December 2023 edit:
I've done a lot of reflection since February and my perspective on many things has shifted. You can see a statement update here. I've left my original statement unedited (except in one place where noted) below:
Original post
Since the Time article on sexual harassment came out, people have been asking for information about one paragraph of it, about an “influential figure in EA”. I wanted to respond to that.
This is talking about me, more than five years ago. I think I made significant mistakes; I regret them a lot; and I’m sorry.
[March 2024 edited to add:] I've recently discovered that some people had interpreted the act in question to have occurred after she arrived at my house. I want to clarify that it happened before she arrived (I wanted to reduce the extent to which attraction was a significant part of my experience when she was there), but disclosing that to her (which I now think was extremely poorly judged) happened afterwards.
Context
I think the actual mistakes I made look different from what many readers may take away from the article, so I first wanted to provide a bit more context (some of this is straightforwardly factual; other parts should be understood as my interpretation):
- We had what I perceived as a preexisting friendship where we were experimenting with being unusually direct and honest (/“edgy”)
- Including about sexual matters
- There was what would commonly be regarded as oversharing from both sides (this wasn’t the first time I’d mentioned masturbation)
- Our friendship continued in an active way for several months afterwards
- I should however note that:
- We had met via EA and spent a good fraction of conversation time talking about EA-relevant topics
- I was older and more central in the EA community
- On other occasions, including early in our friendship, we had some professional interactions, and I wasn’t clear about how I was handling the personal/professional boundary
- Including about sexual matters
- I was employed as a researcher at that time
- My role didn’t develop to connecting people with different positions until later, and this wasn’t part of my self-conception at the time
- (However it makes sense to me that this was her perception)
- I was not affiliated with the org she was interviewing at
- I’d suggested her as a candidate earlier in the application process, but was not part of their decision-making process
On the other hand I think that a lot of what was problematic about my behaviour with respect to this person was not about this incident in particular, but the broad dynamic where:
- I in fact had significant amounts of power
- This was not very salient to me but very salient to her
- She consequently felt pressure to match my vibe
- e.g. in an earlier draft of this post, before fact-checking it with her, I said that we talked about “feelings of mutual attraction”
- This was not her experience
- I drafted it like that because we’d had what I’d interpreted as conversations where this was stated explicitly
- (I think this is just another central example of the point I’m making in this set of bullets)
- Similarly at some point she volunteered to me that she was enjoying the dynamic between us (but I probably interpreted this much more broadly than she intended)
- e.g. in an earlier draft of this post, before fact-checking it with her, I said that we talked about “feelings of mutual attraction”
- She was in a structural position where it was (I now believe) unreasonable to expect honesty about her experience
- As the person with power it was on me to notice and head off these dynamics, and I failed to do that
(Sorry, I know that's all pretty light on detail, but I don't want to risk accidentally de-anonymising the other person. I want to stress that I’m not claiming she provided any inaccurate information to the journalist who wrote the story; just that I think the extra context may be helpful for people seeking to evaluate or understand my conduct.)
My mistakes
In any case, I think my actions were poorly judged and fell well short of the high standards I would like to live up to, and that I think we should ask from people in positions of leadership. Afterwards, I felt vaguely like the whole friendship wasn’t well done and I wished I had approached things differently. Then when I found out that I’d made the person feel uncomfortable(/disempowered/pressured), I was horrified (not putting pressure on people is something like a core value of mine). I have apologized to the person in question, but I also feel like I’ve let the whole community down, and I would like to apologize unreservedly. It’s extremely important to me that our community is a welcoming place for everyone, and I feel dismayed that I have contributed to it not being so. 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.
Was this incident an isolated case? Yes and no. I think this was by some way my most egregious mistake of this type. However, in my time in EA there have been four other occasions on which I expressed feelings of attraction towards someone in a way that — in retrospect as I’ve developed a more nuanced understanding of power dynamics — I regret. (In most of these cases I’m still on very good terms with the person.) I’ve slowly been improving my implicit models (so I never quite make the same mistake twice), but honestly it’s gone more slowly than I think it should have done.
There were several intertwined mistakes here:
- I was not attendant to implicit power dynamics
- I was aware that hard power (like employer relationships or grantmaking) mattered, but I was pretty blind to the implications of the soft power that came from being older and more central in the community
- I entangled personal and professional (without being clear about how I was handling that)
- I was aware that it was important not to let personal relationships cloud professional judgements, but I didn’t understand the point as deeply as I do today; moreover I was not properly alive to the importance of keeping these legibly-to-others separate (& I didn’t discuss how I was approaching it with this person)
- I didn’t respect normal societal standards about what’s oversharing, or what conversational implicature might be, especially re. anything sexual
- I think this meant that misunderstandings were especially likely; I think it was particularly egregious when combined with the above issues
- I made decisions about how to communicate while flinching internally
- I should have been more conscious that I was feeling a lot of shame (over all kinds of things, including the fact of being attracted to people!), and that this meant I would think less well than normal. I should consequently have taken steps sooner to address this
(How could I have come to make these mistakes? 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. 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. And I was naively optimistic that we could ~do away with interpersonal power dynamics, so that of course someone would tell me if they were ever uncomfortable. (I now think that this kind of power differential represents exactly the circumstances in which it’s unfair to expect the disempowered person to be able to correct conversational dynamics which are off.) And then I was making decisions quickly without reflecting appropriately — and I was slow to correct mistakes after the fact — because shame impeded my metacognition from looking closely at what was going on.)
