Posted under pseudonym for reasons I’d rather not get into. If it’s relevant, I’m pretty involved in EA. I’ve been to several EAGs and I do direct work.
tldr I think many more people in the community should consider refraining from sleeping around within the community. I especially think people should consider refraining from sleeping around within EA if they have two or more of the following traits- high status in EA, a man who sleeps with women, and socially clumsy.
I think the community would be a more welcoming place, with less sexual misconduct and less other sexually unwelcome behaviour, if more EAs chose to personally refrain from sleeping around within EA or attempting to do so. Most functional institutions outside of EA, from companies to friend groups to extended families, have developed norms against sleeping around within the group. We obviously don’t want to simply unquestionably accept all of society’s norms, but I think in this case those norms address real problems.
I worry that as a group, EAs run a risk of discarding valuable cultural practices that don’t immediately make sense in a first principles way, and that this tendency can have particularly high costs where sex is involved (Owen more or less admitted this was a factor in his behaviour in his statement/apology: “I was leaning into my own view-at-the-time about what good conduct looked like, and interested in experimenting to find ways to build a better culture than society-at-large has”).
Regarding sleeping around within a tight-knit community, I think this behaviour has risks whether the pursuer is successful or not. Failed attempts at sleeping with someone can very often lead to awkwardness or uncomfortability. In EA, where employment and funding may be front of mind, this uncomfortability may be increased a lot, and there may be no way for the person who was pursued to realistically avoid the pursuer in the future if they want to without major career repercussions. Successful attempts at sleeping around can obviously also cause all sorts of drama, either shortly after or down the road.
Personal factors that may increase risks
I think within EA, the risks of harm are increased greatly if the pursuer has any of the following three traits:
- High status within EA- this can create bad power dynamics and awkward social pressure. First, people generally don’t like pissing off high status people within their social circles as there may be social repercussions to doing so. Second, high status people within EA often control funding and employment decisions. Even if the pursuer isn’t in such a position now, they might wind up in one in the future. Third, high status EAs often talk to other high status EAs, so an unjustified bad reputation can spread to other figures in the movement who control funding or employment. Fourth, many EAs consider the community to be their one best shot at living the kind of ethical life they want, raising the stakes a bunch. Fifth, the moralising aspect of EA may make some people find it more uncomfortable to rebuff a high status EA.
- A man pursuing a woman (such as a heterosexual man or a bi-/pansexual man pursuing a woman)- this factor can sometimes be an elephant that people dance around in discussions, but I’ll just address it head on. On average men are more assertive, aggressive, and physically intimidating than women. On average women are more perceptive about subtle social cues and find it more awkward when those subtle social cues are ignored. My sense is these factors are pretty robust across cultures, but I don’t think it matters for this discussion what the cause of these average differences are. Add to all that, the EA community has a large gender imbalance, meaning there’s effectively a large multiplier on any unwelcome sexual advances coming from men and towards women.
- Socially clumsy- awkward advances are obviously more likely to lead to the other person feeling uncomfortable or disrespected. Poor ability to read social signals is also more likely to lead to further or more extreme unwanted behaviour. Even if this never reaches the line of assault or harassment proper, it can still be very uncomfortable.
For anyone who has at least 2 of the above traits (such as a heterosexual man who is high status in EA or is socially clumsy), I would strongly recommend considering refraining from sleeping around in the movement. (Edited to add: I personally consider myself to have two of these traits, so this advice would apply to me.)
While these factors exist somewhat on a spectrum, I think many EAs will underestimate how much factor 1 applies to them personally. Rampant imposter syndrome likely causes many EAs to underestimate their status in the movement. If you have basically any direct job, note that many people within the community will assume you’re somewhat high status, even if you don’t feel that way.
