[HN Gopher] Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up ___________________________________________________________________ Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up Author : femfosec Score : 421 points Date : 2021-03-28 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (femfosec.com) (TXT) w3m dump (femfosec.com) | tryonenow wrote: | Exactly as intended. Beneath the surface, this "social justice" | movement is nothing but a power grab, primarily from those who | could not attain such power by merit. All of society suffers when | decisions are made according to gender or race rather than | ability. | | This is an organized, quasi-religious campaign of oppression, | self-justified by _perceived_ oppression. The key word here is | perceived - it is trivial to "find" oppression (or racism, or | sexism, or ableism, etc) any time two people from different | groups interact, especially in a professional environment where | criticism is critical to success. | | Tyranny by the minority. | mjevans wrote: | A person or group whom is wronged seems to instinctively react | by desiring that particular wrong to be corrected. | | It is sadly rare for any to take a full step back and view the | wrong within the broader context and redress the true wrong(s) | which lead to the individual persecution and often a myopically | inverse racist or sexist or group-ist patch that still fails to | address the root cause of the issue(s). | path411 wrote: | I think the key is that wronged parties really do not care | that much about the wrong being corrected as much as they | desire retaliation | dang wrote: | It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for | ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of | what they're battling for or against, because it's destructive | of the curious conversation this site is supposed to be for. | | If you wouldn't mind reviewing | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking | to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. | docflabby wrote: | 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. | kilroy123 wrote: | This is what I was thinking. I find myself just staying way | quieter around everyone these days. Men and women. | | It's too easy to say the wrong thing and take some serious | heat. | snicksnak wrote: | I think it's now essentially a risk-reward decision, like the | author said. And the potential risk of being ousted after being | accused of something weighs very high. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | If only there could be some legal way protections like this | would prevent companies from firing people from pure | speculation and accusation alone... | | The ironic thing is that this social behavior is what drives | corporate culture to stronger conservativism. | joschmo wrote: | As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days looking at | the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns and cost benefit | analyses, so why would I take a human capital risk? My entire | business is based on my reputation and I've seen what happens to | the men who get comments like "not the best with women at | conferences" or "don't get him too close to your wife." It's | limiting beyond your career. | | I can count on two hands the number of women I would feel | comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I would a man. | Women I can be candid with are women that I have 5+ year | relationships with, have backed in some way, and who know I am | truly looking out for them. | | And the solution is blatantly obvious, but completely | unpalatable. Let men grow the same way we believe women and | minorities should be allowed to. A male engineering manager being | too harsh with a female junior dev is a learning moment for the | director of engineering to help the manager, not fire them. | | And crucially the line is shifting more and more about what's | "obviously fireable." Turns out harsh criticism of the quality of | someone's work and the lack of improvement are rational, not an | ad hominem. Those things are fixable. But criticism from powerful | parties is now scrutinized as dangerous based on identity rather | than for the content of the criticism. | ling3 wrote: | There is another side effect to this that I would add as a | casual investor. My bar for getting involved in a US startup is | much higher than it used to be, because it's hard to make | uncomfortable changes that might be construed in the wrong way. | I find myself investing more freely in other countries where | there is more upside and less risk of a career-destroying media | storm. China for example has all kinds of unique risks | associated with its government, but these are more predictable. | I think this may be the biggest long-term side effect to all of | this stuff - the US loses its position as the place to do | disruptive business. | hooande wrote: | If you walk away from the next Google/Facebook/Microsoft | because of worries about US culture, that's on you. There