Working with official orgs to handle sexual abuse cases almost never goes well. For obvious reasons victims want to avoid backlash. And many victims understandably dont want to ruin the lives of people they still care about. I truly wish private processes and call-ins worked better. But the only thing that creates change is public pressure. I would always endorse being as public as you can without compromising victim privacy or pressuring them to be more open about what happened. It is just a very unfortunate situation.
I agree with your sentiment (and upvoted so your comment doesn’t get hidden), but (1) victims don’t always have a strong connection to their attacker and may not care strongly, and (2) in my six years of doing this, sometimes (not always) private processes work. Mostly importantly, private processes are easier on the survivors, who should take precedence in any process.
Under my old screen name, I had 3 commenters say they changed their minds about rape, for example. I know my work certainly has changed people’s opinions on rape, both at large and within their workplace/community. But to do that, they have to be willing to change and admit they made mistakes.
The problem here for me is that (1) EA isn’t so far showing a willing to begin that process of change—they can’t even admit they’ve got a problem, and aren’t willing to say “hey, we f-ked this up, guys, and we’re sorry.”, (2) EA doesn’t want to compromise with me, and so far, just wants to build off my work without any reciprocity, change, learning...and (3) EA literally pays a team to do what they’re trying to get me to do for free (yeah, I know that team does more than just what I do, but the point is that they pay people to do what they’re trying to gently, perhaps unconsciously, manipulate me into doing for them)- I think in part because they don’t value the education, experience, reputation-building, and expertise that allows me to work as effectively as I do).
I agree that private processors are often better for survivors (Though they can be worse). But usually very little changes until someone goes public (at least anonymously). Nothing else remotely reliably creates the momentum to get bad actors out of power. If the people in power weren’t at least complicit we wouldn’t have these endemic problems. Notably this has already played out multiple times with rationalist and Ea paces. Brent was extremely egregious but until public callouts nothing was seriously done about him. In fact community leaders like eliezer praised his ‘apologies’. Sadly this reality can put a burden on survivors. There isn’t really a great approach as far as I can tell.
CEA pays a team but their main allegiance is to the existing power structure so of course they can’t solve the root issues.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done. It’s not easy.
Yeah, they can be. I went through a brutal “restorative justice” process myself (I’m trained in traditional law, and at the time, was personally insulted that a bunch of hacks thought they could replace centuries of legal work/thought), with someone EA-adjacent (though I just confirmed that my rapist has some ties to EA via Google; he’s one of the 14 and not 30) - I said no for weeks, had multiple people push into a process, went along because I wanted to tell my side, was silenced, and the “mediator” texted me to encourage me to kill myself before I left the country. Obviously, I’m not advocating for that.
And also, I had no idea to report this to CH. Nor, given how CH is handling this, would I report this today.
I’m not sure if that is inherent to private responses, though. One could imagine something set up vaguely like the “Facebook Supreme Court” (FSC) with longterm funding and independent/external control by neutrals. I’m not suggesting anything about the FSC model other than its externality and independence, but those features would allow us to have more confidence in the process because we would almost eliminate the concern that the processors have “main allegiance . . . to the existing power structure.” Data could get published, including on actions that were taken in response, and the data quality would probably be better for a wide variety of reasons.
The problem with that is most accusers would want anonymity/privacy. This is why I suggest conveying information about processes through a policy (as I mentioned above, I was assaulted by someone “EA-adjacent”, and had no idea where to report; and a policy is more fair to both the accusers and accusees), working with third parties that survivors can approach and CH can interface with, and disseminating only information intended to keep the community safe is the better approach.
Definitely—I meant anonymized summary data like “there were X individuals reported for sexual assault, Y number of individuals were banned from CEA events as a result of those reports, Z number of individuals were not acted on because CEA determined the individual was not connected to EA in a way that CEA could take any meaningful action.” How much could be said without compromising anonymity/privacy would depend on the specific data, and we should always err on the side of protecting that over publishing information.
That’s one of my big issues with the way things are now: you’re basically suggesting what I’m suggesting—that things not be as arbitrary as they are now.
I’m not super familiar with the practices of call-in culture though I’m aware of it. While I’m sure there are some communities that have practiced methods similar to call-in culture well for a long time, they’ve been uncommon and I understand that call-in culture has in general only been spreading across different movements for a few years now. I also expect this community would benefit from learning more about call-in culture but it’d be helpful if you can make some recommendations for effective altruists to check out.
