I think thereās two separate dynamics at play here:
I think we could do more to avoid punishing opinions perceived wrong. An example of punishing behavior at play is my own comment two days ago. I made it while being too upset for my own good and lashed out at someone for making a completely reasonable point.
I donāt blame the user I replied to for wanting an anonymous account when that is the response they can expect.
Secondly, I suspect that people are vastly overrating just how much anybody cares about who says what on the forum.
While I understand why someone making a direct attack on some organization or person might want to stay anonymous, most things I see posted from anonymous accounts seem to just be regular opinions that are phrased with more hostility than the mean.
Itās a bit weird to me why somebody would think that a few comments on the EA forum would do all that much to ones reputation. At ea globals, at most, Iāve had a few people say āoh you are the one who wrote that snakebite post? Cool!ā and thatās about it.
It all feels very paranoid to me. Iām way too busy worrying about whether I look fat in this t-shirt to notice or care that somebody wrote a comment that was too woke/āanti-woke.
Maybe thereās a bunch of people smarter than me who think my opinions are mid and now think less of me, but like, they were going to realize that after speaking to me for five minutes anyways.
I donāt know. Reading the post from the burner account that wants to get rid of weird people, and who thinks my wife is a poisonous creep because she views inviting coworkers to BDSM parties is a completely reasonable thing to do made me actually understand for the first time the emotions that underly parts of cancel culture.
This both makes me think that my instinct that he shouldnāt be hired for anything should be taken less seriously, and makes me think that I took cancel culture style concerns about simply not wanting to work near a person who has certain attitudes about the sort of person that you are actually should be taken at least somewhat seriously.
It probably was wise for him to go anonymous before saying that weird people like me are generally bad actors who do not deserve an assumption that we are speaking in good faith (I know that is not what he actually said. That is what it feels like he said, and I suspect if I ever was in a position where I knew who he was, and was deciding whether he should get it, I would not be able to ignore my sense that he is attacking me personally and my right to exist, and assess him in the way that I would look at other candidatesāand this is despite knowing that my reading of what he said is uncharitable).
I think people might be imagining some pretty different situations? Compare:
Employee A approaches new hire B at lunch and says āIām putting together a BDSM party this weekend, let me know if thatās the sort of thing you might be into.ā
Employees A and B have become close over a long time working together. They talk about a lot of things, and have gradually become more comfortable sharing details about their personal lives. At this point they both know that the other is into BDSM, and A invites B to a BDSM party theyāre organizing.
[EDIT: in both cases imagine the employees are at the same level, and not in each otherās management chains]
Thereās a continuum from 1 to 2, and while I do expect some of the disagreement here is about whether to treat BDSM parties as different from other social activities (if #1 was about a board game party then it would probably be widely viewed as welcoming) my guess is most of it is how much information people are imagining A has about whether B would like to receive an invitation?
A board game party is very different. There have been reams and reams written about power dynamics in corporations and the issues that sex brings into it. I find it concerning that so many EAās are so blase about this topic.
Especially when it comes to something like BDSM, that explicitly has dominance and submission in most circumstances. That seems like a ridiculously unhealthy dynamic if, for instance, someone invited a direct report or an employee to a BDSM party. I donāt think the amount of time spent getting to know the employee matters too much.
Imagine being an employee, your boss invites you to one of these parties, and then asks you to perform submissive acts. I find that incredibly problematic, and it sounds like this exact scenario happens frequently at big EA orgs.
I wouldnāt go so far as to say all sexual relations between coworkers should be banned, but I do think the current norms are unhealthy. Not sure exactly how to fix it without being unnecessarily draconian though.
Edit: Iāll also add that, as Tim admits (and I truly appreciate the candor here), when it comes to things like sex itās very difficult to disentangle emotions. Tim would feel personally attacked if someone doesnāt like his and his wifeās sexual practices.
In reality I see this very easily extending to people who accept sexual advances. I think it would be extremely difficult for a boss to be neutral when it comes to decided to promote an employee if they have slept with one of them.
