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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#901

Post by sepin4 »

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…

Sooo, damned(sexist) if you do, damned(sexist) if you don't. I hope you see the paradox that PC culture is.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#902

Post by hntrader »

hawkice wrote: post #380

This seems like a classic problem of trust, more than a discussion about gender. I can't imagine investing in a company I didn't trust enough to be candid with, but I guess that's happening, the money in it is probably good. It's worth saying that people who have no capability to betray you in a certain way are easier to do business with. It limits downside. I'd prefer to have a reputation for defending my friends, b…

It's fundamentally a problem of incentives. If the perceived downside to giving feedback to a particular person outweighs the upside, then some selfless (or stupid) people might still decide to give that feedback, but most won't.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#903

Post by blub »

lgleason wrote: post #737

My wife, who is a second wave feminist that believes that women should be given the same opportunities, but are not victims, ran across some of the craziness a few years ago. She was in a tech forum where a woman was complaining about her experience at a company. It amounted to this woman having a perception that she was not being valued as much as a male colleague and was immediately jumping to the conclusion that i…

Feminism as it is practiced today in the West is a lost cause, but it's been dying for decades. Like many movements around social justice it was hijacked by radicals and became totalitarian in its beliefs, to the point that it brings dubious value to or even harms the interests of most women.

The big topics like violence against women have not been properly addressed and feminists focus instead obsessively on minor topics like abuse of Hollywood actresses or gender imbalance in software engineering.

The strategy has also changed - such factions are focusing less on equality and more and more on taking something for themselves, transforming the dialogue into an us versus them and turning it hostile. The problem with this thinking is two-fold:

1) One can take only so much before the ones that are being taken from push back, especially since there's no shortage of groups that want to take.

2) Other factions also want a piece of the pie and don't care about female victimhood. Feminism has for example failed to tackle both culturally influenced violence against women perpetrated by misogynist immigrants and the zero sum game they play with transsexuals.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#904

Post by tweetle_beetle »

raducu wrote: post #881
tweetle_beetle wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take a step back, you could actually look at this as a sign of progress in society. Things are moving enough for sexism to be a concern to a company - even if it's for cynical reasons and it has been weaponised by a dishonest person. Progress is bumpy and people can end up suffering during a transition.

The problem is what is good for society can hinder progress in certain individuals, as in this case. It's not just a regular weapon, being acused of sexism or sexual harassment or God forbid rape is a nuclear weapon, it can do such tremendous damage to an innocent man with zero damage to the one making false allegations that there's no wonder men a really careful. We have reached a local peak for sexual equality, but…

> The problem is what is good for society can hinder progress in certain individuals, as in this case.

That was exactly my point.

Sexism in the workplace has gone from normalised, to being recognised as a potential issue, to having a process which can deal with it all within my lifetime. To expect a perfectly executed deescalation undoing hundreds of years of history across all of society is disingenuous.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#905

Post by dalbasal »

robertlagrant wrote: post #318
dalbasal wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> My question is, is this even sexism at all? There is a danger of getting overly semantic, but also a danger of ignoring the importance of semantics to perspective here. Sex ism as opposed to sex ists . Sexism, using the term as the the GP does, is how they behave towards or speak to her. That's what sexism is regardless of why it is. It affects her or the workplace the same way whether it is because of "exclusiona…

> Sexism, using the term as the the GP does, is how they behave towards or speak to her. That's what sexism is regardless of why it is. This is incredibly flawed. It can never be behaviour observed in a vacuum. A behaviour's motivation in context is the only thing to observe and - potentially - classify as sexism.

This is semantics, semantics of perspectives.

If your perspective is one where you care about "culprits," and whether they are good or bad... motivations matter.

If you're characterising the system, not judging culprits.. you don't care about motivations, historical reasons or such. You just care about how the system behaves.

A sexist office is one where people are treated differently based on sex. That could be because of office rules. It could be because of cultural or religious reasons. It could be because of #metoo. Etc. Say you walk into that office, experience or observe sexism and walk out. You don't know why it's sexist, but you do know that it's a sexist office.

I get that you don't want everyone inside that office painted as sexists. Maybe they're not. That doesn't mean that it's not a sexist workplace. This isn't a criminal trial.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#906

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

saiya-jin wrote: post #853
kylebenzle wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nothing else this will be an interesting time for historians to look back on. At some point sanity must set in and after that I wonder how they will reflect on this period.

Well, its a pendulum that was swung for very long time into one extreme, and now it swung into the opposite similarly extreme one. We can hope that over time things will get to some sort of balanced state, but that might be a wishful thinking for very long time. It's also quite geographic - in this case I mean US-centric (and spreads to rest of the western countries). Ie in eastern europe/former eastern bloc, there w…

THIS!