What can you expect from me going forward?
Some updates I’d already made (simplified):
- Before 2020:
- Don’t be edgy
- Make sure that anything intimate comes up only in relationships where there’s a good existing foundation of trust
- Don’t consider romantic engagements in cases where there’s a big age gap
- It’s good to make handling of personal/professional matters legible to others
- 2021:
- Attend significantly to implicit power dynamics for anything relating to attraction/romance
- You won’t always know if someone is uncomfortable, or is feeling pressure in some direction
- 2022:
- Attend significantly to implicit power dynamics even for things that aren’t romantic
- Avoid communicating while triggered
- Consider not being open to polyamory (NB I’ve been in a relationship with my wife for 17 years, which has in practice been monogamous, but for the last few years we’ve been open to the possibility of polyamory)
- Shame is a big problem for me
- Talk to a therapist to sort it out (this plan actually got interrupted by the FTX crisis)
- Don’t express feelings of attraction towards anyone (except my wife) until I’ve sorted this out
What’s the right thing to do now? First, I want to ensure never to repeat these mistakes. I won’t know what my final personal policy updates are for a while longer — some of them might be quite subtle, and I’ll continue to work on these with a therapist, but in the interim I’m planning to hold off on:
- Expressing feelings of attraction to anyone
- (this is a continuation of the 2022 policy update; it’s because I want to sort out what’s up with my dubious track record on this, not because I think that nobody should ever express attraction)
- Being open to polyamory
I don’t know whether I’ll be open to these again in the future. In any case the timeframe on which I might pick these back up will be decided in consultation with my therapist.
Second, I think it’s helpful if the community is able to process this with my visibly not being in any positions of power. Therefore I have resigned from the EV UK board, my most substantive position in the community, and am consequently no longer in an oversight role for any of its projects. (Although I’m still listed on the FHI website, I actually left FHI over a year ago.) Note that I'm not saying "I deserve to lose my positions of authority" — in this case that would ultimately be a decision for the rest of the board. Rather, I think it's best if right now I give them and others as much space as I can to consider the most appropriate actions.
For right now, I am also pausing other activities which may give me power:
- Starting any new mentor relationships;
- Recommending funding for anything or connecting people with funders;
- Organizing events (in the immediate, I’ve stepped back from any decision-making for the Summit on Existential Security).
Again I’ll make decisions about when to resume these in consultation with my therapist.
(I don’t think I have a way of fully giving up soft power without committing not to be a part of the community in the future, something which doesn’t feel like the right move to me. Instead I will just share that I love it when people do the things that seem to them to be good and true, even when I disagree, or where the consequences might be bad for me personally.)
Third, I think it’s important to ask how the culture or structures we have could be different in ways that would reduce the risk of such harms. I know that this is also important to the person whose story appears in Time, who said in a recent email to me "I deliberately did not name you as I want to draw attention to [systemic issues]. We should expect individuals to make misjudgements over time.". I don’t want to shirk responsibility here — I absolutely think that I could and should have made better judgements. But I also think that holding my flaws at a fixed level, I might not have made these errors in a different culture, and it’s generally good to look for multiple different levels on which things could have been fixed. I don’t think I should be the arbiter of what should be implemented here, but I think it’s possible I have access to helpful inside-view data, so I plan to continue reflecting on this. Topics that I especially want to think about:
- When is radical openness good, and what are the bounds on that?
- When is oversight important, and what types would meaningfully help?
- What tools could help people better track soft power, and its impacts?
- Are there mechanisms that could help to empower the voices of the disempowered?
I then plan to feed thoughts to the community, CEA’s Community Health team, or other parties as appropriate.
I’ll leave things there for now. I’m very happy to hear thoughts of other things I should be doing. (Though some of the conversations around this I won’t want to have in public, in order to protect people’s privacy.) But in closing let me say again: I’m so, so sorry to anyone whom I’ve ever made uncomfortable, and I’m so sorry to the broader community for having contributed to these dynamics.
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... (read more)
I want to make a small comment on your phrase "it could have a chilling effect on those who have their own cases of sexual assault to report." Owen has not committed sexual assault, but sexual harassment. If this imperfect wording was an isolated incident, I wouldn't have said anything, but in every sexual misconduct comment thread I've followed on the forum, people have said sexual assault when they mean sexual harassment, and/or rape when they mean sexual assault. I was a victim of sexual abuse both growing up and as an adult, so I'm aware that there are big differences between the three, and feel it would be helpful to be mindful of our wording.
