second/third-hand reports.
Here’s something else I’d like to know on that survey:
what proportion of respondents wants to post on EAF or engage in other discussions they think are important for EA’s goals, but don’t, or will only do so anonymously because they are worried about the consequences?
how does that compare to the proportion who feel free to contribute without fear of retribution?
what proportion thinks they have been in fact passed over for an opportunity because they have criticized EA or said something else “politically incorrect” here?
If you have not a Census of EA, you can not do this kind of survey. The EA Survey is donde on a voluntary basis on the Forum, and false identities can be used to manipulate results. Any EA survey shall be based on a anonymous answers but verified identity.
Surveys of these types are often anonymous, because
while it is possible for people to make false responses, that doesn’t happen very much, because it is time consuming, and unethical, and there just aren’t that many people out there who are all of unethical, have lots of time on their hands, and want to manipulate our survey. Manipulated responses are generally more of a danger for short polls (e.g., “which political party would you vote for”), but less of an issue for 10 minute + surveys.
there are means of probabilistically filtering false responses out, including eliminating identical copies of responses, comparing IP addresses, and so on
It is quite expensive, difficult, and risky to verify identities and at the same time, guaranteeing anonymity
For that reason verifying identities can discourage genuine responses
What you’re suggesting—some sort of census and then restricting access to the poll—would be rather expensive and time-consuming. Is there any evidence for someone wanting to fund what I expect would be a six-figure endeavor?
Why do you think an anonymous survey for physical gatherings and meeting attendants (real humans taking part in physical EA activities ) with paper sheets would be so expensive? You go to a gathering, ask people their names (ideally ask for a ID), write them in a list, then give them envelopes and the survey, and collect the written answers.
An additional issue is than the “at risk” population is not all EAs and EA adjacents, but only those physically involved.
You’d have to distribute at a lot of events to get a representative sample, and then would need the completed forms mailed to a trusted third party organization (having site-level distribution would risk deidentification, and people need privacy to complete surveys on particular topics). Unless you’re limiting yourself to multiple-choice, someone then needs to transcribe all the written responses before running the scantron sheets through.
There are reasons that mail-in surveys aren’t popular nowadays.
Well, it is hard to believe that a random chosen person would try to do “deidentification”. What I have described is routinely done for calification of university professors at end course in countless universities!
Do those surveys ask people if they are survivors of sexual assault? That is extremely sensitive information that requires a very high level of assurance that one’s identity cannot be attached to one’s responses.
Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event.
I think the comparison here is somewhat inapt. The actual case listed in the OP is “casually invit[ing] coworkers to go to sex parties with them to experiment with BDSM toys”. If someone now invited a coworker to a gay sex party I think it would be quite reasonable to consider that unacceptable behaviour, even in the complete absence of homophobia.
Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?
This comparison seems quite misleading to me because it glosses over the type of “event” in question. The OP was calling for people to avoid casually inviting coworkers to sex parties, not just “events”. I certainly hope that casually inviting a coworker to to attend a sex party -- whether that be gay, lesbian, straight, or whatever—would be considered inappropriate and grossly unprofessional even today!
*Caveat before starting here: I really don’t want any poly reading this to see it as a personal attack. Someone who is poly isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, it might really be better for certain people, but it is very much worth discussing whether the community may actually strongly benefit from a social norm of monogamy. This comment is also more directed towards heterosexual poly relationships, which I think are more likely to pose power differential and sex ratio issues than homosexual ones.
“Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?”
To be quite frank, I think that this a wildly offensive appeal to emotion. Sexuality and gender are very, very different things from the mono/poly distinction and views about monogamy and low age gaps in relationships being superior shouldn’t be immediately dismissed as “polyamory stigma.” The risks when a 50 year old poly man with two current relationships asks out a 22 year old woman are higher and the potential benefits less from a utilitarian point of view then when a 22 year old women asks out a 22 year old man. This is because
a. A poly person will likely invite more people on dates then a monogamous one, leading to more opportunities for something bad to happen.
b. There is a higher risk of rejection and offense being taken when there is a large age gap. The process of rejection can be very painful for people on both sides.
c. There is more likely to be a power gap when one party is older.
d. The risk of STD spread is higher within polyamory.
e. There are lots of studies showing highly negative long term impacts from polygamous societies in contrast to monogamous ones. Obviously polyamory and polygamy are not the same thing, but there are certainly similarities.
f. The potential welfare gains for both parties are much higher in the second case as we should expect the happiness gain from going from zero partners to one to be much higher than the gain from going from two to three.
g. Relationships between older men and younger women seem more common then those between younger men and older men. More high age gap relationships therefore mean more lonely young men and older women.
h. Large age gap relationships are more likely to lead to long term widows.
