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Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

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Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#201

Post by tonyarkles »

mtrimpe wrote: post #176
revetkn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is no such case for female founders. Here we have a much simples issue: stigmatization. I disagree. I might be in the minority but in the places I've worked in tech no one cares - at least as far as I can tell - what your gender is, it's how well you do the job. What I do see a lot of is women who are capable but not interested in STEM. Not because of some kind of social stigma, they just don't care about it.…

Would you be willing to do me a favor and take the implicit association test on gender at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit and post back the results? I really think that it's the best answer I can give to someone like you who would want a bit of deeper understanding into what this is all about ...

That's a very interesting link! For me, I ended up in the "strong association between men and science". My best guess as to why that is is that there are very few women that I've personally worked with in a technical capacity.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#202

Post by mikeleeorg »

It would be very, very interesting to repurpose the Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes Racism Experiment[1] to one that highlighted the subtle (or not so subtle) differences faced with gender. Then applied to the audience here. I wonder if more empathy for such a conference would be seen.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeK759FF84s

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#203

Post by _bfhp »

mtrimpe wrote: post #200
_bfhp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual transphobia (like the rampant homophobia, specifically against lesbians, before it) in "feminist" communities is tragic, just as it is anywhere. I don't mean to excuse bigots, only to provide context for the discussion of the political exclusion of (rather than emotional, bigoted marginalization and violence against) transwomen from women-only spaces, which is the overall topic at hand here and the concern of…

As I suspected we're mostly on the same page then with the main difference being (if I'm correct) that I interpreted radical feminists as the subset of feminists who hold radical beliefs rather than referring to a specific 'radical feminist' belief system and its views on trans* issues (whose existence I was not aware of until now.)

I see now, I assumed a different motivation on your part than there was in reality. I apologize.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#204

Post by Domenic_S »

quinnchr wrote: post #199
obstacle1 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that most institutional structures aren't dominated by men. I don't know whether "most" are or aren't -- neither do you. If you figure out a way to quantify that, let me know. Seems like a research grant in the making. I do know, however, that "every other organization is a men's organization" is a ridiculous statement. Every other organization ? Seriously? In order for that to be true, "men's organizati…

So your issue with feminism is essentially that it's wrong for a women's movement to pursue women's issues? Nothing about feminism is orthogonal to addressing the needs of men. In fact there is a lot of feminist theory exploring pretty much every single issue you listed, and if you did actually engage the issue critically you'd probably know that.

Hello,

Just wanted to tell you that your comments of "if you did actually engage the issue critically..." are obnoxious. Two honest people can read the same literature, learn from the same folks, etc, and come to different conclusions. You're insinuating that if obstacle1 disagrees with you then they are either ignorant or lying about their experience. Not cool.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#205

Post by tonyarkles »

goggles99 wrote: post #169
soneca wrote: post #30

I'm assuming some HNers are soon to arrive saying things like "why does it matter that a founder is a female?", "why make an excluding event? isn't it sexism all the same", "imagine if someone make a 'male founders conference'?" I would like to ask you to think for a moment, before raising this concerns (I am not bothering here to debate with haters, only with those who are genuinely concerned that this might sexism…

Did anyone stop to think that woman generally just have differing interests and natural skills than men? Why is there so much emphasis on women being the same as men in everything? I don't see campaigns to get more women interested in auto repair or plumbing.

Here's a screen shot from my local trade school. http://cl.ly/image/3b1J3H2a0q0P http://gosiast.com/programs-and-courses/programs/Automotive-...

Here's another (didn't take a screenshot): http://gosiast.com/programs-and-courses/programs/Carpentry.a...

But just in case you're thinking that they just used pictures of women for all of the industrial trades, here's a few more: http://gosiast.com/programs-and-courses/programs/Refrigerati... http://gosiast.com/programs-and-courses/programs/Industrial-...