What I mean by sleeping around
As this post is a call for people to voluntarily consider adopting certain personal behaviours, I’m not sure having an explicit definition is needed. Having said that, I would generally consider all of the following hypothetical examples involving Bob and Alice sleeping together to be behaviour in line with Bob sleeping around. Assume for all examples that both Bob and Alice are EAs:
- Bob and Alice have a one night stand
- Bob and Alice are friends with benefits
- Bob is casually dating multiple people, including Alice, and he doesn’t consider his relationship with Alice to be particularly special
- Bob is dating Alice and no one else, but he doesn’t consider it a serious relationship AND he thinks it's very unlikely their relationship will develop into a serious relationship
- Bob is polyamorous with multiple people, including Alice, AND Alice is not his primary
On the other hand, I generally would NOT consider the following to be examples of Bob sleeping around within EA (again, for all examples assume both Bob and Alice are in EA and that the examples involve them sleeping with each other):
- Bob and Alice are in a monogamous, monogamish, or open relationship
- Bob is polyamorous with multiple people, including Alice, AND Alice is his primary (and none of the other people Bob is polyamorous with is an EA)
- Bob and Alice are dating casually AND Bob considers his relationship with Alice to be special and thinks there’s a realistic chance the relationship could develop into a serious relationship (either 1. or 2. above)
Of course, I recognize this isn’t all black and white. And of course the risks here increase the more extreme behaviour someone engages in, so I think someone could decrease risks by decreasing degree of behaviour.
And for clarity’s sake, nothing in this post should be taken as a criticism of promiscuity in general or of any relationship styles in general. If any EA decides to have a bunch of one night stands or threesomes or non-primary polyamorous relationships or whatever else with lots of different people outside the community, I think that’s 100% fine and does not raise the sorts of concerns that sleeping around in EA does.
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.
I may be reading you overly literally, but I think you're saying that we should not as a community, strongly discourage, say, grantmakers from sleeping with grantees. As long as its consensual and they're thoughtful about the power dynamics it's just their decision, right? But this ignores issues like:
Other grantees would then feel pressured to sleep with grantmakers, leading to bad interactions (even ones where all the signals that the grantmaker receives are that the grantee wants this).
The funders behind the grantmaker may reasonably worry that the grantmaker's judgement is clouded by their otherwise positive views towards this grantee or that there was quid pro quo.
People may choose to become grantmakers with poor intentions because a norm of "it's ok to sleep with grantees" is very vulnerable to abuse.
If you think we should draw lines excluding this, however, and I hope you do, then we should be thinking about what lines we want as a community, not insisting that we refuse to be bound by any lines.
I'd feel a lot more comfortable about this post if it were "EAs having ~casual relationships with other EAs is a good thing generally but here's how we can limit the worse spillover effects" than like, "please be less horny"
I'm not saying that age/power/money/any other differences should be ignored when it comes to consent. I believe we should, as a general rule in the community, discourage grantmakers sleeping with grantees. This post, however, doesn't stop there, at least to my understanding. And this is what I disagree with.
If you think we should discourage grantmakers from sleeping with grantees but no further, what about managers and reports, highly senior and junior staff at an org who don't share a management chain, senior researchers and junior researchers in the same field, or community builders and people just joining the community? -- Possibly you were trying to say this with your first sentence; not sure?
What I'm trying to get at here is that determining what sorts of interactions the community should discourage is complex, and asserting strong generic dating rights makes it harder to muddle out.
Yes, I was saying it in my first sentence. Everything which goes beyond that is crossing personal boundaries (at least of mine). This post in my opinion doesn't talk about the examples you've mentioned above. It talks about two people who have no professional connection, but happen to be EA, at least to my understanding.
Is my position clear to you now? If not, please let me know, I'll try to explain it better.
Thanks! I understand your view a lot better than I did initially!
I guess I think this reply is sort of not helpful. The OP was clearly about more than grantmakers and grantees, and other situations where there's a clear power dynamic. I feel like in a lot of these interactions you are bringing up hypotheticals to refute people's firm statements, but it's hard to see what you actually think. Like do you disagree with OP? If so, why are you nitpicking people who also disagree with OP? Do you agree with OP? Or a limited form of it? If so, just say that and let other people have their emotional reactions.
Anyway I want to say I agree with Liv throughout this comment section.