To be clear, the social norms against LGBTQ relationships, marriages and sexual/gender transitions were and are very wrong. But gender and sexuality are not a choice, pursuing monogamous vs polyamorous relationships and the age of the person being dated are very much choices. The utilitarian benefits from allowing same sex marriages etc .seem very high, I really don’t think the same is true of advocating polyamorous or high age gap ones.
Rob—I strongly agree with your take here.
EA prides itself on quantifying the scope of problems. Nobody seems to be actually quantifying the alleged scope of sexual misconduct issues in EA. There’s an accumulation of anecdotes, often second or third hand, being weaponized by mainstream media into a blanket condemnation of EA’s ‘weirdness’. But it’s unclear whether EA has higher or lower rates of sexual misconduct than any other edgy social movement that includes tens of thousands of people.
In one scientific society I’m familiar with, a few allegations of sexual conduct were made over several years (out of almost a thousand members). Some sex-negative activists tried to portray the society as wholly corrupt, exploitative, sexist, unwelcoming, and alienating. But instead of taking the allegations reactively as symptomatic of broader problems, the society ran a large-scale anonymous survey of almost all members. And it found that something less than 2% of female or male members had ever felt significantly uncomfortable, unwelcome, or exploited. That was the scope of the problem. 2% isn’t 0%, but it’s a lot better than 20% or 50%. In response to this scope information, the society did not adopt the draconian anti-sex, anti-relationship, anti-socializing policies that the activists had demanded. Instead, it allowed its members to treat each other as mature adults capable of navigating their own social and sexual decisions.
If EA is serious about assessing ‘weird sexual come-ons’ as a cause area that’s worthy of attention, then we should apply the usual EA quantification methods, instead of just defaulting to emotion-driven ‘activist mode’. How widespread is the actual problem? How severe are the consequences? How neglected is this issue (given that the EA community team is already actively involved in addressing this issue)?
If we’re not willing do a serious, scope-sensitive, cause assessment of this issue, we’re just reacting as prudish, puritanical alarmists, who are willing to sex-shame, poly-shame, kink-shame, and Aspy-shame whenever it seems like the ‘empathic, concerned’ thing to do.
Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?
Epistemic status/disclosure: I’m an evolutionary sex researcher who teaches courses on ‘Alternative Relationships’, ‘Psychology of Human Sexuality’, and related topics. I’ve recently been doing research on anti-polyamory stigma and anti-BDSM stigma, and I’m on the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on Consensual Non-Monogamy. FWIW, I’m seeing an alarming amount of anti-poly stigma, kink-shaming, and ageism (esp. outrage about age-gap relationships) emerging in EA lately—and in the mainstream media’s oddly well-coordinated attack EA.
I agree with this. Though the thing I’d want to push for isn’t “treat it as an axiom that poly and BDSM are exactly as socially and psychologically healthy and good as LGBT things, and accuse people of bigotry if they ever criticize those practices”.
The thing I’d push for instead is: Err on the side of treating EAs’ consensual choices in their personal lives as None Of The Movement’s Business. But if topics like “what are the costs and benefits of poly?” come up (either because EAs are trying to make personal decisions, or because they’re trying to understand the world at large), try to make it socially safe for people to express their actual views (both pro and con), as long as they’re civil, willing to provide supporting arguments and hear counter-arguments, and otherwise following good epistemic norms in the conversation.
Rob—Yep. Fair point.
I’d strongly endorse your suggestion that we should ‘Err on the side of treating EAs’ consensual choices in their personal lives as None Of The Movement’s Business’.
Most EAs are adults who are old enough to vote, drive, join the military, own property, take out loans, invest in stocks, get married, have children, and consent (or not) to sex.
IMHO, we should treat each other as adults, and the EA community should not put itself in a position of policing our social/sexual lives.
Side-note: the OP says “Wildly unusual social practices like polyamory”, but I think poly is fairly common in the Bay Area outside of EA/rat circles.
I suspect it’s fairly common in other young, blue-tribe, urban contexts in the US too? (Especially if we treat “polyamorous”, “non-monogamous”, and many “monogamish” relationship styles as more-or-less the same phenomenon.)
