Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#491

Post by sneak » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #259

I had an experience at work where a coworker (who is black) shared his experience of being told to "stay in his lane" early on in his career. The insinuation was of course racism, he didn't mention it but it was obvious. Then I and someone else (who are white) shared our exact same experiences. He told me he felt cut off, etc, even though we were sharing the same experience. If we had something similar happen, how ca…

> The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about anything these days, if you are white.

I don't think that these universal sort of statements are anywhere near universally accurate.

There has certainly been a shift about what is an acceptable public topic lately, but "anything" is certainly false.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#492

Post by pm90 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

random5634 wrote: post #460

Female founder friend (non tech space) was in a female focused incubator / competition. She got only one set of somewhat critical feedback - ie, lacks experience in X and Y which are key in product space Z. She posted a comment on her social media focusing on this feedback as "criticism" that came from a sexist guy "of course". It was pretty easy to draw the line to the three panelists, one of whom was a guy. Ouch. I…

I won’t even pretend to know enough to be able to solve this problem. But does your social circle not include other female friends that you could discuss the optics of this situation with? Or better yet, be honest with the female friend that you wanted to advice, pointing out what she had done before and expressing your apprehension in providing critical feedback?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#493

Post by dang » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #267

ta-ffsmcu wrote: post #51

I can see this happening with myself (male, for the record). I'm usually someone who gives feedback quite frankly, am more critical of others' (and my own) work than average, etc. Over recent years I've read so much about women being passed over, cut off, terms like "microaggressions", women getting less talking time in meetings, etc., that's it's made me extremely self conscious. It's not even that I'm afraid of get…

I find it funny because they love to talk about implicit bias and microaggressions, and all these other things that "white men" are not aware of, but then cancel them when white men do something wrong. Where is the opportunity to learn and grow?

If you want to make an argument in favor of learning and growing, that's great, but please don't lead with ideological flamebait. That will only produce more flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#494

Post by xbar » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

Dialog has chilled, among lots of groups that need to talk more for all of us to benefit.

Some outsider risk takers will use this chill to create new networks and yield some consequent successes.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#495

Post by ghiculescu » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

christefano wrote: post #474

“One worrying trend I’ve observed among my male investor friends is that they’re much more wary of giving candid advice to women founders than they used to be. They are afraid of saying anything that a female founder might misinterpret as sexism. So, when giving feedback to a woman they don’t know well enough to trust, they talk with less candor than they would with a male founder.¹ When this happens, women are missi…

Thankfully nobody has had an angry Twitter mob come after them for beta spraying... yet.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#496

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

tolbish wrote: post #424

rocqua wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its treating people different based on gender. It depends very much on semantics whether you call that sexism. It is certainly not the form of sexism that people these days are most worried about.

That would be discrimination based on sex, but no it would not be sexist in this case. Now if, for example, he treated people based on gender because he felt women belong in the kitchen, then that would be both sexist and discriminatory. The words sexism/racism often get confused with discrimination.

There's no confusion, just a difference in upbringing. I was raised being told that racism was discrimination due to race and sexism was discrimination due to sex. I was told that our goal should be to be blind to such attributes in a professional setting. There were many in my age group that were raised the same.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#497

Post by themolecularman » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

throwitaway12 wrote: post #118

I am so thankful to work in an environment where everyone is just... normal. We don't have to walk on egg shells when speaking. Men and women can still interact like it was before I started reading about such insanity.

I'm curious what this environment is?

Right now we're seeing a lot of the "illiberal left" marching through institution after institution, as another commenter said, it will reach you eventually.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#498

Post by sneak » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

holografix wrote: post #488

This is a very relevant article to everyone in business. Men and women. I wouldn’t say this publicly and am saying it here due to a reasonable amount of anonymity (that’s a symptom of the problem). There are behaviours that are universally toxic and destructive. Sexual abuse, sexual objectification, violence, etc. These are all behaviours, generally, more commonly found in males. I think a lot of males have understoo…

I don't think you can segue quite that smoothly from "behaviors commonly found in males" (which seems to be mostly accurate) to a list of "behavior[s] more commonly associated with women" that appears, at least to me, to be false (a common biased trope).

It has the appearance of symmetry but I think the first is correct and the second is a very hearty [citation needed] as I have experienced just as much gaslighting and gossip from men as women.

It's well documented that most cases of aggressive sexual violence are men. Is it equally well documented that most gossips are women?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#499

Post by awb » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #298

DoreenMichele wrote: post #5

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…

What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear of being labeled as a sexist.

It’s probably both.

The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.

Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past.

For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of being accused of sexism. Or, speak up and maybe ruffle some feathers and have a ~X% chance of being accused of sexism.

You can see the problem on both sides of the equation, but withholding advice based on gender alone does meet the definition of sexism, regardless of the intentions of self-protection rather than hate.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#500

Post by elevenoh » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

throwaway861229 wrote: post #236

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…

>I have been extremely fortunate 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

Far more men get groped than women these days.

Few know/talk about this unless they're doing the groping or an outlier in attractiveness.