are | a lot of hot opportunities in China and around the world, but | the US is still pumping out IPO unicorns. I'd be more worried | about missing out on the next Tesla or AirBnb as the greater | risk | joschmo wrote: | I disagree pretty strongly, but obviously your experience is | your own. If you are going into a hotly contested investment | process, are you going to get away with asking for big | uncomfortable changes? Probably not as you'll lose the round. | | If you are already invested? I find it's pretty easy as I | really am only looking to back people who are open-minded, | receptive and coachable in the first place as I hope I am. | One of the most common criticisms I make is that someone | backed the wrong head of sales, head of growth, etc. and | folks almost always hear me out because I can be quantifiable | (sales metrics) and bring a solution (someone better). | 1penny42cents wrote: | Sexism is not a fixed category. Every comment falls on a spectrum | between absolutely sexist and absolutely not sexist. | | But when we evaluate how sexist a comment was, it's much simpler | to label it as "sexist" or "not sexist". This label loses all | context, especially when we share it with someone who wasn't | there or otherwise doesn't have that context. | | So outside of the fact that sexism exists, this problem isn't | specific to culture or Twitter. It's a result of how we | interpret, compress, and share reality with each other. | KODeKarnage wrote: | Comments do not fall on a spectrum between "absolutely sexist" | and "absolutely not sexist". Comments exist as fixed points in | space, and the observers fall on a spectrum of "absolutely | going to call the comment sexist" and "absolutely going to call | the comment not sexist". The men who are "clamming up" are | judging the audience of their comments and deciding that the | potential costs of honesty are just too high compared to the | benefits. They know that they will no longer get the benefit of | the doubt and that they will be convicted without trial. If the | punishment for traffic infringements was death and you were | immediately judged, convicted and executed by the police | officer on the scene, there will be a large number of people | who would simply stop driving. | arnath wrote: | I can't be the only one who thinks this is bullshit, right? The | scenario described in the article isn't a dilemma unless the | gender of the CEO is part of your reason. If it's not, you will | have some rational explanation and should be able to point to | your history of not being a sexist asshole. | blast wrote: | The article explains why having a rational explanation is not | enough. You may not agree but it's not as if the point is | unaddressed. | tdeck wrote: | I'm really curious if the purported consequences of an | accusation of sexism are so harmful for these wealthy | investors. For example, Ellen Pao filed a lawsuit against | Kleiner Perkins and wrote a whole book about sexist behavior | she experienced while working there. That got a ton of | publicity - what has the long-term impact been? Kleiner Perkins | seems to be doing fine. I'm not saying investors don't perceive | a risk here - many people are concerned about their reputation, | but this idea that someone's career would be ruined doesn't | appear to square with reality. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | >If it's not, you will have some rational explanation and | should be able to point to your history of not being a sexist | asshole. | | Ah yes, this always works for calming woke mobs | UShouldBWorking wrote: | Welcome to the wonderful world of women | Causality1 wrote: | It's gotten to the point that my first and ongoing assessment of | someone is how "cool" they are. Sort of the identity politics | version of whether you're the type of person who yells at a | waiter. In my experience about 75% of people are cool. | | If you're cool, I'm candid around you. If you're not cool, I'm | treating you like you're radioactive. Everything I say is | carefully considered. Controversy of any kind is studiously | avoided. Most likely I avoid dealing with you at all when I can, | and certainly avoid being alone with you with no witnesses. If | that's sexist or racist I really don't give a damn. | cbdumas wrote: | I don't think the author needed to bring "false accusation" into | the picture here, and in fact it weakens the point. I think male | investor saying to a female CEO that her male colleague is better | suited to the CEO role would be taken, ipso facto, as sexism. No | falsehoods need enter the picture. | phkahler wrote: | But in this case it would be a false accusation. That's kind of | the entire point - he's afraid to give honest feedback out of | fear of a false accusation. | sokoloff wrote: | If the recommendation was based on data other the genders | involved, it's not sexism, but could be accused as such | (falsely). | | There are any number of ways person B could be more qualified | than person A to be the CEO. | | If an