While I understand that people generally like Owen, I believe we need to ensure that we are not overlooking the substance of his message and giving him an overly favorable response.

Owen's impropriety may be extensive. Just because one event was over 5 years ago, does not mean that the other >=3 events were (and if they were, one expects he would tell us). Relatedly, if it indeed was the most severe mistake of this nature, there may have been more severe mistakes of somewhat different kinds. There may yet be further events that haven't yet been reported to, or disclosed by Owen, and indeed, on the outside view, most events would not be suchly reported.

What makes things worse is the kind of career Owen has pursued over the last 5+ years. Owen's work centered on: i) advising orgs and funders, ii) hiring junior researchers, and iii) hosting workshops, often residential, and with junior researchers. If as Owen says, you know as of 2021-22 that you have deficiencies in dealing with power dynamics, and there have been a series of multiple events like this, then why are you still playing the roles described in (i-iii)? His medium term career trajectory, even relative to other EAs, is in the top 20% of pathways that would make these kinds of mistakes happen more, rather than less, often. 

The fact that there has never been precisely the same mistake made twice should give little comfort, while the admission that mitigating these problems has gone "more slowly" than it should is worrying. Problems with sexual harassment usually have a lot to do with personality, so it should not be surprising that this behaviour has been hard to change with therapy.

Owen's altered duties are somewhat underwhelming. His departure from the EV UK board is acknowledged as a temporary one, and while new mentoring connections are currently on hold, existing mentorship will carry on. The planning of events is currently suspended, but participation in them is permissible. Moreover, it is framed as a question of "when" he will resume these responsibilities, rather than "if".

Owen attempts to insert himself into the conversation regarding governance measures. However, the act of a board member providing their opinions to the community health team could potentially disrupt efforts to uncover the truth of what occurred.

So I don't believe that the apology was very reassuring. But what concerns me more is that from skimming the forum, one may think that forum readers are taking Owen's side here. I think two things are going on. Firstly, few seem willing to speak against Owen due to his still considerable power in the EA community (that he indicates he intends to cling onto), so there is an imbalance in the comments. Secondly, people like Owen and his writing, and face cognitive dissonance in contemplating that he might be a bad guy, so there is an imbalance in the votes (e.g. between this post and the one from the EVF board). Understandable though this may be, it could have a chilling effect on those who have their own cases of sexual assault to report. I realise that we are a community who prize ourselves on thinking about the big issues, and striving to do the most good. But here I worry about our ability to handle the basics. For me, it's a matter of decency - we should make righteous whistleblowers feel comfortable, rather than backing powerful members of own tribe. 

I feel there's a bit of a "missing mood" in some of the comments here, so I want to say: 

I felt shocked, hurt, and betrayed at reading this. I never expected the Oxford incident to involve someone so central and well-regarded in the community, and certainly not Owen. Other EAs I know who knew Owen and the Oxford scene better are even more deeply hurt and surprised by this. (As other commenters here have already attested, tears have not been uncommon.)

Despite the length and thoughtfulness of the apology, it's difficult for me to see how someone who was already in a position of power and status in EA -- a community many of us see as key to the future of humanity -- behaved in a way that seems so inappropriate and destructive. I'm angry not only at the harm that was done to women trying to do good in the world, but also to the health, reputation, and credibility of our community. We deserve better from our leaders.

I really sympathize with all the EAs -- especially women -- who feel betrayed and undermined by this news. To all of you who've had bad experiences like this in EA -- I'm really sorry. I hope we can do better. I think we can do better -- I think we already have the seeds of something better -- but first we need to look hard at what we're not doing well.

(Also: I think this apology was necessary, and was also unusually well-done, but I disagree with another highly upvoted commenter about it being "healing". The revelation that Owen Cotton-Barratt did this feels very damaging to my relationship with the UK EA community -- which typically does so much better than the Bay Area community on metrics like this! I hope that healing and a degree of rehabilitation can come in time, but I personally feel that talk about healing, redemption, etc, is somewhat premature, and that now is the time to pause for people's hurt and grief.)