As someone with a fairly upvoted comment expressing a different perspective than yours, I want to mention that personally I had never heard of Owen until this post except for the disturbing description in the Time article, and that personally I have no interest in advancing my career based on any of my political opinions, so his power is irrelevant to me. While I appreciate that the last section of your comment came from a place of wanting to be supportive towards early career people like me, I think it oversimplifies the issues and found it a bit condescending. I’m trying to encourage women in my position to speak up more because we have important things to say.
I think it's likely that the difference in the replies to this post and the replies to the official statement by EV UK are from people not reading the link in the EV UK post, and so not getting the full context of the statement.
Edit: Also, if I was trying to impress Owen, wouldn't I be agreeing with his current perspective instead of arguing that he had over-updated?
Seconding that it's a bit condescending to imply that people who are not digging into Owen might just "like Owen" or "face cognitive dissonance"
I also find the concept in the last sentence that commentors might look like they are "backing" powerful community members, to be gross. It's not a zero-sum situation. This might not be exactly what Hattie meant by "backing" but I think others night feel vindicated that that's a good way to look at it. But Owen and the woman herself collaborated on the piece so I'd be surprised to find that anyone involved thinks of this situation as like...winner v loser going forward.
I agree with (edit: many parts of) this comment and I've made a mental note to stay extra vigilant in this regard and go out of my way to consider that I might be biased in Owen's favor (I tend to really like people who seem unusually introspective and open about their exact motivations, potential flaws, etc).
Also, I want to emphasize that while I made comments here that tried to shift the balance more in one direction, I wouldn't necessarily describe and condense this as"taking Owen's side." (I feel like the only comment that "took Owen's side" without any caveats has more than 120 disagreement karma, which is a pretty clear statement.) And I want to say somewhere that this incident was a negative update for me not just in a social-implications sense (pattern of having made people uncomfortable in asymmetric power dynamics). It also affected my impression of the strength of Owen's orientation and ability to overcome "self-serving traps." Especially for the longtermist project where we can't help but rely on the best judgment of a few expert researchers (because there aren't really any short-and-unambiguously-relevant/helpful feedback loops we can check instead), having peopl... (read more)
I want to highlight this. The more general thing to flag is that this is only Cotton-Barratt's side of the story, albeit apparently checked by several people. The prior is that at least some of this presentation to be slanted in his favor, subconsciously or otherwise.
I don't think it's reasonable to take either the facts or (especially) the framing of this story at face value without entertaining at least significant doubts, and I'm surprised at the number of commentators who appear to be doing this.
I realized you’ve made a good point, and don’t feel as confident about my takes as I used to because of this. People may not have been comfortable being honest when they gave Owen feedback on this post because of the similar power dynamics at play that seem to have made them unwilling to be honest in the first place. Although the policies about sexual misconduct of “Big EA” seem to have evolved substantially since then, so I hope it wouldn’t have been quite as bad.
The statement about pausing some exercises of soft power is rather indefinite:
There's no timeframe on that (could it be a month?). There's no meaningful external accountability or oversight of the decision to unpause (only "consultation" with a therapist who is bound by confidentiality).
Much better would be: I will not conduct these activities for a minimum of A months, and will not conduct them unless and until [pick one: B and C leaders / a independent
therapistpsychologist or other professional(edited to: psychologist or other professional)
As a friend pointed out, relying on Owen's own judgment regarding whether or when to restart mentorship, event organizing, and funding recommendations seems a really bad idea given that the problematic cases happened in the first place due to errors in Owen's judgment. I think it should go without saying that these decisions should be made by a separate body.
(I don't think these two types of judgments are perfectly correlated, but they seem somewhat correlated. Also I don't mean to take a stance on whether/how Owen should be involved in the future; I think it's good to consider the full range of options.)
Personally, I think it's useful if this decision is made by people who competently investigate the case and gather all the information, not by people acting primarily based on public information like this post. Even though I know Owen well, I personally find it hard to say how likely Owen is to make mistakes again; it seems plausible to me that he can learn from his mistakes and continue to be highly involved in the community without causing any further issues, and it also seems possible that he would continue to make similar mistakes. It seems to me that the main way to find out would be by seeking out conversations and investigating.
I personally think the community health team (after implementing some improvements) would be suitable for deciding his future involvement. Even though they didn't deal with this particular case well, I think overall their track record seems strong, and I think they can learn from this case. They have a lot more relevant context than external investigators.
I feel most confused why the therapist is important here. The therapist recs might be a necessary condition but clearly not sufficient. Therapist are not trained in this (it might be that his therapist is an expert in dealing with such situations, but then I expect he would have mentioned this).
