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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#61
post #34

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…

"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…

I think it's not a useful exercise to come up with a better phrasing of the advice, as that's not really the point here. When you're in the moment reacting to peoples' questions and giving advice on the spot, you don't have time to wordcraft your speech like this. You'd still mess up once in a while.

Look at how often people tweak, clarify, and edit their comments even here on hacker news. So you'll probably just end up with "stifled" advice (using the terminology from the article), as you can see with all these suggestions in this thread.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#62
post #25

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 you learned the wrong trick. The "trick" is to not have a trick. Use mature, respectful language and not echo the divisive political language wielded by activists.

Exactly. There is no need to inject identity politics when you just need to tell someone that they need to make sure to take credit for their work. If you inject identity politics into a situation, you are taking a risk. Going into identity politics when there is no need to just comes across as someone being a vain moralist.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#63
post #37

My first take on the article is that the author overestimates the impact and even the causality of an investor giving founders advice to swipe roles. It makes it sound simple and so reduced that to turn a company around is just having founders swiping roles. But that’s beside the point of the article. Ultimately I think it’s on men to learn how to handle giving candid advice in a non-sexist manner. This investor just…

You can’t control how a recipient will receive advice and how they may choose to twist/change it.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#64
post #34

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…

"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'?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#65
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>men erring on the side of protecting themselves and not wanting to take risks to engage with me meaningfully Do you believe that people should take potentially career-ending risks to benefit you?

I don't understand how you ended up with such an interpretation of what she said. As I understand it, she's saying that the current "politically correct" environment is hurting women more than it helps.

edit: removing my comment as this seems to be an uncharitable reading.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#66

Reminds me of the phenomenon recorded of men avoiding women after the original #metoo thing. Part of this is that I think that men feel they are walking on egg shells. The kinds of male assertiveness that my wife found attractive when she met me also can leave women who aren't into this assertiveness feeling harassed. I feel that we need to be clear more about what is "desirable" masculinity it "desirable assertivene…

I'll probably get downvoted for this but I think desirable vs toxic masculinity tends to depend on whether the woman in question finds the man in question attractive.

Lookism is the final -ism that lacks a social justice movement. Incels and disfigured people are the closest thing to the "underclass" of physical attractiveness.

Yes, many time the distinction in the margins between toxic and desirable masculinity is partially based on the attractiveness of the person in question.

For what it's worth - men and women are equally bad in regards to lookism. I think we need to simply start explicitly saying that we shouldn't discriminate because someone is ugly. If RMS were as attractive as Micheal foucault, he wouldn't get in trouble for those age of consent beliefs (foucault, an attractive leftist, famously defended lowering the age of consent)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_...

No one wants to cancel foucault because him and other french post modernists are the intellectual foundation for today's "wokeism"

A lot of the double standard is due to RMS being fat and ugly. No other explanation.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#67
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.

You wrote 2 sentences and still managed to contradict yourself.

Either parent and 'other side' have been both victimised (by him now knowing how they felt) or parent isn't a victim but since you claim he is experiancing what 'the other side' did neither were they.

Maybe try listening for a change.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#68
post #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

It's his "lived experience", so you should respect that.

I'm only half joking...

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#69
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.

Every sense of morality transformed into abuse has at least some basis in what would be called real objective good.

You cannot simplify the problems of "woke culture" as "asking everyone to treat others with respect", because that is not what is happening on the dark side of "woke" and you can't pretend that the dark side doesn't exist.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#70

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…

Care to define what those "fairly minor infractions of the groupthink" were?

With respect, and I'm not saying this is you, but often I've heard that type of line - and then when you get into the detail, the firing was an obvious correct decision.

Edit: lol @ the downvotes, you can k!ss my @ss. Glad to have you here as I guess you were rejected from Parler.

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