I don't think we're a good fit

Although you haven't asked for advice, and imply that you're on your way out of the EA community, I am going to offer some advice anyway. I don't think the issue you describe is particularly uncommon here, and individuals with somewhat similar issues may be reading this thread. 

This isn't the advice I would give after most first or even second complaints, but I think it is warranted after a string of incidents significant enough to warrant a year-long EAG ban (and probably at least some version of it was warranted at some juncture before that).

I submit that, if you were to return to in-person EA spaces,^[1] you really need to employ some bright-line rules to prevent future harm while in those spaces. For instance: No flirting. No touching women.^[2] 

Based on your narrative, it seems that your best efforts at avoiding harm while employing more flexible standards are not succeeding. If following judgment-based standards are not avoiding harassment,^[3] then I don't see another viable option other than bright-line rules. And those will have the usual downside of bright-line rules -- they will rule out some behavior that would actually have been OK. 

Although you characterize the situation as the community deciding "to value the comfort of some subset of women over guys like me" (emphasis added), I would characterize it as the community valuing fellow community members' right to bodily integrity and right to a harassment-free experience over your interest in continuing to interact with women in ways a number of them find inappropriate and/or offensive enough to have reached out to Community Health. 

These sorts of rules are necessary in some professional spaces for some actors (for instance, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals). It seems that they would be necessary for you in EA spaces.^[4] While I'm not suggesting that a bright-line rule against flirting is necessary for EA spaces in general, I think it may often be necessary for those who have a history of harassing behavior. 

I recognize that creates a burden for you that others do not have to bear. But it does not impair your ability to participate in the core of what EA is. And some differential burden is unavoidable in life. 

For example, there are a number of reasons that are not a person's fault that nonetheless can make them unsuitable to drive a motor vehicle (or do so only under limited conditions) -- extreme clumsiness, severe anxiety disorders, blindness, seizure disorders, etc. People are morally culpable (and expose themselves to criminal liability) if they recklessly ^[5] keep driving even after it is clear that their condition renders their continued driving an unacceptable risk to other road users. Ultimately, it is not enough that these individuals care about avoiding harm, they have to stop driving at least once it is clear enough that no lesser alternative will protect other road users' rights.^[6] Based on your post, I think you may be in a roughly analogous situation here.

1. ^{^}

   I recognize that it may be difficult to discern exactly what counts as an "EA space," and am cognizant of the downsides of extending EA "jurisdiction" as it were too far into people's private lives. I'd suggest that anything that happens in the city of an out-of-town EA event, or on the day of an in-town one, is very likely to involve an EA space. This definition is doubtless underinclusive. For instance, I would consider most parties with a bunch of people who are EAs to be "EA spaces," similar to how I would usually treat a party with a bunch of people from the same office/employer as a work-related event for harassment purposes.

   I also recognize that the question of interactions with EAs outside out "EA spaces" is outside the scope of this response.

2. ^{^}

   I am assuming from your framing that all the complaints have involved women.

3. ^{^}

   Given the number of reports to Community Health, I feel confident that this is the correct characterization.

^{^}

 What rules you should follow outside EA spaces is largely beyond the scope of this comment. It is likely that you should follow similar rules in at least some contexts -- e.g., where the other party is on the job, and thus their ability to extricate themselves from an uncomfortable situation is limited by that status. On the other hand, certain other social spaces may warrant less restrictive rules.

^{^}

Lightly adapting from the Model Penal Code, recklessness exists when an individual "consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that" a certain kind of harm "will result from his conduct." 

^{^}

Readers who live in areas with good public transportation may underestimate how severe the impact of losing the ability to drive is for most people in the United States.

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I would like to suggest that folk not downvote this post below zero. I'm generally in favour of allowing people to defend themselves, unless their response is clearly in bad faith. I'm sure many folk strongly disagree with the OP's desired social norms, but this is different from bad faith.

Additionally, I suspect most of us have very little insight into how community health operates and this post provides some much needed visibility. Regardless of whether you think their response was just right, too harsh or too lenient, this post opens up a rare opportunity for the community to weigh in.

I suspect people are downvoting this post either because they think the author is a bad person or they don't want the author at EA events. I would suggest that neither of these are good reasons to downvote this specific post into the negative.

When people talk about women's negative experiences in EA, they act as if it happens because men just don't care about women's feelings.

I opened the second example you cited, and they explictly deny the framework you are offering here. I'll quote in full because I think it's relevant here:

It’s interesting, because in these instances, I’m never talking about intention. I’m never saying, “this person condescends me because they are sexist” or “this person touches me because they are malicious.” And yet, immediately, a charitable intention is proposed to me. An explanation offered, the action is defended. Lest I start getting any ideas of even daring to suggest ill intent.

But I don’t care that much about intent anymore, because I’ve learned it’s a losing game. I don’t care if they are autistic or traumatised or delusional or shy or if free will exists or doesn’t. At a point, we’ve just lost the plot entirely. I am identifying an action that I want stopped. I do not need to have my empathy invoked. I naturally have immense empathy—often to my own detriment, often to a far greater degree than the “intention explorers” I’m conversing with. I am voicing a hurt and a need. And a helpful solution might be as simple as giving someone feedback. Or even just offering recognition.

The outcomes of your actions matter more than your intent. If it got to the point of you being banned from EA spaces, probably your actions had quite negative outcomes. In that case it is your responsibility to manage your behaviour to prevent causing those negative outcomes again, and it is the communities responsibility to prevent you and others from doing the same.  