investor is going to give good-on-average advice in one | case but not the other almost identical situation, the author | is right to be concerned. | worker767424 wrote: | Remember how Mike Pence basically avoids being alone with a woman | unless his wife is present? As ridiculous as it sounds, that | self-preservation strategy got him to VP. | DoofusOfDeath wrote: | I don't think that policy is ridiculous at all. It's mine as | well, and IIRC it was Billy Graham's. | | It minimizes the chances of (a) false accusations of | inappropriate behavior, and (b) adultery. | | It makes me a little sad for the limits it imposes on my | friendships with women, but I consider the tradeoff very | worthwhile. | | EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that _everyone_ | should adopt my policy. I 'm just saying that in my particular | life circumstances, and with my particular ranking of | concerns/values, it's a tradeoff that I find worthwhile. | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar, | and especially not with partisan lemon twists. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613795 | why_Mr_Anderson wrote: | Isn't it a standard practice for any interaction between male | teacher and female student? Never in private, always more than | 1 witness not related/close to either of participants, etc. | igorkraw wrote: | I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea | that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. | I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a | cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If | your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any | ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the | last N times you froze up and you seem nervous again" makes your | reasoning clear without beating around the bush. How can you | twist this into something sexist? | nitwit005 wrote: | American media culture is probably more relevant than general | American culture. | | A lot of politicians or executives will only say carefully | scripted sound bites to the press because they can't count on a | reasonable portrayal. They give them a sentence or two that's | difficult to twist into something offensive. | | Here it's similar. They're afraid reasonable behavior will be | portrayed as outrageous in some blog post. | jancsika wrote: | If I'm sexist then I could choose to make such a remark _only_ | if it happens to be a female colleague. If male then sleep(). | Sexism achieved. | | If you're not from the U.S. you have to understand the | background of mendacity that flows through nearly the entire | culture. That's a big part of the backdrop for fairly deep | levels of distrust, whether it's of a company, one's colleague, | the gov't, etc. | | For example-- I was watching a political show where the | question was something about global warming. One of the guests | gave a reply that sounded vaguely reasonable but wasn't clear. | The host tried to rephrase the question, and the same | respondent again gave a suspiciously confusing reply. This | caused the host to drill down on a simpler question-- did the | guest believe that global warming _was real_ and that human | activity has contributed to this global warming? This time the | guest answered a different question, addressing the reality of | global warming but ducking the issue of causes. This went on | for about 45 seconds before the host _finally_ forced the guest | to give a response that revealed the guest was in fact a | climate denier. Honestly, it was like watching that scene in | Blade Runner with the Voight-Kampff test, except on humans. | | Being an American myself, I could immediately tell what the | guest's purpose was: to sound like they agreed with the other | (sensible) panelists, in order to give more credibility to a | climate denial talking point that their job depends on. It's a | planned strategy essentially of "denial-in-depth"-- try to | sneak FUD into an otherwise good faith discussion, and if that | doesn't then reveal your crude talking points for what they | are. | | In a weird way, the process of figuring out someone's level of | earnestness makes me think of the "Sie" to "du" journey in | German. Except here in the U.S., it's a slow slog of figuring | out _exactly_ how a friend spouts bullshit and under what | circumstances, and then figuring out if there 's enough | earnestness left to become close friends. | throwaway194726 wrote: | Wow, that's a pretty deep, insightful and harsh analysis of | your own culture. You've found exactly the words to express | something that I noticed in the states as well, but couldn't | quite put my finger on. | | Did you figure this from the outside, so to speak, spending | time abroad and immersing in a different culture? I've found | that most people sort of start noticing cultural blind spots | only then. | igorkraw wrote: | > If I'm sexist then I could choose to make such a remark | only if it happens to be a female colleague. If male then | sleep(). Sexism achieved. | | Well, sure, but