Thanks for everyone's contributions. I am learning a lot. I see that the author made significant mistakes and am glad he is taking action to correct them and that the community is taking them seriously, but I want to make a small comment on the sentence "She was in a structural position where it was (I now believe) unreasonable to expect honesty about her experience." I don't know enough about the specific relationship in the post to comment on it directly, but felt it could describe enough dynamics that it could use a diverse array of perspectives from women in the structural positions described.

I want to encourage other women in early stages of their careers like myself to continue striving to overcome shyness. I don't think it's too much to expect us to be honest if we dislike a higher status man flirting with us who doesn't have direct power over us, or if we dislike any other thing they do.  I hope this post encourages shy lower status women to feel like they would be heard if they were assertive about behaviors they don't like, that one way of making the behaviors stop could be to be more direct.  

I also think in general the Ask Culture norm prevalent in EA is very helpful, and that we should all work to ensure it continues. Cultural norms are so diverse that Guess Culture doesn't really work in cross-cultural environments like EA. 

Lastly, I want to defend dating within EA between people who don't have professional interactions that produce conflicts of interest, but do have different statuses within the movement. EAs are often so unique that building a life with someone in the movement can be very high impact, and  we will never all be the same status at the same time. If there was mutual attraction between myself and a man who happened to be higher status in EA than me, but he didn't pursue a relationship because he felt he couldn't trust lower status women to be honest based on this post, I would feel insulted. Outside a work environment, I want to be viewed as an equal able to speak my mind.

I don't have enough upper class experience yet to be confident what norms would be best on net for EA. I come from a blue collar background where workplace gender relations are more catered to assertive women, and am open to being wrong about how much they could apply here. I just felt like this conversation was benefiting a lot from the voices of early-stage career women that are more shy than me, and that voices like mine have been underrepresented so far. 

I'm sorry to be pushing on this when it seems like you are doing the right thing, but could you elaborate more on this sentence from the article?

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.

Why was she being put up in your house and not a hotel, if you weren't affiliated with the group she was interviewing for? I think this is the part a lot of people were sketched out by, so more context would be helpful. 

context: I'm relatively new to EA, mid 20s, and a polyamorous woman. Commenting anonymously because I am not yet totally "out" as polyamorous to everyone in my life.

I feel that this post risks conflating and/or unfairly associating polyamory with poor handling of power dynamics and personal/professional boundaries. Such issues can overlap with any relationship structure. Sexual misconduct exists throughout our society, and throughout both monogamous and non-monogamous spaces. 

I've experienced a range of sexual misconduct prior to my involvement in EA, and so far have found my dating and professional interactions with men in EA to be high quality, relative to high personal standards. In particular, the openness to and active solicitation of feedback I've experienced is something I've never really experienced outside of polyamory within EA. Since I learned about EA thanks to polyamory (not the other way around), I think I have a pretty different experience than that shared by women in the Time article. Their experience is not a representation of what polyamory done well actually looks like.

Additionally, the Time article fosters skepticism about restorative justice approaches to  repair following sexual misconduct, and fails to provide context on how broadly such approaches are being adopted in the Bay Area outside of polyamory/EA, due to severe limitations of the legal system (I first encountered the term restorative justice in a racial justice context, before I knew anything about EA). I support restorative practices that balance accountability with growth and forgiveness. Therefore, I appreciate that Owen has shared this publicly, which helps others grow. Our society at large still has lots of room for progress on healing sexual and gender dynamics.  I think that both the people directly involved (Owen and the woman who reported the incident in the Time article), and those indirectly involved (such as Julia at CEA), deserve compassion and support in learning and growing from this. 

Trust is a fragile and important thing in relationships and in communities. Trust in a community happens when its individuals and institutions are living in accordance with their shared values. Transparency helps foster trust, so I think being open about this was an important step towards strengthening that trust.