Here's a screen shot from the industrial apprentice website. http://cl.ly/image/3g093I0I3T3A. That's a rotating carousel of images; the majority of the images in it are men, but there are two women.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#206

Post by obstacle1 »

quinnchr wrote: post #199
obstacle1 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that most institutional structures aren't dominated by men. I don't know whether "most" are or aren't -- neither do you. If you figure out a way to quantify that, let me know. Seems like a research grant in the making. I do know, however, that "every other organization is a men's organization" is a ridiculous statement. Every other organization ? Seriously? In order for that to be true, "men's organizati…

So your issue with feminism is essentially that it's wrong for a women's movement to pursue women's issues? Nothing about feminism is orthogonal to addressing the needs of men. In fact there is a lot of feminist theory exploring pretty much every single issue you listed, and if you did actually engage the issue critically you'd probably know that.

Sometimes I think HN has a 2-post memory or something.

To remind you, I originally responded to a poster who claimed to "finally understand" feminism when a teacher said, in response to "why can't there be men's organizations", that "every other organization is a men's organization".

I'm reacting to that specific kind of feminism, which prohibits addressing men's issues on the assumption that all men are already taken care of by some mythical "men's club". This obviously isn't representative of all feminisms, but it's a pretty common viewpoint here on HN, and it's often accepted uncritically. Note I qualified my talk of feminisms in the previous post with "much of feminism says X", deliberately avoiding saying "feminism says X".

It is not wrong for a women's movement to pursue women's issues. It is wrong for a women's movement to pursue women's issues exclusively while lying that it also addresses men's issues, subsequently advocating the prohibition of groups that address men's issues.

There are streams of feminism that are orthogonal to addressing the needs of men. And I'm addressing those streams specifically. People who say things like "you can't have men's organizations because every other organization is a men's organization" are contributing to these streams.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#207

Post by tonyarkles »

mtrimpe wrote: post #173
crazy1van wrote: post #160

The problem -- and the reason they are popular -- with identity events like these are that they give lots of people except the most talented women a cop out: Sexist males - "See, women can't hack it as founders in the real world. They need extra help." Non-sexist males - "Whew. I'll support this event and stop second guessing myself whenever I choose to fund a male-led organization." Mediocre females - "Sweet. Now I…

You probably are a naive idealist; there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to get rid of that give the IAT on gender a try at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit I'm willing to bet that just the experience of taking it will make you somewhat uncomfortable.

The moment where I felt my brain slowing down to parse things was rough. I knew I wasn't going as quickly but I felt like I couldn't do anything to speed up again. Very fascinating how that stuff works subconsciously.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#209

Post by kaitai »

yapcguy wrote: post #189
kaitai wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment. Sorry your hope at the bottom of your post is a pipe dream :) I am a woman. I am thinking of being a founder. I guess I'm a founder of something since I'm working on selling products (ebooks) online. (Huh. A realization.) I am totally interested in this Female Founders conference because I might see people "like me" who have succeeded. How exciting to learn from them what worked! Some guy will…

Curious to know what you think of BGC (and others like it)? http://blackgirlscode.org/

From a previous comment I made,

"It's attempting to do successful intervention & marketing, essentially, by focusing on a specific demographic. As we all should know, focusing on a specific demographic is a fine way to produce a product targeted to that demographic's needs. Young black women have different pain points in tech than Zuckalikes or male first-born children of Chinese immigrants. It is obvious that other organizations with mainly white or male constituents are not effectively serving the market and it's no surprise that something better for this target group has come along."

Mini-story: I went to Caltech for undergrad. A "Men's Trip" started in my hovse in response to a women's dessert night or something. They had one men's-only weekend trip and realized they were bored without girls. The next "Men's Trip" was women-welcome. It was a lot of fun to go along, shoot guns, whip shitties in the desert, make Molotov cocktails out of a disputed load of boys underwear (the guys could not remember whose they were and neither wanted them). Great stuff. But I still found the women's dessert night valuable.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#210

Post by mtrimpe »

aaren wrote: post #183
stephp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN readers in these gender discussions are so outright condescending, hateful, and knowingly, deliberately unreasonable-- not to mention "othering"-- it makes me consider never coming to this website ever again. Thank you for being a voice of reason, even though doing so can be incredibly frustrating in its fruitlessness sometimes.

Please stay. Don't let the vocal minority dissuade you. There are a good number of people here that do care. Gender is being increasingly discussed here now, which inevitably draws out this discussion. I really think that this site will become more inclusive, but it needs your voice (and your votes).

Thank you.
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