then you are displaying a clear and | verifyable pattern, and my original point of candor that | can't be twisted into sexism remains no? You had to add a | separate sexist pattern ("treats men and women differently"). | | Your point of high level of distrust is appreciated and one | of the reasons why I'd never move there (no offense intended, | most individual americans I know and read about are lovely | people, but this culture of hidden BS is too much for me). | But then, this is an issue _in general_ no? Why are people | only concerned about _women_ /feminists twisting words | against them? Why not christians, or veterans as well? Or men | for that point, last I checked the protected group list | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group does not | specify women, and there _are_ conservative mobs on social | media just as much as "woke" ones. So I'm just a bit | confused | hhjinks wrote: | People can make up whatever motivation they want if they feel | slighted. All it takes is for the female founder to ascribe | sexism to the VC when he suggests swapping CEOs, and you've got | the entire media circus on your neck. And then people stop | being rational actors when mob mentality kicks in. | igorkraw wrote: | Well if that was the case _where are all the horror stories_? | With the acceptance rates of startups at VC pitches etc., | shouldn 't we be expecting a lot of VCs being hounded with | allegations of sexism and the media circus going amok? How is | YC still in business given their acceptance rates? | carmen_sandiego wrote: | > Well if that was the case where are all the horror | stories? | | Pre-empted by the abundance of caution described in the | article? It's not a very deep game, so I assume the | strategy in question is readily apparent to almost any man | in such a position. | igorkraw wrote: | Isn't that circular logic? Everyone is afraid of | something bad happens, so everyone censors themselves way | too much...but it's somehow still so well known that it | would happen? | toyg wrote: | "Yet another man who thinks all women are hysteric. What next, | are you going to ask me if it's my 'period'?" | | Once one moves from a position of effective prejudice ("he will | criticise me because I'm a woman"), any critical statement can | be read from that perspective. It's a bit like with conspiracy | theories, where every debunking attempt can be turned into " | _of course_ THEY would say that!". | igorkraw wrote: | You are inventing a hypothetical straw-man. Until you can | point to conversation where someone said something fact based | like I gave as an example and people _accept_ your twisting | and start a twitter mob of any impact, this remains a | hypothetical victimization. | ufmace wrote: | There's nothing hypothetical or straw-man about his | comment. If you surf around english-language forums where | the new breed of feminist hangs out, you'll see dozens of | posts pretty much exactly like that, all highly | liked/upvoted and with huge numbers of responses agreeing | and amplifying. Any posts with the message of "hold on, | maybe it's not just sexism and he actually has a point" | will be downvoted and attract hateful responses: "you sound | like just another one of those sexists!". | igorkraw wrote: | I mean, can you provide me a link? Because neither Reddit | not Hackernews has supplied me with examples so far | toyg wrote: | I could transcribe entire conversations here and you would | still accuse me of making them up. What I wrote I heard | almost precisely word for word; but in the end, exchanging | anecdata until the end of time will do precisely nothing to | persuade anyone that such mindset really exists (and indeed | prospers), apart from making me a candidate for | cancellation. | | The main point is that, unless you're talking physics | (maybe), _nothing_ is so "fact-based" that it cannot be | perceived in the "wrong" way by someone sufficiently | determined to do that. | igorkraw wrote: | 3 points: | | 1. An observation that you are arguing from a position of | assuming malice from the other side. "They" are trying to | twist everything, therefore evidence is not required | since "they" won't listen anyway | | 2. You can point at any public twitter mob where the real | conversation was made public afterwards or where you know | the inside scoop and with the caveat of anecdata it could | strengthen your point | | 3. You seem to be dangerously close to resting on a "what | even is 'fact based'?" argument repeating that "they" are | determined to misunderstand statements in malicious ways | toyg wrote: | You said "if I say something like this, there is no room | for attack/misinterpretation". I showed you how such a | statement can be _easily_ attacked /misinterpreted - and | I can do that because I've been in enough conversations | like those to know that this mindset is relatively | popular. | | You are free to not believe me and continue to live your | life as you were, I honestly don't care. Take my | statements