“A meta discussion was not needed. There was no suggestion of banning flirting. No call for punishment. Just a young woman, feeling sad and uncomfortable, tweeting that a young man hit on her at an EA meetup.”
I guess when you’re in a community dedicated to solving every possible problem, you can forget that sometimes people don’t want advice, just empathy.
Thank you for sharing this! You're great at explaining this stuff.
> They’ll be so excited to hear my honest perspective, or to watch me say “stop that” in real-time, even if it’s not particularly pleasing or considerate of their wants!
I definitely relate to feeling pressured to communicate this way. I feel like I've sensed a lot of superiority around "direct communication"/"ask culture."
Sucks that individuals expressing discomfort about these things get met with so much talk about norms and intent. Like, it’s more popular to use the incident as a stage for culture debate, than to actually support the person in distress.
I empathize with all of the experiences you mentioned here and relate to most of them, especially on the assertiveness point. Recently I encountered a man, who’s used to be my friend, spreading lies about me at an EAG. I came to that person and asserted my stance, demanding that he admits to what he did wrong. It got backfired. He called my action harassment, and he is “not responsible for how others interpret his words.” I stood up for myself and thought they would adjust; turned out I just wasted my time and effort.
This post really made me consider speaking to the community health about how that experience affected me. Thank you so much for speaking up and I’m forever grateful for such voices like this within the movement.
I think it really is quite amazingly hard to have any discussion about gender dynamics that doesn't trigger a lot of people, myself included. Probably if we all had healthy romantic relationships this wouldn't be the case really.
It really is incredibly difficult. I think the conversations touch on such raw wounds for most people involved and years and years of baggage from personal experiences and societal narratives.
I would participate more in EA & Rationalist spaces if I encountered voices like this more often. You’ve pointed out my key pet peeve with these communities: The way they gloss over or entirely ignore the emotional aspect of being, leaving many/some (maybe just the loud ones?) emotionally arrested even if highly intelligent.
When you say “The way I’ve psychologised this…” you could’ve also said “The emotional pattern I’ve noticed is…” And the pattern is automatically jumping to taking-it-personally when sexism is brought up. As an autistic person with a trauma background (cPTSD), your examples and infuriated me. If you mention someone asking you out & later being rude and someone replies with “Maybe they’re autistic / They haven’t thought about it carefully…”, then that person has a loose grip on consent/respect, and they’re immediately a yellow flag in my book. They’re not thinking about you or about connection at all; they’re only thinking about how they hope you would perceive them if they were who you were talking about (aka, they took your statement personally and made it about them).
I mentioned being emotionally arrested earlier, because chronically taking things personally is what children do before they develop past such a stage. This is almost always accompanied by a relatively small capacity for emotional sensation, and that’s why you see reactions like those on the “a guy hit on me..” tweet. They automatically took it personally, which filled them with emotions they don’t have the capacity to hold or skills to process, and so they dumped/spewed what they couldn’t manage, leading to shit like “Are we not allowed to flirt?” coming from people you know damn well are smart enough to account for context.
I would feel very uncomfortable working with people who seem to not see/hear me - or worse, only do so selectively - and whom also claim to be dedicating their lives to relieving the suffering of others.
Yes, this is my biggest pet peeve as well. And it does make me incredibly uncomfortable, it's my least favourite part of being in the EA community. Though fwiw, I have also met some of the most exceptional people through EA, and I have been incredibly supported by my work team & others in the community. I think, most people are not like this. But *especially online*, I think this behaviour is too enabled. And I totally agree that calling this 'emotionally arrested', immature, etc., is accurate. It is essentially a kind of adult tantrum, but instead of screaming and crying, it is an onslaught of pseudo-intellectual word vomit that refuses to acknowledge the actual catalyst (which is not intellectual curiosity or genuine concern but dysregulated emotion, taking things personally, etc.)
And yes, the "maybe it's autism" excuse that I hear far, far too often also makes me incredibly frustrated. "Why does he do that?" is a great book for combatting this attitude, although it's unfortunately heavily gendered in its language, which I think alienates some readers. But nonetheless, it makes the important point that systematically treating people poorly is a separate issue that stems from *beliefs*, not brain structure or mental unwellness (though these things can worsen or exacerbate the severity of poor behaviour). Because, as you've pointed out, many people have these issues and do not systematically treat women poorly.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment, if you ever do end up engaging with EA more, I'll be very happy to see you around <3
I think there is this reaction because lots of people want to excessively police behavior, there is some baseline level of harm we have to accept, a man will ask out a women and she will feel uncomfortable, such is life
I absolutely agree that there are certain behaviours which cannot or should not be policed by an authoritative body. I like to think we can all still ask, "are there ways to reduce harm, maybe not systemically, but in how I treat and listen to the people in my community?" rather than throwing up our hands and immediately entering radical acceptance.