BDSM is not primarily about sex, and sex mostly does not happen at BDSM parties, at least not the ones that Iāve been at. A sex party is a different thing. The impression I get from your comment is that you are not very familiar with the BDSM sceneāthough I might be wrong. There isnāt any tell in it that shows that you definitely are ignorant about a basic fact, it is just a vibe Iām feeling.
In either case, as far as I know, neither of us work at an EA org, and from your comment it seems like you imagine that what happens at these parties is very different from what I imagine happens at them (which is not to say Iām correct, they probably occur in the Bay Area or London, where the scene is very different, and vastly bigger than where I live).
Also, I think we have a different set of priors here about sex, relationships and careers.
And again, I am self employed, and have been for the entire time Iāve earned meaningful money, and Iām male, so my intuitive pov is likely missing important things. And also, my resistance to changing norms in EA around sex is not about thinking that there shouldnāt be a norm where managers donāt sleep with subordinates in EA orgs -- there probably should be a norm against that, though I think even here the other side of the cost benefit ledger is systematically ignored because it sounds bad to talk about benefits of something that has been decided to be socially condemned.
My view here is mostly about creating norms against people who are not in employment relationships with each other dating within the community, and my anger is about trying to define community boundaries to make openly poly, bdsm, or generally weird people feel less welcome and allowed to be who they are.
Timāexcellent comment. I agree that a lot of the EA people who seem to be freaking out about the very idea of being invited to BSDM events seem to know less than nothing about BDSM, and are relying on third-hand media stereotypes about the subculture.
A good rule of thumb about highly stigmatized sexual subcultures is, if one hasnāt read anything about them, hasnāt watched any inteviews with people in the subculture, hasnāt gone to any events in the subculture, and doesnāt have any close friends involved in the subculture, then oneās takes about the subculture are likely to have very low epistemic quality.
a lot of the EA people who seem to be freaking out about the very idea of being invited to BSDM events seem to know less than nothing about BDSM, and are relying on third-hand media stereotypes about the subculture
On the other hand weāre talking about situations where someone is inviting their coworkers to BDSM parties. While (as I said above) I think this can be ok if the asker already knows the askee is into this kind of thing, consider the more dubious cases where the asker doesnāt:
A: Iām putting together a BDSM party this weekend, let me know if thatās the sort of thing you might be into.
B: Um, no thanks.
How B feels here depends mostly on their likely-uninformed understanding of what happens at these parties.
I guess the key issue is, whoās responsible for having misunderstandings and stereotypes about a popular sexual subculture, if those misunderstandings and stereotypes lead to negative reactions or to offense being taken.
I donāt think itās necessarily about having misunderstandings or stereotypes. I was the original person who commented this. I think people have different levels of comfort when it comes to mixing their sex and work lives. I personally have strong boundaries in professional settings. Ultimately I think everyone has different preferences here, and I get the sense that EA groups maybe have a slightly different culture than what Iām used to when it comes to personal/āprofessional boundaries. Should that be changed? Iām not so sure, I was mostly posting it as a question, and to show my own perspective.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I am indeed not aware of how BDSM culture operates and definitely made a lot of assumptions. My apologies for that!
I guess I agree we should welcome people, and my general sense is that optimal sexual/ārelationship norms should be far more open and less prudish than they are today. As Iāve said elsewhere though, when work and large decisions regarding money/āpower get involved l become wary of sexual relationships.
A board game party is very different. There have been reams and reams written about power dynamics in corporations and the issues that sex brings into it. I find it concerning that so many EAās are so blase about this topic.
I agree that a board game party is very different and was trying to say so; Iām sorry my comment was confusing here. Rephrasing:
I see two main explanations for why people might disagree about the scenario: (i) disagreement about how much information A has about whether B would like to receive an invitation and (ii) disagreement about how we should socially treat BDSM parties vs other parties.