as anecdata and move on. Just don't come | crying to me when you're cancelled because of some "fact- | based" statement. | LockAndLol wrote: | Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy, | American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in | your case German) discussions and experiences from American | ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc. | | It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context | switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow | non-Americans), they talk about American topics as if they were | happening locally - and is if they were directly impacted with | a major stake in the issue. | | Remember where you are, who you're talking to, and the context. | Since non-Americans seem so eager to copy Americans however, it | can be prudent to be aware of what's going on across the pond | without being heavily invested. The USA is now acting like a | looking glass into the future of what successes and mistakes | are going to be imported wholesale by other countries and their | citizens. | igorkraw wrote: | Good points, thank you. It just seems like in this case, | whenever the topic is discussed everyone points to "it is | known" style twitter mobs, and the actual examples of twitter | mobs that do show up tend to not be as unreasonable in | general. | | E.g. the cancelling and uncancelling of RMS seemed to me | mainly...reasonable? Like, he says some weird stuff and | defended ~~Eppstein~~ Minsky (sorry, memory got messed up, | thanks skissane) in a tone-deaf manner (I have had the joy of | exchanging emails with RMS and interacting with him at talks | he gave at my alma mater, and he always seemed like a | thoughtful and kind person whom I respect and admire, but I | feel like "tone-deaf" is a fair description), maybe that's | not a good thing to do if your job is to be a public figure? | And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of | what really is rape reasonable? So if this is an example of | what people are afraid of, it seems a very...specific fear | skissane wrote: | > he says some weird stuff and defended Eppstein in a tone- | deaf manner | | He was defending Marvin Minsky, not Jeffrey Epstein. The | former was twisted into the later. | igorkraw wrote: | thank you, corrected | madsbuch wrote: | Sometimes an outsiders perspective asks the right question. | The parent simply asked _why_ candor and sexism appear to be | conflated. Curious conversation is good | | BTW, the roots of the US is from a cultural melting pot. | carmen_sandiego wrote: | > "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. | | But this isn't the idea at all, right? Rather, everyone seems | to agree it's relatively rare, but that it's such a massively | negative experience when it does happen that it tanks the | expected value anyway. | igorkraw wrote: | Thanks for pointing that out, good point. I'll actually need | to think about this aspect a bit more. It still seems like | the _fear_ is more clamming than the thing being feared | bandyaboot wrote: | This article demonstrates exactly why I've tended not to get as | up-in-arms as some of my fellow male colleagues when it comes to | gender/workplace issues. Sure, sometimes it seems like the | pushback against the male dominated culture of some industries | can push a little too far leading to unintended consequences like | the author illustrates. But, sooner or later those get recognized | and things tend to self-correct. Who ever said that dealing with | entrenched, thorny issues isn't messy and fraught with | inefficiencies? | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | >I don't think most female founders even realize that they're | getting different advice than their male counterparts. Silicon | Valley has always run on candor, but it's being stifled at the | moment, and no one is noticing that we are the collateral damage. | | Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just | "collateral damage". It's not a problem that men are nervous to | be candid but it's a problem that women are feeling the secondary | effects of that? | haltingproblem wrote: | Deleted | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads further into gender flamewar | hell. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | oh_sigh wrote: | Have you felt the need to fix rape and murder, which other | men have given to society in a manner far over representative | relative their demographics? | | Maybe if this author was encouraging twitter lynch mobs with | scant evidence it would be an apt point, but I don't think | there is any sign of that. She doesn't owe the world anything | because some other women did something. | tlogan wrote: | I know a couple of female founders (including my wife). The | biggest problem is that female might run into a creep and that | makes very very stressful experience. For me... it is easy. | First creeps do not want to meet me (I'm fat, older guy, | short,..), and if I do meet somebody who is giving me creeps - | my