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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

femfosec.com

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#471

Post by dang »

wontendwell wrote: post #324
hobs wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your methods and conclusions make no sense - associating with women doesn't get you canceled, Kevin Spacey didn't molest any women as far as I know. Smugness makes no sense when what it appears is you have some deep rooted psychological issues that need addressing.

I am going to be honest and admit I have a problem with women also and would much prefer to work only with other men. In addition, I lament that it is iillegal for men to have their own organizations of any kind. It is not legal for men to have their own clubs or organizations in the Western world. It is illegal for men, and particularly white men, to self select and self organize. This is a factual statement. I do w…

I've banned this account. Laments for the absence of white-men clubs? No.

Creating accounts to post like this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#472

Post by julianmarq »

oirjjlksjmfljaj wrote: post #323

There's a rhetorical pattern I see in many articles, this one included, that perpetuates the issue this article is trying to address: men are the problem. Before, it was men saying bad things. Now, it's that men aren't saying things at all. "I’m not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men clamming up." If not, then perhaps that's the wrong problem statement, and solutions will become more readily obvious an…

Agreed, I'm definitely not comfortable with her phrasing in several sections of the article, and it clearly has an impact since some people are saying that this behavior is also male sexism.

The author is, perhaps inadvertently, contributing to the problem.

BTW, yeah, this is one of my alt accounts.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#473

Post by ambicapter »

TameAntelope wrote: post #454

What do people think of the idea that this is a cost worth paying? The transaction is, "sometimes less candor" for, "oftentimes less discrimination". I think it's true and fair to say that caring more about how people are perceiving you results in drawbacks, and the world we live in where people do watch how their actions effect others isn't a perfect, problem-free world. It makes intuitive sense to me that sometimes…

The way I read the article, the majority of the cost is not on those "already at the top". Its on the women founders who are trying to make it.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#474

Post by christefano »

“One worrying trend I’ve observed among my male investor friends is that they’re much more wary of giving candid advice to women founders than they used to be. They are afraid of saying anything that a female founder might misinterpret as sexism. So, when giving feedback to a woman they don’t know well enough to trust, they talk with less candor than they would with a male founder.¹ When this happens, women are missing out on potentially valuable advice.”

Oh. My. God. Just ask the person if they want your advice.

It’s the same in the (presumably male-dominated) workplace as it is in anywhere, such as giving unsolicited advice to someone at the (usually male-dominated) rock gym.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#475

Post by maxerickson »

flumpcakes wrote: post #455
maxerickson wrote: post #207

The structural sexism in this story is arguably the investor choosing to spare himself the minor risk to reputation, the assumption that the CEO isn't likely enough to listen to the advice fairly for it to be worth giving. (it's not at all a given that the situation would blow up in his face…)

> (it's not at all a given that the situation would blow up in his face…) The article was talking about risk. Risk isn't binary, if it was then there wouldn't be a risk... > minor risk to reputation I think the article, and at least from some candid comments in this thread, indicate that people perceive this risk as much more than minor. Almost as if not being labeled a racist or sexist or homophobic (founded or not)…

Right, they are cowards that put their perception of some risk ahead of doing the right thing, and they only act like that when they deal with women.

Like what do they do if a man falsely accuses them of some trespass?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#476

Post by nwallin »

akudha wrote: post #403
ta-ffsmcu wrote: post #51

I can see this happening with myself (male, for the record). I'm usually someone who gives feedback quite frankly, am more critical of others' (and my own) work than average, etc. Over recent years I've read so much about women being passed over, cut off, terms like "microaggressions", women getting less talking time in meetings, etc., that's it's made me extremely self conscious. It's not even that I'm afraid of get…

I feel the same way. A lot of the emphasis is placed on the words and not enough on the context, intent behind those words (by everyone, not specific to male or female or any other group here). People have learned to keep quiet. And when they do speak, they use highly polished, politically correct language (silly example - first time my manager said he is taking a "bio break", I was confused. Took me a second to unde…

> Some comedian (forgot who it was) mentioned that they don't like performing in colleges anymore

Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have stated that they are not willing to perform at colleges. There are probably more, but with smaller names.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#477

Post by throwaway113421 »

It seems as if there's an idea that if we install women in corporate leadership skills we'll get better corporate governance overall. In my experience women's ego can be just as fragile as men's. And guaranteed corporate governance is not necessarily true.

One company I worked for ended up being no different than the good-ol-boy system, except all the men were women -- looking out and protecting each other, figuring out how to screw with employee's yearly reviews in order to game the system for the cabal of women leaders. This was getting to the point that the management chain was vacationing with each other in the south of France.

In one particularly painful case, they celebrated a big cloud move to AWS with T-shirts. The devops engineers who did all the painful up front work to make it happen got t-shirts. When the devops team completely turned over, they left the t-shirts hanging in their cubicles.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#478

Post by mcguire »

idyio wrote: post #156
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #17

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…

"Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. ... The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in society, but it doesn't just apply to black people. It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. Just look at how they treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so on, regardless of race."

You're not wrong about that. But many people face further oppression based on their race, gender, and sexuality, in addition to wealth and class.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#479

Post by sneak »

rocqua wrote: post #362
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #17

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…

One explanation here is certainly the media being sensationalist for sensation's sake. An alternative is that some in media might think the crackdown on sexism is bad. Hence they focus on the bad effects. Whether this is explicit propaganda or honest reporting on what they consider the more important issue almost seems like a semantic question. I suspect both elements play a role. How big a role I have little idea.

> One explanation here is certainly the media being sensationalist for sensation's sake.

Sadly I think it may be for profits, for survival's sake. The media business is very different now than it was pre-Zuckerberg.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#480

Post by igorkraw »

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #443
igorkraw wrote: post #223

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…

> "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. 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.

Thanks for pointing that out, good point. I'll actually need to think about this aspect a bit more. It still seems like the fear is more clamming than the thing being feared
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