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…
I've had similar a few times. The most illogical was had a sales person (female) telling me (male) about how girls cant get ahead in the company, naturally in context to themselves. I asked them what their boss was (female) and their bosses boss (female) and til a few months before, their bosses bosses boss (was female and recently changed to male). Was not a happy look I received. And 100% there is sexism/racism in…
Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
791–800 of 1001 posts
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#792This reminds me of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I have to wonder how she may have received criticism of her ideas if there was a baseline of equality of ideas from men and women. Basically, to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective. It would be a bridge too far to link it to the cheating.
> to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective So, one important criticism of Theranos, which was made at various points starting very early on, was this: "If a substance is present in the patient's bloodstream, you still won't be able to detect it unless it is also present in the blood sample…
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#793Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective So, one important criticism of Theranos, which was made at various points starting very early on, was this: "If a substance is present in the patient's bloodstream, you still won't be able to detect it unless it is also present in the blood sample…
“Theranos wouldn’t have gotten away with it if she hadn’t been attractive” is also some form of weird sexism - said slick conMEN don’t exist or something.
But secretly sleeping with and living with one of her male investors likely was a factor in this debacle dragging on as long as it did and that's not typically an option for most slick conMEN even if they were willing to pursue it because most wealthy, powerful people are heterosexual males.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#794This meshes with an experience I had a few years into my career which I'll never forget and had definitely influenced and will continue to influence my future interactions with women in tech. I, cis white guy in the bay, was hired as a consultant to help build out a product and was pair programming with a woman founder & new engineer and made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something o…
So what happened is that you had one bad experience and decided that it was representative of all people in that group? And you're saying that it wasn't made a big deal, that it was just pointed out to you?
in this case the gun being your career shattered by idiotic accusations of sexism in the form of calling out bad CSS. being called a sexist is almost like being called a racist. the accusation is enough for people to believe it to be true. so yes, a normal human being will instead be extremely wary, and rather than trying to shoot more guns in the future, will instead shy away from that experience entirely.
you seem to be posting in this thread everywhere that every man should just be a hero and after a close call with having their career derailed, they should continue on and ignore the past. realistically, this will never happen given the state of how society deals with these issues.
it's also a very privileged POV to have because if you're a father with a family/kids etc, the last thing you're likely to do is stick out like a sore thumb and continue doing the thing that almost made you lose your job and reputation in the industry.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613220 .
Why not?
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, this scenario isn't exactly uncommon in the startup world. It happens all the time. But because she's a minority female and her competitor is a white man, it suddenly becomes an example of white supremacy and the patriarchy conspiring to oppress her. Doesn't this sort of thinking basically make these notions into a conspiracy theory? Every piece of evidence interpreted in a way that it supports the chosen narrati…
In some ways, it reminds me of incel-style thinking. You pick up on some signals that you're facing discrimination. Some or many of them are real. But then you elevate that discrimination into the primary component of your identity: you're a victim, and all your failures have nothing to do with things you have agency over and everything to do with how society is out to get you. Entirely unrelated things get pigeonhol…
Just because some people think in ways that don't work, doesn't mean that there isn't unfairness toward women. But just because there is unfairness doesn't mean that's the cause of everything.
But i think the incel notion didn't even have a grounding in reality underlying it. Isn't it that sex is scarcity and and there's some sort of conspiracy against them as individuals that means they get no sex? Maybe i don't understand their view, but as i state it's, to me, anyway, complete and utter balderdash.
Just because that's bs, doesn't mean that all women are good people who treat everyone fairly, it doesn't mean that some women don't deliberately try to hurt people in relationships and surrounding matters, just like some men do... But the notion that there's a conspiracy targeting some self identified subset of the male population to deprive them sex is just crazy. Plus the notion that somehow they are entitled to some minimum sex quota and are being unfairly shortchanged...which is like the flipside of toxic masculinity. Like defeatist beta male toxic masculinity. Plus the notion sex is scarcity. It's not at all. So the underlying narratives are just bullshit i think. But atop that bs narrative the same type of disempowering delusional pathology that women attributing every failure to institutionalized patriarchal oppression also succumb to.
Another connection I see albeit less commonly occurring in the population is the narrative used by terrorist recruiters. You know like it's not your fault that everything sucks in fact it's the result of someone else some institutionalized oppressor who is deliberately targeting you because of a group membership (that you can rally around), and you need to blame them for everything. It provides a fake pretext for violence, which i think you also see to a lesser degrees with incels and then a type of emotional or reputational violence with twitter mobs.
And i think there's connections with Trump supporters and the white Christian America under attack narrative, although in that case there's a lot of different dynamics at play and it's not as easy to parallel because it's such a popular movement.
I do think there's a common thread that runs through all of these different movements, and whether consciously or unconsciously at work, it's a tool in tool box of people who try to enroll you in these movements and get you to do useful work in them, and that is to cast you as a disempowered member of some targeted group, setting you up to realize that there's "salvation" (or at the very least comforting consolation) achievable via this new group identity.
Apart from the tragedy of the violence which sometimes results, and which is then justified and explained away within the parameter set up by these narratives (at least by the supporters themselves), there's another tragedy where the group identity or "cause" is abused to lend legitimacy and motivation to the movement, and this often disenfranchises people who are authentic members of those groups by clouding their message and hijacking their collective voice (such as actual victims of discrimination, or true followers of Islam)
Of course there's a lot of room within these group definitions for a diversity of people to be genuine members of the group but I suppose that's the point, because it's the inclusivity of these groups that provides this vulnerability of their "brand identity and message" (if you will) to the abuse and exploitation of these movements that co-opt these for something else. These platforms could be sources of good. But when misused like this, the hijacked groupe messaging ends up getting in the way of people who should be doing good, or seeking good, through them. I think such misuse is the second tragedy.
the third tragedy is the that you end up with all these people who are ostensibly seeking empowerment ending up disempowering themselves by believing and acting in alignment with this stuff.
None of these tragedies insignificant. Even in the case where the second tragedy doesn't apply because, at least to me, there's no legitimate narrative underpinning the movement such as in the case of incels, the remaining tragedies are not insignificant.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#797Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why do we need to bend ourselves backwards to make sure all minorities feel comfortable all the time? > The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about anything these days, if you are white. You lost me here. You had one experience with one person and extrapolated that to multiple entire groups. You should be able to discern how your conversation with that one person was okay and not a "cancelable" offens…
I'm going to guess the parent has more than one experience
A white person reports this story and says "see, minorities exaggerate." and you are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it must have happened to more than one person.
Do you see the problem?
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#798Earlier 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…
Even the law, which is usually the last to evolve, clearly understands the difference between a death caused by self defense and murder.
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#799The 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…
Just a tip that's helped me in similar situations!
Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
#800Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won’t even pretend to know enough to be able to solve this problem. But does your social circle not include other female friends that you could discuss the optics of this situation with? 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?
This is a fair question - not sure why you are getting down votes. Background - I'm actually on the left a fair bit. So one issue - you are not supposed to really ask minorities / women to explain / teach you / help you deal with these issues because it in fairness burdens them. I'm not looking for that either. In terms of my colleague who I'd mentored in past (before things had gotten more extreme). I think others h…