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Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

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Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#71

Post by potatolicious »

hueving wrote: post #70
potatolicious wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Slut" is a derogatory term, it has connotations and meanings well beyond the most literal definition of "promiscuous person". Calling Tinder user "sluts" is no more appropriate than calling my Chinese users "chinks", or my gay users "faggots". It seems intentionally obtuse to pretend that the term doesn't have a gigantic truckload of derogatory connotations behind it.

What are the negative connotations? I thought the only reason it was considered a bad term was purely because it was considered bad 60 years ago for a woman to be promiscuous. I.e. The insult was calling them promiscuous.

The same negative connotation of "faggot" and "chink" - i.e., that being promiscuous/Chinese/gay/etc is intrinsically bad.

I can't speak for the whole world, but in North America at least I've never seen the word "slut" used in everyday speech that wasn't intended to be derogatory.

Side note: "purely because it was considered bad 60 years ago for a woman to be promiscuous"

I don't think that's 60 years ago, I'm pretty sure that's still today. Maybe not as bad, but the general perception of promiscuous women is still deeply negative.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#72

Post by dang »

robg wrote: post #62
dang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the "extract alternative title from URL" trick. My title fu is failing me, though. Is this one really better?

I think so, it's certainly more descriptive of what's contained therein. EDIT: The generic "women" in the current title is certainly more misleading and may be contributing to the penalty being assessed by those who haven't read the piece. The article only discusses one woman.

Ok, we changed it (from "The Truth About Tinder and Women").

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#73

Post by joe_the_user »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #61
rayiner wrote: post #7

The "Tinderslut"[1] comment says a lot about how Rad and Mateen view the women who use their app. It's consistent with Wolfe's claim in her complaint that Mateen told her it would be "slutty" to be a female Tinder co-founder, because it was an app people used to hook up. As an aside, Mateen exhibits the textbook Madonna-whore dichotomy. To him, women are either someone he can see being a wife (Wolfe pre-breakup), or…

> says a lot about how Rad and Mateen view the women who use their app // Isn't the point of the app to enable promiscuity. "Slut" is a word for a promiscuous woman, sometimes used for a prostitute, sometimes used of men (in UK at least). Surely they viewed the women who use the app as wanting to have free and easy sexual encounters, ie behave like sluts? When the slang that associated their app with the actions of t…

"Slut" is generally considered a derogatory term.

I think it is sometimes, maybe, possible to use this kind of term in a way that communicates a positive "no apologies" attitude. However, I think a speaker has to go to some lengths if this use is going to be convincing. Especially, it's a lot easier for people denigrated by a term to convincingly use it in a way that show non-derogatory attitude - contrast a ghetto black person using the N word versus a middle class Southern white person using the same word.

And there is a double standard in the US, where only a promiscuous woman gets called a slut. Someone might turn that around but that person would to do a lot of work to show they were sincere.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#74

Post by michaelochurch »

jessaustin wrote: post #53
michaelochurch wrote: post #41

What seems like a side story is actually, I think, quite indicative. Tinder isn't a real startup, but a manufactured success for a couple of well-connected douchebags (who behave as if they're above the law). It's the Disneypreneur phenomenon ( http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/silicon-valle... ). If you look into it, both of these guys are invaders from the MBA culture. These phony startups, that are ac…

Can you provide other examples of this phenomenon?

Snapchat and Clinkle.

Evan Spiegel should have been fired after the frat emails surfaced. As for Clinkle, that's been around for years and hasn't produced jack shit because it's not even a real company-- just a scam.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#75

Post by mwetzler »

surprised12 wrote: post #38

Hmmm so i wondered if this reporter went through many other successful start-up guys in their early to mid 20s (even late 20s) instragram and twitter feeds would he find similar stuff? Their actions aren't right, but they are not surprising based on age and level of success.

Misogyny is pretty ubiquitous in the current state of the world. Most people get away with it under the "that's just the way boys are" blanket of protection you just mentioned.

