I think this is the sort of thing that might make sense in the abstract, but that in practice would probably lead to more awkwardness and uncomfortability for many people. Imagine if you’re used to being the person on the receptive end instead of the initiating end. In that case, you may find it uncomfortable to initiate and escalate. But your system may involve this person making the move at every single step. They’d have to be the first to flirt, to ask the other person out, to go for the first kiss, and so on. This feels like it could be compounding uncomfortability for a lot of people who aren’t used to making those sort of moves. I also think asking people to take on roles they’re not used to filling would increase the amount of missed signals, which would increase awkwardness. There might also be confusion about which party should be in which role (what if there’s a higher-status woman and a lower-status man, or if there’s two people who are socially clumsy in different ways).
Patrick Sue Domin
Consider not sleeping around within the community
- 22 Feb 2023 22:39 UTC; -1 points) 's comment on Consider not sleeping around within the community by (
I disagreed with your comment (despite obviously agreeing with my own post), so let me explain why. First (as I describe here), I think your proposal may actually increase uncomfortability and awkwardness, which is what the post was largely written to address. Second (as I described to Jeff here), I think dating within EA doesn’t necessarily involve the issues I’m concerned with, and I think your proposal would decrease dating within EA more than mine would. Third, I think your proposal would involve spending weirdness points, while mine would involve saving weirdness points.
Also, for clarity’s sake to address the comment “it’s better than a ban”, I’m not proposing an externally imposed ban. I think an explicit ban would be harmful and I do not endorse one.
I don’t think I’m scared and I don’t think I’m particularly emotional about this issue. I do think that if more people in the community followed the points in this piece then the community as a whole would be more functional and more welcoming (though I admit there are some people who would find it less welcoming). My feelings on this issue are not recent, and I’ve been feeling this way since long before the TIME’s article, though recent revelations regarding Owen are what tipped me over into actually writing a post about this.
I basically agree with Jeff’s points here and here.
I understand that these are very personal issues, which is why my suggestion was for people to “consider avoiding” certain behaviours (factoring in potential negative second order effects they may not be focused on) instead of saying people should simply “avoid” these behaviours or that we should ban them outright. I notice your comment focuses on consent and abuse, so that makes me think you might think I’m placing “sleeping around” in a similar category to things like sexual assault. I absolutely do not think this (if I did, I would not have suggested that it’s fine for people to sleep around as much as they want outside the community).
I also don’t think this is about purity. The emotions I feel towards the community here are more like frustration that the current setup seems (to me) to be hurting community functionality and welcomingness, and not at all like disgust, which is what I think I’d feel if it was about purity.
For clarity’s sake, my point isn’t that people are “bad” if they try to sleep around, but that there can be subtle harms if people do it within a tight-knit community, and that we’d be better if people did it less within EA.
“Taboo” is also stronger than what I’d want here.
I’m sorry you feel that way. For clarity’s sake, I don’t think sex is “bad”, but instead that it is often “messy”, and that there are costs with messiness within the community. I think at the very least, more people should consider the potential messiness here in their personal decisions. And while I think there can be large messiness involved in being polyamorous with multiple people from within the same tight-knight community, I don’t think the post is as harsh towards polyamory/nonmonogamy as your comment suggests.
I’m sorry you feel those things. In particular, I’m sorry you feel judged. My intention here was not to judge anyone as being a bad person or anything like that, but to point towards behaviours that I think are harmful largely in a diffuse way given their prevalence in the community and aspects of tight-knit groups.
I would agree with you in the overwhelming majority of cases, but I would make exceptions in cases where the differences are relevant and large and the issue is important (all of which I think apply here).
Strong agree, with obvious exceptions for things like “actually I already knew this person before and was going to ask them out anyway” (though even then it might be best to not ask them out at the event).
Hot tubs at least seem fine. I can’t imagine anyone feeling offended or creeped out by being asked at a party if they want to join a hot tub the way they might if they’re propositioned for sex (at least, unless there’s more going on in the situation). I’ve heard of the cuddle puddles at Bay Area parties but I’m not familiar enough with them to have an informed view there.
Do hot tubs require weirdness points? Don’t most people just find them fun and relaxing?
Realistically, I think many EAs have a much easier time sleeping around in EA than outside of EA. Unfortunately, this is probably particularly true for people that are high status in EA or socially clumsy.
Since this post is a call for people to voluntarily consider avoiding some personal behaviours, I don’t imagine it would cause people to stop identifying as EA as a workaround.