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 seed... (read more)
I appreciate you writing this. To me, this clarifies something. (I'm sorry there's a rant incoming and if this comunity needs its hand held through these particular revelations, I'm not the one):
It seems like many EAs still (despite SBF) didn't put significant probability on the person from that particular Time incident being a very well-known and trusted man in EA, such as Owen. This despite the SBF scandal and despite (to me) this incident being the most troubling incident in the Time piece by far which definitely sounded to be attached to a "real" EA more than any of the others (I say as someone who still has significant problems with the Time piece). Some of us had already put decent odds on the probability that this was an important figure doing something that was at least thoughtless and ended up damaging the EA movement... I mean the woman who reported him literally tried to convey that he was very well-connected and important.
It seems like the community still has a lot to learn from the surprise of SBF about problematic incidents and leaders in general: No one expects their friends or leaders are gonna be the ones who do problematic things. That includes us. Update no... (read more)
These cases seem very different to me. One big update from the FTX situation was "in case you didn't already notice, dark triad traits can be really bad." By contrast, while I'm still processing the update from Owen's case, I think it's gonna be something more like, "probably there really is something unusually bad/unwelcoming with aspects of EA culture even outside the Bay area, sorry I didn't see this earlier." I don't see how I could've made that update just from the FTX scandal.
For what it's worth, I did have significant probability mass on the influential EA figure mentioned in the TIME article being someone who is indeed still influential within EA, despite the fact that the TIME article misrepresented the degree of involvement and centrality of one of accused in one of the other incidents they described. So, it's not like I thought "no way this could happen to EA." The main thing I was taken aback by is that it ended up being someone who was not only very influential within EA, but also some... (read more)
Yeah, I mean I don't disagree with a lot of what you wrote. Maybe my comment was complicated by me trying to word it in such a way that anyone can "get it" whether they believe Owen did a anything "bad", from a minor faux pas (socially bad, not ill-intentioned) to actual SA (morally bad, or creepy and otherwise badly and selfishly-intentioned)
At the end of the day what I'm trying to get at is something like:
"Not every scandal/negative incident is a black swan event. Everything relevant to this situation from 'your supposedly-sage leaders do PR-risky professional misconduct' to 'your trusted friends and idols do SA within your community' should be in your model of the world already.
On the other side of the coin, just because an incident is not a black swan event, doesn't mean you think you should have been able to predict it. Surprises exist. The community shouldn't feel a need to do a lot of handwringing about the community, society, and what happened. At least not if having these types of surprises (SAs or professional misconduct, including by leaders) were factored in. Why suddenly do a lot of self-flagellation in response?
That the incident is confirmed an... (read more)
I find this characterization of the journalist to be wildly uncharitable, overblown and exaggerated. I'll explain why in detail with reference to this incident, which is the only one where we know anything close to the full story.
Here is the passage from the article:
... (read more)Other context (reader decide importance):
Regardless, I think that counting facts is not fully the right approach here. Like I say, I think a mal-intentioned journalist is going to use nuggets of truth, but put the whole truth on the backburner and a scandalous narrative upfront. When evaluating the intention of the journalism, it's the comparison of the facts to the words surrounding the facts that matters. You don't have to call it lying exactly if that term implies too much forethought to you. But the journalist definitely seemed to be acting in service of a narrative about EA not of the truth.
[I've also discussed this (what I and many would call "lying") being an unsurprising human tendency here, using veganism as an example EAs might "get" more. I also discuss two groups I think are necessa... (read more)
I've had several experiences where I think men used their relationship status as a shield/to get me to let my guard down/to push my boundaries. Like, they would engage in behavior that I would have otherwise interpreted as them hitting on me, but I would instead assume I was misreading the situation. If I'm confident someone is hitting on me, I can shut them down, but the more unsure I am, the more presumptuous/awkward it is to do this. So, if the woman in this situation knew he was married, but didn't know he was poly (which she might not have, since he says his marriage was "in practice... monogamous"), that makes things worse, not better, imo.
Yes I agree that that is a possibility, albeit a slimmer one as we are travelling down the chain of qualifiers now. You are right that it is worthy context whether she knew he was trying poly or not [or interested in this woman]
Yeah, for sure! I mainly made this point because this is a mistake I’ve made several times (letting my guard down on the basis of relationship status), and I didn’t want others to make the same mistake (“reader decide importance”).
This is more than a mere "nugget of truth". It's majority truth , with some context missing. (I don't think your added context adds much, given that Owen was polyamorous and self-admittedly attracted to the woman. Also, he could have pushed the org to pay for a hotel room but didn't)
As for the larger picture, this anecdote was used to prove the point that there was "sexual misconduct" in EA. This absolutely fits that description.
As for the wider point, the article title implies that there is a "toxic culture of sexual harrassment and abuse" in EA. (It only explicitly claims that "these women" say that, but in general it sides with the idea that this is true).
The victim in this case (who again, was 100% honest in her account) claims that there are "systemic issues" in EA. Owen himself claims that the culture of EA contributed to his sexual misconduct. We also now know that a third party in EA (the org hiring) failed to see the problems in her situation, and was not willing to pay for a hotel room to avoid it.
