Yeah, there aren’t very many people with professional experience around SA.
The proposal is pretty standard stuff (a policy defining consent, reporting process, banning, investigation, evaluation, suggestions for safer events—to ensure that neither survivors nor the accused are subject to arbitrary actions at the whim of the team); training sessions (sexual harassment is required by law in many states, as I’m sure you’re well-aware...just that I’m more familiar w/EA and SA than the standard low-cost training—which research shows is not only ineffective but counter-intuitive in that it creates a backlash), a robust reporting system & dissemination (as underreporting is a hard problem; and using me isn’t working for me so I’d rather develop something to replace me), and some survivor-friendly language and framing to encourage survivors to come forward. I imagine your professional experience is more relevant to this than most of the other commenters :)
I know the risk of defamation is low if I posted a description of the accused, but it’s still not one I want to take—but I considered it because the “30” I mentioned ARE more connected with EA (eg, employees of orgs at the time of the incident, paper trails of orgs verifying that they’re connected to these people) - but agreed that the decentralization and associated legal issues make this complex. But that complexity is also interesting IMO.
IMO, I feel like rape is increasingly adjudicated by public opinion rather than law. Given the parameters of the law, it’s understandably very difficult to prove non-consent beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, the opinions and biases of juries and judges, eg, the judge in the Stanford rape case is a good example, but I feel like I come across similar opinions from presiding judges of “not ruining a young man’s life” once a month or so.
If you’re interested, I found a lot of value in Alexandra Brodsky’s Sexual Justice—she’s a Yale-trained attorney who makes some great arguments about why we need other processes that aren’t the legal system for dealing with this.
Thanks for the details! Yeah, definitely wasn’t suggesting you should list names. It’s helpful to hear how you determined that the 30 were more connected, though.
What you’ve described makes sense to me. As far as appropriate training (and also appropriate employer policies), I think that mandate would probably need to come from Open Philantrophy (the major EA funder) as a condition of its grants. I don’t think either CEA or RP would have a great means of enforcing such a requirement. CEA could require training as a condition of attending one of its events . . . but the attendance at those events has been significantly cut due to budget constraints, so it would apply to only a fraction of the population. I would be a bit skeptical of on-line training unless supportive data were available; the people who most need to hear it would be the people most likely to be reading something unrelated in the background.
I think people sometimes tend to focus on the sanctioning/banning at the expense of other parts of a comprehensive response, so I’m glad to see the proposal was comprehensive. I expected it would be, of course.
I’m sure you have thought through all of this, but for the non-lawyers, here are some more specific reasons that sanctioning/banning can only be a very partial solution. Clasically, there are three reasons we sanction people for the protection of a community: general deterrence, specific deterrence, and incapacitation. (There’s also rehabilitation, but rehabilitation of people who commit sex offenses is presumably beyond EA’s abilities).
General deterrence happens when someone else learns that the offender has been sanctioned; the idea is that other people will avoid misconduct because they don’t want the same thing to happen to them. The challenge here is confidentality and privacy for the survivors, as well as legal concerns surrounding naming offenders. CEA doesn’t have any legal privilege to be calling people out for committing sexual violence; repeating a factually incorrect statement will likely be libel or slander. [1] So while CEA could publish summary statistics, those probably don’t have the same effect as watching some celebrity go to jail because they didn’t file their taxes. (The feds specifically target celebrities for criminal tax prosecution because of general deterrence—it gets a lot more attention than publishing statistics.)
Specific deterrence works when being sanctioned is unpleasant enough that the offender will avoid the behavior that caused you to them sanctioned in the first place. Presumably, a finding that someone committed rape would result in a ban from CEA events and some legally-defensible negative references if someone asks CH about a job candidate or community member. In other words, CEA would use everything in its arsenal on the first offense. The problem is that the offender knows that CEA has nothing left to throw at them for a second offense, so the policy doesn’t act to discourage them from re-offending.
Incapacitation involves removing the offender’s ability to cause future harm. It’s not clear to me how effectively the available tools in CEA’s toolkit actually incapacitate. The confidentiality issues and legal risks would seem to sharply limit how much CEA can communicate to those who control other EA spaces.
EVF (the corporation of which CEA is a part) has tens of millions of pounds of exposure in one of the world’s most favorable jurisdictions for libel/slander plaintiffs. These factors make its risk for libel/slander much higher than the risk of a private individual. Most private individuals don’t have enough assets to be worth suing for libel/slander after you factor in the Streisand effect—or at least won’t by the end of the trial!
What you’ve described makes sense to me. As far as appropriate training (and also appropriate employer policies), I think that mandate would probably need to come from Open Philantrophy (the major EA funder) as a condition of its grants. I don’t think either CEA or RP would have a great means of enforcing such a requirement. CEA could require training as a condition of attending one of its events . . . but the attendance at those events has been significantly cut due to budget constraints, so it would apply to only a fraction of the population. I would be a bit skeptical of on-line training unless supportive data were available; the people who most need to hear it would be the people most likely to be reading something unrelated in the background
Oh, I meant training for CH/in orgs, not people at large (especially the CH team, who deals with this stuff internally; I think a lot of the mishandling is due to a lack of information/training). And similarly, most of the “policies” would mostly set the tone for deterrence, eg, having a “consent framework” and “suggestions for greater safety at events” isn’t really an official employer policy, but sets the tone that non-consent isn’t tolerated.