> It's also quite geographic - in this case I mean US-centric (and spreads to rest of the western countries). Ie in eastern europe/former eastern bloc, there wasn't so much sexism, all women had to work and generally things were way more balanced. Not saying it was perfect, almost nothing there was, but to see current trends from that perspective looks like a bit as western world going slightly cuckoo.

have spent the past half a decade living in various countries from the former Eastern block mostly working for local companies and not much exposure to the outside. Over here women are generally more comfortable with choosing jobs in STEM and the male reaction to them isn't seen as competition or as toxic as it seems in US. idk what's the reason but perhaps they are not allowed to behave like princess barbies by their parents. But as you indicate the whole cuckoo from the US is spilling over to this region as well. Thanks to Instagram (beauty standards and trendsetting) and US propaganda that tells people how to apply any kind of norms (which is compared to "old" countries massively divisive).

I'm not saying people in the Balkans are less sexist (OMG no :D) but they seem a lot more chill in dealing with this issues. The number of times I had women use the most profane insults hurled at the opposite sex simply because this is how they speak (they swear a lot over here) often balances men's mysogonystic remarks.

edit: clarity

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#907

Post by blub »

saiya-jin wrote: post #853
kylebenzle wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nothing else this will be an interesting time for historians to look back on. At some point sanity must set in and after that I wonder how they will reflect on this period.

Well, its a pendulum that was swung for very long time into one extreme, and now it swung into the opposite similarly extreme one. We can hope that over time things will get to some sort of balanced state, but that might be a wishful thinking for very long time. It's also quite geographic - in this case I mean US-centric (and spreads to rest of the western countries). Ie in eastern europe/former eastern bloc, there w…

Eastern Europe is generally behind on adopting the latest social transformations compared to Western Europe, which in turn is late compared to the US. As such EE is currently not facing the turmoil which has engulfed the US and is well underway in e.g. France or Germany. On the one hand, there's more problems with discrimination and violence against women in EE (except those perpetrated by immigrants), on the other hand EE has the opportunity of not overcompensating like WE and the US did and finding a reasonable compromise.

I wouldn't say that the Eastern Bloc had it better. Based on the experience of my own mother and others from her generation, women both had to work and take care of the children. But the roles were very well defined and people didn't waste time debating everything ad nauseam, for better or for worse.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#908

Post by blub »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #906
saiya-jin wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, its a pendulum that was swung for very long time into one extreme, and now it swung into the opposite similarly extreme one. We can hope that over time things will get to some sort of balanced state, but that might be a wishful thinking for very long time. It's also quite geographic - in this case I mean US-centric (and spreads to rest of the western countries). Ie in eastern europe/former eastern bloc, there w…

THIS! > It's also quite geographic - in this case I mean US-centric (and spreads to rest of the western countries). Ie in eastern europe/former eastern bloc, there wasn't so much sexism, all women had to work and generally things were way more balanced. Not saying it was perfect, almost nothing there was, but to see current trends from that perspective looks like a bit as western world going slightly cuckoo. have spe…

"I'm not saying people in the Balkans are less sexist (OMG no :D) but they seem a lot more chill in dealing with this issues."

Exactly, probably more sexism, but the discourse around it and life in general is not venomous. My theory is that when you have real (economical) problems you tend to focus first on what matters.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#909

Post by durovo »

curiousmindz wrote: post #868
insert_coin wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem. America was supposed to be the land of the free, where anyone from anywhere could have an opportunity didn't matter who they where. Instead we created African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Gay-Americans, Straight-Americans, Native-Americans, etc, and everyone is out for themselves. And everyone is against one another. Female-led, Black-led, Latino-majority, who gives a fuck. Do…

Sadly, it is not as simple as that: Imagine a society of squirrels and hamsters where squirrels have been oppressing hamsters for centuries. Then, one day, they decide to stop doing that and treat everyone the same. On average, a young squirrel will come from a family that is vastly richer and better educated than a young hamster. So, if they have to compete "fairly", the hamsters will remain much poorer for centurie…

Thankfully this does not apply exactly to issues relate to gender. Genders should be uniformly distributed across socio-economic classes.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#910

Post by h0l0cube »

virgilp wrote: post #895
h0l0cube wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something of the sort Not saying you weren't the subject of over-reaction, or not, but I think this is an example of sub-par feedback. It would be better to point out the issues in concrete terms, and say this is something that should be addressed, and why. And if you can't do that, you should ruminate on it until you can reify whether it is wrong…

This is good advice but it cuts both ways. The other side of the same coin is whenever you receive nasty and undeserved feedback, you don't reply or argue.. You say "thank you for the feedback" and ruminate what good you can take out of that, if any. You don't fight back - not if you actually want to receive feedback in the future. It's exactly what the article is saying: men are clamming up. If one doesn't know how…

I didn't neglect to read the article, and largely agree with its central plaint. I also agree there's a chilling effect.

I don't think it applies as much to coding practices, where you can provide specific and constructive advice and there's a concrete thing that can be debated (i.e., the changes to the code-base). What makes good business reasoning relies upon intangibles, like experience. But even here, one could point to examples of a strategy being used in the past and failing. You can't argue with the historical facts as being innately sexist. You could argue that the variables have changed, but then there's something concrete to talk about.

Edit: minor clarification

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