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It's Different for Girls

heidiroizen.tumblr.com

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Re: It's Different for Girls

#121
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a person of color? Are you a woman? Are you gay? Are you trans? Are you disabled? Not trolling, genuinely curious. Edit: I can't reply to the children (might be my karma game) and so I'll reply here. The linked article is about specifically about power and privilege, and how being a woman in the tech business puts you at a severe disadvantage in your job, in your community of choice. The reason why I ask is j…

Those don't matter and what you are doing is generalizing lots of groups of people which is something I assume you would be against. What matters is individuals. Some gay people don't mind jokes about being gay, some do. Some women don't mind jokes about gender, some do. If you are a in a professional setting you NEVER lead with a joke about something personal or potentially controversial if you are not among very ve…

Actually yes it is okay to joke about white males in some corporate cultures.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#122
post #6

I think the big takeaway here, not just for women but for anyone in the workplace who feels uncomfortable with or offended by something someone else has said, is to consider the intent. Sometimes somebody says something offensive, and they don't even know they're being offensive. And in those cases, you can take them aside, explain to them why it's offended you, and hopefully they'll say, "Oh, dreadfully sorry, I did…

That's one good takeaway. But there's one that is more important to me: no matter how good my intent is, it's easy for me to accidentally make people suspect I'm just like some total asshole they've dealt with before.

So I'm going to try harder to avoid triggering those associations. And when I do, I'm going to try to be bolder in apologizing for it and learning from it. My good intentions may explain a fuckup, but they sure don't justify it, and they don't excuse me from taking full responsibility.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#123
This is not intended to diminish the perfectly valid stories in her blog, but about 30 years ago I went to a Silicon Valley talk where Heidi Roizen was the featured speaker. Minutes before the talk started she swept into the room surrounded by a half-dozen very handsome young guys in designer suits, all smiling beautifully. It was exactly the same as if some older guy had showed up surrounded by models in Versace dresses. I thought it was very inappropriate and lost some respect for her. Of course, I may have interpreted it incorrectly...perhaps there is another explanation for the entourage of young men accompanying her.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#124
Was the question about the baby really so bad?

It seemed to me like the person asking about it tried as hard as he could to ask it in a positive way (i.e. not accusatory, but offering opportunity to explain).

Re: It's Different for Girls

#125
post #105

Incredibly classy of her to not name & shame the bad guys but to accent the good ones. Kudos. Also, the behavior of some of those guys is absolutely shocking, I'm sorry to say I never suspected it to be this bad at that level. Call me naive.

Would you have a problem with someone naming those responsible? It is obviously wrong to demand of victims to take specific actions (or not). Telling a victim (especially one you do not know personally) what to do is definitely never ok. At most you might recommend a certain action, but depending on how that is framed such a recommendation might already be problematic. That said, I’m not sure I see the problem with n…

That said, I’m not sure I see the problem with naming those who are responsible.

One of the problems with naming names is that there are two sides to every story, so it tends to lead to "he said, she said" and tends to get very ugly -- the man has reason to defend himself and often feels he didn't do anything wrong and may not have been intentionally bad. Another is that the woman who does so harms her own reputation. Who the hell will want to work with her if they know that should they crack an off color joke or make some other faux pas, she will go all SJW on them and seek to publicly hang them high?

Women are never going to get anywhere if they continue to jump on their high horse every time they have a run in with some guy. It is the men who have power. We (women -- as I am one) have to find a way to work with them if we want to get anywhere. And learning to sidestep trouble and frame things as innocently as they are reasonably able to be framed is a path forward. Jumping to ugly conclusions and starting a shitshow every time something happens is not.

The author was a CEO who apparently did multi-million dollar deals. I suspect she knows whereof she speaks. The shitshows we have seen posted to HN mostly seem to be women who are less successful than that.

I say this as someone who was molested and raped as a kid, who talks openly about that fact and what it did to me yet I have protected the identities of the perpetrators, for quite a lot of reasons. So this is something I have firsthand experience with.