Working with official orgs to handle sexual abuse cases almost never goes well. For obvious reasons victims want to avoid backlash. And many victims understandably dont want to ruin the lives of people they still care about. I truly wish private processes and call-ins worked better. But the only thing that creates change is public pressure. I would always endorse being as public as you can without compromising victim privacy or pressuring them to be more open about what happened. It is just a very unfortunate situation.
I agree with your sentiment (and upvoted so your comment doesn’t get hidden), but (1) victims don’t always have a strong connection to their attacker and may not care strongly, and (2) in my six years of doing this, sometimes (not always) private processes work. Mostly importantly, private processes are easier on the survivors, who should take precedence in any process.
Under my old screen name, I had 3 commenters say they changed their minds about rape, for example. I know my work certainly has changed people’s opinions on rape, both at large and within their workplace/community. But to do that, they have to be willing to change and admit they made mistakes.
The problem here for me is that (1) EA isn’t so far showing a willing to begin that process of change—they can’t even admit they’ve got a problem, and aren’t willing to say “hey, we f-ked this up, guys, and we’re sorry.”, (2) EA doesn’t want to compromise with me, and so far, just wants to build off my work without any reciprocity, change, learning...and (3) EA literally pays a team to do what they’re trying to get me to do for free (yeah, I know that team does more than just what I do, but the point is that they pay people to do what they’re trying to gently, perhaps unconsciously, manipulate me into doing for them)- I think in part because they don’t value the education, experience, reputation-building, and expertise that allows me to work as effectively as I do).
I agree that private processors are often better for survivors (Though they can be worse). But usually very little changes until someone goes public (at least anonymously). Nothing else remotely reliably creates the momentum to get bad actors out of power. If the people in power weren’t at least complicit we wouldn’t have these endemic problems. Notably this has already played out multiple times with rationalist and Ea paces. Brent was extremely egregious but until public callouts nothing was seriously done about him. In fact community leaders like eliezer praised his ‘apologies’. Sadly this reality can put a burden on survivors. There isn’t really a great approach as far as I can tell.
CEA pays a team but their main allegiance is to the existing power structure so of course they can’t solve the root issues.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done. It’s not easy.
Yeah, they can be. I went through a brutal “restorative justice” process myself (I’m trained in traditional law, and at the time, was personally insulted that a bunch of hacks thought they could replace centuries of legal work/thought), with someone EA-adjacent (though I just confirmed that my rapist has some ties to EA via Google; he’s one of the 14 and not 30) - I said no for weeks, had multiple people push into a process, went along because I wanted to tell my side, was silenced, and the “mediator” texted me to encourage me to kill myself before I left the country. Obviously, I’m not advocating for that.
And also, I had no idea to report this to CH. Nor, given how CH is handling this, would I report this today.
I’m not sure if that is inherent to private responses, though. One could imagine something set up vaguely like the “Facebook Supreme Court” (FSC) with longterm funding and independent/external control by neutrals. I’m not suggesting anything about the FSC model other than its externality and independence, but those features would allow us to have more confidence in the process because we would almost eliminate the concern that the processors have “main allegiance . . . to the existing power structure.” Data could get published, including on actions that were taken in response, and the data quality would probably be better for a wide variety of reasons.
The problem with that is most accusers would want anonymity/privacy. This is why I suggest conveying information about processes through a policy (as I mentioned above, I was assaulted by someone “EA-adjacent”, and had no idea where to report; and a policy is more fair to both the accusers and accusees), working with third parties that survivors can approach and CH can interface with, and disseminating only information intended to keep the community safe is the better approach.
Definitely—I meant anonymized summary data like “there were X individuals reported for sexual assault, Y number of individuals were banned from CEA events as a result of those reports, Z number of individuals were not acted on because CEA determined the individual was not connected to EA in a way that CEA could take any meaningful action.” How much could be said without compromising anonymity/privacy would depend on the specific data, and we should always err on the side of protecting that over publishing information.
That’s one of my big issues with the way things are now: you’re basically suggesting what I’m suggesting—that things not be as arbitrary as they are now.
I’m not super familiar with the practices of call-in culture though I’m aware of it. While I’m sure there are some communities that have practiced methods similar to call-in culture well for a long time, they’ve been uncommon and I understand that call-in culture has in general only been spreading across different movements for a few years now. I also expect this community would benefit from learning more about call-in culture but it’d be helpful if you can make some recommendations for effective altruists to check out.