Even though there isnāt consensus on (ii), I think most of the disagreement on ācan it be ok to invite coworkes to BDSM partiesā is around (i).
if, for instance, someone invited a direct report or an employee to a BDSM party
Edited my comment to specify that both people are at the same level.
Imagine being an employee, your boss invites you to one of these parties, and then asks you to perform submissive acts. I find that incredibly problematic, and it sounds like this exact scenario happens frequently at big EA orgs.
Wait, what? This isnāt something Iād heard ofāwhat makes you think it happens at all, let alone is frequent?
A mix of anecdotal stories from friends, and the common posts up here, like Tim, clearly claiming that this happens and he and his wife are part of it.
Perhaps the āfrequentlyā is uncharitable, Iām admittedly a bit frustrated on this topic. Still it seems like you arenāt really answering the core of my criticismāthat this creates extremely unhealthy and abusive power dynamics...
You might be underrating the role of theatricality in the culture, the role silliness plays in the appeal for a lot of people, not to mention the high bar for communication and introspection. Heck, people of the culture are known to say things like ācan I hug you?ā which is more interpersonally scrupulous than the base rate ānormalā person who, Iāve observed, seem use this āhugs for women; handshakes for menā heuristic that itās super autistic to second guess.
I think if the community theater was putting on King Lear, and my boss got the part of the king, and I got the part of a servant, no one would think thereās a CoI or unscrupulosity, right? or if I got the part of Lear and my boss got the part of a servant, whatever.
(flagging that Iām hesitating to participate in subthread because topicalness, but didnāt think leading a pivot to DMs made sense since the cat was already out of the bag)
Iām admittedly not in the polyamory/āSF/āRationalist part of the EA movement, and going based off second or third-hand stories and things posted on the EA forum.
I didnāt claim anything of that sort. Neither of us work for an EA org. My wife strongly does not identify as EA. Iām not even BDSM. I just claim my wife would consider inviting an interested coworker to a munch or a party as a totally reasonable thing to do if it naturally came up.
A mix of anecdotal stories from friends, and the common posts up here, like Tim, clearly claiming that this happens and he and his wife are part of it.
Tim said his wife āviews inviting coworkers to BDSM parties is a completely reasonable thing to doā. I agree that this is ambiguous, which is why I wrote my comment. But I donāt see how you can interpret it as a clear claim that she is a manager at an EA org who invites her direct reports to BDSM parties and asks them to perform submissive acts? (Unless your āthis exact scenarioā was intended to be hyperbole?)
that this creates extremely unhealthy and abusive power dynamics
Can you say more about what you mean by āthisā? If you mean inviting subordinates then I agree, but not if you mean inviting equals you have strong reason to think would like to be invited.
I think inviting equals you have strong reason to think would be invited is also problematic. People donāt stay equals forever. They get promoted, move to other orgs, leave and receive grants, etc.
Like I said I donāt have a fully fleshed out way to fix the problem of sex influencing decisions that should be made impartially, but itās clearly a problem in my view.
Without the addition of polyamory, I think itās fine in a limited sense. However if every single person in a position of power in EA is also dating another person of power, even monogamously, I would see that as a problem.
Adding in polyamory on top of that complicates things to a far greater degree. As a disclaimer I have nothing against polyamory, I just think it can lead to unhealthy workplace dynamics if it becomes a norm.
If you have an office with a laid-back culture (ie the sort of place that youād want to work at anyways), and it is a topic of conversation that came up naturally, and the coworker actually seems interested, why not invite them to a beginner friendly thing related to one of your main hobbies?
I suppose when you phrase it this way itās less weird sounding, I may be convinced after a long discussion.
But my current prior is that lord of casual sex with coworkers is overall a large negative for an organization as it makes it far more difficult to make decisions based on the mission of the org instead of personal feelings.
Again, BDSM is not about sex. You are not inviting someone to have sex with you, or with anyone else. You are inviting them to be come to a party, where they can talk to people who they seem to share a general interest with, and have a chance to meet partners to explore a set of behaviors they want to learn about their own interest in.