experience is not stressful at all. | | Btw, I still have not met a female VC: after 22 years in SV. | uncoder0 wrote: | You've never met a female VC? We just raised our second round | and we have 4 women VC's or angels on the captable now. Maybe | it's just based on industry. I'm in sports/media tech. | mangix wrote: | This is amazing. I'm glad a woman pointed this out. | dang wrote: | All: if you're going to comment, please make sure you're up on | the site guidelines at | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and that you're | posting in the intended spirit. Here's a brief refresher: Curious | conversation is good. Substantive comments are good. Thoughtfully | sharing personal experience is good. Flamebait is bad. Personal | swipes are bad. Ideological boilerplate is bad. | | I don't mean 'good' and 'bad' absolutely--that's above my pay | grade. I just mean good or bad for HN, relative to what we're | trying to optimize for: | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... | If you want to smite enemies or fulminate snarkily, that's your | business--just please don't do it on HN. It's not hard to find | platforms that welcome that sort of engagement; we're trying for | something different on this one. | joadha wrote: | Maybe the investors shouldn't be such fucking cowards? Unless you | have a long, storied history of being a sexist piece of shit, you | should have no fear of being "me too"'d over the scenario | presented in the article's intro. | | And seriously, why should I believe any of this? Sorry, but the | article reads as feminist-boogeyman porn for insecure male | investors. | joadha wrote: | Looks like I'm being downvoted into oblivion by insecure male | investors. | | Perhaps they are bitter about lacking the gumption to handle | such situations professionally and ethically? Perhaps they | avoid any and all critical conversations with the people they | work with? Enjoy watching all of your ventures fail! | | Or maybe it's: conducting themselves like professionals while | concealing their sexism just breaks their poor rich brains. | gpt3fake wrote: | Why would you talk to women at all professionally, unless there | are _reliable_ witnesses or video recordings? | | As we increasingly see, witch hunts are already possible by | deliberately misinterpreting _written_ statements like mails or | bug tracker messages. | | I would not want to get into a _he-said-she-said_ real life | situation. Mike Pence understood this early. | [deleted] | karpierz wrote: | Because I'm a professional, and strive to avoid treating people | differently based on their gender/sex? | zepto wrote: | What about race? | | I ask because if you took that same attitude towards race, | you could easily be accused of colorblind racism. | karpierz wrote: | Same principle. | | To be clear, I'm not saying that I do treat all people | equally, regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, etc. | I grew up in an environment filled with stereotypes, and | they do seep through. I can only strive to avoid having | that bias affect how I treat people. If it does leak | through, I try to recognize it and do better in the future. | MaximumYComb wrote: | There's being a professional but there's also not seeing the | situation you are in. I would be hesitant to be in a one on | one situation in a private area with a female colleague, | especially one below me in the organisational structure. Even | an unfounded accusation could completely derail my life and | career. | | When I was young I had something similar happen. A woman went | around telling people she had slept with me. We hadn't. | Nobody believed my side of the story since "why would she | lie?". This caused a rift with my best friend, who had a | crush on her. I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't | disprove. | karpierz wrote: | > Even an unfounded accusation could completely derail my | life and career. | | I don't think that treating people poorly because you're | worried that not doing so could hurt your career is the | right thing to do. It might be pragmatic in your case, but | so is taking money out of a wallet you find on the ground. | | > I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't disprove. | | You lost your best friend because your best friend didn't | trust you and because someone lied. None of that is your | fault. Sometimes the world is a shitty place with shitty | people. That isn't a reason to add to that shittiness by | refusing to treat women in the workplace as you would men. | baby wrote: | Why would woman step out of the kitchen amirite? | dang wrote: | > _Why would you talk to women at all professionally, unless | there are reliable witnesses or video recordings?