It's unfortunate that it takes a case like this for people to question if slutshaming is accetable behavior.

It's very brave of her to file the lawsuit. Whatever shitparade the other founders and dealing with, I'm sure hers is ten times worse.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#76

Post by jlees »

jedanbik wrote: post #64
protonfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt having an "anti-fraternization" policy in your handbook will do anything prevent sexist harassment.

It's better than nothing. It's better than literally nothing.

Is it? Legality aside, if you define the limits of unacceptable behaviour then you're also saying that anything outside that is acceptable. If you hire decent human beings, hopefully your team can use their judgement and empathy to tell whether something's OK or not, rather than "S/he shouldn't have been offended, I wasn't breaching the rules laid down in the HR handbook! Grow a pair!"

(On the flipside, if you hire decent human beings then nobody's going to be looking in the HR handbook to determine how far they can push harassment without being fired anyway.)

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#77

Post by jlees »

bearnun wrote: post #55

There is something interesting about the fact that conversation is, again, revolving around the men in this scenario instead of the woman. Just an observation. EDIT: Referencing top comments.

The article does as well. In this case, I suppose the heart of the story is about how douchebaggy the guys are -- there seems to be no question that Wolfe deserves credit for what she's done, but since she declined to comment, we only have the actions of the men involved to work from.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#78

Post by nostrademons »

michaelochurch wrote: post #74
jessaustin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide other examples of this phenomenon?

Snapchat and Clinkle. Evan Spiegel should have been fired after the frat emails surfaced. As for Clinkle, that's been around for years and hasn't produced jack shit because it's not even a real company-- just a scam.

Also Xobni, Webvan, Color, Cuil, Digg.

However, I'd say that all these examples basically disprove your theory about them making it harder for "real" startups to compete. Webvan flamed out miserably, but that didn't stop Peapod (and now Instacart, Google Shopping Express, and Amazon Prime) from taking off. SnapChat didn't exactly hurt WhatsApp's chances. Cuil has had a negligible impact on DuckDuckGo - it just flamed out, pivoted beyond recognition, died, and the founder went back to her job at Google. Digg's death throes proved a huge boon for Reddit, and their audience started increasing massively.

As a startup founder, you are best off just ignoring the well-funded competitor who's doing everything wrong. Let them pave the path, legitimize the marketplace, pump millions of dollars in ad spending into the noosphere - and then quietly save your cash, talk to real customers, build the product that people actually want, and provide a breath of fresh air for the people that were burned by your celebrity dunce competitor.

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#79

Post by bootload »

hueving wrote: post #70
potatolicious wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Slut" is a derogatory term, it has connotations and meanings well beyond the most literal definition of "promiscuous person". Calling Tinder user "sluts" is no more appropriate than calling my Chinese users "chinks", or my gay users "faggots". It seems intentionally obtuse to pretend that the term doesn't have a gigantic truckload of derogatory connotations behind it.

What are the negative connotations? I thought the only reason it was considered a bad term was purely because it was considered bad 60 years ago for a woman to be promiscuous. I.e. The insult was calling them promiscuous.

"... What are the negative connotations? ..."

Shame ~ http://www.psychologytoday.com/search/query?keys=shame&x=0&y...

Re: Tinder's Forgotten Woman: Whitney Wolfe, Sexism, and Startup Creation Myths

#80

Post by coryl »

bigdubs wrote: post #18
WoodenChair wrote: post #15

While the allegations are shocking, it was irresponsible for the journalist to add the little bit in the very last paragraph on the third page about one of the founder's former startups having an FBI investigation as a kind of final pot-shot. How was that relevant to the thrust of the rest of the article? What did it add? Was it fair to include it without elaborating?

I was struck by that too, the "I wasn't going to mention this before, but now, here it is." nature of it was strange.

Modern journalism isn't really even journalism anymore, its more like blogging. Publish whatever it takes to get the most attention.
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