Thank you for sharing. In particular, I find your mention of shame vs edginess interesting.. But I expect that at least one person reading your story will think "Uh sounds like you need more shame, dude, not less" so I'd like to share a perspective for any such readers: 

If I understand Owen anyway, I'll say that I relate in that I also have had some brazen periods of life, prompted by a sort of cultural rebirth and sex-positive idealism. An outsider might have labelled these brazen periods as a swinging of the pendulum in response to my strict religious upbringing, but that isn't quite right.. It's hard to notice how it is related to shame but in my case:

For a very shame-prone or shame-trained person, it can be very difficult to parse out "What is the actual harm here? What are the actual bad acts and why, when I know that most of these things I'm programmed to feel shame about simply are not wrong or shame-worthy?" This can lead to a sort of idealistically-motivated throwing out of all feelings that look like shame. Anxiety, hesitance, guilt, and self-criticality are examples of possibly-adaptive-feelings that can be mistakenly thrown out here. This, I think, can lead to social permissiveness and lack of boundaries (you might call it "edginess") to a problematic extent. Ironically, I can see this happening more for the people who have been most shame-prone because those are the people for whom shame has been such an omnipresent guide that "feeling something similar to shame" actually loses most of it's compass potential without highly tuned emotional intelligence. Additionally, when such people throw shame out as a compass, they might find that other social-guiding inclinations (social skills which help you realize the unstated preferences of others) are underdeveloped. This is, I think, more likely the more you have used shame as a compass, especially if it was your primary compass during your whole developmental years.

It's actually pretty hard to express in language, but I hope I have helped share one perspective on how, ironically, more shame can lead to worse behavior for a certain type of rational person, especially in their younger, not-at-all-wise-yet, years.  

I found reading this document somewhat healing*, and I bet I am not the only EA woman who has**. With transparency and accountability, maybe we can move forward as a community.  I'm hopeful to know that you are prioritising getting the help you need, and I hope other EA men follow suit. I hope that your therapist (or coach) helps you to develop other (non-shame) social compasses for sorting truly unhelpful acts from neutral or helpful acts. Long periods of focused tumult-free reflection are also important, so I'm glad you are putting polyamory and any extra obligations like board responsibilities on hold til you have things sorted. ***
 
[*Edit 1: "Somewhat healing" = I've been thinking about SA in EA for months now (ramping up since September but obviously peaking now). And my mind has come back to this (Owen's) incident a lot. Why this incident? Well it is probably the most egregious incident in that Time piece that there has (til today) been no public clarity on. I have every day since the Time piece thought to myself "So, who is that man? This one seems the most likely to still, today, be strongly connected to EA. Do we need to be concerned about this actor?" It's embarrassing to admit that it has consumed my mind this much recently, but I think other community builders are struggling similarly. So, this post somewhat heals 3 things for me: (1) this extra-worrying incident can be crossed off the list as handled without a doubt, eg that's one less potential predator or reputational risk around. We don't have to worry about that actor anymore. (2) The man himself is actually stepping up to take responsibility for it. That's one less man's scandal or misconduct that EA women have to clean up/monitor/apologize for. I feel healed in expectation that I and others might be able to get some of our energy back. I am acutely aware of how much energy men's mistakes here cost women (women who are often supposed to be working on other altruistic questions!) (3) this post is also a model for how other men can clarify their pasts. I hope to see more of those Time incidents handled or somehow clarified, (although I still wish it could have happened in a different way). So this post might even signal further upcoming clarity, which will be what the community needs to move forward. And having hope that EA can move forward, improved, and back to impact, is healing too.]

[**Edit 2: I've gotten some fair pushback on the "I think I speak for a lot of EA women" phrasing I had originally. I modified the language to more what I really mean. I don't presume to speak for all readers or any single reader. It would even be perfectly valid if this were your moment of peak fury or despair.. like maybe that's right for you. Personally I am able to take healing from this post, and I bet I'm not the only one who is finding something positive to take out of it]

[***Edit 3: Some people feel this particular paragraph is too warm, and feel it's an example of dialogue being gentler toward men than women. (1) It felt humanly natural for me to flow into my own thoughts once I'd crossed that shame writeup off my list. That was a mistake and in future I'll just start a new comment. (2) I don't regret being warm and leaving out affirmations of ill-fit, because sitting below my comment as I was composing mine was another comment saying how distraught they were at reading this post, and how disappointed in Owen. I did and still do think it was equally important (in expectation to the first part of my comment) for Owen and for this community that someone share a different perspective on reading the piece and also like, wish him well rather than pile the guilt on. Frankly I expected more negative sentiment toward him to come (which has), and some of these responses would make me straight up want to die if I were OP. I don't want anyone to feel that way. The woman seems to have forgiven him herself so I presume no reason to withhold compassion myself.]

