I realize I’m the worst person to write this, and I was hoping someone else would, but apparently they’re not going to. So here goes. If you’re going to say that this being said reflects badly on the community’s values, please blame me personally instead. Everyone else in the community isn’t writing this, even though they should, because they have the same values as you, and different ones from me.

I never met Kathy. I knew her only as a warning. Multiple people told me over the course of several years that I should never go to any event she was attending, because she had a habit of accusing men she met of sexual harassment. They all agreed she wasn’t malicious, just delusional.

This warning wasn’t aimed at me in particular. I think everyone in the Bay community got it at one time or another. When I search the Discord channels I’m on for Kathy’s name, I see other people making the same point years ago.

Kathy is originally from Australia. Two Australians, one of whom is a woman, told me years ago that the same thing went on there - people stopped attending meetups because they were afraid Kathy would be there, and they were afraid of her accusing them of sexual harassment.

I never tracked down any of these warnings to their primary sources. I can’t prove they don’t all come from some one- or two-person conspiracy against her, creating rumors that followed her to every community she went to.

But I don’t think that’s true. I see @theunitofcaring says she has specific knowledge that one of Kathy’s accusations was false, with multiple witnesses attesting to this. I believe this was the conclusion of the organizational investigation of various of Kathy’s accusations also.

And everyone who has interacted with Kathy on Facebook knows that she was really erratic, constantly harassing people and behaving in really bizarre ways. Millie describes some of them here.  And I know she was in and out of mental hospitals a lot for the last few years of her life - something she alludes to in her note. Obviously that doesn’t mean we can ignore her or that her accusations shouldn’t be taken seriously. But it makes me a little more inclined to believe the warnings I heard about her being delusional were true. I think if you read her note all the way through, this kind of comes out. I don’t want to quote any of it here because it seems extremely violating, but read it carefully and draw your own conclusions.

I will mention that I think Millie is right when she points out that it’s strange Kathy says this is endemic and helped drive her to suicide, but the only specific claims she makes are two stories of the sort “somebody touched my thigh, I was immediately believed when I reported it, and the offender was immediately expelled from the community”. These two stories sound completely believable, and pending someone else’s contradiction, I believe them. I feel bad that they happened to Kathy. But they don’t excuse that she hurt a lot of people and her note is on track to hurt a lot more.

I realize that attacking someone based on things they disclosed in a suicide note makes me garbage. I’m okay with that, because I know some really good people, who devoted their lives to effective altruism, who were victimized by Kathy. I don’t have proof they were innocent, but for what it’s worth, they’re not the same people she names as harassers in her note. One of them became really depressed at Kathy’s constant accusations and Facebook harassment and almost left the community (though thankfully he’s doing better now). I can’t imagine how these people and all her other victims feel to have her turned into some kind of saint and I’m not okay with it.

Kathy was obviously a very disturbed person. I feel bad for her. But not as bad as I feel for everyone she hurt, so I’m not okay with giving her martyrdom.

It’s important to fight sexual harassment in our community and every community. I know several instances of sexual harassment definitely happening, and my claims about Kathy don’t detract from that. If you’ve been harassed, please know there are structures in place to deal with this - consider contacting Julia Wise, who’s the community leader on this issue. There are also other things that you can learn about by contacting any well-connected woman in the rationalist community. I’m being deliberately vague here because, again, I’m the worst person to talk about this, and I don’t know how much of the procedures people do or don’t want public.