Rob—yes, among under-30s in the US, UK, and Europe, consensual non-monogamy is pretty popular; good reliable data are hard to come by, but it’s certainly NOT the case that polyamory is a ‘wildly unusual social practice’.
The most recent Census-based quota sample (Moors et al, 2021) of single adults in the US (N = 3,438) shows that about 17% of people would like to engage in polyamory, and about 11% have done so at some point. (Compare that to circa 4.5% of Americans being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans). So, polyamory as a relationship orientation is arguably about as common as (or maybe more common than) gay/lesbian as a sexual orientation.
I’ve heard this argument before but I think it’s quite overstated. I grew up in the SF Bay Area and still am in touch with many friends from childhood. They are generally young, blue-tribe, urban/suburban, etc.
Of that group, I think zero of them are polyamorous, with perhaps one exception (though I’m not sure if this person actually practices polyamory or has merely thought about doing so/been attracted to the idea) -- and that one exception is also the one member of the group, other than myself, with by far the most contact with the Bay Area rationality/EA scene.
(Of course, it’s possible and perhaps indeed somewhat likely that some people I knew in childhood are now polyamorous but I haven’t learned about this, as they keep it quiet or we’ve fallen out of contact or whatever? But it certainly does not seem to be a big mainstream thing.)
Third Generation Bay Area, here—and, if you aren’t going to college at Berkeley or swirling in the small cliques of SF among 800,000 people living there, yeah, not a lot of polycules. I remember when Occupy oozed its way through here that left a residue of ‘say-anything-polyamorists’ who were excited to share their ‘pick-up artist’ techniques when only other men where present. “Gurus abuse naïve hopefuls for sex” has been a recurring theme of the Bay, every few decades, but the locals don’t buy it.
if I’m going to be nervous about anything it’s doing things like poly and kink when you don’t have a good sense of how these things ~typically look.
fortunately there is plenty of cultural infrastructure for fixing this in EA/rat circles.
This is a great idea. EA already runs an annual community survey. So it wouldn’t necessary to create a whole new survey to get this data—just add some questions to the existing community survey. If they aren’t already on there it would be great to see them on the next survey.
I am now also very curious about what value the community gets from various kinds of experiences in EA spaces.
For example, I’m curious how most women would weigh being in a community that lets them access healthy professional networks free from the tensions of inappropriate* sexual/romantic advances against being in a community where they are able to find find EA partners. (I am implying that there is a tradeoff here.)
I am also curious if the men in the community have an opposing view—if so, it might be important to think about how the existing state of the community (that may have been shaped by the views of the majority gender) may make it less attractive to women considering joining the community.
(I personally gain a lot from interacting with the EA community in a professional way and would weigh having healthy EA professional networks a lot higher than the chance to date within the community.)
*eg of inappropriate—young EA job seekers being propositioned by potential bosses in their field after making it clear that they are looking for opportunities in that field.
Ben—good idea. I think the crucial thing would be to phrase the questions about these issues as neutrally and factually as possible, to avoid responses biases in either direction.
Ideally EA would ask just about actual first-hand experiences of the individual, rather than general perceptions, impressions based on rumors and media coverage, or second/third-hand reports.
Here’s something else I’d like to know on that survey:
what proportion of respondents wants to post on EAF or engage in other discussions they think are important for EA’s goals, but don’t, or will only do so anonymously because they are worried about the consequences?
how does that compare to the proportion who feel free to contribute without fear of retribution?
what proportion thinks they have been in fact passed over for an opportunity because they have criticized EA or said something else “politically incorrect” here?
If you have not a Census of EA, you can not do this kind of survey. The EA Survey is donde on a voluntary basis on the Forum, and false identities can be used to manipulate results. Any EA survey shall be based on a anonymous answers but verified identity.
Surveys of these types are often anonymous, because
while it is possible for people to make false responses, that doesn’t happen very much, because it is time consuming, and unethical, and there just aren’t that many people out there who are all of unethical, have lots of time on their hands, and want to manipulate our survey. Manipulated responses are generally more of a danger for short polls (e.g., “which political party would you vote for”), but less of an issue for 10 minute + surveys.
there are means of probabilistically filtering false responses out, including eliminating identical copies of responses, comparing IP addresses, and so on
It is quite expensive, difficult, and risky to verify identities and at the same time, guaranteeing anonymity
For that reason verifying identities can discourage genuine responses
In my view you underestimate the degree of intentionality and coordination of the offensive against EA.
