If you take this as your point of departure, I think that’s worth highlighting that the boundaries between community and organizations can become very blurry in EA. Projects pop up all the time and innocuous situations might turn controversial over time. I think those examples with second-order partners of polyamorous relationships being (more or less directly) involved in funding decisions are a prime example. There is probably no intent or planning behind this but conflicts of interest are bound to arise if the community is tight knit and highly “interconnected”.
While I think that you have a good starting point for a discussion here, I would expect the whole situation to be not as clear cut and easy as your argument suggests. So, I really agree with the post that getting to a state most people are happy with will require some muddling through.
Yeah, totally agreed that it’s not that clear and easy. My comment was meant to be a starting point. I purposefully kept it pretty short and focused on one, easy conclusion, as the whole issue is super complex, I don’t have it well-thought through and I’m probably missing a lot of information and context. I think however, that the whole discussion is over-focused on sex and polyamory, and not focused enough on other interpersonal connotations which for sure happen in a community like that (friendships? living together? Ex-partners?).
Agree that the discussion has been overfocused on polyamory. However, I think sex in general has an element than friendship or platonically living together generally lack. I don’t think we have seen many, if any, stories about power differentials contributing to significantly problematic situations in those areas in the same way we’ve heard about problematic situations involving sex. So while I think all of these interactions can cause conflict of interest, the harassment risk seems much higher with sex.
If you take this as your point of departure, I think that’s worth highlighting that the boundaries between community and organizations can become very blurry in EA. Projects pop up all the time and innocuous situations might turn controversial over time. I think those examples with second-order partners of polyamorous relationships being (more or less directly) involved in funding decisions are a prime example. There is probably no intent or planning behind this but conflicts of interest are bound to arise if the community is tight knit and highly “interconnected”.
While I think that you have a good starting point for a discussion here, I would expect the whole situation to be not as clear cut and easy as your argument suggests. So, I really agree with the post that getting to a state most people are happy with will require some muddling through.
Yeah, totally agreed that it’s not that clear and easy. My comment was meant to be a starting point. I purposefully kept it pretty short and focused on one, easy conclusion, as the whole issue is super complex, I don’t have it well-thought through and I’m probably missing a lot of information and context.
I think however, that the whole discussion is over-focused on sex and polyamory, and not focused enough on other interpersonal connotations which for sure happen in a community like that (friendships? living together? Ex-partners?).
Agree that the discussion has been overfocused on polyamory. However, I think sex in general has an element than friendship or platonically living together generally lack. I don’t think we have seen many, if any, stories about power differentials contributing to significantly problematic situations in those areas in the same way we’ve heard about problematic situations involving sex. So while I think all of these interactions can cause conflict of interest, the harassment risk seems much higher with sex.
What problematic situations involved sex? Or do you mean “sexuality” ?