Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#341

Post by pron » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #328

pron wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a woman were to say, if we don't put an end to casual sexism, the end result we're heading for is that men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her in a dungeon. A much more realistic and likely outcome, and a far less hysterical perspective than yours, is that the needle was way too far one way, now people are learning to cope with it shifting, and if we try to be more empathetic, perhaps getti…

> men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her in a dungeon. > And, of course, women do not want the vote Please keep this sort of flamebait out of your HN posts. It's guaranteed to make everything worse, and you can make your substantive points without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The second was a quote from numerous reasoned arguments (which I linked to) posted in similar forums in the ear 20th century. Anyway, this thread is so terrifying (and brings back bad memories from my time in SV) that the natural reaction should be to scream in horror and not make any "substantive points." I am even more worried and, frankly, hurt that you don't see that. The most I could manage is try to hold a mirror up so that some people might see what they sound like to others.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#342

Post by igorkraw » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:07 PM UTC

LockAndLol wrote: post #307

igorkraw wrote: post #223

I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…

Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy, American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in your case German) discussions and experiences from American ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc. It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow non-Americans), they talk about American topi…

Good points, thank you. It just seems like in this case, whenever the topic is discussed everyone points to "it is known" style twitter mobs, and the actual examples of twitter mobs that do show up tend to not be as unreasonable in general.

E.g. the cancelling and uncancelling of RMS seemed to me mainly...reasonable? Like, he says some weird stuff and defended ~~Eppstein~~ Minsky (sorry, memory got messed up, thanks skissane) in a tone-deaf manner (I have had the joy of exchanging emails with RMS and interacting with him at talks he gave at my alma mater, and he always seemed like a thoughtful and kind person whom I respect and admire, but I feel like "tone-deaf" is a fair description), maybe that's not a good thing to do if your job is to be a public figure? And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of what really is rape reasonable? So if this is an example of what people are afraid of, it seems a very...specific fear

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#343

Post by xenihn » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:07 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #247

haltingproblem wrote: post #239

[deleted]

How come other professions like Law and Medicine were able to make huge progress overcoming similar problems while tech continues to lag behind? This is not an intractable problem.

I think top-tier law is still overwhelmingly male. Read up on the double bell-curve for the legal industry, which is quickly becoming a problem for tech as well. Though for the legal industry, there's gatekeeping in the form of school pedigree.

For medicine, it's easier to balance the ratios when you can fully control the pipeline, and also control the total number of new practitioners entering the workforce regardless of demand.

If you only have 28,000 residency slots a year, institutions can pick whoever they want, and get the diversity numbers that they want. They decide who eventually gets to work in the field. Employers and customers don't have any real choice. They're going to get whatever the schools provide, and if they don't like it, they can go without doctors.

Modern tech is nothing like that, but it could be someday. Imagine if schools decided who could be professionally employed as a software engineer.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#344

Post by undefined1 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

idyio wrote: post #156

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #17

This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky becaus…

> people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy This supposed hierarchy of oppression, based on identity characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality, really is the biggest scam going. Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet, identarians insist on shoehorning everything into their flawed worldview. The Black L…

> Why make everything about identity; where has the traditional focus on class gone?

that's the point of identity politics, to take away that focus by distracting and dividing the working class

https://i.imgur.com/wusW5Rn.jpg

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#345

Post by stonogo » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #304

stonogo wrote: post #255

And the consequences of being accused of sexism by an online mob have now become so extreme that many investors don’t want to risk it anymore. Forgive me, but, what exactly are these "consequences"? I can see it for e.g. line employees, especially in communications or media roles, but for investors? What happens, they lose some Twitter followers? Slightly fewer companies beg them for money? I've never ever heard of a…

Investors only make money when people accept their money... like any other business. It's especially a risk now with VC money basically easier to get than a drink at 7-11

I'm really looking for examples here. Nobody seems to be able to provide me one investor who is left in the lurch over this sort of thing.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#346

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #14

ipsocannibal wrote: post #2

Seems like online twitter mobs and callouts are actually counterproductive to the "-isms" that employ them. Too bad but expect more of the same as we've basicslly given a global megaphone to any hyper-purist or power-tripper with a social media account. This stops when people have to pay a price for engaging in a cancel action.

They don't care cause they are not the same people. It's like how 100% of women complaining about there not being enough girls in STEM, are themselves women who have chosen a non-STEM career.

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#347

Post by neonological » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #214

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #17

This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky becaus…

I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot. I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years ago. I believe Northern Europe has been trending slowly towards gender equality since the 90s, and thus the amount of overshoot here is much less from the rece…

> I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot.

No I don't think it's this. I think it's the advent of the internet. The internet changed everything. What you will find is that the internet is responsible for making everything look like an "overshoot."

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#348

Post by hhjinks » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

igorkraw wrote: post #223

I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…

People can make up whatever motivation they want if they feel slighted. All it takes is for the female founder to ascribe sexism to the VC when he suggests swapping CEOs, and you've got the entire media circus on your neck. And then people stop being rational actors when mob mentality kicks in.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#349

Post by csours » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

This reminds me of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I have to wonder how she may have received criticism of her ideas if there was a baseline of equality of ideas from men and women.

Basically, to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective. It would be a bridge too far to link it to the cheating.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#350

Post by igorkraw » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #306

igorkraw wrote: post #223

I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…

“Yet another man who thinks all women are hysteric. What next, are you going to ask me if it’s my ‘period’?” Once one moves from a position of effective prejudice (“he will criticise me because I’m a woman”), any critical statement can be read from that perspective. It’s a bit like with conspiracy theories, where every debunking attempt can be turned into “ of course THEY would say that!”.

You are inventing a hypothetical straw-man. Until you can point to conversation where someone said something fact based like I gave as an example and people accept your twisting and start a twitter mob of any impact, this remains a hypothetical victimization.