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Comment by pmk on Abuse in LessWrong and rationalist communities in Bloomberg News · 2023-03-10T03:49:28.718Z · LW · GW

Given the gender ratio in EA and rationality, it would be surprising if women in EA/rationality didn’t experience more harassment than women in other social settings with more even gender ratios. Consider a simplified case: suppose 1% of guys harass women and EA/rationality events are 10% women. Then in a group of 1000 EAs/rationalists there would be 9 harassers targeting 100 women. But if the gender ratio was even, then there would be 5 harassers targeting 500 women. So the probability of each woman being targeted by a harasser is lower in a group with more even gender ratio. For it to be the case that women in EA/rationality experience the same amount of harassment as women in other social settings the men in EA/rationality would need to be less likely to harass women than the average man in other social settings. It is also possible that the average man in EA/rationality is more likely to harass women than the average man in other social settings. I can think of some reasons for this (being socially clumsy, open to breaking social norms etc) and some against (being too shy to make advances, aspiring to high moral standards in EA etc).