I’m the woman who Julia asked on a hunch about her experiences with Owen, and one of the women who Owen refers to when he says there have been four other less egregious occasions where he expressed feelings of attraction that he regrets. I’m sharing my experience with Owen below, because I think it’s probably helpful for people reflecting on this situation (and by default, it would remain confidential indefinitely), but as an FYI, I’m probably unlikely to participate in substantive discussion about it in the comments section. (I’m posting this anonymously because I’d prefer to avoid being pulled into lots of discussions about this in a way that drains my time and emotional energy, not because I’m afraid of retribution from someone or negative consequences for my career.)

• Several years ago, I stayed at Owen’s house for a while while I was visiting Oxford. Owen and I were friends, I had been to his house several times before, and he had previously offered that I could stay there if I was in Oxford. I was working at an EA organization at the time that was not professionally connected to Owen.
• Towards the end of my stay, Owen and I went on a long walk around Oxford, where we talked about a lot of different things, including my romantic interests. At one point in the conversation (potentially adjacent to me talking about my romantic interests, though I can’t remember), Owen told me he was attracted to me.
• I didn’t feel pressured or particularly uncomfortable hearing Owen’s comment, but I found it somewhat jarring, given Owen was someone who I perceived as influential and meaningfully senior to me in the community, and I remember feeling worried about the possibility that Owen would make similar comments to other young women who might feel more uncomfortable. I don’t remember exactly how I responded– my best recollection is that I told him that that was flattering to hear (pretty sure I said this), but also felt a bit weird (less sure that I said this, but I do remember that he apologized to me, so presumably I communicated this somehow, though it may have been implicit), and that I thought he shouldn’t say this kind of thing to younger EAs in the future (I’m sure I gave him some kind of feedback like this, but I don’t remember how specific it was, e.g. whether I said “younger EAs” or some other reference class). Owen apologized to me, and we continued the conversation; we remained on good terms afterwards.
• It didn’t occur to me to tell anyone about this at the time (I’m not sure I even knew there was a Community Health team that I could report things to), and I basically forgot about this interaction until a few years later (within the last two years), when Julia Wise emailed me asking me if I had had any experiences with Owen that seemed a little off. (She also gave me some vague, high-level information about a minor-sounding experience someone else had had with Owen, which I won’t share here to protect that person’s confidentiality.) I recounted the incident above to her, and told her I thought it would be good for Owen to receive feedback about how senior he seemed to others in the community, as it seemed to me in our interaction that he hadn’t perceived or internalized this, and wasn’t considering how it could create power dynamics that changed how certain personal interactions came across.
  
  Edited to clarify: My interaction with Owen happened after the interaction reported in TIME, but before Owen received feedback about the TIME interaction from Julia.

I had  ChatGPT rewrite this. Probably not the best place to share this, but if I don't post here it here, might not post it anywhere.

My  impression is that young women new to the community have at the least felt uncomfortable or uneasy in EA in some of their interactions with men who've been in the community longer and are a bit older. There's probably enough of an issue here that it warrants a systemic solution.

As for myself, I admit that I have contributed a bit to the problem. Being a bit older and having been in the community for a while, I have engaged romantically and sexually with women who are younger and new to the community. Looking back, I recognize the problematic power dynamics at play and think there are things I would take back if I could. Nothing egregious, just stuff that wasn't ideal.

I'm uncertain about the ideal systematic changes and norms, and where to draw the line when it comes to engaging in romantic relationships. While not abusing power is obvious, the gray area is unclear.