Does this prove, on it's own, that EA has a "toxic culture"? Certainly not on it's own. But it is evidence in it's favor, and this is only one anecdote. You can disagree with the conclusion if you want (I don't think it's entirely fair), but no part of this was "lying" or dishonesty.
Regardless of my own views about which are the largest cultural problems in EA, what's your prior that people who do wrongdoing are accurate in their public assessment of factors that diminish their moral responsibility and/or make themselves look better? Your italicized bolding implies that you think this is an unusually reliable source of truth, whereas I pretty straightforwardly think it's unusually bad evidence.
"As for the wider point, the article title implies that there is a 'toxic culture of sexual harrassment and abuse' in EA."
But this is the part I don't agree with and I think the journalist could have found that the alarm-ringing they chose to go with was easily downgradable in many senses.
You can even tell from the title that put salaciousness before accuracy and in implication, which I consider a bad-faith move:
Title: "Effective Altruism has Sexual Harassment Problem, Women Say"
Better title: "Some Women Say Effective Altruism has Neglected a Toxic Culture Toward Women"
I realize the person who wrote the title is likely not the journalist, but surely you can see how their actual piece prioritizes the scandalous first narrative while putting the second (a truth many more can get behind) on the backburner? It's messed up tbh. [I realize this is normal in journalism but that's why many people find it to be a messed-up field til proven otherwise, and "normal practice" does not mean "okay practice" or "epistemically honest practice"]
And I think all groups have a toxic culture and "systemic issues" around gendered experience. I don't think EA has more of either than the world or tech at l... (read more)
I think it's better than tech at large or basically anywhere else I've found. [Edit: Nobody just writes a Time piece about a community that needs the same level of improvement as other places. Come on.. the world knows this and let's not pretend otherwise. The world therefore should not be happy and shrug its shoulders and allow its attention to be collectively wasted in such a way? Readers should be able to trust that if something is published in Time that it is important and actually noteworthy. To publish something non-noteworthy in there is inherently espistemic dishonesty. So no, that "improvement is needed" is not the only thing that matters when it comes to the question of whether the journalist was dishonest, mal-intentioned, etc]
And I think an investigative journalist absolutely could have found more claims to the actual contrary, yeah, and actually should have before blasting a narrative on a nation-wide scale. I see them as basically paying lip service to neutrality by quoting Julia there (if they were truly neutral, they could have just said that themselves, as I see similar qualifying sentiments in Kelsey Piper's journalism). And paying lip service to neutr... (read more)
I realized I neglected your question above about how I feel about the women. Sorry about that:
- Actually I am very glad the women came forward and even glad they tried a new method than the CH team (those who had reported already but weren't happy with the outcome). And I respect them for doing so. [My impression is that women were and are still bouncing off EA because of mismatch in professional and cultural expectations so this needed addressing. And I believe it is important for anyone who suspects they might view something awry with our culture to try to raise alarm bells so it can be fixed.]
- I am much less happy that the method chosen was to speak to Time. Is any EA happy about this reality specifically? Are the women? I think other methods, like posting anonymous incident reports on the Forum or something with actual usable details (which still no woman has done), could have led to faster resolution, including outcomes like OCB stepping down from the board and prompting a period of reflection where he and other men figure out why he/they'd been so slow to improve and notice perspectives of women before (in other words, both tangible and intangible systemic improvements).
- BUT I si
... (read more)I'm happy to leave it here too. I hope I did not get too argumentative in this conversation, I respect your opinion and I appreciate that you are willing to write a lot of detail on it, especially considering the heated topic matter.
As my last word, I'll just point out that the some of the women did try going through EA channels like the community team and making posts on this forum, but were unhappy with the results, feeling ignored and belittled. Whereas it seems like the article has caused at least some positive change.
If we want to discourage future articles from coming out, we need to ensure that the people coming forward are treated with the kindness and respect they deserve, and that their reports and concerns are taken seriously.
Sorry, what was your prior belief here? Upon reading that section in the Time article, I definitely did not interpret (paraphrased) "telling a job interviewee staying at your house about your masturbation habits" as a one-off incident by someone who never otherwise does creepy things, and I doubt the average Time reader did.
EDIT: I'm confused about the disagree-votes. Did other people reading the Time article assume that it was a one-off incident before Owen's apology?
EDIT2: Fwiw I thought the rest of the comment that I replied to was a good contribution to the discourse, and I upvoted it before my comment.
My honest reaction was: This is finally being taken sort of seriously. If an EVF board member acted badly then the community can't just pretend the Time article is about people totally peripheral to the community. At least we got some kind of accountability beyond "the same team that has failed to take sufficient action in the past is looking into things."
It honestly does feel like the dialogue is finally moving in a good direction. I already knew powerful people in EA acted very badly. So it's honestly a relief it seems like we might get real change.