Again: Inviting someone to a BDSM party is not inviting them to have sex with you. And it is not inviting the person to be part of a BDSM scene with you.
With regards to the idea that lots of casual sex in an organization is bad: I want to again note, we are not talking about norms around sex within an organization, we are talking about norms around sex within a social movement.
I think thereās two separate dynamics at play here:
I think we could do more to avoid punishing opinions perceived wrong. An example of punishing behavior at play is my own comment two days ago. I made it while being too upset for my own good and lashed out at someone for making a completely reasonable point.
I donāt blame the user I replied to for wanting an anonymous account when that is the response they can expect.
Secondly, I suspect that people are vastly overrating just how much anybody cares about who says what on the forum.
While I understand why someone making a direct attack on some organization or person might want to stay anonymous, most things I see posted from anonymous accounts seem to just be regular opinions that are phrased with more hostility than the mean.
Itās a bit weird to me why somebody would think that a few comments on the EA forum would do all that much to ones reputation. At ea globals, at most, Iāve had a few people say āoh you are the one who wrote that snakebite post? Cool!ā and thatās about it.
It all feels very paranoid to me. Iām way too busy worrying about whether I look fat in this t-shirt to notice or care that somebody wrote a comment that was too woke/āanti-woke.
Maybe thereās a bunch of people smarter than me who think my opinions are mid and now think less of me, but like, they were going to realize that after speaking to me for five minutes anyways.
I donāt know. Reading the post from the burner account that wants to get rid of weird people, and who thinks my wife is a poisonous creep because she views inviting coworkers to BDSM parties is a completely reasonable thing to do made me actually understand for the first time the emotions that underly parts of cancel culture.
This both makes me think that my instinct that he shouldnāt be hired for anything should be taken less seriously, and makes me think that I took cancel culture style concerns about simply not wanting to work near a person who has certain attitudes about the sort of person that you are actually should be taken at least somewhat seriously.
It probably was wise for him to go anonymous before saying that weird people like me are generally bad actors who do not deserve an assumption that we are speaking in good faith (I know that is not what he actually said. That is what it feels like he said, and I suspect if I ever was in a position where I knew who he was, and was deciding whether he should get it, I would not be able to ignore my sense that he is attacking me personally and my right to exist, and assess him in the way that I would look at other candidatesāand this is despite knowing that my reading of what he said is uncharitable).
Could you explain why you and your wife think inviting coworkers to a BDSM party is not a problem? I am genuinely curious for your perspective.
I think people might be imagining some pretty different situations? Compare:
Employee A approaches new hire B at lunch and says āIām putting together a BDSM party this weekend, let me know if thatās the sort of thing you might be into.ā
Employees A and B have become close over a long time working together. They talk about a lot of things, and have gradually become more comfortable sharing details about their personal lives. At this point they both know that the other is into BDSM, and A invites B to a BDSM party theyāre organizing.
[EDIT: in both cases imagine the employees are at the same level, and not in each otherās management chains]
Thereās a continuum from 1 to 2, and while I do expect some of the disagreement here is about whether to treat BDSM parties as different from other social activities (if #1 was about a board game party then it would probably be widely viewed as welcoming) my guess is most of it is how much information people are imagining A has about whether B would like to receive an invitation?
A board game party is very different. There have been reams and reams written about power dynamics in corporations and the issues that sex brings into it. I find it concerning that so many EAās are so blase about this topic.
Especially when it comes to something like BDSM, that explicitly has dominance and submission in most circumstances. That seems like a ridiculously unhealthy dynamic if, for instance, someone invited a direct report or an employee to a BDSM party. I donāt think the amount of time spent getting to know the employee matters too much.
Imagine being an employee, your boss invites you to one of these parties, and then asks you to perform submissive acts. I find that incredibly problematic, and it sounds like this exact scenario happens frequently at big EA orgs.
I wouldnāt go so far as to say all sexual relations between coworkers should be banned, but I do think the current norms are unhealthy. Not sure exactly how to fix it without being unnecessarily draconian though.
