Women may at times want to engage with predominantly male social circles, such as Effective Altruism or casinos. Yet no one wants to be the rasher of bacon in a famine. There are diminishing returns to being hit on. If a boy and girl meet cute, and the boy flirts with the girl, she’s fairly likely to find this flattering even if she isn’t actually interested in him specifically. If literally every single man she encounters is hitting on her, she is left with two hypotheses: either she is overwhelmingly desirable, or these guys are just really really horny in a kind of gross way. Most women aren’t self-deluded enough to pick the first option.

In practice, women navigating mostly-male social circles generally get themselves a boyfriend or a husband in fairly short order, which, once this becomes public knowledge, generally serves to decrease the volume of sexual attention they get by some large percentage. Most men are not complete chancers and will typically tone it down with a monogamously partnered woman. Furthermore, many men in the scene may well be partnered themselves, and are typically not going to try to cheat on their wives or girlfriends. All this serves to keep the sexual interest levels manageable.

Polyamory is uniquely destructive because it upends all of these protections. The “get a boyfriend” tactic doesn’t work because everyone will assume you’re still sexually available, since polyamory is the default norm. The “mostly hang out with the partnered men” option now doesn’t work either because these men are still looking for women to add to their roster. Suddenly there is no way to avoid being the bacon rasher in the famine. The only way to opt out is to leave the scene altogether.

The dynamics described in the Time article are not hard to get your head around once you view the problem through this lens. Let’s take the most charitable framework and assume that most of the men not called REDACTED BY A TIME-TRAVELLING AGI in the stories listed didn’t think they were doing anything wrong and had relatively moral intentions. Default polyamory, though, turns what might otherwise be merely awkward or even charming interactions into “oh god not again” in the head of the women in question. Quite reasonably! Who isn’t going to get jaded if every man you run across is trying to get into your pants? 

A heavy-poly scene that is also largely male-dominated is inevitably going to be woman-unfriendly, even before we add in all the existing EA problems around control over jobs and funding applications that certain high-profile gatekeepers enjoy. It’s just bad, makes things worse for women, adds endless drama potential, and makes managing conflicts of interest essentially impossible. As these problems become more and more publicly known, EA will get talent-drained as EA-adjacent people simply give up on applying for jobs and grants because they aren't part of the inner magic sex circle. Though a relatively minor problem, this dynamic also makes life worse for monogamously married men whose wives may not be thrilled with the additional workplace sexual interest that being involved in EA comes with.

EA should, therefore, try systemic affirmative action in favour of monogamous people. Most urgently, there should be a clear commitment from the board of EVF that the next CEO of CEA will a) be monogamous and b) have at least three degrees of sexual separation from any current or past board members of EVF.

No doubt this will get downvoted into oblivion by the poly people, but the future of EA itself is at stake. Eventually FTX will be forgotten, but a rolling series of #MeToo scandals that drip-feed out over the next few years will do huge damage. If you don't think there's more to come, then boy do I ever have some bets we can make for you!