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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Elevatorgate: Effective Altruism version?Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse

Does anyone remember Elevatorgate? Long story short: the atheist "movement" had gotten going, many books were published and cons were attended. At one a figure in the community "Skepchick"- Rebecca Watson- was propositioned by a man who'd attended her talk in an elevator and made a video stating - in understated tones given the conflagration it started tbh - that she didn't like it and it made her feel unsafe.

Because this was pre-#MeToo and the Great Awokening and atheists at the time kind of prided themselves on being assholes truth-tellers , figures like Dawkins jumped in, criticizing or mocking her for complaining about such an anodyne event. Dawkins wrote a notorious letter titled "Dear Muslima", mockingly comparing the suffering of a hypothetical circumcised Muslim woman with Watson in the sort of move that wouldn't even begin to fly today.

Well...that led to an absolute shitstorm that split the atheist community with some using it to create "Atheism+": basically atheism that was sufficiently woke, after insisting atheism had a racism/sexism/whatever problem. As foreshadowing for a now pervasive social tendency, it then ate itself with circular firing squads and purity spirals.

At the time, there was enough pushback that Watson and her defenders didn't outright win but she probably won the moral victory. Years down the line most of the leftover "100% atheist" communities were pretty woke, see the banning of RationalityRules for arguing against trans-identified males in women's sports.

Now...

But as Gopalakrishnan got further into the movement, she realized that “the advertised reality of EA is very different from the actual reality of EA,” she says. She noticed that EA members in the Bay Area seemed to work together, live together, and sleep together, often in polyamorous sexual relationships with complex professional dynamics. Three times in one year, she says, men at informal EA gatherings tried to convince her to join these so-called “polycules.” When Gopalakrishnan said she wasn’t interested, she recalls, they would “shame” her or try to pressure her, casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach.

After a particularly troubling incident of sexual harassment, Gopalakrishnan wrote a post on an online forum for EAs in Nov. 2022. While she declined to publicly describe details of the incident, she argued that EA’s culture was hostile toward women. “It puts your safety at risk,” she wrote, adding that most of the access to funding and opportunities within the movement was controlled by men. Gopalakrishnan was alarmed at some of the responses. One commenter wrote that her post was “bigoted” against polyamorous people. Another said it would “pollute the epistemic environment,” and argued it was “net-negative for solving the problem.”

...

Gopalakrishnan is one of seven women connected to effective altruism who tell TIME they experienced misconduct ranging from harassment and coercion to sexual assault within the community. The women allege EA itself is partly to blame. They say that effective altruism’s overwhelming maleness, its professional incestuousness, its subculture of polyamory and its overlap with tech-bro dominated “rationalist” groups have combined to create an environment in which sexual misconduct can be tolerated, excused, or rationalized away. Several described EA as having a “cult-like” dynamic.

...

One recalled being “groomed” by a powerful man nearly twice her age who argued that “pedophilic relationships” were both perfectly natural and highly educational. Another told TIME a much older EA recruited her to join his polyamorous relationship while she was still in college. A third described an unsettling experience with an influential figure in EA whose role included picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs. After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel. When she arrived, she says, “he told me he needed to masturbate before seeing me.”

I'm torn.

On the one hand, I recognize the same tactics (and, tbh, it doesn't escape my notice that the first victim seems to have social competition with males for funding on her mind) that ripped the Atheist community apart. I also find most of the examples of harassment to be of the all-too-common nebulous and vague variety that allow people to claim victimhood. I honestly don't know if people are this fragile nowadays, or are exaggerating their fragility for points, but it is a bit absurd. If you're an adult, I don't want to hear about you being groomed. A "22f-44m" relationship is one where one party is twice as old but it'd be absurd to act like one party didn't have agency.

A lot of the complaints also seem to be that alleged rationalists and effective altruists - for some reason - don't just take people at their word.

On the other hand: some of these (e.g. the final one I quoted, the one about a male jumping into a woman's bed at night) are more egregious and the quokka point is well-applied here for those "good" EAs who still encouraged people not to go to the cops. It's exactly the sort of problematic math I can see some people doing. Hell, people did it all the time in churches, schools and so on. It's not a particular foible of EAs.