This is a great piece. A fundamental tension within the very idea of rationality is that, ultimately, it’s feelings all the way down. When someone says something wrong, even something with no moral valence like 2+2=5, it *feels* wrong.
Getting rejected sucks. Getting hit on by someone you’re not attracted to is, in the *best* case, very awkward. Both people are allowed to feel their feelings in that scenario.
Women have to deal with additional unspoken menace of masculine strength, and many men are not aware of that at all. They think of themselves as weak, too, so the idea of someone being scared of them is alien concept.
I think it's important to be precise in your language when making claims like this or it becomes quite inflammatory. What is "ruin your life" and what is "complain". It is absolutely true that, say, reporting harrassment or assault can lead to consequences or exclusion. Though, not always. It also very much depends on the environment, the power dynamics at play, etc.
Just want to say you publicly talking about this makes me more comfortable identifying with the EA community. Thank you for taking the time to write this and share about your own experience. Hopefully the EA can improve here.
I loved EA so much from 2013- ~2023. I never had a problem with sexism *that I could detect*. But my experience in the last few years has taken a lot of those good memories away, and I realize now what other women were talking about. I think, at the end of the day, a lot of the core men are there for a “boy” thing, and they feel on some level that girls can’t really keep up. So you’re fine if you’re not directly challenging them (I was not in AI Safety until 2023, but doing Animal Welfare stuff that the silverbacks didn’t care about), GREAT if you’re there to have sex with, but as soon as you are challenging then it becomes clear you’re a second-class citizen.
If this is truly a misunderstanding, then you could easily clear this up by editing your comment for clarity. e.g. "I think this post implies that we should have social norms that only require men to bear the burden of your discomfort, and that would be unfair."
As is, it looks like you're trying to reframe her post as a "demand."
“A meta discussion was not needed. There was no suggestion of banning flirting. No call for punishment. Just a young woman, feeling sad and uncomfortable, tweeting that a young man hit on her at an EA meetup.”
I guess when you’re in a community dedicated to solving every possible problem, you can forget that sometimes people don’t want advice, just empathy.
Thats a nice observation
Thank you for sharing this! You're great at explaining this stuff.
> They’ll be so excited to hear my honest perspective, or to watch me say “stop that” in real-time, even if it’s not particularly pleasing or considerate of their wants!
I definitely relate to feeling pressured to communicate this way. I feel like I've sensed a lot of superiority around "direct communication"/"ask culture."
Yes, same same, that's a really good way of putting it. Tysm for reading <3
This was a really good post, thanks for writing it
Thanks Max, thank you for reading it :)
Well stated! Thanks for writing this.
Sucks that individuals expressing discomfort about these things get met with so much talk about norms and intent. Like, it’s more popular to use the incident as a stage for culture debate, than to actually support the person in distress.
I empathize with all of the experiences you mentioned here and relate to most of them, especially on the assertiveness point. Recently I encountered a man, who’s used to be my friend, spreading lies about me at an EAG. I came to that person and asserted my stance, demanding that he admits to what he did wrong. It got backfired. He called my action harassment, and he is “not responsible for how others interpret his words.” I stood up for myself and thought they would adjust; turned out I just wasted my time and effort.
This post really made me consider speaking to the community health about how that experience affected me. Thank you so much for speaking up and I’m forever grateful for such voices like this within the movement.
I think it really is quite amazingly hard to have any discussion about gender dynamics that doesn't trigger a lot of people, myself included. Probably if we all had healthy romantic relationships this wouldn't be the case really.
It really is incredibly difficult. I think the conversations touch on such raw wounds for most people involved and years and years of baggage from personal experiences and societal narratives.
Thank you for taking the time to read the post!
This is so good.
I would participate more in EA & Rationalist spaces if I encountered voices like this more often. You’ve pointed out my key pet peeve with these communities: The way they gloss over or entirely ignore the emotional aspect of being, leaving many/some (maybe just the loud ones?) emotionally arrested even if highly intelligent.
When you say “The way I’ve psychologised this…” you could’ve also said “The emotional pattern I’ve noticed is…” And the pattern is automatically jumping to taking-it-personally when sexism is brought up. As an autistic person with a trauma background (cPTSD), your examples and infuriated me. If you mention someone asking you out & later being rude and someone replies with “Maybe they’re autistic / They haven’t thought about it carefully…”, then that person has a loose grip on consent/respect, and they’re immediately a yellow flag in my book. They’re not thinking about you or about connection at all; they’re only thinking about how they hope you would perceive them if they were who you were talking about (aka, they took your statement personally and made it about them).