Thanks for writing this <3
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 ... (read more)
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I think it's good to have a diversity of views and that the forum is better for it. I think your view is empowering, but one thing I want to say is that I don't think we should describe this as "shyness". The point is that when there are power-dynamics at play, such as the one described, people are less likely to say how they feel since a lot may be on the line, such as their livelihood. This isn't just general shyness, because the same person may feel confident to say how they feel in other settings where the same power dynamics don't exist.
Thank you for your contributions Rebecca and Lauren. My career is the most important thing in the world to me, so I have empathy for women who would take actions that feel drastic to me to protect theirs. I've worked hard to see things from your perspectives, but in thinking about them I actually came away more confident that women should feel comfortable standing up to powerful men.
It dawned on me that until I changed my career plans this month, most of my male friends held positions of power in my field very similar to the power gap that I think the post described. They had no direct power over me, but a word from them would have been extremely helpful in getting an interview or a job. I criticize them freely about all sorts of things, and think this is the best way of engaging in these friendships that honestly feel more like peer relationships than relationships of different status to me. The idea of trying to be strategic by not being honest if one of them flirted with me and I didn't like it makes me even more uncomfortable than not being honest with them in general would. Wouldn't that mean I was trying to get ahead based on something other than the quality of my work?... (read more)
Hi Sonia, thanks for your thoughtful response. Maybe this scenario will show an example of a more complex power dynamic than the one you describe having with your friends:
Jen gets a small grant from x and starts working with senior people at y company. She knows all of their names because they are well known people in z community, but doesn't know them personally. She slowly gets to know them by working with them, and knows that having them as contacts, references, etc will be really important to the future of her career (perhaps she wants to even stay at this company longterm). She has spent a year working with them now, and her ability to get future career opportunities within this community, field of work, and/or company is reliant on them being good references for her, or longterm co-workers. One of the senior males begins to get extra friendly with her. At first it seems like normal friendly banter that may push her professional boundaries a bit further than she'd like, but after a few months it is clear that he is interested in her sexually, and that the other senior people in the group know about this, and talk about it in a way that makes it seem as though they are co... (read more)
Oh yes, I agree this would be a very different scenario than the one in the OP and with my friends, and I would feel much the same way you do about it.
Thanks for sharing. I actually think that quote from the post describes my relationship with my friends very well except for the saliency and pressure part, although it's vague enough that it's possible it's describing something different too.
I am updating that so many women seem to care so much more about power differentials than I do that norms that cater to them would probably be net positive because otherwise we would have far fewer women in the movement.
This isn't really about sexual misconduct anymore for me, but a broader issue. If women don't feel comfortable declining romantic interest from senior men outside the workplace, they must be abstaining from criticizing them in all sorts of other ways too. I'm very disturbed by the mass of knowledge we are missing out on if they are refraining from speaking up at the rate it seems like from the conversation around this post. Do you have any thoughts about how we can encourage women in EA to care less about power differentials outside of sexual misconduct problems?
I think the onus needs to be placed on the people who are abusing their power. There are ways to do this. If the community acknowledges that this isn't ok, there can be a shift in the broader culture. People need to be aware these power dynamics exist and speak out against people who abuse them and I don't mean the person on the receiving end of the abuse of power, but their colleagues.
Some concrete steps I can think of moving forward would be:
a) Workplace training on power dynamics and professional boundaries.
b) An external source where complaints can be made where the people receiving the complaints do not have connections to the EA community such as personal friendships/collegial relationships.
I'm not sure if this answers your question at all, but I am enjoying this discussion and appreciate the way you are approaching our conversation. Thanks!
Edit: I want to make it crystal clear here that I'm not talking about sexual misconduct at this point, or denying that actual power differentials are a huge problem in EA. I'm learning that the forum requires a clearer writing style that I'm still new at.
The concrete steps you mentioned make sense to me, although my weakly held view is that people with less power caring too much about power differentials is an even bigger problem than actual power differentials. Maybe more workshops about overcoming imposter syndrome would help? I think epistemics would be weaker in the community if we don't make a large effort to encourage people to be as assertive as I am in the face of power imbalances, but maybe that's a price I'm willing to pay if it means more diversity? A lot depends on how tractable different interventions are, and ultimately I just care about getting people's voices heard. I also appreciate how you've approached this conversation! I hadn't said anything controversial on the forum before this weekend, and this has been much less scary than I expected.
(Sorry you are getting downvotes as soon as you affirm that commenting on the forum is less scary than you expected. The irony is real and hopefully you can laugh at it.)
I've continued to work hard to see things from the perspective of women like you over the last couple days, and just had another surprising realization. I've actually experienced a conversation in EA that I think could have gone in the Time article (similar to some of the milder examples they gave like the man who expressed an interest in adult relationships with large age gaps to a young lower status woman, not the OP's example). I will give no details because I don't want to get anyone in trouble. I enjoyed the conversation and it took this intense dialogue for me to realize a different woman in my position might feel opressed by it. Not being able to have as many fun, edgy (to me) conversations like that anymore will decrease my quality of life. However, the pain that people are experiencing seems a lot more intense than the joy I get from edgy conversations. I'm really looking forward to the results of the polls EA is putting together about this. My sense is I'm in a minority for my gender and status, but I have no idea by how much.
