EA, 30 + 14 Rapes, and My Not-So-Good Experience with EA.

Catherine, thanks for taking the time to respond to this.

I think both the TIME story and this thread underscore the need to devote some additional resources to transparent, proactive reporting about incoming reports ^[1] (in a way that protects the privacy of everyone involved). Every report should be accounted for in some fashion (e.g., "closed due to reported person's non-involvement in EA" is fine; "reported person was an EA, but not enough information was provided even after a follow-up to open a matter" is fine). ^[2] 

For example, hearing that at least four people will not be allowed at CEA events as a result of reports about sexual assault last year is helpful. Arguably the most significant effect of CEA's actions in reducing future misconduct is general deterrence (i.e., convicing other people that they should not commit misconduct lest they suffer the same consequences), and that only works if the consequences are publicized (as well as they can be). 

In addition to some apparent factual disagreements between CH and the original poster, I get the sense that one of the cruxes here may be a lack of clarity about who is involved with EA. As Julia mentioned in her comments to TIME, that can be a tricky question.

I think it would be helpful to develop and publicize non-exhaustive criteria of who will be considered to be involved with EA for purposes of statistical reporting and potential action. For example, I would consider anyone meeting any of the following criteria to have been involved for statistical purposes (there are probably others):

• Anyone who was accepted to EAG in the relevant time period;^[3]
• Anyone who worked for an organization during the relevant time period, if that organization received a grant from any of a specific list of funders and could reasonably be considered part of the EA movement (e.g., the Gates Foundation does not count);
• Anyone who received a grant from any of those funders during the relevant time period;
• Anyone who is in a position of leadership in an EA group during the relevant time period, where that group that has received funding from a specified funder.

The point of committing to non-exhaustive published inclusion criteria is that it provides something objective to help mitigate factual disagreements like the one we see here and promotes public confidence in the reported data. ^[4] When there are reports of misconduct in the media, I think it will be helpful to have published objective criteria to which we can refer to determine whether the person was clearly an EA.

There could also be criteria for individuals who are potentially involved, such anyone who applied for EAG at any time, or anyone who more than occasionally attends official functions of a group described above. Those could be decided on a case-by-case basis; the outcome should report the individual as "somewhat involved" or "determined not to meet involvement criteria after individual-specific review" depending on the exercise of judgment. In other words, there should be a distinction between people in the grey zone and people who are clearly not involved.

Finally, you could make clear that living in a "EA house," attending parties thrown by EAs or with EAs in attendance, etc. do not count as involvement with EA for statistical or action purposes. It's understandable that the original poster may be looking at EA more as a social group, but as a practical matter CEA isn't in a position to take any action against these sorts of individuals. I also don't think it's necessary for EA as a movement to somehow accept responsibility for these individuals.^[5]

1. ^{^}

   Given the nature of this thread, this comment focuses on reports relating to sexual assault. However, I think data on reports of non-assault sexual harassment also needs to be provided.

2. ^{^}

   In my view, CH should encourage and log reports from individuals in the EA community even if the reporter does not wish to name the individual, as long as the reporter provides enough information to conclude that the individual counts as EA-involved as described below (e.g., "was at EAG this year" or "works for [Organization]"). I do think reports from outside the community generally need both an identified survivor who can be contacted and an identified perpetrator to count for statistics.

3. ^{^}

   The year in which the incident occured, the year prior, and the following year (to the extent the following year has transpired)

^{^}

CH would not need to go through the specific exclusion criteria unless it was planning to no-action the matter on grounds that the person accused of misconduct was not involved in EA.

^{^}

 I default to trying to apply the same standards to EA as to other movements or organizations absent a good reason. I wouldn't (e.g.) generally view actions of a roommate of a member of a church, actions of someone who attends parties with a lot of church people present, or actions of someone who has attended a few worship services as "chargeable" to that church.

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Strong upvoted for visibility.

I personally find these kinds of updates and transparency useful, so thanks for the context + appreciate it!

It is a little surprising to hear that the numbers claimed by both sides differ so much from each other - did the total number of cases from them or attributed to them total 30 incidents? What do you define as "possibly / formerly involved with EA"? 

I guess I'm wondering whether this difference is because they only shared, e.g. 5 / 44 cases, or whether all 44 were shared but only 4 of them that fit the CH team's definition of "possibly involved with EA"?

They have been fighting assault in EA since 2016....We don’t think it’s productive to go into more depth about the author’s specific claims or engage in a back and forth with her,

Correct, I have been working on rape as an issue since 2016. It was only after the publication the Time article that I went back and counted the number/percent that relate to EA. Re: numbers, I have not shared most of the stories/reports with Community Health. Further, as Catherine said, most of the information - including the information I “shared“ had been shared prior to my speaking to anyone at CEA, as confirmed via email by Julia Wise in August 2022. 

