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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#351

This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky becaus…

It's a sort of similar to the prisoner's dilemma. It's hard to keep a community cooperative when there are defectors about and our impression of how likely others are to defect on us influences how willing we are to cooperate.

That's why you see people looking for smaller, more trust-bound online communities to associate with.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#352
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah because you can't talk about this stuff openly without getting cancelled, unless you aren't white or male.

> unless you aren't white or male. Kind of says something when this is seen as an exceptional case, given that a significant majority of people aren't white men...

Whites are about 70% of American, and half of those are men, so in American, yeah they are. This is an American site, and the context of these conversations are America, so there's nothing exceptional about this.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#353

Anecdotal but my office is ultra -woke. There are endless internal emails about whatever-week, or veterans-this, or LBGTQ+-that etc etc. People have been hounded out and either quit or been fired for fairly minor "infractions" of the groupthink (...and also some people have rightly been fired for actual inappropriate behaviour). And guess what all this talk about "toxic masculinity" and generally vilifying all men le…

I utterly adore that my workplace has a strict ban on using any company resources such as the email system for non-work related business. The one time in eight years someone sent a political email they were formally reprimanded.

This is more common than not in traditional enterprises and businesses. It feels like a unique trait of the Silicon Valley bubble (and places testing to emulate it).

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#354
post #266
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy Wouldn't someone talking to someone "lower" on the "oppression hierarchy" just be what we basically have today? That sounds like "privilege," or an "imbalanced power dynamic." I think you'll only be able to talk to equals, whatever that is, and by whatever metric is en vogue for that day.

I do some work with HIV prevention. Sometimes I give talks where I'm very blunt about the realities of HIV among men who have sex with men. I've watched people immediately shift from mild hostility and discomfort to wholehearted acceptance of what I am saying, when I tell them I'm gay myself. In that circumstance, I think it is clear that my sexual orientation is the basis by which they are judging the authoritativen…

Interesting, can you give an example of a fact that is initially resisted but is then accepted when you provide additional personal experience.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#355
post #156

This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky becaus…

> people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy This supposed hierarchy of oppression, based on identity characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality, really is the biggest scam going. Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet, identarians insist on shoehorning everything into their flawed worldview. The Black L…

[flagged]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#356

I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…

People can make up whatever motivation they want if they feel slighted. All it takes is for the female founder to ascribe sexism to the VC when he suggests swapping CEOs, and you've got the entire media circus on your neck. And then people stop being rational actors when mob mentality kicks in.

Well if that was the case where are all the horror stories? With the acceptance rates of startups at VC pitches etc., shouldn't we be expecting a lot of VCs being hounded with allegations of sexism and the media circus going amok? How is YC still in business given their acceptance rates?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#357
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Think about what a white man would do" seems completely ambiguous to me. It's not a clear way to communicate. It would be better to follow up "I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work" with specific examples of what she might be able to say. Or you could give examples of behavior that people she knows have exhibited. Even if "what a white man would do" wasn't emotionally charged (and it is), it's not a g…

No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous? How could you possibly interpret it in any other way than 'be more confident/less hesitant in taking credit'?

> No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous?

That it is unclear is obvious in that the person using the stereotype couldn't identify the concrete, actionable behavior they intended to encourage when directly questioned.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#358

I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…

Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy, American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in your case German) discussions and experiences from American ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc. It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow non-Americans), they talk about American topi…

Sometimes an outsiders perspective asks the right question. The parent simply asked why candor and sexism appear to be conflated.

    Curious conversation is good
BTW, the roots of the US is from a cultural melting pot.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#359
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, good people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. But the social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear of first dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how women have to treat men on their day to day. I've yet to encounter a woman who has gone from internalizing this aspect of society to dropping their priors and living care free without…

>Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, good people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. But the social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear of first dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how women have to treat men on their day to day. I've yet to encounter a woman who has gone from internalizing this aspect of society to dropping their priors and living care free withou…

I caveated decades with "at least", not because I think that things were going swimmingly in the 1800s or earlier but more around when women attained more freedom in society to associate with who they wish by their choice than in the authoritarian sense of the older patriarchal societies. I'm referring to the choice aspect of ones own actions, not just the historical context.

I do not subscribe to the belief that patriarchy is biological because there is numerous empirical examples of historical matriarchal societies in places such as South America, Asia, Native American Hopi tribe, Celtic society, Germany and Estonia including in the recorded history of my own non-American society.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#360
post #283
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy This supposed hierarchy of oppression, based on identity characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality, really is the biggest scam going. Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet, identarians insist on shoehorning everything into their flawed worldview. The Black L…

But the Black Lives Matter movement never proclaimed that police brutality only applies to Black people.

Yes they did. And they actively targeted people who stood up for Asian lives or "All Lives Matter"
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