I did try to say what I think, in my top-level comment. To be more explicit, though, I mostly agree but think that it's missing important considerations even on its own terms. I think it's good for EAs to think over the issues raised in the post and the comments, and expect that when some people do that they'll decide to change how they approach interactions within EA. I think on balance the ways people make decisions about who to sleep with after reading this post will lead them to be slightly personally happier, and will also lead to a slightly healthier EA community.
People are often responding by saying that the only acceptable norm is consent, but then it turns out that they actually are in favor of stricter norms in a variety of situations. As someone who is interested in figuring out whether there are better norms it makes sense to try and push the community towards, I think it's important that we acknowledge that both current norms and ideal norms are more complex than "anything consensual." I followed up with Consent Isn't Always Enough to get into this more.
I agree it's important for people to be able to have emotional reactions and process things, but I think a Forum culture of ignoring the text of what people are actually saying would be disrespectful and harmful.
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.
Thanks for the answer! After reading your comments, I'm a bit confused now - I'm not sure if I misinterpreted your post heavily, but we agree on some points, or I red your post correctly and we still disagree.
As for you being emotional, yes, I assumed that based on your answer, but shouldn't have done so, I'm sorry.
It would be helpful for me to understand, if you agree with the points below:
This is how I understood your post, and I have multiple reasons to disagree with all points and regard them as problematic.
I would agree with:
1. You should strongly consider not engaging in "random" and "not well thought through" sexual activities within the community with anyone towards whom you are in a direct position of power.
2. While engaging in any random or not well thought through activities, please: a) if you are not a master of social interactions, do your best to learn mechanisms which prevent harm b) if you are in a position of power in EA in general, never ignore this dynamics and learn how to address it. If you are much older than the person you hook up with, remember - even if they seem mature, you are in a position of power. If you suspect you may fail to understand somebody's boundaries, stop engaging in random encounters immediately and go ask for help. This is a skill which can be learned. c) if you are not in a position of power, do your best to learn how to clearly and assertively state your boundaries. If you suspect that you'll have trouble doing that, stop engaging in random encounters immediately and ask for help. This is a skill which can be learned.
3. Poly relationships pose a set of different challenges than monogamy and our general culture provides very little guidelines on how to do them well. If you are engaging in a complex polyamorous dynamics, make sure you have mental space to do so appropriately. Take social misconceptions about polyamory and metaamorus dynamics into consideration. They can be hard, so if you are not ready to take it, consider possible monogamy/address your concerns in a safe setting.
In the same time, I strongly acknowledge that people have right to make mistakes and sexual interpersonal interactions are difficult and sexual usually full of emotions, so there will be conflicts, misunderstandings, mistakes. I believe no social or religious rules on the world change that, "a culture of being more modest " certainly doesn't. Education, communication, empathy and emotional maturity from both sides on the other hand, works wonders. So I'd like to see more of that within the community.
tbh I always feel slightly like I want to push back when people say "polyamory is this thing that's new and untested and that our culture does not have well established guidelines for"
like, poly feels pretty intuitive to me from being somewhat immersed in poly culture, it's just that I don't think the norms have seeped out into the mainstream yet? Sure, the way people do poly is pretty heterogeneous but the same is true of monogamy?
I think I do want to urge people to be cautious if they don't feel entirely comfortable with it/ don't feel like they get the norms, or it feels like they're trying to work it out from first principles. But 'this seems as simple as any other relationship structure' is a state that it's possible to get to
I still mostly agree with this sentiment, but after having been poly for 8 years, I agree with it a lot less than I used to. I think poly can be very easy, and also that there a lot of pitfalls that I didn't predict until I found myself in them. I've made significant mistakes as recently as a year ago that changed my mind about how to best approach things like jealousy and commitment.
Some specific ways I've changed in the last couple years: I've become more willing to change or limit my own behavior in response to my partners' insecurity (while still dispreferring "rules"), err towards proactively having explicit conversations with all my partners as my feelings change or develop over time, have a higher bar of interest for starting relationships than I used to, and lean more towards breaking up over "de-escalating" with ex-primaries (but not in all situations). I wish I'd had some of these models earlier -- I could have avoided hurting some people I cared about -- but I do think they were hard to learn without experience.
