I think I found the crux.
I treat EA as a community. And by “community” I mean “a group of friends who have common interests”. In the same time, I treat some parts of EA as “companies”. “Companies” have hierarchy, structure, money and very obvious power dynamics. I separate the two.
I’m not willing to be a part of community, which treats conscious and consensual behavior of adult people as their business (as stated under the other post). In the same time, I’d be more than happy to work for a company which has such norms. I actually prefer it this way, as long as they are reasonable and not i.e. sexist, polyphobic and so on.
I think a tricky part is, EA is quite complex with this regard. I don’t think the same rules should apply to interest groups, grant-makers, companies. I think a power dynamic between grant-maker and grantee is quite different from the one which applies to university EA group leader and group’s member. I believe, that the community should function as a group of friends, and companies/interest groups should create their own, internal rules. But maybe it won’t work for the EA. Happy to update here, I, however, want to mention that for a lot of people EA is their whole life and the main social group. I would be very careful while setting the general norms.
(When it comes to “EA celebrities”, I think it’s a separate discussion, so I’m not mentioning them here as I would like to focus on community/workplace differences and definitions first. )
My personal reaction: I know you are scared and emotional, I am too. This post however, crossed my boundary.
I’m a woman, I’m in my late 20s and I’m going to do what you call sleeping around in the community if it’s consensual from both sides. Obviously, I’m going to do my absolute best to be mature in my behaviors and choices in every way. I also believe that as the community we should do better job in protecting people from unwanted sexual behavior and abuse. But I will not be a part of community which treats conscious and consensual behavior of adult people as their business, because it hell smells like purity culture for me. And it won’t do the job in protecting anybody.
I’m super stressed by this statement.