I called myself a "report taker" not a "report giver" or "report sharer" (I know this is a small distinction and I’m sorry for any confusion using it would cause) - and out of an abundance of caution and fear for survivor well-being and limiting my personal exposure to defamation, will not do so in the future. 

My intent with "calling out" Community Health in a forum  was in hope that they would take stronger action against rape. I felt that the forum was a more gentle approach than the media. Apologies for the harm Community Health felt in being called out by me. However, it feels to me that our approaches on rape diverge so greatly that there is no middle ground, and it is not productive for me to ask for stronger action. 

Agreed that it would not be productive to engage or to adjudicate any of my/Community Health's claims. When I realized that, I took down the original post. 

Good luck :)

The information from her included serious concerns about various people in the Bay Area, most of whom had no connection to EA as far as we know.

I'm concerned that predators may be claiming EA affiliation to gain the trust of victims.

It looks like the head of CEA community health is Nicole Ross, whose LinkedIn lists a degree in philosophy, which I also wouldn't consider a STEM subject.

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No, my main complaint isn't the lack of payment; I was taking reports and speaking to survivors for years prior. What I didn't realize until two weeks ago is that the way in which CH used my work puts me at higher legal liability, so I want to replace it. My main complaint is that the orgs and the folks listed aren't knowledgable on the topic - while I'm sure are lovely humans in many regards - also aren't willing to admit that they're in over their heads and not experts on SA. I don't think it's malice, just - being overwhelmed, carelessness, bad communication, a lack of putting themselves in my shoes or survivor shoes, that sort of thing. Trying to gather more data makes sense, but trying to gather that data to see if it's worth CH's time/resources to take stronger action on SH/SA without addressing the inherent issues with the difficulty of obtaining such data is short-sighted at best, and from a moral standpoint, we should reduce sexual harassment/assault without first needing to see if the scope of the problem is greater than it is for other groups or not. 

My main things are: given that CH seems pretty antagonistic toward survivors or seeing that there's a problem and puts me at risk of legal liability (I guess payment is number 4). Creating a formal relationship with them would lower risk (some information is private, the flow of info from me to CH is better), and for CH, create conditions in which confidentiality exist. And if CH continues to be antagonistic toward survivors, then I'd rather not connect survivors to them. How can I possibly ever send survivors to talk to someone who says she needs to how the accused is beneficial to the movement to make any sort of judgement? I do genuinely want them to more survivor-friendly. I do want them to see that women are being harmed; especially because more trauma comes from mishandling rape cases than from rape itself*. But at the same time, I don't want to spend all that time working with CH without getting paid for my time, nor do I think it's a good idea to try to spend that time unless we have better communication between them & me. 

Definitely don't think you're promising anything! And tbh, I'm not sure how I feel about funding versus getting paid directly for doing work (thus far, I don't charge survivors for my work, and only in the past five months have been charging institutions). 

*this is from my experience in speaking to survivors, one of my mentor's 30+ years experiences in advocacy, and data (eg, survivors who file police reports experience PTSD at much higher rates than survivors who don't)

I'd hardly say someone who has been catching rapists in your community for six years is an "outsider" who just "noticed" a problem. I've been doing this November 2016. Contrast my# with Julia Wise's appendix of a year of situations (mostly interpersonal conflict, which she lumps together with rape and sexual misconduct, which is in and of itself a problematic stance) to notice which approach is more effect - hers or mine?  

And as I explain in my post, I'm quite intentional in my use of strongly emotive language, to get my point across. Knowing when and how to use emotion is in and of itself a valuable skill - in some professions (such as mine, and the one I'm coming out, as I'm client-facing). I think that CH not being emotional is one of the reasons survivors approach me instead of them, or more accurately, that I've had more than one survivor tell me speaking to me made them feel better than any prior conversation, which pushes my ability to gather and finalize reports to be higher than average. 

Also, this is intended to be a discussion on rape and EA's handling of it, not on emotions. I downvoted to get the conversation back on track. 

All the [redacted] parts of this post were written that way by the author, mods did not edit this post and if we edit or remove information, we will always either post a comment explaining what we did, or get in touch with the poster directly. (which we did not do in this case)

No, it was redacted by me after I wrote the post and before I posted it here - the risk is low, but don't want to risk defamation - or derail the conversation about the overarching issue, in that people might start trying to guess/post names based on my descriptions (which happened with the original post about the Time article).

Yeah, there aren't very many people with professional experience around SA. 

