One (Asian-American) survivor’s rapist called the police on her when she panicked and tried to cover her nudity post-assault. Another accused threatened suicide if the Asian-American survivor told anyone. Yet another raped three Asian-American/people of Asian ancestry, including a teenager under the age of consent in any state. Four, five, and eight people have accused specific persons of completed rape.

The survivors of assault and abuse that I’ve connected to are tied to the same community. The broad community I speak of here are insular, interconnected subgroups that are involved most of these categories: tech, EA (Effective Altruists), rationalists, Burning Man camps, secret parties, and coliving houses. I’ve heard it referred to as a “clusterf**k” and “confluence”, I usually call it a community. The community is centered in the San Francisco bay area but branch out into Berlin, London/Oxford, Seattle, and New York. The group is purpose-driven, with strong allegiance to non-mainstream morals and ideas about shaping the future of society and humanity. Allegiance to purpose often equates to a need to stay in the group, and to protect the group. The people in the community party together, host conferences and talks, live in co-living houses together, and date one another. And if you’re respected, your place in the hierarchy yields more invitations, introductions, and investment.

Nothing in the above paragraph is shocking. It’s how much of society operates, and why rape/abuse and racism are systemic. However, while much of society is now trying to remediate systemic racism, gender violence/bias, and the like, this communities often are proud of continued gender and racial biases. Some spaces explicitly say they are not safe, which leads them to be less inclusive. For the past eight years, I’ve asked people in this circle about the women leaders in the circles are. No one has been able to point to high-powered or influential women in these groups. Even post-#metoo and post-George Floyd and after most of mainstream tech, startups, the bay area, and much of the non-conservative world began to discuss how to improve DEI concerns, this circle is largely antagonistic to such efforts. While men and gender non-conforming people suffer rape/abuse, the survivors I’ve spoken in these communities are cis-women. Many are young, new to community and preyed upon/funneled to men with more power. Specifically, sixty-eight percent of the survivors I’ve spoken to are Asian-American, in communities that are majority white.