Edit: Iāll also add that, as Tim admits (and I truly appreciate the candor here), when it comes to things like sex itās very difficult to disentangle emotions. Tim would feel personally attacked if someone doesnāt like his and his wifeās sexual practices.
In reality I see this very easily extending to people who accept sexual advances. I think it would be extremely difficult for a boss to be neutral when it comes to decided to promote an employee if they have slept with one of them.
BDSM is not primarily about sex, and sex mostly does not happen at BDSM parties, at least not the ones that Iāve been at. A sex party is a different thing. The impression I get from your comment is that you are not very familiar with the BDSM sceneāthough I might be wrong. There isnāt any tell in it that shows that you definitely are ignorant about a basic fact, it is just a vibe Iām feeling.
In either case, as far as I know, neither of us work at an EA org, and from your comment it seems like you imagine that what happens at these parties is very different from what I imagine happens at them (which is not to say Iām correct, they probably occur in the Bay Area or London, where the scene is very different, and vastly bigger than where I live).
Also, I think we have a different set of priors here about sex, relationships and careers.
And again, I am self employed, and have been for the entire time Iāve earned meaningful money, and Iām male, so my intuitive pov is likely missing important things. And also, my resistance to changing norms in EA around sex is not about thinking that there shouldnāt be a norm where managers donāt sleep with subordinates in EA orgs -- there probably should be a norm against that, though I think even here the other side of the cost benefit ledger is systematically ignored because it sounds bad to talk about benefits of something that has been decided to be socially condemned.
My view here is mostly about creating norms against people who are not in employment relationships with each other dating within the community, and my anger is about trying to define community boundaries to make openly poly, bdsm, or generally weird people feel less welcome and allowed to be who they are.
Timāexcellent comment. I agree that a lot of the EA people who seem to be freaking out about the very idea of being invited to BSDM events seem to know less than nothing about BDSM, and are relying on third-hand media stereotypes about the subculture.
A good rule of thumb about highly stigmatized sexual subcultures is, if one hasnāt read anything about them, hasnāt watched any inteviews with people in the subculture, hasnāt gone to any events in the subculture, and doesnāt have any close friends involved in the subculture, then oneās takes about the subculture are likely to have very low epistemic quality.
On the other hand weāre talking about situations where someone is inviting their coworkers to BDSM parties. While (as I said above) I think this can be ok if the asker already knows the askee is into this kind of thing, consider the more dubious cases where the asker doesnāt:
A: Iām putting together a BDSM party this weekend, let me know if thatās the sort of thing you might be into.
B: Um, no thanks.
How B feels here depends mostly on their likely-uninformed understanding of what happens at these parties.
Jeffāfair point.
I guess the key issue is, whoās responsible for having misunderstandings and stereotypes about a popular sexual subculture, if those misunderstandings and stereotypes lead to negative reactions or to offense being taken.
I donāt think itās necessarily about having misunderstandings or stereotypes. I was the original person who commented this. I think people have different levels of comfort when it comes to mixing their sex and work lives. I personally have strong boundaries in professional settings. Ultimately I think everyone has different preferences here, and I get the sense that EA groups maybe have a slightly different culture than what Iām used to when it comes to personal/āprofessional boundaries. Should that be changed? Iām not so sure, I was mostly posting it as a question, and to show my own perspective.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I am indeed not aware of how BDSM culture operates and definitely made a lot of assumptions. My apologies for that!
I guess I agree we should welcome people, and my general sense is that optimal sexual/ārelationship norms should be far more open and less prudish than they are today. As Iāve said elsewhere though, when work and large decisions regarding money/āpower get involved l become wary of sexual relationships.
I agree that a board game party is very different and was trying to say so; Iām sorry my comment was confusing here. Rephrasing:
I see two main explanations for why people might disagree about the scenario: (i) disagreement about how much information A has about whether B would like to receive an invitation and (ii) disagreement about how we should socially treat BDSM parties vs other parties.