The proposal is pretty standard stuff (a policy defining consent, reporting process, banning, investigation, evaluation, suggestions for safer events - to ensure that neither survivors nor the accused are subject to arbitrary actions at the whim of the team); training sessions (sexual harassment is required by law in many states, as I'm sure you're well-aware...just that I'm more familiar w/EA and SA than the standard low-cost training - which research shows is not only ineffective but counter-intuitive in that it creates a backlash), a robust reporting system & dissemination (as underreporting is a hard problem; and using me isn't working for me so I'd rather develop something to replace me), and some survivor-friendly language and framing to encourage survivors to come forward. I imagine your professional experience is more relevant to this than most of the other commenters :)

I know the risk of defamation is low if I posted a description of the accused, but it's still not one I want to take - but I considered it because the "30" I mentioned ARE more connected with EA (eg, employees of orgs at the time of the incident, paper trails of orgs verifying that they're connected to these people) - but agreed that the decentralization and associated legal issues make this complex. But that complexity is also interesting IMO.

IMO, I feel like rape is increasingly adjudicated by public opinion rather than law. Given the parameters of the law, it's understandably very difficult to prove non-consent beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, the opinions and biases of juries and judges, eg, the judge in the Stanford rape case is a good example, but I feel like I come across similar opinions from presiding judges of "not ruining a young man's life" once a month or so. 

If you're interested, I found a lot of value in Alexandra Brodsky's Sexual Justice - she's a Yale-trained attorney who makes some great arguments about why we need other processes that aren't the legal system for dealing with this. 

I agree with your sentiment (and upvoted so your comment doesn't get hidden), but (1) victims don't always have a strong connection to their attacker and may not care strongly, and (2) in my six years of doing this, sometimes (not always) private processes work. Mostly importantly, private processes are easier on the survivors, who should take precedence in any process. 

Under my old screen name, I had  3 commenters say they changed their minds about rape, for example. I know my work certainly has changed people's opinions on rape, both at large and within their workplace/community. But to do that, they have to be willing to change and admit they made mistakes. 

The problem here for me is that (1) EA isn't so far showing a willing to begin that process of change - they can't even admit they've got a problem, and aren't willing to say "hey, we f-ked this up, guys, and we're sorry.", (2) EA doesn't want to compromise with me, and so far, just wants to build off my work without any reciprocity, change, learning...and (3) EA literally pays a team to do what they're trying to get me to do for free (yeah, I know that team does more than just what I do, but the point is that they pay people to do what they're trying to gently, perhaps unconsciously, manipulate me into doing for them)- I think in part because they don't value the education, experience, reputation-building, and expertise that allows me to work as effectively as I do).

I'm not super familiar with the practices of call-in culture though I'm aware of it. While I'm sure there are some communities that have practiced methods similar to call-in culture well for a long time, they've been uncommon and I understand that call-in culture has in general only been spreading across different movements for a few years now. I also expect this community would benefit from learning more about call-in culture but it'd be helpful if you can make some recommendations for effective altruists to check out.

I almost never engage in karma voting because I don’t really have a consistent strategy for it I’m comfortable with, but I just voted on this one. Karma voting in general has recently been kind of confusing to me, but I feel like I have noticed a significant amount of wagon circling recently, how critical a post was of EA didn’t used to be very predictive of its karma, but I’ve noticed that recently, since around the Bostrom email, it has become much more predictive. Write something defensive of EA, get mostly upvotes, potentially to the triple digits. Write something negative, very mixed to net negative voting, and if it reaches high enough karma, possibly even more comments. Hanania’s post on how EA should be anti-woke just got downvoted into the ground twice in a row, so I don’t think the voting reflects much ideological change by comparison (being very famous in EA is also moderately predictive, which is probably some part of the Aella post’s karma at least, and is a more mundane sort of bad I guess).

I’m still hopeful this will bounce back in a few hours, as I often see happen, but I still suspect the overall voting pattern will be a karmic tug of war at best. I’m not sure what to make of this, is it evaporative cooling? Are the same people just exhausted and taking it out on the bad news? Is it that the same people who were upvoting criticism before are exhausted and just not voting much at all, leaving the karma to the nay sayers (I doubt this one because of the voting patterns on moderately high karma posts of the tug of war variety, but it’s the sort of thing that makes me worry about my own voting, how I don’t even need to vote wrong to vote in a way that creates unreasonable disparities based on what I’m motivated to vote on at all, and just voting on everything is obviously infeasible). Regardless, I find it very disturbing, I’m used to EA being better than this.

What amazes me about what you're saying is that - many, many times, in this post and my previous ones, I tell people that reporters are reading the forum. So your last comment - about face the movement is presenting to the world - is particularly striking. 

And also, I called out CH/EA for ostracizing survivors, but it's buried in this post and was more clear in my last one - I emailed this to them 2 days ago and haven't heard back yet. 

And whether this gets downvoted (so the public sees EA as problematic, and potential victims stay away) or upvoted (so EA wants to do something and change) - I'll get my point across.