I mentioned being emotionally arrested earlier, because chronically taking things personally is what children do before they develop past such a stage. This is almost always accompanied by a relatively small capacity for emotional sensation, and that’s why you see reactions like those on the “a guy hit on me..” tweet. They automatically took it personally, which filled them with emotions they don’t have the capacity to hold or skills to process, and so they dumped/spewed what they couldn’t manage, leading to shit like “Are we not allowed to flirt?” coming from people you know damn well are smart enough to account for context.
I would feel very uncomfortable working with people who seem to not see/hear me - or worse, only do so selectively - and whom also claim to be dedicating their lives to relieving the suffering of others.
Yes, this is my biggest pet peeve as well. And it does make me incredibly uncomfortable, it's my least favourite part of being in the EA community. Though fwiw, I have also met some of the most exceptional people through EA, and I have been incredibly supported by my work team & others in the community. I think, most people are not like this. But *especially online*, I think this behaviour is too enabled. And I totally agree that calling this 'emotionally arrested', immature, etc., is accurate. It is essentially a kind of adult tantrum, but instead of screaming and crying, it is an onslaught of pseudo-intellectual word vomit that refuses to acknowledge the actual catalyst (which is not intellectual curiosity or genuine concern but dysregulated emotion, taking things personally, etc.)
And yes, the "maybe it's autism" excuse that I hear far, far too often also makes me incredibly frustrated. "Why does he do that?" is a great book for combatting this attitude, although it's unfortunately heavily gendered in its language, which I think alienates some readers. But nonetheless, it makes the important point that systematically treating people poorly is a separate issue that stems from *beliefs*, not brain structure or mental unwellness (though these things can worsen or exacerbate the severity of poor behaviour). Because, as you've pointed out, many people have these issues and do not systematically treat women poorly.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment, if you ever do end up engaging with EA more, I'll be very happy to see you around <3
Really really good post (from a big fan of EA)
Thanks Sergio :)
Well written. It's good to hear the other side.
I'm glad!
I think there is this reaction because lots of people want to excessively police behavior, there is some baseline level of harm we have to accept, a man will ask out a women and she will feel uncomfortable, such is life
I absolutely agree that there are certain behaviours which cannot or should not be policed by an authoritative body. I like to think we can all still ask, "are there ways to reduce harm, maybe not systemically, but in how I treat and listen to the people in my community?" rather than throwing up our hands and immediately entering radical acceptance.
This is a great piece. A fundamental tension within the very idea of rationality is that, ultimately, it’s feelings all the way down. When someone says something wrong, even something with no moral valence like 2+2=5, it *feels* wrong.
Getting rejected sucks. Getting hit on by someone you’re not attracted to is, in the *best* case, very awkward. Both people are allowed to feel their feelings in that scenario.
Women have to deal with additional unspoken menace of masculine strength, and many men are not aware of that at all. They think of themselves as weak, too, so the idea of someone being scared of them is alien concept.
There's also the unspoken menace of women's social influence. A man mostly can't ruin your life by complaining about you, but a woman can.
I think it's important to be precise in your language when making claims like this or it becomes quite inflammatory. What is "ruin your life" and what is "complain". It is absolutely true that, say, reporting harrassment or assault can lead to consequences or exclusion. Though, not always. It also very much depends on the environment, the power dynamics at play, etc.
Disagree. I have lost funding and speaking engagements because of a man's false narrative about me.
Just want to say you publicly talking about this makes me more comfortable identifying with the EA community. Thank you for taking the time to write this and share about your own experience. Hopefully the EA can improve here.
Very glad to no longer be an EA.
I loved EA so much from 2013- ~2023. I never had a problem with sexism *that I could detect*. But my experience in the last few years has taken a lot of those good memories away, and I realize now what other women were talking about. I think, at the end of the day, a lot of the core men are there for a “boy” thing, and they feel on some level that girls can’t really keep up. So you’re fine if you’re not directly challenging them (I was not in AI Safety until 2023, but doing Animal Welfare stuff that the silverbacks didn’t care about), GREAT if you’re there to have sex with, but as soon as you are challenging then it becomes clear you’re a second-class citizen.
> it's not reasonable for you to demand social norms that require only men to bear the burden of that discomfort
She didn't do this. This is rude and frustrating to read
"I didn’t say she did, I said it would be unreasonable if she did. That’s a conditional, not an accusation." lol you sound ridiculous with this shit
If this is truly a misunderstanding, then you could easily clear this up by editing your comment for clarity. e.g. "I think this post implies that we should have social norms that only require men to bear the burden of your discomfort, and that would be unfair."
As is, it looks like you're trying to reframe her post as a "demand."