441–450 of 1001 posts
For candor, reduce the risk of blow back by giving the advice in person or over the phone. California law is very strict in recording conversations. Yes, a guy could screw it up and say something potentially sexist or just dumb — but for success what someone is doing wrong needs to be expressed.
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…
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…
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…
But this isn't the idea at all, right? Rather, everyone seems to agree it's relatively rare, but that it's such a massively negative experience when it does happen that it tanks the expected value anyway.
Maybe the investors shouldn't be such fucking cowards? Unless you have a long, storied history of being a sexist piece of shit, you should have no fear of being "me too"'d over the scenario presented in the article's intro. And seriously, why should I believe any of this? Sorry, but the article reads as feminist-boogeyman porn for insecure male investors.
Perhaps they are bitter about lacking the gumption to handle such situations professionally and ethically? Perhaps they avoid any and all critical conversations with the people they work with? Enjoy watching all of your ventures fail!
Or maybe it's: conducting themselves like professionals while concealing their sexism just breaks their poor rich brains.
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…
I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot. I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years ago. I believe Northern Europe has been trending slowly towards gender equality since the 90s, and thus the amount of overshoot here is much less from the rece…
this is the way
>Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus[27] as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.
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…
> Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities Yes, and almost none of the people founding startups in Silicon Valley are oppressed by any reasonable understanding that concept.
I’ve never understood why they are so desperate to be oppressed that they have to invent new categories to be part of then claim to be oppressed when literally no one even knows what they are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not at all the way I interpret the article. The author empathizes with the male investors, and justifies their behaviour. If anything, she's blaming society, not men.
The author literally calls it "the problem of men clamming up." Empathy or not, they're saying the problem is male behavior. This could be framed as "the problem of taking grievances to the mob" or "the problem of overattributing behavior" or anything that puts responsibility for change on some group other than men, but it does not. Whether they're to blame or not, men are the ones behaving incorrectly.
Even when phrased that way, I don't perceive that the author is _blaming_ men. The author is critical of the mob, and the dangers of being incorrectly perceived as sexist and ruining one's reputation. You may insist on your interpretation, and fixate your attention on a couple of sentences that ring the wrong way to you, but I think you are missing out on the nuance.
I am so thankful to work in an environment where everyone is just... normal. We don't have to walk on egg shells when speaking. Men and women can still interact like it was before I started reading about such insanity.
"Just be cool" is not a strategy.
Creating a throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm not an investor but someone who is in a position to make key decisions about peoples' careers and give advice, and I do have a bit of a trick I use for this. There was one black female mentee who I noticed was timid in taking credit for her work. I had recently attended a diversity panel where someone in a similar role as me said that in a similar situation, and her advic…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky because the media makes it seem like there are murderers lurking around every corner." They're called cars. Houses are packed tighter and there's more cars per household than when I was growing up (maybe due to everyone being double income now). Streets are also narrower and most have street parking, creating visibility issues. Go…
Honestly, this is pretty trivially avoided. My parents drilled it into my head to look both ways before going into a street. I always look ways before going into the street. It's really not difficult.
We live a block from the playground, close enough that I can almost see it from our window, but you can't get there without crossing the street. So our kids (7y, 5y) can only go there with a grown up. I've worked on teaching them how to cross the street safely, but they're just not good enough at checking for cars yet.