In my opinion, the best changes will come from a deeper understanding of the current situation and how we got here. From what I've seen, heterosexual men in the EA community who seek intimate relationships with women face significant challenges due to the crushing gender ratio. It can feel like a highly competitive environment where only the most attractive and successful men have any "luck." Finding relationships outside of EA doesn't feel like a real solution either, especially when one wants a partner who shares similar values and culture.

In my experience, being in the community for a long time or working in an organization does not feel powerful from the inside. Even in that position , it can  lonely and desperate from a romantic/sexual angle, which in turn can make attractive women feel like they have significant power. As for me, I'm not particularly interested in women in their early 20s, both because of age and power imbalances and because of maturity and other factors. However, this age range seems to be where EA is most successful at recruiting women. Selfishly, I'd love to see more mid-late 20s or older women join.

There's also the issue of pursuing younger women simply because they might be more impressed with one's accomplishments so far. However, it would be fantastic if a woman a bit older with many impressive accomplishments took an interest in me. Unfortunately, it seems like women who are already established in the community are already in relationships, leaving only people new to the community as options.

In summary, while from angle there are men who are abusing their power and influence to gain sexual favor with younger woman, from another angle you have men who don't feel that powerful and do feel lonely and desperate. This does not justify all behavior, of course. I believe that understanding where this behavior comes from is essential to changing it. That's why I'm writing this.

The gender ratio imbalance in the EA community is a significant challenge, and I don't think there are any quick or easy solutions. It is a challenging situation for both men and women, albeit in different ways. While this does not excuse mistreating others for one's own needs, a better understanding of the root causes may help us be more effective in changing this behavior.

A solution might look like teaching people to recognize the power and influence they have even when it doesn't feel like they have it. As Owen points out, it's harder to see soft power.

 If there’s anyone else whom I’ve ever made feel uncomfortable or pressured, I’d love to hear about it — I think I might benefit most from a conversation, but I’d also welcome anonymous feedback."

Sorry if this is uncharitable, but this sentence rubs me the wrong way. It reads to me like "hey people who I might have harassed, it would be good for me if you talked to me".
I think the priority here should not be what YOU benefit from.

Hey everyone,

Note that there's also a statement from EV UK board, and there is some discussion in the comments there. We suggest centralizing the discussion there if you think a comment could be written on either post.

Edit: unpinning this comment because there are now several independent conversation threads on the two posts, with little overlap

I sense there is a lurking disagreement about whether what Owen did was clumsy or really bad and I guess that will make a lot of this pretty hard to discuss. 

Hi all,

Nine months later, I wanted to provide a brief update, in service of letting people make informed decisions about how to interact with me, and in service of helping people to understand the patterns that can cause harm.

Professional updates

I previously said I was pausing some professional activities, such as starting new mentor relationships or organizing events, and actually paused a larger class (e.g. posting on the forum; attending professional events I’m invited to). I'm now cautiously resuming some of these activities. In some cases (like posting things online) this is just a decision in my court, though I’ll continue to seek advice. In other cases there will be decisions for others to make about how to interface with me^[1] (e.g. whether to have me at events) — in such cases I’d like to cooperate with the relevant parties to help them reach whatever decisions they’d most endorse. I'm making this change after working in-depth with a therapist, integrating more feedback, asking advice from wiser folks, and reflecting to better understand what I did wrong, how it was problematic, and how to act appropriately going forwards.

If anyone has any bad experiences interacting with me in the future, I want to say — please share that with somebody if you feel comfortable doing so. I’d love it if you could share with me (and I don’t think I’ve ever thought badly of someone for giving me blunt feedback), but I understand if it would be easier to share with someone else. I know that my colleagues (broadly understood) won’t want to support patterns where I’m doing harm.