Even if there was a norm established along the lines here, it would presumably work on an informal level instead of based on whether people explicitly self-identify as EA, so I don’t think it would affect identifying as an EA anyway. I also have a really hard time imagining people who would avoid working at EA orgs or donating to effective charities in order to be able to sleep around within EA without judgment. Who cares that much about being able to sleep with EAs as opposed to sleeping with people outside the community, but doesn’t care about doing actual EA stuff? That sort of person sounds like they have an EA fetish. I suppose I could imagine a hypothetical person who is only in EA because the community gives them a source of people to hook up with and that they’d leave otherwise, but my honest view is if someone is actually in that boat then I’d probably want them to leave.
historically groups like villages, churches and ethnic groups have been keen to encourage members to date and marry each other
Right, and I don’t consider that to be “sleeping around”. I elaborate on my views on dating within EA here.
Thank you for adding your perspective, I think it is valuable. I think there are probably many people who have similar views to you but who unfortunately quickly left EA, so I imagine this view is underrepresented on the forum.
Agree
I feel like there’s an implicit prediction of something like [communities with intelligent people which have lots of causal sex are going to be worse at dealing with sexual assualt/harrassment] and I kind of want to note my reaction being ‘given my personal experience i dont really believe this and all else equal I would feel safer in such communities’
I can see why you think that, but I actually wasn’t motivated in writing this post by concerns about sexual assault. Sexual assault is obviously a huge issue, but I don’t think of it as something like “a subset of sexual behaviour” or “sex gone wrong”, but instead something qualitatively different. Sexual harassment is somewhat trickier as it can be more grey (what’s appropriate flirting in one context can be sexual harassment in another), but the main things I was thinking of were more like people being creeped out/feeling uncomfortable or bad community dynamics as opposed to things like people being abused (I don’t know that my proposals would decrease abuse).
you only really have so many dumb mistakes to make and I would prefer it if, unlike Owen, people could get these out of their system while young and not yet in leadership positions
I would prefer it if people made more of their awkward mistakes outside of the community. You didn’t bring this up, but I’d especially prefer this if people are “practicing their dating skills” or similar (which is a thing some people do). I think online dating provides a place for people to make awkward mistakes with very low relative harms, as neither of you have to see each other again if it becomes awkward. This also brings up a point that the traits I mentioned aren’t essentialist, as someone who is socially clumsy now might not be socially clumsy anymore within a few years.
Agree. I would also want a poll of EA-adjacent people of their view of EA here or people who went to one EA meetup and never came back, if it could be done, since I think the community right now may have a selection effect inflating support for sleeping around.
I think most of the problems I’m thinking of go away if it’s done outside of EA or a similar tight-knit group. If you go on a date with a stranger and clumsily proposition them or do something similar, they can just choose not to see you again and they also won’t generally worry about how that affects their career.
For clarity’s sake, I don’t think “socially clumsy” and “non-neurotypical” are identical. There are plenty of neurotypical people who are socially clumsy, and there are also some non-neurotypical people who are not socially clumsy. People also often change in their social clumsiness (typically from clumsy to not clumsy), and it can depend on context (perhaps two people who are socially clumsy in a similar way would actually find each other to be less socially clumsy). I won’t pretend there’s no correlation to neurotypicality, but I just thought I’d clarify this in case anyone thought I was trying to dog whistle.
I think there was a slight breakdown in communication and you’re imagining I’m proposing more restriction than I am. Flirting can still have plausible deniability as it could be interpreted as any of “they’re just engaging in friendly banter”, “they’re flirting as flirting, but just for a spark”, “they’re feeling out whether or not they’re interested in me”, “they’re somewhat interested in me, but that could change”, “they’re secretly in love with me”, etc. If everyone in EA were to avoid sleeping around in the sense I’m using it, I think the only interpretation that would be taken away would be “they want to have sex with me but don’t want anything serious”.
I also think EAs can follow this and still casually date other EAs from the perspective of being open to seeing where it goes, though that might mean taking things a little slower physically. Personally, if I were to date someone outside of EA, I might have sex with them on the first or second date (thought process “I’m attracted to them so why not”), but if I were to date someone in EA I’d probably wait until something like the fourth or fifth date (thought process “oh wow, I’m excited by this person and I think there’s a chance we could develop into something serious”), though I could also imagine exceptions where things were clearer earlier and where I’d sleep with an EA on the first date (I’m definitely not trying to propose a community norm here of a certain specific number of dates before sex). This all also seems to be how people in most companies and other functional tight-knit communities generally approach dating within the group.
And by “serious” I didn’t mean “marriage or similar”, so I think “might be the one” is a much higher bar than I meant.