What you’re suggesting—some sort of census and then restricting access to the poll—would be rather expensive and time-consuming. Is there any evidence for someone wanting to fund what I expect would be a six-figure endeavor?
Why do you think an anonymous survey for physical gatherings and meeting attendants (real humans taking part in physical EA activities ) with paper sheets would be so expensive? You go to a gathering, ask people their names (ideally ask for a ID), write them in a list, then give them envelopes and the survey, and collect the written answers.
An additional issue is than the “at risk” population is not all EAs and EA adjacents, but only those physically involved.
You’d have to distribute at a lot of events to get a representative sample, and then would need the completed forms mailed to a trusted third party organization (having site-level distribution would risk deidentification, and people need privacy to complete surveys on particular topics). Unless you’re limiting yourself to multiple-choice, someone then needs to transcribe all the written responses before running the scantron sheets through.
There are reasons that mail-in surveys aren’t popular nowadays.
Well, it is hard to believe that a random chosen person would try to do “deidentification”. What I have described is routinely done for calification of university professors at end course in countless universities!
Do those surveys ask people if they are survivors of sexual assault? That is extremely sensitive information that requires a very high level of assurance that one’s identity cannot be attached to one’s responses.
I think the comparison here is somewhat inapt. The actual case listed in the OP is “casually invit[ing] coworkers to go to sex parties with them to experiment with BDSM toys”. If someone now invited a coworker to a gay sex party I think it would be quite reasonable to consider that unacceptable behaviour, even in the complete absence of homophobia.
This comparison seems quite misleading to me because it glosses over the type of “event” in question. The OP was calling for people to avoid casually inviting coworkers to sex parties, not just “events”. I certainly hope that casually inviting a coworker to to attend a sex party -- whether that be gay, lesbian, straight, or whatever—would be considered inappropriate and grossly unprofessional even today!
*Caveat before starting here: I really don’t want any poly reading this to see it as a personal attack. Someone who is poly isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, it might really be better for certain people, but it is very much worth discussing whether the community may actually strongly benefit from a social norm of monogamy. This comment is also more directed towards heterosexual poly relationships, which I think are more likely to pose power differential and sex ratio issues than homosexual ones.
“Historical note: If EA had emerged in the 1970s era of the gay rights movement rather than the 2010s, I can imagine an alternative history in which some EAs were utterly outraged and offended that gay or lesbian EAs had dared to invite them to a gay or lesbian event. The EA community could have leveraged the latent homophobia of the time to portray such an invitation as bizarrely unprofessional, and a big problem that needs addressing. Why are we treating polyamory and kink in 2023 with the same reactive outrage that people would have treated gay/lesbian sexuality fifty years ago?”
To be quite frank, I think that this a wildly offensive appeal to emotion. Sexuality and gender are very, very different things from the mono/poly distinction and views about monogamy and low age gaps in relationships being superior shouldn’t be immediately dismissed as “polyamory stigma.” The risks when a 50 year old poly man with two current relationships asks out a 22 year old woman are higher and the potential benefits less from a utilitarian point of view then when a 22 year old women asks out a 22 year old man. This is because
a. A poly person will likely invite more people on dates then a monogamous one, leading to more opportunities for something bad to happen.
b. There is a higher risk of rejection and offense being taken when there is a large age gap. The process of rejection can be very painful for people on both sides.
c. There is more likely to be a power gap when one party is older.
d. The risk of STD spread is higher within polyamory.
e. There are lots of studies showing highly negative long term impacts from polygamous societies in contrast to monogamous ones. Obviously polyamory and polygamy are not the same thing, but there are certainly similarities.
f. The potential welfare gains for both parties are much higher in the second case as we should expect the happiness gain from going from zero partners to one to be much higher than the gain from going from two to three.
g. Relationships between older men and younger women seem more common then those between younger men and older men. More high age gap relationships therefore mean more lonely young men and older women.
h. Large age gap relationships are more likely to lead to long term widows.
To be clear, the social norms against LGBTQ relationships, marriages and sexual/gender transitions were and are very wrong. But gender and sexuality are not a choice, pursuing monogamous vs polyamorous relationships and the age of the person being dated are very much choices. The utilitarian benefits from allowing same sex marriages etc .seem very high, I really don’t think the same is true of advocating polyamorous or high age gap ones.
I am terrified that you were downvoted to obscurity. These posts, the ones that EA hides, are the ones the public needs to see the most.