_ | | That's beyond the pale. I've banned this account for reasons | explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613795 | above, and everywhere else you'll find moderation comments on | this site. | | Creating accounts to break HN's rules with will eventually get | your main account banned as well, so please don't. | acjohnson55 wrote: | This is real, and it's also a type of sexism. Not all forms of | sexism or discrimination are acts of malice. The sexual | harassment training required for my job speaks explicitly about | disparate treatment. | | I do question one of the examples a bit. The idea of giving | advice to female founder to step down as CEO in favor of a male | cofounder sounds like bad advice. It's pointing out one rather | drastic solution, rather than the actual problem. Better advice | would be to lay out the observed issues and help think through a | range of possible solutions, if everyone can get on the same page | about the problems. Maybe the solution would still be a change in | roles, but there's a lot less chance it would seem sexist the | advice were predicated on a lot more information. | flumpcakes wrote: | > it's also a type of sexism | | I guess it depends on your definition of sexism. Reading these | comments, and just general life experience, I believe different | people have different definitions of what sexism is. Regardless | of company policy or the law of your country. | | Taking your definition of sexism I would say every interaction | with a woman is a form of sexism. Everyone, at all times, tries | to speak to another human being in a way that conveys a | message. That manner of communication changes based on social | norms. Which, as this article points out, currently seems to be | differnt between the sexes. | | Generally I believe people do try to "talk to their audience". | | One example from my life: if I notice my colleagues have nice | shoes, I point it out. If it was a female colleague, I probably | wouldn't because of the risk of that social interaction "going | wrong". | | Someone could point out that complimenting someone on their | footware is weird/wrong/shouldn't be done during working hours. | If this is the case then I'm not talking sport or politics or | local news or how you're kids are doing... | | I think the article does a good job highlighting the downside | of being hyper-aware of the social situation around a person | trying to convey a message to another person, and how that | could be labeled as inappropriate. | dalbasal wrote: | In a sense, what she's describing sounds almost old-timey. A | return to stiff propriety between men and women in order to avoid | the possibility of scandal. | | The entirety of everything leading to this point is complex. That | said, half the reason for twitterized scandal politics is | hyperbole. It's too easy to think in dichotomies and extremes. | This stuff can be true without doom being upon us. | | I think twitter mob problems will improve in a few years, or move | on to other areas. | | On a lower profile scale, bullying-related HR processes and | associated cultural dynamics can and do "flare up." Many bullying | claims. Fear of bullying accusations. Threats. First strikes. | etc. It often happens in environments with a lot of bullying. | Unpleasant, but it usually passes eventually... I think. | throwaway20222 wrote: | I also work in a very "woke culture." In fact, as a straight, | white, cis man I am in the extreme minority. | | I have been told that I can't do my job which includes | negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an "old, white, | cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there" just | because of my identity. It is discrimination plain and simple, | but I literally stand to have my career derailed if I fight back. | One accusation and I don't get hired again. | | I joined the company because I believed, and still believe in | company mission which is LGBTQ+ focused. | | There is no room for allies at some companies and they silence | opinions they don't like. It hurts everyone. | [deleted] | CharlesW wrote: | > _I have been told that I can't do my job which includes | negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an "old, white, | cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there" just | because of my identity._ | | IANAL, and I don't know what "LGBTQ+ company" means, but if you | believe that you're not being allowed to negotiate with other | companies because of your age, race, and gender, you can (and | should) sue for discrimination. | BonoboIO wrote: | This reminds my of this meme: | | "It Hurt Itself in Its Confusion!" | | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/it-hurt-itself-in-its-confusi... | stonogo wrote: | Interesting pivot from identity politics to "opinions they | don't like." One is discrimination, the other is business as | usual. I wouldn't conflate the two. | baby wrote: | had to google what cis is: | | > A cisgender person (sometimes cissexual, informally | abbreviated cis) is one whose gender identity matches their sex | assigned at birth. For example, someone who identifies as a | woman and was identified as female at birth is a cisgender | woman. The word cisgender is the antonym of transgender. | Phelinofist wrote: | I thought it meant "Commonwealth of Independent States", the | CIS region | booleandilemma wrote: | I never really saw the point of this term, to be honest. To | me it just feels like a sly way to normalize being abnormal. | | Imagine if we had specific terms for someone who doesn't | shoplift, or who doesn't eat other people's pets. | throwitaway12 wrote: | Thanks, would have never known something so bizarre. | CharlesW wrote: | That comment might make sense a decade ago (when it was | mostly relegated to academic journals)[1], but it's been in | common use (at least in the U.S.) for years.