Advice to people in similar situations

Based on my original statement, a few people expressed to me confusion about what had gone wrong. I want to be clear that I wasn’t just unlucky here: my actions would have been ill-judged even absent any power differential, and were decidedly inappropriate when there was one. In particular, I sought increased intimacy — heavily grounded in misguided emotional angst^[2] — in ways that were inattentive to romantic communication norms, and sometimes lost touch with what the other person wanted. In case this might reach anyone in a similar position to where I was (and thereby help to avert the pattern playing out again), here is the advice I’d want to give to my past self:

You need to get over yourself. Emotionally, the question of whether you’re bad for feeling attracted to people is crushing. It happens that it’s a misguided question, and not one that other people would be interested in. I recommend — if you can access it — just not feeling bad about it. But you’re allowed to be misguided on things. What’s not OK is casting other people as your judge (a role that shouldn’t exist!) without their permission. 

What’s worse is trying to involve the people you feel attracted to in determining whether you're bad. This is a recipe for harm — both because they should never have to engage with you on that question, but also because its reductive nature doesn’t leave room for their own feelings, and you’re at risk both of not noticing their experience, and even of asking them to be complicit in masking their experience to provide reassurances on your nonsense question. People who have less structural power are at greater risk of not feeling comfortable being direct — you’re not being respectful by “taking them at their word” and assuming they’ll say the important things, because it doesn’t really give them room to choose how to engage. Moreover, (1) if you have professional interactions with someone where shame inhibits your ability to think/talk directly about the meta of the relationship, this could make things go wrong, and (2) if you ever hurt someone who regards you in some way as a mentor, that would be a betrayal of their trust. 

Instead, think things through in private, or with help. Principally, process your feelings; when it’s no longer painful to think about, if you still feel moved to act, think through how any action may be received. (It’s not bad to think about these things! it’s actually laudable to do so. Naïvety is not a shield. Your sex aversion won’t always stop others from seeing things as about sex.) Journal about it. Talk to friends. Get a therapist.

(If you’re reading this and you feel like this might in some way be talking to you, feel free to reach out — I could say a bit more, but am also just very happy to listen to anyone who finds it difficult to talk about this.)

Personal updates

Having spent time working through my angst I now think I know how to seek romantic connection in healthy ways. However, I also now identify as monogamous — I still think polyamory has a philosophical appeal, but it’s apparent to me that I don’t really want more romance in my life; and it’s now apparent that feeling attraction while monogamous need not involve wronging people. Going forwards I won’t bring these topics up in conversation. Also having taken feedback from folks I’ll avoid some behaviours I wasn’t tracking as potentially problematic (notably, taking meetings in hotel rooms when it was more convenient).^[3]

I’m conscious that in some cases people might be uncomfortable interacting with me because of my past actions. Navigating this is tricky. I’m quite uncomfortable with the idea that people who don’t want to might feel compelled to interact with me, but I don’t think I can promise never to be present in any spaces where this might occur. I will say that I would like it if people felt affordance to withdraw or to ask me to withdraw. (I can’t imagine holding this against someone, and if I find the experience difficult that’s between me and my therapist.)

I’m sorry again to everyone. I care deeply about giving people interacting with me good experiences, and strive to be one of the people who proactively contributes to a healthy culture with robust safeguards against harm. I fell well short of that standard. I’ll work hard to do consistently better on this in the future — I never get to know exactly what my remaining blindspots are, but I’m hopeful that I’ve now understood enough to give the problematic behaviour a wide berth — and I welcome others helping to hold me accountable in this.
 

1. ^{^}

   And in some cases that might take some time; e.g. CEA had said that they wouldn’t talk to me about the issues in-depth or consider having me at their events until the external investigation EV commissioned was complete — which seemed very reasonable. When I shared a draft of this comment with EV they let me know that the investigation has now concluded; I don’t yet know what its recommendations are or how they plan to respond. I thought I’d go ahead and post now because it seems epistemically cleaner for me to just share things without a question of those being influenced by where EV land. Of course I plan to cooperate with whatever they end up asking of me, and could end up making further policy updates if there’s further useful feedback.

2. ^{^}

   I’ve been confused about whether/how to mention this because I don’t think that motivations excuse actions. But it’s central enough to what went wrong that I expect things to make less sense — and be less useful for helping to avert similar patterns — if I omit it.