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?
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.
Sorry I'm mostly trying to take a day away from the forum, but someone let me know that it would be helpful to chime in here. Essentially what happened:
(I'm eliding details to reduce risk of leaking information about the person's identity.)
This is a lot worse than I was expecting. This makes it clear that the woman was in a situation where it was extremely hard to refuse Owen's offer of accommodation.
Firstly, the organization screwed up majorly. You should not be arranging accommodation for someone on the same day they fly to a foreign country. I know I would have been fairly distressed if this had happened to me.
Secondly, we need to remember that this was an organization she was interviewing for, and Owen was the one that recommended her, and was presumably on good terms with the org. It wouldn't be unreasonable to think that making a fuss about staying at Owen's house could hurt her chances with the org.
Thirdly, the power imbalances in their friendship might make her concerned about what would happen to her position if refusing accommodation hurt said friendship.
Fourthly, it's often very expensive to get a last minute hotel. Refusing to stay with Owen could have occurred a large financial penalty.
This was not a case of "hey do you want to crash at mine when you fly over next month?". This is a case of "no better options". It's extremely inappropriate to push boundaries on someone who is in this situation. I'm very saddened at the extreme lack of empathy and judgement that was shown here. I'm relieved that Owen is no longer in leadership positions in EA, and I deeply hope he has sincerely reformed since this encounter.
To clarify, do you think:
(1) Owen should have pushed the organization to find other housing for the interviewee?
(2) If the organization would or could not do so, Owen should not have agreed to host the interviewee for an evening (leaving her to find an expensive last-minute hotel?)
One potential concern with a yes to (2) is that -- assuming it would have been OK to offer lodging in this situation to an older male to whom Owen wasn't attracted -- this could be seen as imposing extra costs on the woman for being young, female, and attractive to Owen.
(Personally, I would never make the hosting offer to any candidate.)
The most important thing he needed to do was to not mention masturbation or anything else sexual. The situation makes it significantly harder to for her to push back against unwanted behavior. (I think this would also have been wrong if she had agreed in advance to stay there, but the fact that it was foisted on her on the day makes it worse).
I absolutely agree with 1), I definitely think the org should have paid for a hotel, given how badly they screwed up it's the least they can do. I'm not too sure about 2), I think an offer of lodging could be okay if it was the absolute last resort and kept strictly professional.
From the article, it sounds like her flights to the UK were paid for by the org (although it's a little ambiguous, could read it as Owen paying, although that wouldn't really make sense to me). If they can pay for flights, it seems reasonable that a hotel room is not an excessive extra cost.
I've stayed at a (non-EA) professional contact's house before when they'd invited me to give a talk and later very apologetically realized they didn't have the budget for a hotel. They likely felt obliged to offer; I felt like it would be awkward to decline. We were both at pains to be extremely, exceedingly, painstakingly polite given the circumstances and turn the formality up a notch.
I agree the org should have paid for a hotel, I'm only mentioning this because if baseline formality is a 5, I would think it would be more normal to kick it up to a 10 under the circumstances. It makes this situation all the more bizarre.
[Edit: I'll redact this comment once someone who knows more actually clarifies it. My intent was to help provide a way to connect the concern to OP's piece as-written. If you don't want that and want perfect clarity instead, just skip this thread]
(I'll throw my hat in the ring that this doesn't surprise me, now seeing that he was pretty sure that he had a friendship with this woman. Personally If I arranged for a friend to have an interview at an effective nonprofit in my city, I would definitely ask them if they wanted to stay in my spare bedroom. I'd always offer because (1) I personally greatly prefer to stay in a place with a kitchen and some opportunity for social interaction over a hotel room, and (2) hotel costs are counterfactual donations and trades of this flavor have been going on in EA for a decade now.
It's bad if he didn't clarify first and give her the option of hotel or not. And possibly, due to perceived power dynamics, it would even be bad anyway to offer his space... like maybe it's important that he had been totally hands-off with her entire work-related visit since their friendship was not actually so cemented. But this whole housing dynamic seems qualitatively similar to the type of mistakes and misunderstandings of power dynamics that he made elsewhere, and is now working on improving and addressing proactively in future. So I personally do not continue to be worried about the housing aspect although it was not named in this apology piece.)
"she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home" seems to preclude the notion that Cotton-Barratt asked her first, so I'm not sure why you're writing as if we're not clear whether they discussed it beforehand.
Sorry I'm on mobile and it's hard for me to see exactly how my comment comes off in the scheme of larger discussion. I agree it sounds like he didn't ask her first. My main intention with my comment was to say that his treatment of that situation seems qualitatively related to the idea that he needs to address power dynamics and find clarity more proactively.
