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…
What sorts of guys do you hang out with? I'm not sure how you know that the vast majority of men think that women complaining about being solicited for blowjobs are "being bitchy." That seems like a really jaundiced generalization of men.
It's Different for Girls
201–210 of 400 posts
Re: It's Different for Girls
#202Attractive woman are going to have such problems as a matter of course. Men are attracted to woman primarily based on their looks and confident men are going to act on their desires. If you are an attractive woman and want to do business under such potential circumstance, then your best bet is to try to make yourself look unattractive. You can't have it both ways. You can't lure a client with your looks and then alwa…
>Attractive woman are going to have such problems as a matter of course. Men are attracted to woman primarily based on their looks
People are attracted to all kinds of things. Go out to a big box store in an unfashionable suburb some weekend and look at the couples walking around. It's not as if The Real America is living in a PUA utopia where only attractive people find a mate. All kinds of facial and body types are walking around with each other.
If people can pair with unconventional types, they find them attractive enough. Some people will harass what they find attractive. Therefore some people will harass non-conventionally attractive people.
Which is a long way of saying, by no means will conventionally attractive women be the only ones to find themselves receiving such harassment.
This pretty much defeats the purpose of the rest of your comment.
>and confident men are going to act on their desires.
What do we mean by "act on their desires?"[0] There is enough ambiguity to drive a rather alarming truck through.
[0] http://www.hackcanada.com/canadian/zines/spacemoose/take_bac...
Re: It's Different for Girls
#203She 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…
“This is bullshit. Each one of us is just sitting here with his dick in his hand asking for more money without truly justifying it.” Jason looked nervously at me, wondering how I was going to react. “This is making me very uncomfortable,” I said. “Because I don’t even have a dick to hold.” Without skipping a beat, Brad replied “well if you need a dick to hold you can borrow mine anytime.” What I think Brad did in tha…
I think Brad's comment was rude and the only comeback to lighten the mood would be to ask him to slice and hand his dick over.
but hard to think this way for those not natural at wit.
Re: It's Different for Girls
#204I'm a woman who is new to hacker news. I've been told I have to be on this thing if I ever want to apply for YC. I don't know if I'll ever do that but I don't want to ruin that opportunity. I've been reading through all these comments and a lot of them make me sick to my stomach. Articles that surround women in the work force interest me because my startup is in this space, but at what cost of my sanity do I have to…
I'm very sorry. Many of these comments have made me sick to my stomach, too. And also ashamed. (I'm one of the moderators of HN.)
You don't have to be active on HN to apply for YC. There's a technical requirement to have an account, just because YC's software systems were built that way, but there's definitely no requirement beyond that. I hope you'll participate, but if this has been your introduction to the "community" I can understand why you might not want to.
Re: It's Different for Girls
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
yea, but it did say she was dealing with VCs 10 years ago, so an educated person can make a pretty confident guess.
I hope you can see the racism inherent in your "confident guess". "yea, but it did say she was dealing with [community organizers] 10 years ago, so an educated person can make a pretty confident guess." "yea, but it did say she was dealing with [an H1B immigrant] 10 years ago, so an educated person can make a pretty confident guess."
racism requires the assumption of a power dynamic that subjugates the recipient. eg a white guy being called a cracker doesn't resonate with the kinds of cultural practices of oppression that that using racial slurs against a minority carries. it's disingenuous and completely misses the point to equate racism with any time the concept of race is brought up
Re: It's Different for Girls
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
> straight white men's privilege The article didn't actually include the man's race.
The point is the same though: it's about power and privilege.
I am an individual!
When you equate power and privilege with my appearance and gender, not only do you dehumanize me and treat me like a caricature, but you seem to assume that I hold some sort of power that makes me immune to your hate -- or you just don't care.
Well, I'm not immune, and I'm sick of it, and if anything, I'd like you and people like you to take your message of prejudice somewhere else.
I never graduated high-school, much less from Stanford with a MBA, and as far as I'm aware, I've never even had a meeting with a VC. I guess we all just "look the same" to you.
