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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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381–390 of 1001 posts

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#381

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…

One of my main concerns is that almost all legitimate discussion is now happening in private invite only communities because people are too risk averse to continue to chat on public sites that will be indexed forever in a culture where they can be cancelled for even a slightly uncouth opinion. Almost all of my consumption and contribution on the Internet is now in private communities that are quite strict about invit…

Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in private already? This article is pointing out situations where even in private people might not want to give out candid feedback, which seems like a different concern that what you are saying.

I'm a pretty active person online and I genuinely do not understand your concern. If you want to say something controversial online, just do so anonymously like you are doing now. If you want to give somebody candid advice I'm not sure why you'd do that in public anyways.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#383

I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism , I think people think I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what I'm trying to say. I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due…

Basically the me too movement and the way in which men cannot defend themselves from sexual accusations back fired. Very predictable that this happened, there’s no easy solution.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#384
As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days looking at the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns and cost benefit analyses, so why would I take a human capital risk? My entire business is based on my reputation and I've seen what happens to the men who get comments like "not the best with women at conferences" or "don't get him too close to your wife." It's limiting beyond your career.

I can count on two hands the number of women I would feel comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I would a man. Women I can be candid with are women that I have 5+ year relationships with, have backed in some way, and who know I am truly looking out for them.

And the solution is blatantly obvious, but completely unpalatable. Let men grow the same way we believe women and minorities should be allowed to. A male engineering manager being too harsh with a female junior dev is a learning moment for the director of engineering to help the manager, not fire them.

And crucially the line is shifting more and more about what's "obviously fireable." Turns out harsh criticism of the quality of someone's work and the lack of improvement are rational, not an ad hominem. Those things are fixable. But criticism from powerful parties is now scrutinized as dangerous based on identity rather than for the content of the criticism.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#385

I have been extremely fortuante that women have always found me very attractive and there is not a single job I've had where female co-workers didn't make comments at work which would not have been seen as extremely inappropriate the other way around. Even when I was 19 and I got my first job some 30+/40+ year old female co-workers heavily flirted with me in the most inappropriate way. I'm not gonna lie, I enjoyed it…

Nice humblebrag, but at the end of it all, "all humans are the same" is a thought-terminating cliché.

> Nice humblebrag

Yeah, a great brand-building exercise for throwaway861229.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#386

Knowledge of history has gone down, year over year. Students are more likely to get a propagandized and highly skewed caricature of history that leaves out certain "inconvenient truths." This is also an overcorrection.

Which students, and where? I don't see that happening locally, but perhaps it's different where you are?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#387
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your methods and conclusions make no sense - associating with women doesn't get you canceled, Kevin Spacey didn't molest any women as far as I know. Smugness makes no sense when what it appears is you have some deep rooted psychological issues that need addressing.

I am going to be honest and admit I have a problem with women also and would much prefer to work only with other men. In addition, I lament that it is iillegal for men to have their own organizations of any kind. It is not legal for men to have their own clubs or organizations in the Western world. It is illegal for men, and particularly white men, to self select and self organize. This is a factual statement. I do w…

I think that statement is a little underfactualized. In the U.S., private clubs and religious groups can both legally discriminate by gender. The Civil Rights Act protections apply to public-facing businesses. And generally speaking, legal protections in the U.S. are by class, not with specifically enumerated members of a class, so the "particularly white men" notion is not really accurate when it comes to employment protections, although I imagine you were thinking about affirmative action or similar policies at universities.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#388

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…

American media culture is probably more relevant than general American culture.

A lot of politicians or executives will only say carefully scripted sound bites to the press because they can't count on a reasonable portrayal. They give them a sentence or two that's difficult to twist into something offensive.

Here it's similar. They're afraid reasonable behavior will be portrayed as outrageous in some blog post.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#389
post #71

Anecdotal but my office is ultra -woke. There are endless internal emails about whatever-week, or veterans-this, or LBGTQ+-that etc etc. People have been hounded out and either quit or been fired for fairly minor "infractions" of the groupthink (...and also some people have rightly been fired for actual inappropriate behaviour). And guess what all this talk about "toxic masculinity" and generally vilifying all men le…

Not good. Some of us have felt like that for thirty years. Once apon a time there were a group of people who swaggered through life saying whatever popped into their brains whom ever it offended or belittled. They engaged in metaphorical, but brutal, wrestling matches not just with each other but with any body who crossed their paths. Now life is very hard for them. Should have happened thirty years ago. Has it gone…

What is that "group of people" you're talking about, can you be more specific ?

Are you attributing certain characteristics to people only because they are part of that group ?

Should people that are born into that group without a choice be punished for what other members did or are accused of having done in the past ?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of risk mitigation. Either a person accepts extreme, but very unlikely, risk by exercising perfect candor with everyone or they decide to clam up around people lower on the 'oppression hierarchy' which costs them almost nothing to do. Why would any rational actor not choose option B unless they're getting some reward great enough to offset the risk of option A?

https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-...

Thank you for sharing this. This issue is constant but I’ve never had it explained so well.
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