Also:

Several of the women who spoke to TIME said that the popularity of polyamory within EA fosters an environment in which men—often men who control career opportunities–feel empowered to recruit younger women into uncomfortable sexual relationships. Many EAs embrace nontraditional living arrangements and question established taboos, and plenty of people, including many women, enthusiastically consent to sharing partners with others.

I have to say I find this funny. People discovering that looser social and sexual norms allow bad actors - or merely "people with more status than me who don't want to treat me as I think I deserve" - to accrue sexual and social benefits and blur the lines. Quelle surprise.

This feels less like breaking social and sexual norms and more like the same old problem with mixed gender workplaces under a different name.

I don't think I have ever been in an adult work environment where there wasn't at least one couple. I met my wife at work, I had two other work romances before I met my wife.

If you put people together a bunch, and give them a common interest then they will at a minimum develop some friendships and social ties. It shouldn't be a surprise that some of the friends start taking it further if they share a sexual interest in each other.

I think people should be responsible and be adults. Which is a whole package of norms and expectations. And I'm guessing the EA crowd broke some of those rules.

However I sometimes feel like the metoo movement and some parts of feminist groups want a completely asexual workplace. I feel that such a thing is largely impossible, but would also be a travesty. Once an adult leaves college the workplace can become one of their best places for finding a compatible life partner. Apps and bars are a shitty replacement.

However I sometimes feel like the metoo movement and some parts of feminist groups want a completely asexual workplace

Their actions seem to align more with a group looking for a sexual dynamic that is totally dominated by the female sex than an asexual workplace. For example, it seems that their opposition here lies in the man benefiting from his status, not the sex in itself.

I think you could argue that this set of beliefs or values is espoused because men are more likely to benefit from workplace hierarchies and status in terms of sexual benefits. I also think to effectively argue that you would need to build up a very blank slate view of gender dynamics and values thereof that doesn't hold up to scrutiny because status games are an intrinsic part of male attractiveness (although I won't go into detail there simply because it would take a lot of time) This seems more and more like a deconstruction of that dynamic under nebulous claims of misogyny than any principled criticism of workplace dating dynamics.

I don't know; the examples of workplace romances I've seen or heard about didn't end up well. I've never heard anyone say "I met my spouse at work" but I do know of two examples from a former workplace of men who picked up a new romance at work, left their wives, got the new girlfriend pregnant, then left her/were left by her.

Part of it is down to change in attitudes; formerly, women at work were expecting to get married and then be housewives and homemakers and leave their jobs, so finding a match at work was not a bad idea (the trope of nurses and doctors or boss and secretary). You might meet someone at work or through work. You weren't going to continue working afterwards so the divide between home and workplace was much clearer. Today is different, women are going to have careers (or at least jobs) even after marriage, and a workplace romance need not lead to marriage at all. So the lines are blurred - work is not a place to find a mate, but human nature means that attraction happens and people do get into relationships, but if the relationship ends then it can be uncomfortable for both parties to still be seeing each other every day because they are also work colleagues. That leads to bad relationships at work and makes it more trouble than its worth for the business employing them.

IIRC work is now the most common place to meet a spouse, and if not, its ones of the most likely. Of course workplace romances can end poorly, because most romances do. I don't think that's a good argument against them. I have had some regrettable workplace romances. One was so nasty that I was credibly threatened by the woman, among other things. On the other hand, I don't think there are many other good places left in the modern world to find a spouse that are widely accessible.

As for the business, it probably isn't worth it in an abstract sense, but what people forget is that companies are just groups of people, and people want to get laid. HR can't really fight human nature and they're never going to fire top people over getting laid. If you suck at your job? Yeah, they might use it as an excuse.

There has been a large decline in couples meeting through work. It was equal 2nd place in 1995 at 19% dropping to 11% in 2017.

Given remote work trends, it may well be even lower now.

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