I'm sure I'd have had a different set of relationship lessons to learn if I'd been monogamous for 8 years; I don't think monogamy is simple either! But I also think some of the complex situations where I was most likely to hurt others were specific to polyamory (for example, wanting to "switch primaries" while still dating my previous primary).
ETA: still largely agree with you that it's very possible to get to the point of "this seems as simple as any other relationship structure", especially if you're in a pretty stable relationship configuration, or if you and your partners are all pretty chill / ok with fluidity of time and commitment
Also, just so you know, I am going to discuss under this post today, but after that I am making a major break from discussion on the forum for some mental health :). So I may not answer to your comments.
Thanks for the honesty of expressing something vulnerable.
In this situation, under this post, and given your voting pool, it is not half as vulnerable as it could be if I was a man, especially a "socially not skilled" one (often = non - neurotypical) . So I could pretty easily write it, as in this particular position I felt in a position of power.
uh, not quite a guy but I credit the more sexually relaxed parts of the community for solving ~most of my "socially inept around this" problems in a way I think is not easily replaceable, so I'm personally also pretty defensive about this
So honestly I meant the boundaries triggering thing.
But yes, you can make that argument much more cheaply than me.
It's a shame we use such clear language in this forum. I think "than my cowardly ass" would have been much funnier.
yeah I had a "excuse me but I will continue to be an asshole libertine" reaction to this
Strongly agree with your general point – but I feel like you're not the demographic this post is aimed at (i.e. not a socially-awkward man).
Yup, I understand that it was most probably the intention, but this post doesn't do a good job stressing it enough in my opinion. It says that those are people who should consider not doing that in particular, but it's not directed only to them.
Plus, even if this post is directed only towards "not socially skilled men in a high position of power" asking them not to sleep around violates the same boundary- not mine, but it's still against my values. Consensual relationship between adult people, as long as one of them is not a supervisor/senior/grant-maker of another, is none of community's business, unless we are in church.
But isn't this sort of relationship exactly the one that OCB had with an anonymous woman which people one thread over are saying they're feeling shocked, betrayed and undermined by?
There's no suggestion that there was a violation of consent, only that there was an exchange between two friends who had a very frank relationship, and that OCB said something rather crude (for which he apologised). He at the time wasn't a supervisor/grant-maker of the woman in question.
Yes, it was. Let me make it clear - there was still a significant power imbalance and he ignored it, which I believe is stupid.
Regardless, my boundary stays exactly in the the same place. And for the context, I've experienced creepy people, unwanted sexual behavior and harassment many times (not in EA, to be clear), more than three times it was serious, some of the instances were when I was a minor. Still wouldn't trade it for something I believe is (a soft version, but still) a purity culture, as such culture is something I've experienced as well and it harms more (and it would harm more not only me, but also other people if imposed, in my opinion). Moreover, I believe some of the harassment I've experienced was encouraged by such culture because imposing such rules also has serious, not always obvious consequences. I know that right now it may seem like a good thing to do, as many believe that recent situation was a fruit of "too much sexual freedom" and "sleeping around", and you really want to try something even extreme to be safe. I'd say - it's a trap. But feel free to try it, if you want and it's good for you and your personal integrity, I honestly wish you the best.
In the same time, I'm not going to support it, my boundary stays the same and I'm not going to change my actions. I'm going to keep sleeping around, and you have exactly the same power over it, as, for example, any type of church does - which is none or very little. If it turns out that I meet with a backlash or interacting with the community stops being for me, I'm ok with that.
I guess of the three conjunctions here "socially awkward men" is the one I'm least concerned about -- or at the very least I suspect a lot of people reading this underestimate the level of social competency they can get away with, and I suspect it's already a pretty self-punishing state of affairs
(I guess there's also the thing where probably a lot of socially awkward men would make people more comfortable if they were more direct about romantic/sexual interest, and I kind of worry we'll accidentally end up discouraging that)