[[Edit: That said I can come up with an exchange where he would consider himself to have asked. I don't really want to theorize this as likely to have happened, but maybe it can illustrate why I try to speak hesitantly about the actions people might or might not have taken. Example dialogue:
Owen: So normally in this situation I'd just host the interviewee at my place rather than having people faff around with a hotel. Is that cool here?
Woman: (thinking: damn that's expected huh? Im surprised) um I guess so
My second paragraph appears to go off on a tangent but I was actually thinking in response to a potential exchange like this and trying to get ahead of anyone who might think that asking would always be good enough. I'm not necessarily ensorsing asking as a singular plan though I'd probably do it myself in some situations. The only sure solution is the solution that Owen appears to be taking, more proactivity and avoid these dynamics when possible anyway]]
Yes, that is one possible explanation for the sentence. There are also other, more problematic possible explanations, such as if the org itself told her they had a place for her and then sprung the surprise that it was at Owen's house.
I tried to avoid speculation like this with my original comment because we can just ask what happened. We don't need to make up stories, we can just find out what actually happened from the OP and the woman and put the matter to rest.
Yes I agree and I do hope someone who knows chimes in. I waited hours to comment here hoping someone else would, but in the hours I waited the original comment got over 60 more upvotes. It seemed like a growing and urgent concern for people, and I was becoming less confident that Owen or the woman would chime in in a timely manner.
I commented in parentheses to try to imply I was just dropping in, but now I really regret not writing something like: "I'll delete this comment once someone who knows more actually clarifies it"
Ah, thanks! I've retracted my first 2 comments here.
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 ... (read more)
Totally agree that Owen was mainly meaning to say "the only person I will date in the immediate future is my wife" and think that's a smart decision for him while he works on himself.
I think the part that came in the zone of unfairly associating polyamory with poor handling of power dynamics and persona/professional boundaries comes here:
"How could I have come to make these mistakes? 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. 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."
Here, Owen lists new openness/exposure to polyamory/circling almost as if they are reasons/explanations for his mistakes. Which to me simply isn't the issue, plenty of people explore polyamory/circling without making such mistakes, because they come from a background of already having done work to understand their identities and social positions. To me the issue appears to be primarily a lack of a sufficiently formed critical lens for his own position of powe... (read more)
I knew Owen at university. The circles he moved in regularly had conversations about: gendered dynamics, power imbalances in relationships, rape culture. Metoo did not invent these ideas, feminists have been talking about them for decades & longer.
He has no excuse not to have learnt minimal human decency when dealing with other people.
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 soci... (read more)
This is such a good comment, thank you! I've also been mulling over the shame/inappropriateness connection. Another, complementary frame is something like, if you have strong psychological parts that shame you, while at the same time other parts recognize that this shaming is toxic and overpowerful, those parts might well be like 'F*** you, I refuse to be shamed anymore!' which might lead to leaning hard in the opposite direction and doing things that healthy shame/embarrassment might have warned you not to do.
[Edit: this comment was a tangent... now I wish this thread was better organised]
Totally. I think that even when living "shame-free" starts out idealistically, from there, ppl can move into the territory of valuing willfulness and recklessness intrinsically. And that value swap can be hard to catch for them, because they threw out one of their major tools (shame) for noticing when they were behaving self-interestedly and recklessly. Although they may still have conscious intent to behave ethically, safely, and considerately, it becomes easy to miss the ways you are betraying those values, especially if you are surrounded by people who also value edginess intrinsically.
(Idk what happened in Owen's case but I think I've seen this in the BM community)
Largely in response to the final paragraph of Ivy's comment: FWIW, as a woman in EA, I do not feel "healed" by Owen's post. I feel *very* annoyed and sorry for the person who was affected by Owen's behavior. In response to the final sentence ("extra obligations like board responsibilities on hold til you have things sorted"), I would be concerned if Owen was in a board position in EA because he has clearly proved himself incapable of doing so in a way that doesn't discredit legitimate actors in the space and cause harm. I'm surprised, and again really annoyed, this is already a topic of discussion.
I agree with everything you wrote. I guess I think some things are so obvious they don't need to be said. The intention of my comment was to make overt things which were probably not obvious.
Okay, Ivy. I did really like your other point about shame. Thank you.
I am also a woman in EA, and do not feel "healed" by this post. That comment really rubbed me the wrong way, and I'm confused why the OP assumed to speak for many women in EA.
I also wish the empathy that is evident in that comment was directed towards the person on the receiving end of his behaviour rather than him.
I think my sentiments are not only my own though? Just as I'm sure your sentiments are not only your own and it is important that you say them. I never said I speak for all. I also never said I was fully healed nor that anyone should be fully healed by reading this piece.
I do have empathy toward that person too. I think that went without saying. In future I really hope that others will not try to map any particular women like me and other women who do feel healed and/or hopeful about moving forward to any particular side of any fence.
Same and I'm also annoyed that the comments here are so fluffy versus the blistering skepticism against women who do post when they've had a bad experience. I'm not advocating being unkind to Owen but I am wondering why the chasm-like discrepancy.