3. ^{^}

   These are serious policy updates — I’m thinking about things pretty differently now, and will act in ways that should steer well clear of what was problematic. They're not ironclad commitments, because there are clear exceptions (e.g. I don't want to stop talking to my wife or therapist) and I don't want to lock something in when I'm not sure I've understood all of the cases where it would be a bad idea.

Since I expect some people to be a bit confused as to what exactly was the bad thing that has happened after reading this post, I think it would be great if the community health team could write a post explaining and pointing out exactly what was bad here and in other similar instances.

I think there is value in being crystal clear about what were the bad things that happened because I expect people will takeaway different things from this post.

For the times when I have been done wrong to, I would have been really happy if the injuring party had been as reflective, genuinely self-critical and (from what I can see) steadfast in trying to do better as you are.

From what I can tell, you didn't have to "out" yourself for this. I respect the move to do this and to make amends and doing so (from what it seems) with the person you wronged. It's impressive that (from what it seems) they're keen to see things put right and giving you some support in this regard (if only fact checking this post).

I've more often felt like the younger woman in this scenario did. But the depths of your reflections Owen are leading me to think more critically about how I can be careless / flippant from my relative position of power and how that would make others feel.

Whether someone has had a big fuck up or minor infractions, I think this stuff is life long learning. There is no simple algorithm (though some guidelines, always evolving); diversity of people and emotional world's mean that it's just hard work to understand other people better, and not become complacent or over-confident when you think you're doing is well or dismissive and derisive if you're dismayed by lack of success.

So looking at the set of polls I wrote, what would the community have had happen here? Seemingly on net we don't think that people should publicly report immediately or that behaviour like this is instant disqualification. I guess many believe Owen acted wrongly, but there is little agreement afterwards.

In short, I'm confused as to what agreed ideal behaviour was here, beyond not making this woman uncomfortable in the first place.

Perhaps people who pushed back or even attacked the Time article should have some reflection?

[hastily written]

Never ever would I have guessed this. You were living proof to me that at least some, if not many, decent men people exist. I am completely devastated.

EA has been dying. But for me, this is the ultimate death blow.

[Edit: Comment was modified to no longer refer to a specific demographic group.]

I think there are couple of discussions happening here at once:

• How to respond to Owen as a person
• How to respond to this situation
• What should have happened in the reporting process
• What should community norms be around situations like this
• What should community expectations of powerful figures be

Re: circling/radical honesty

I remember being on a circling retreat a number of years ago (indeed, I think it was one Owen was on/ CEA people did sometime Nov/Dec 2019) and I remember, for whatever dumb stupid reason my system 1 freaked the fuck out at the instructor and said "do not trust this person"

and you can hang as many 'radical honesty' signs on the door as you want, it is very difficult to tell someone 'hey for whatever dumb reason my gut is freaking the fuck out at you, probably not anything personal' when you feel like this

and this did not help with my system 1 flipping out, it just felt like there were uncomfortable truths other people could tell and I couldn't tell uncomfortable truths back
 

apparently the guy also hosts these things but more for sexuality?  I guess this seems like a reasonable idea in theory given what circling is about but you'd certainly need to make explicitly sure feelings like these are welcome/encouraged? like even when stuff goes well dealing with anxiety around this is an important cost of doing business. (I don't feel reassured that this was likely to be the case, but I may be mistaken)

not saying circling/radical honesty is bad, i do see a lot of value in these practices

just
be careful with this shit mk.

Honesty, never-mind radical openness, is usually impossible if one party is dependent on the other. This is honestly one reason I hate how intensely hierarchical the EA community is. Hierarchy destroys openness. 

My confusion here is not so much this event, but the other things that have happened in the last 5 years. I feel like if I upset someone and was pretty high up in EA I would be more cautious than to let bad stuff happen another 3 more times in the next 5 years.  

I was newly open to polyamory, and newly exposed to circling and saw something powerful and good about speaking truths even when they were uncomfortable. 

From what you describe, it sounds to me like you didn't really express truths when they were uncomfortable. 

