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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#531

Post by danielvaughn »

bastawhiz wrote: post #513
random5634 wrote: post #460

Female founder friend (non tech space) was in a female focused incubator / competition. She got only one set of somewhat critical feedback - ie, lacks experience in X and Y which are key in product space Z. She posted a comment on her social media focusing on this feedback as "criticism" that came from a sexist guy "of course". It was pretty easy to draw the line to the three panelists, one of whom was a guy. Ouch. I…

> lacks experience in X and Y which are key in product space Z. Obviously you didn't post the feedback, but I wonder how this was phrased. If the feedback was "improve X and Y", I think I sympathize with the panelist. The feedback was solicited! If it was framed as "unlikely to succeed because inexperienced in X and Y" then I think that crossed a line from critical feedback to a somewhat demeaning comment, even if it…

There are better and worse ways to communicate, sure. But fundamentally, you cannot control how people interpret the words that you say.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#532

Post by golergka »

awb wrote: post #499
Thorentis wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear of being labeled as a sexist.

It’s probably both. The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism. Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past. For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of…

> The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.

Well, I think that unlike women or bin-binary people, a man wouldn't be able of accusing another man of sexism in his direction.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#533

Post by rowanG077 »

While the article is hyper focused on investor founder relationship I'd wager something similar is happening in many other situations. And not just gender but also race. We have made it so anything negative about someone can be trivially reframed in a sexism, rascism, anyism framework.

This will impact society badly for years or decade to come.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#534

Post by to1y »

godelski wrote: post #526
Thorentis wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear of being labeled as a sexist.

Fear based actions can still be sexist though. We're talking about treating people different based on their sex. Let's draw a parallel. Most people would consider crossing the street because there is a black man walking towards you as a racist action. Sure, not burning a cross in their lawn racist, but racist nonetheless (it's a spectrum). I would argue that people that do this do so because they are afraid of said b…

So you're a sexist if you do, you're a sexist if you don't?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#535

Post by [deleted] »

pm90 wrote: post #524
notsuoh wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But does your social circle not include other female friends that you could discuss the optics of this situation with?" Respectfully, this shouldn't be on the person from whom advice is being sought, but on the asker. "Or better yet, be honest with the female friend that you wanted to advice, pointing out what she had done before and expressing your apprehension in providing critical feedback?" If someone asked me t…

> If someone asked me this, I'd probably think they used hashtags like #redpill or were into bashing Ellen Pao or something. It comes across as, "you can't say anything these days without being offensive, men in tech are soooo mistreated." Interesting. I hesitate to accept your interpretation as the universal one, because my experience has been that there are ways to express these concerns without coming off as a big…

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#536

Post by awb »

julianmarq wrote: post #510
awb wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably both. The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism. Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past. For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of…

I don't know the solution to this problem, but I do think that turning it into a Morton's fork ("men are sexist regardless of whether they speak or not") is not it. Instead of playing semantics by saying that "it is technically sexism" (and I'm not saying I agree with whether it actually is or not), we could choose to at least stop phrasing the situation like that.

You’re not sexist if you give honest feedback to both genders. But you are at risk of being falsely labeled sexist if you do. It’s a bad situation I agree, but we won’t fix it by giving into the fear of being labeled.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#537

Post by zenexer »

> I’m not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men clamming up. This is more of a public service announcement than anything else.

Is there a solution, though? How do we work around this?

I think most of us would like to reach a point where none of this is a concern, and we can just get on with working—yet the prospect of a future without sexism almost seems hopelessly optimistic.

Is this just one of those problems that cannot be solved in a single lifetime? Humanity seems perfectly capable of acknowledging its faults, yet it seems entirely incapable of fixing them. Our status page is always set to “Under Maintenance.”

When we encounter technical barriers, we’re good at overcoming them. Recent events have shown that we’re able to overcome medical hurdles in a manner that our ancestors would have deemed impossible. When will we be able to do the same for social issues?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#538

Post by awb »

golergka wrote: post #532
awb wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably both. The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism. Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past. For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of…

> The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism. Well, I think that unlike women or bin-binary people, a man wouldn't be able of accusing another man of sexism in his direction.

You can accuse people of anything. I think maybe what you’re saying is that a man accusing another man of being sexist against men would be far less believable.

Regardless, we’re talking about social judgements. In a legal setting the burden of proof would be on the accuser.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#539

Post by herval »

dkersten wrote: post #520
kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #259

I had an experience at work where a coworker (who is black) shared his experience of being told to "stay in his lane" early on in his career. The insinuation was of course racism, he didn't mention it but it was obvious. Then I and someone else (who are white) shared our exact same experiences. He told me he felt cut off, etc, even though we were sharing the same experience. If we had something similar happen, how ca…

As a non-minority person, I often see people just being assholes. For example, some dominating dude who talks over everyone, who ignores others input, who takes credit for everything, etc. As a white male, when I encounter that behavior, I think to myself, wow, that guy is a fucking asshole. However, and I have experienced this, people who are in a minority often take it personally, that they're an asshole to them ,…

Why would you say something to defend the asshole? In your example, you interpreted the same - the guy was an asshole. Why give them a pass?

In most cases I hear of people that claim they’re afraid of giving “candid feedback” to a minority, it’s almost always the case that the person is an asshole when giving feedback IN GENERAL as well. Maybe evaluating your general behavior first, before going all scared of this or that minority group, would be much more productive? The net result is almost always positive.

Edit: I interpreted this as you having been witnessed situations where you felt someone was an asshole, and someone else did too but ascribed it to sexist or targeted. Apologies for the non-fluency.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#540

Post by jfim »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #430

The other day, I was in a Zoom meeting with another man and a woman. The call had too much latency, and the conversation was a tad heated, so we were all interrupting each other to some extent—but I noticed halfway through that I was interrupting the woman more, and she was speaking the least. Just like in all the research. While I certainly didn't go silent for the rest of the meeting, I made a concerted effort to l…

In general, on a high latency call, if you find yourself interrupting someone, you can just "pass the mike" back to them once you're done.

A simple "Sorry , I cut you off, you were saying?" does wonders and makes it clear to everyone that the next person who should be speaking was the one who got interrupted.

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