Context: I am a person who faces harassment in my life sometimes, though not (yet) in EA spaces.

I think it's interesting to hear your experience of the situations you have got yourself into. I'll leave dissecting any issues with the post to others.

Do you feel like any of the advice you received was more effective than other pieces of advice? I would like to know what kind of advice I could give someone in your approximate situation in order to help them change their behavior and avoid a ban.

I've read the responses to this post and while many of them contain criticisms of me and my actions (many of which I agree with and wrote in the original post), few seem to contain substantive disagreements to the post itself.

The post has a lot of downvotes and 12 people have reacted with "disagree".

I don't think it should be enough to dislike my conduct. I often dislike it too. Could someone explain what is wrong with the post?

I still claim that I care about people I have upset and that EA is not a very good fit for me. I think even after being exceedingly careful, people were still upset. This was after having attempted to stop flirting and un-asked touches altogether.

What, actually, are your disagreements with the post?

A goodfaith interpretation of this reads to me as:   you are sad about feeling "shamed" or socially punished for what happened and angry because you feel like you shouldn't be punished for something that you couldn't have done differently - and you want other people to acknowledge that this sucks for you. This is all understandable. It might in fact not be your fault (impossible for me to know), and I'm sorry if that's the case. But this will not be the last time you will be affected by something that isn't your fault. It's okay to be sad/angry at this, but I honestly think whatever acknowledgement you get from other people about this particular case will not eliminate this sad thing about your (or anyone else's) life.  

But there is another interpretation, that feels a lot like "I'm hurt and leaving this community. It's not my fault. So it has to be someone elses"("the community, frances, the time magazine article, whoever acts like you don't care about women's suffering."). 

If you don't endorse that second one, I think this post, and particularly the first sentence is not very helpful. 

("When people talk about women's negative experiences in EA, they act as if it happens because men just don't care about women's feelings." ) 

Clearly noone knows about what other people care about. And to assume that every man who hurts women doesn't care about women's feelings would be overconfident. What seems reasonable though is that 1) men who hurt women either don't care enough to change their behaviour or 2) cannot change their behaviour. 

Without getting into a conversation about how easy it is to change your behaviour in particular or free will or whatever - it seems fair to say that hurting people is wrong and that it would be good to incentivise not hurting others - so that its worth caring about whether or not you're hurting other people. 

This is intrinsically going to be shitty for people who - for some reason - cannot change their behaviour. But the alternative of simply tolerating people hurting others seems .. just pretty clearly worse? Partially because you'll still face the problem of being associated with people who absolutely could change their behaviour, but just don't - because they don't care enough about other people's feelings. You might not be excluded from EAG's, but EAG's would look pretty different, too. 

You do say "It's ok if the community decides to value the comfort of some subset of women over guys like me. But I wish we acknowledged this trade-off." - I'm assuming you mean "guys who can't change their behaviour - even when they care enough to try" -  How can a community "acknowledge" that your inability to change your behaviour - infact - wasn't anyone's fault and you couldn't have done any better and that you tried your best - when this is clearly impossible for anyone (but you) to know? Furthermore - how do you know that you genuinely can't change your behaviour? Changing this stuff can take a long long time, and a lot of reflection on the culture you grew up in, getting better at asking for things, confronting painful stuff, etc. 

The pragmatic approach for a community to this stuff just is "We don't know whether this behaviour is anyone's fault, but the consequences of this behaviour seem unacceptable (i.e. constantly getting harassed at EAGs seems so much worse than not being able to attend EAG's for a year) so we should incentivise people trying as hard as they can to not do it." Particularly when "Some men just can't help it, so what happens happens" has historically been used as an argument for terrible terrible norms in this particular area. 

I appreciate you sharing your perspective, and I can see this has been difficult for you. However, I find your framing troubling for several reasons:

I don't feel like your apology fully acknowledges wrongdoing. You say you're sorry people were upset, but you frame your behaviour as part of an unavoidable "tradeoff" between different communication styles rather than as something you should work to change. This shifts from "I'm really sorry and will change" to "I'm sorry you're sad, but I endorse my actions and may continue them."

Most men navigate these situations without repeated issues. The fact that you've had multiple incidents over years, culminating in a ban, suggests this isn't about inherent incompatibility between "clumsy men and sensitive women." Many men—including those who are neurodivergent, from different cultural backgrounds, or naturally flirtatious—manage to participate in EA without repeatedly making others uncomfortable. Some aren't flirty at all and still form meaningful relationships.

Cultural differences can be navigated. While I understand different cultures have different norms around touch, people regularly adapt their behaviour when they learn it's making others uncomfortable. You mention being "as careful as you could be," but if that still resulted in complaints, it might be worth exploring different strategies rather than framing it as an unsolvable incompatibility.

The social utilitarian framing feels concerning. You seem to weigh your enjoyment of physical touch and flirtation against others' discomfort as if they're comparable goods. Most people (even those within EA) might find this approach to interpersonal ethics troubling—it treats others' boundaries as negotiable based on your personal cost-benefit analysis.

I understand you've experienced real loss here—friendships, community, and reputation. But I don't think the "tradeoff" you describe is inevitable—it's about finding ways to express yourself that don't consistently cross others' boundaries.

This isn't even an EA vs non-EA thing. I assure you that randomly touching women, whether female colleagues or strangers, in a normal corporate or government or non-profit job will deservedly get you fired for sexual harrassment.