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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#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 getting in any actual trouble if I say or do something wrong, it's just that I'm generally already somewhat anxious about how I behave around others and this has made me extremely aware of any time I might be too harsh, not really listen to someone, etc., that I've probably gotten overly sensitive.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#52
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tried to be clever and it backfired :-) What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more assertive"/"don't be afraid of taking credit for your work"?

> What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more assertive"/"don't be afraid of taking credit for your work"? I don't see those as useful since it doesn't provide the person any actual guidance or reference point. What does assertive mean? What should I exactly do? How do I do it? "Act like X" provides a well known reference point that they can use to adjust their behavior based on. They can remember all the times they'v…

That's hilarious.

If you want to make it super explicit, come up with examples. "Be bolder, for example for this project I saw you doing 80% of the work, you should get to headline the presentation and have top billing on the authors page".

"Act like X" is also potentially useful, if you make it explicit. Explicit is not "Act like a white man" (whaaaa?). Explicit: is "Act like Bob, for example do you remember when HR said he couldn't have a new screen and he insisted"?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#53

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…

I'm not saying what she did is right, but you unnecessarily brought in race into a situation that could easily have been handled without race.

> I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work

Could easily be followed up with actionable items to take credit for her work: do a company/department wide presentation for instance. Instead you gave her vague non-advice. I'm a white man and I have no idea what a white man would do because I know a ton of different white men who would all do very different things.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#54
post #43

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…

Now you know how the other side felt all along :). Seriously, we are now asked to treat everyone with respect and that is a problem? Edit: No I don't mean eye for eye. I am merely pointing out, this is a male dominant industry where women didn't even have a chance for a long time. The moment we face little uneasiness, we are complaining and throwing temper tantrums.

No, that's not the problem. It's that offense is easy to take at anything and companies erring on the side of caution will prefer to get rid so they appear to be doing something. Whether it is right or not doesn't matter by the time the truth is out the actions have been taken.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#55

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…

Document the hostile work environment in a journal, look for new positions, and quit when it becomes too much of a threat to your wellbeing. If you decide to quit or get fired, use your documentation of the environment as a basis for filing for unemployment benefits or if it merits it, higher levels of complaint/compensation.

The "progressive" cause is just as capable of doing wrong as the "conservative" cause; there is this general perception that being "woke" is the moral high ground and if you're against the "conservative" people who are jerks then you and your peers do no wrong.

In fact it seems like the conservative jerks and the "woke" jerks are doing the exact same thing - abusing groups of peoples and behaviors in order to show off their moral superiority.

A bunch of young people in the past generations left the church because they saw church people hating on folks who didn't fit their definition of "good people" and saw that definition distorted into abusing folks that deserved to be who they were. The exact same behaviors are showing up and getting stronger in the "woke" community, just with different targets. I'm still waiting for the popular backlash against the "woke" agenda - probably just the next generation of kids rebelling against their parents' ideals.

I have a target on my back too and occasionally am treated like a predator, but I also have the privilege that though it isn't harmless to me, I usually have the ability to get up and exit the situation treating me poorly. This is what everybody should try to cultivate - the freedom to quit a bad situation and not be a slave to a particular job, group of people, life plan, etc. When you can say "I would like to do this but I have other options" then it becomes a whole lot harder to be abused because when bad things happen you can just say goodbye.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#56

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…

Funny I work in a similar workplace and don't find that "all men" are vilified, or that being conscientious about the impact my words and actions have on marginalized people has any negative impact on my behavior. Maybe it's a you problem

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#58

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…

I think the learning for you should be: don’t repeat other people’s words without understanding what they are supposed to mean, what’s the context, what’s the reasoning behind them. I would say that a proper answer to _”What do you mean?”_ (or even better, a well communicated preamble before the phrase) would pass the right message and not sound ofensive.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#59

This is a really great piece. While it's unfortunate this phenomenon occurs, in a way it's also an opportunity for the many talented female VCs in the industry. I hope they capitalize on it!

I’ve seen professional women get negative feedback when they favored a qualified man over a slightly less qualified woman. I can imagine a female VC would be under the same pressure to remain silent lest they be lit up on Twitter for being female and yet still sexist.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#60
post #42
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there's going to be a calibration period. The pendulum was stuck, it's started swinging, and the first few swings are completely out of whack. We'll get there, eventually.

There's no reason to assume that. The system could be destabilized because while a pendulum with two sides has a stable a world with many many competing interests and nonlinear feedback systems might not.

Thankfully for us, men, apparently we're about 50% of the population and you know, traditionally, we've held 99% of the power in the world.

I'm not super worried that we'll be crushed under a matriarchy. Heck, in some regards a matriarchy might be a bit gentler than a patriarchy :-)

Edit: I seem to have touched a nerve, a lot of weak/sensitive men around here, it seems.

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