The truth was that you felt shame. It's easier to be edgy and say "I have to masturbate before I see you" than to say "I feel ashamed of the attraction I have for you. I think I should masturbate so that I don't get aroused by your presence before seeing you.". Saying "I feel ashamed of the attraction I have for you" would be showing vulnerability. Probably, it would have made sense to share that feeling of shame about your attraction to her even earlier as at this point in time even the full version would have been too much. 

The problem is that you neither followed the societal standards nor the standards of being radically honest about your experience. 

I would like to ask for some of your perceptions of the relative importance of the different problems that coincided here. I see three problems with the situation (am I missing some?):

1. The masturbation comment
2. The couchsurfing
3. The power differential

No. 1 seems easy to avoid. I hardly ever talk about such private things. Generally the topic of "Things to do with sex" seems relatively sharply defined to me, so that I don't find it challenging to avoid it categorically.

The other two seem like things I could more easily get wrong, so I find it disconcerting how easily this mistake could've happened to me.

Couchsurfing is something that I've offered before, regardless of the gender of the guest. It itself puts me, as the host, in a position of power because I know the place, have keys, etc., and the guest doesn't have an easy fallback option. So I'm usually quite careful with it and use a phrasing like, "By the way, if you want to crash at my place just let me know. It's quite small and messy though and there's all the construction work. You can probably find something nicer." (Typically with some links to the main EA couchsurfing sites.) That gives the guest a plausible reason so they can refuse without having to give a reason. (Or would people not do that because they'd feel it's misleading/dishonest to refuse an offer for a reason other than the implied one? Or would they understand that I’m giving the pretend reasons on purpose so it's okay?)

But apart from that my general feeling was that offering couchsurfing is good and nice and should be done? (I like to save costs for hotels if possible, so I want to pay it forward or give back to the community.) Or should there be guidelines for when offering couchsurfing is appropriate and when it is not? I mean, refusing when someone asks would be awkward, but just not offering it in the first place if the other person is newer to EA, more junior, or younger could work, apart from the fuzziness of those terms?

The third one is particularly tricky because I don't usually perceive myself as being in a position of power (except in, to me, known cases like couchsurfing), but someone else might easily perceive me as more powerful, unbeknownst to me. E.g., I can't tell people's ages very well. And a lot of EAs usually seem really impressive to me, so if more people are like me and we meet, we'll be intimidated by each other without realizing this about each other. At one point I had just given a talk, and suddenly there was someone talking to me all flustered-like. It took me a moment to realize that giving the talk must've increased my perceived power charisma, so that I tried to be extra silly to get it down again. But I could've easily missed or misattributed the flusteredness and probably have in many other cases.

Would it be acceptable to quite generally (when there is any doubt about the power dynamics, so like 80% of the time) to be like, "I'm generally concerned about power dynamics. I'm a bit intimidated by your accomplishments, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you also see yourself in an equal or higher position of social power. What is your impression? Do you think it might be more prudent to try to find another solution than the couchsurfing?" Something like that?

So in summary:

There are my questions above about guidelines for offering couchsurfing and about how to find out about the other person's perception of power.

But I'd also be interested in the relative importance of the three (or more?) factors: Is it more additive, and if so, is like 10 bad + 10 bad + 10 bad = 30 bad or 27 bad + 1 bad + 2 bad = 30 bad? Or is it multiplicative: 10 bad x 10 bad x 10 bad = 1000 bbbaaaddd or 10 bad x 2 bad x 5 bad = 100 bbbaaaddd? I mean, the sum/product is not important. I just get the feeling that there's an understanding that the masturbation comment was bad, but it's less clear to me whether the other two factors were equally bad or half as bad or much less bad.

Poll:

People who have behaved like this should publicly apologise as close to the time as possible.

Agreevote to agree. I don't necessarily endorse this but I think it's valuable for us to know what we think on stuff like this - I bet we disagree a surprising amount.

I don't feel comfortable doing it here, but on another topic I'd attempt to write a concensus statement of what parts we all agree with and what we think should have happened. Feels like that might be a useful process.