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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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641–650 of 1001 posts

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#641
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I disagree. Effective communication requires effort, but many people speak impulsively and fail to convey what they actually mean. If someone is unable to clearly express themselves without being misunderstood then either their thoughts need to be distilled further or the statement needs to be carefully worded. If I am not responsible for how people interpret my words, who is?

Your comment only works if it’s possible to construct your words so precisely that there is no way to misinterpret them. You honestly believe that’s possible?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#642
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I disagree. Effective communication requires effort, but many people speak impulsively and fail to convey what they actually mean. If someone is unable to clearly express themselves without being misunderstood then either their thoughts need to be distilled further or the statement needs to be carefully worded. If I am not responsible for how people interpret my words, who is?

The other party. You can't fix broken people.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#644

I think fear is making people in general just clam up. Anything you say can be taken as offensive and the crowds bay for blood.

Ironic that all these platforms that have democratised global communication mean only the deranged or the righteous say anything.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw some improvement in the Netflix movies getting less extreme over time. Emily in Paris was the first movie where the woke Netflix made fun of itself using French people / culture as props. Disney and Netflix had to lose billions of dollars to understand that the loudest voices may not represent the majority of the people.

Can you be more specific about what happened with Disney?

There's a small cottage industry of Youtubers making up "fake" news about how Star Wars movies and Star Trek shows are all getting cancelled and going out of business for "being too woke" and losing the audience. These Youtubers invent secret inside scoops about how the executives at Disney and other companies are constantly in turmoil and losing money.

My guess is the person you replied to doesn't realize these shows are fiction and doesn't' realize he or she is in a information bubble. However I know nothing about that poster so could easily be mistaken.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#646
This article is really only the tip of the iceberg. If you're a man in a position of authority, and you're worried about the consequences of you or anybody in your team accidentally stepping on a "diversity" land mine, what's the best way to avoid the problem? Don't hire any women in the first place. You may get some shit from HR for not meeting your diversity targets, but the calculus is increasingly starting to tilt towards this being the lesser evil -- unless you're a talented woman who doesn't get hired because of it, that is.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#647
As a serial entrepreneur, I think the value of "advice" is overstated. Just go out there and build and fail and listen to customers and iterate. Most people don't know what they're talking about, it's just men are more self-confident in sharing. Elon is not where he is today because he listened to advice. If we want to improve the situation the article addresses, we need more women in executive and VC roles.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#648

A female founder acquaintance of mine (who's quite smart and capable) went on a Twitter screed a couple weeks ago. As it turns out, someone else had copied her idea, and her startup now had a competitor. The competitor was also able to raise a solid amount of money despite her being first to market and her having more relevant knowledge of the problem space (by her own estimation). So, this scenario isn't exactly unc…

I remember some comedian pointing out, racism (sexism in this case) drives people crazy. Because it's subtle. Very rarely are people nowadays blatantly racist/sexist, because they get called out for it. But imagine that every time you have an 'off' experience with someone, you end up wondering whether your race or sex had something to do with it. It only takes a couple instances of finding out that that 'off' feeling…

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#649

I'm glad to see this here. I think people in general do not pay much attention to externalities. I wish to see people take a more holistic/deontological view of the fight for equality across all mankind (shit, is that a microaggression? personkind?). I'm not convinced that this over-correction ISN'T net positive either, but there is an ingrained assumption in the zeitgeist that it is a pure fight for a better world f…

Something I've said before: believing that you are a good person is dangerous, because it makes you likely to assume that what you're doing is also good just because you have good intent.

It's better to focus on trying to do good, to keep learning and adjusting.

"who would willingly attack themselves to prevent their own abuse of the power they've newly gained? Only a rare few, I doubt that will change."

Of relevance - the "least privilege principle" in computer security involves designing the system to prevent itself from doing anything which it isn't outright required to do. It involves the host of a service to even lock themselves out of as much potential access as possible (for example via end-to-end encryption).

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#650
post #499

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…

No, men are (correctly, IMO), assessing the general public's level of sexism.

Even if the gender of the accuser has no effect on the probability of the person accusing someone of sexism, it has a massive effect on the probability that such accusations are believed and weaponised by the public / mainstream media.

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