The other problem is that naming names tends to not let it be a growth experience for men who screwed up because they just did not know any better. We all inherit an awful lot of shit culturally (I grew up in the deep south -- here is me talking about stupid racist assumptions I did not know I had and how I became aware of them: http://ask.metafilter.com/261222/How-can-I-practice-gratitud...) You have to start with the assumption that men are just as much a victim of circumstance as women if we are ever going to find a path forward.

Once you out a man, he is publicly branded. Once that is done, he is much more likely to feel compelled to justify his actions to himself. That means he is likely to keep being an asshole and not become more sensitive to the issue. That does not let us, as a culture, move forward. Nailing men to the cross for relatively harmless assholery keeps all of us, as a group, pinned in place. I would like to move forward. The status quo sucks. I do not wish to do anything which prevents progress.

I am not saying that names should never be named. But the kinds of things described in the article, while definitely deal-breakers socially and in terms of business, are relatively harmless. She is not talking about being beaten and raped. She is not talking about the sort of thing that would justify calling the police and having him charged, criminally.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#126

She makes a really good point about pausing to evaluate the intent behind the words -- and even using the opportunity to educate -- rather than always assuming the worst. But did anyone else feel that Brad Feld was very, very lucky that it was Heidi Roizen in the room and not someone less forgiving when he said, "well if you need a dick to hold you can borrow mine anytime"? What Brad did in that one comment was under…

I see what you are saying but I simply disagree. Depending on the age, specific region, and various other social contexts of the participants, not to mention the context of their existing relationship, that joke can be just fine and the story implied it was, in that case. I don't agree that the comment underscored the power differential, rather than wryly acknowledging the reality that the expression didn't work well…

I think the argument is that there are many ways to compliment someone that aren't sexual, and that sexual statements (whether compliments or otherwise) should not be used in work situations: that even in a situation where a sexual statement is taken as a compliment rather than an offense, it is still inappropriate for work.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#127
post #109
post #6

I think the big takeaway here, not just for women but for anyone in the workplace who feels uncomfortable with or offended by something someone else has said, is to consider the intent. Sometimes somebody says something offensive, and they don't even know they're being offensive. And in those cases, you can take them aside, explain to them why it's offended you, and hopefully they'll say, "Oh, dreadfully sorry, I did…

That is not the big takeaway. The big takeaway is that straight white men's privilege gives them an advantage over everybody else since they face fewer obstacles such as having their hands forced onto a penis while closing a business deal.

Not that I'm justifying it, but I wonder if the deal would even have gotten to the closing table if Heidi had been male?

Re: It's Different for Girls

#129

I have an ex-coworker who is a really attractive girl, and she used to tell me lots of stories like this about places she had worked at previously. Vice presidents calling her to their room and offering her promotions if only she would give them weekly blowjobs, prospective customers turning away from million-dollar deals at the last minute after she refused to sleep with them, etc. The really sad thing about is that…

Makes you wonder about how many women do accept such offers and get ahead that way. Which is "unfair" in a way to the men who don't have such an option.

I'm really curious about the numbers here - what percent of women have ever agreed to such offers for the purpose of getting ahead (at any point in their lifetime).

I'm hoping the number is in the single digits, because if it's higher this type of harassment will never stop.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#130
post #28

> That is why I encourage my fellow female trailblazers to look for the intent behind the words. Offensive language is often unintentional, and sometimes you can turn an awkward situation into a bonding experience. This is probably the most common-sense, insightful piece of advice that our news cycle does its best to make people forget.

I agree that this is balanced advice, but I worry that it is actually another way of masking the problem. In the example she gave with Brad Feld, his response to her critique wasn't really LESS sexist, just more absurd. That may just be an issue with the the example though. In a broader sense, intent is nearly impossible to determine, and it's dangerous to put the responsibility for understanding intent on the party…

Her critique? The way I read it, I interpreted as a joke on her part, which he in turn bounced off of.

What is sexist about "sitting here with our dick in our hands", anyway? Does it say that men are better because they have... dicks to hold on to? That she doesn't have a dick so she can't join in some literal circle jerk later? It's an expression. Sure, it's "othering" in a sense, but all it really is as an expression of a sentiment of passiveness and inactivity. I think most people have felt passive and complacent at some point.

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