Re: incapacitation, I doubt there’s any way for EA/CEA/etc to get to incapacitation. But through my experiences with deterrence, EA/CEA/etc can dramatically lower the number of assaults.
Yeah, there aren’t very many people with professional experience around SA.
The proposal is pretty standard stuff (a policy defining consent, reporting process, banning, investigation, evaluation, suggestions for safer events—to ensure that neither survivors nor the accused are subject to arbitrary actions at the whim of the team); training sessions (sexual harassment is required by law in many states, as I’m sure you’re well-aware...just that I’m more familiar w/EA and SA than the standard low-cost training—which research shows is not only ineffective but counter-intuitive in that it creates a backlash), a robust reporting system & dissemination (as underreporting is a hard problem; and using me isn’t working for me so I’d rather develop something to replace me), and some survivor-friendly language and framing to encourage survivors to come forward. I imagine your professional experience is more relevant to this than most of the other commenters :)
I know the risk of defamation is low if I posted a description of the accused, but it’s still not one I want to take—but I considered it because the “30” I mentioned ARE more connected with EA (eg, employees of orgs at the time of the incident, paper trails of orgs verifying that they’re connected to these people) - but agreed that the decentralization and associated legal issues make this complex. But that complexity is also interesting IMO.
IMO, I feel like rape is increasingly adjudicated by public opinion rather than law. Given the parameters of the law, it’s understandably very difficult to prove non-consent beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, the opinions and biases of juries and judges, eg, the judge in the Stanford rape case is a good example, but I feel like I come across similar opinions from presiding judges of “not ruining a young man’s life” once a month or so.
If you’re interested, I found a lot of value in Alexandra Brodsky’s Sexual Justice—she’s a Yale-trained attorney who makes some great arguments about why we need other processes that aren’t the legal system for dealing with this.
Thanks for the details! Yeah, definitely wasn’t suggesting you should list names. It’s helpful to hear how you determined that the 30 were more connected, though.
What you’ve described makes sense to me. As far as appropriate training (and also appropriate employer policies), I think that mandate would probably need to come from Open Philantrophy (the major EA funder) as a condition of its grants. I don’t think either CEA or RP would have a great means of enforcing such a requirement. CEA could require training as a condition of attending one of its events . . . but the attendance at those events has been significantly cut due to budget constraints, so it would apply to only a fraction of the population. I would be a bit skeptical of on-line training unless supportive data were available; the people who most need to hear it would be the people most likely to be reading something unrelated in the background.
I think people sometimes tend to focus on the sanctioning/banning at the expense of other parts of a comprehensive response, so I’m glad to see the proposal was comprehensive. I expected it would be, of course.
I’m sure you have thought through all of this, but for the non-lawyers, here are some more specific reasons that sanctioning/banning can only be a very partial solution. Clasically, there are three reasons we sanction people for the protection of a community: general deterrence, specific deterrence, and incapacitation. (There’s also rehabilitation, but rehabilitation of people who commit sex offenses is presumably beyond EA’s abilities).
General deterrence happens when someone else learns that the offender has been sanctioned; the idea is that other people will avoid misconduct because they don’t want the same thing to happen to them. The challenge here is confidentality and privacy for the survivors, as well as legal concerns surrounding naming offenders. CEA doesn’t have any legal privilege to be calling people out for committing sexual violence; repeating a factually incorrect statement will likely be libel or slander. [1] So while CEA could publish summary statistics, those probably don’t have the same effect as watching some celebrity go to jail because they didn’t file their taxes. (The feds specifically target celebrities for criminal tax prosecution because of general deterrence—it gets a lot more attention than publishing statistics.)
Specific deterrence works when being sanctioned is unpleasant enough that the offender will avoid the behavior that caused you to them sanctioned in the first place. Presumably, a finding that someone committed rape would result in a ban from CEA events and some legally-defensible negative references if someone asks CH about a job candidate or community member. In other words, CEA would use everything in its arsenal on the first offense. The problem is that the offender knows that CEA has nothing left to throw at them for a second offense, so the policy doesn’t act to discourage them from re-offending.
Incapacitation involves removing the offender’s ability to cause future harm. It’s not clear to me how effectively the available tools in CEA’s toolkit actually incapacitate. The confidentiality issues and legal risks would seem to sharply limit how much CEA can communicate to those who control other EA spaces.
EVF (the corporation of which CEA is a part) has tens of millions of pounds of exposure in one of the world’s most favorable jurisdictions for libel/slander plaintiffs. These factors make its risk for libel/slander much higher than the risk of a private individual. Most private individuals don’t have enough assets to be worth suing for libel/slander after you factor in the Streisand effect—or at least won’t by the end of the trial!
Oh, I meant training for CH/in orgs, not people at large (especially the CH team, who deals with this stuff internally; I think a lot of the mishandling is due to a lack of information/training). And similarly, most of the “policies” would mostly set the tone for deterrence, eg, having a “consent framework” and “suggestions for greater safety at events” isn’t really an official employer policy, but sets the tone that non-consent isn’t tolerated.
Re: incapacitation, I doubt there’s any way for EA/CEA/etc to get to incapacitation. But through my experiences with deterrence, EA/CEA/etc can dramatically lower the number of assaults.