Re: It's Different for Girls
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but I find Shanley's approach to framing this issue completely the opposite of the OP here. The OP sees the good in good men and lifts them up. The closing point about the joke she shared with her colleagues underlines it: there are people who are unable to laugh off a "dick in your hand" joke regardless of context and who it comes from. Not because of a lack of sense of humor, but because any such joke will b…
I've shown Shanley's post to quite a few women in technology (including some diversity experts) and they all think her concrete suggestions are excellent. [As do I.] So I strongly suggest any guys who really want to help read it and act on the suggestions even if they would prefer a different framing. And specifically, which of her points do you disagree with? Are you saying that men don't need to work with each othe…
I push back hard on the tumblr-ization of language, much as I do with the Luntz-ification of language perpetrated by right wing outlets like Fox News.
Terms like "patriarchy", "privilege", and even "problematic" serve to re-frame the debate in a way that causes many negative consequences. It is pretty much the same tactic used in politics to control the language in order to disarm your opponent before debate even begins.
First, it causes debates on issues to immediately have one side assume the premise. If we are having a discussion about privilege, then I am already conceding that in this instance I had privilege in the first place. Second, it turns small issues between individuals into illustrative examples of a wider power and class struggle, regardless of how appropriate such extrapolations might be. Third, it carves a lens through which all day-to-day human interactions may suddenly become viewed, where innocent actions that normally would have gone unnoticed become immediately magnified into sexist acts because they fit into a pre-conceived mold defined by this language and ideology (lets call it what it is) regardless of context. This is what the OP is talking about. Fourth, these terms provide no way to measure progress, similar to the "War on Terror", the "War on the Patriarchy and White Male Privilege" will never be won since it is by definition immeasurable against an enemy that is a concept. Finally, in this particular case it serves to cause women to see men, all men, as inherently flawed and part of a systemic regime of oppression, and men to see themselves that way too. This is all counterproductive, dare I say, problematic.
Re: It's Different for Girls
#208Was 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).
The bit about her losing interest was clearly without tact. Like asking "are you going to love your baby more than your company?"
However, I think tactfully having and voicing concern of how the pregnancy would affect her job performance in a ceo to investor meeting was valid. I wasn't sure myself, so I did a few google searches and which came up with headlines like "Why 43% of Women With Children Leave Their Jobs, and How to Get Them Back", and the legal right for 3 months of maternity leave in the US. It's perfectly reasonable to wonder what kind of preparation the company has to handle these issues.
Re: It's Different for Girls
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope you can see the racism inherent in your "confident guess". "yea, but it did say she was dealing with [community organizers] 10 years ago, so an educated person can make a pretty confident guess." "yea, but it did say she was dealing with [an H1B immigrant] 10 years ago, so an educated person can make a pretty confident guess."
racism requires the assumption of a power dynamic that subjugates the recipient. eg a white guy being called a cracker doesn't resonate with the kinds of cultural practices of oppression that that using racial slurs against a minority carries. it's disingenuous and completely misses the point to equate racism with any time the concept of race is brought up
Tell me how it's not racist to think that all "white guys" are sitting in the better end of a power dynamic when called "a cracker"?
Subsets of academia focused on "critical race theory" might try to redefine "racism" to suite their specific agenda, but I'm content with the dictionary definition:
"the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races."
Re: It's Different for Girls
#210She 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…
She did not seem to interpret the joke the way in the way that you are doing here. As with most humor, we can assume that a lot of the meaning had to do with tone and body language, and she describes the "borrow mine" comment as something which defused the tension created by an earlier remark.
That's exactly what I found so strange about this article. In his first remark the dick is clearly a figure of speech. In this case it's maybe an unfortunate phrase but it doesn't really exclude people without male genitalia (because it's not really about those).
His second remark, however, is clearly innuendo. And that was described as having diffused the situation. As a reader, the first remark did not affect me, but this second one absolutely does feel weird and inappropriate.
All of which probably illustrates that I lack social awareness, but for some reason I find this example very confusing.