Even though there isnāt consensus on (ii), I think most of the disagreement on ācan it be ok to invite coworkes to BDSM partiesā is around (i).
Edited my comment to specify that both people are at the same level.
Wait, what? This isnāt something Iād heard ofāwhat makes you think it happens at all, let alone is frequent?
A mix of anecdotal stories from friends, and the common posts up here, like Tim, clearly claiming that this happens and he and his wife are part of it.
Perhaps the āfrequentlyā is uncharitable, Iām admittedly a bit frustrated on this topic. Still it seems like you arenāt really answering the core of my criticismāthat this creates extremely unhealthy and abusive power dynamics...
You might be underrating the role of theatricality in the culture, the role silliness plays in the appeal for a lot of people, not to mention the high bar for communication and introspection. Heck, people of the culture are known to say things like ācan I hug you?ā which is more interpersonally scrupulous than the base rate ānormalā person who, Iāve observed, seem use this āhugs for women; handshakes for menā heuristic that itās super autistic to second guess.
I think if the community theater was putting on King Lear, and my boss got the part of the king, and I got the part of a servant, no one would think thereās a CoI or unscrupulosity, right? or if I got the part of Lear and my boss got the part of a servant, whatever.
(flagging that Iām hesitating to participate in subthread because topicalness, but didnāt think leading a pivot to DMs made sense since the cat was already out of the bag)
Iām admittedly not in the polyamory/āSF/āRationalist part of the EA movement, and going based off second or third-hand stories and things posted on the EA forum.
I didnāt claim anything of that sort. Neither of us work for an EA org. My wife strongly does not identify as EA. Iām not even BDSM. I just claim my wife would consider inviting an interested coworker to a munch or a party as a totally reasonable thing to do if it naturally came up.
Tim said his wife āviews inviting coworkers to BDSM parties is a completely reasonable thing to doā. I agree that this is ambiguous, which is why I wrote my comment. But I donāt see how you can interpret it as a clear claim that she is a manager at an EA org who invites her direct reports to BDSM parties and asks them to perform submissive acts? (Unless your āthis exact scenarioā was intended to be hyperbole?)
Can you say more about what you mean by āthisā? If you mean inviting subordinates then I agree, but not if you mean inviting equals you have strong reason to think would like to be invited.
I think inviting equals you have strong reason to think would be invited is also problematic. People donāt stay equals forever. They get promoted, move to other orgs, leave and receive grants, etc.
Like I said I donāt have a fully fleshed out way to fix the problem of sex influencing decisions that should be made impartially, but itās clearly a problem in my view.
Do you also think itās a problem for equals to start dating?
Without the addition of polyamory, I think itās fine in a limited sense. However if every single person in a position of power in EA is also dating another person of power, even monogamously, I would see that as a problem.
Adding in polyamory on top of that complicates things to a far greater degree. As a disclaimer I have nothing against polyamory, I just think it can lead to unhealthy workplace dynamics if it becomes a norm.
If you have an office with a laid-back culture (ie the sort of place that youād want to work at anyways), and it is a topic of conversation that came up naturally, and the coworker actually seems interested, why not invite them to a beginner friendly thing related to one of your main hobbies?
I suppose when you phrase it this way itās less weird sounding, I may be convinced after a long discussion.
But my current prior is that lord of casual sex with coworkers is overall a large negative for an organization as it makes it far more difficult to make decisions based on the mission of the org instead of personal feelings.
Again, BDSM is not about sex. You are not inviting someone to have sex with you, or with anyone else. You are inviting them to be come to a party, where they can talk to people who they seem to share a general interest with, and have a chance to meet partners to explore a set of behaviors they want to learn about their own interest in.
Again: Inviting someone to a BDSM party is not inviting them to have sex with you. And it is not inviting the person to be part of a BDSM scene with you.
With regards to the idea that lots of casual sex in an organization is bad: I want to again note, we are not talking about norms around sex within an organization, we are talking about norms around sex within a social movement.