[2] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender [2] https://tre | nds.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=cisgende... | dnissley wrote: | Lest we forget, there are a lot of people out there who | don't belong to the so-called chattering classes. And | that's ok. | baby wrote: | People learn new things every day | [deleted] | anonfornoreason wrote: | If the company is discriminating against you and like others, | why would you still believe in their mission, or at least their | ability to carry it out? Why not move to a more sane company | that doesn't have as many mines you might inadvertently step | on? | iamleppert wrote: | As a gay man myself, I urge you to consider leaving such a | toxic environment. I've experienced similar (even though I'm | gay myself). A more extreme version of what you described | actually exists within the LGBT community itself; being gay is | sometimes not enough anymore. | | A common theme I've noticed in these groups is their penchant | for using the term "cis male". Doesn't matter if you're | straight or gay, the hate is still the same. | | It's better to just walk away from these situations and groups. | ipsocannibal wrote: | Seems like online twitter mobs and callouts are actually | counterproductive to the "-isms" that employ them. Too bad but | expect more of the same as we've basicslly given a global | megaphone to any hyper-purist or power-tripper with a social | media account. This stops when people have to pay a price for | engaging in a cancel action. | mustafa_pasi wrote: | They don't care cause they are not the same people. It's like | how 100% of women complaining about there not being enough | girls in STEM, are themselves women who have chosen a non-STEM | career. | [deleted] | jjj123 wrote: | What are you talking about? Lots of people in stem complain | about women being unrepresented in top tech organizations. | simonbarker87 wrote: | > I'm not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men | clamming up. | | I find this a little frustrating, they've noticed a pattern of | behaviour that concerns them in an area they are clearly invested | in - yet they have no thoughts or suggestions on how to address | this? Is it possible they are not offering such thoughts because | of the same issue they have highlighted in the article? | throwaway19937 wrote: | Kim Elsesser's book _Sex and the Office: Women, Men, and the | Sex Partition That 's Dividing the Workplace_ has some concrete | advice on this topic. | rhizome wrote: | By my read, the essay's audience is men who don't know as much | about running a business as they think they do. Why wouldn't | the successful conversation about switching CEOs in the first | case work in the second? Idealistically, _shouldn 't it_? Women | aren't actually from Venus. | | Furthermore, isn't this an issue of long-standing that for some | reason is still a big enough problem to raise complaints? How | many decades have there been women in upper-management, let | alone the C-suite? Why aren't VCs, people who are rumored to be | good at analyzing businesses across their field of expertise, | already aware of this weakness? Is rooting out inefficiencies | only for the businesses in which they invest? | | This is to say, why is this essay still necessary? I'd say it's | because many men are trying to keep the old world going. Status | quo. | | I suggest that a VC who can't have the conversation about | swapping for CEO in both "directions," who is aggrieved about | the present state of business demographics enough to clam up in | fear of raising controversy, _is not a competent investor_. | | This is a Continuing Education topic for those who need it, | just like RNs have to take a certain number of class-hours each | year to stay up on current techniques and technologies. This | essay is about and aimed at guys who don't think that their | attitudes toward women need changing. | zepto wrote: | Why does someone need to have a solution in order for their | observation of a problem to be considered valid? | | Maybe the problem is real but they just don't have as solution? | simonbarker87 wrote: | I also never said their observation is invalidated by not | offering a solution - I said it was frustrating that they | didn't have any suggestions. | flir wrote: | I noticed it happened a lot on MeFi when I was active there. | Vast reams of text about how terrible X is, but ask what we | should do about it and... crickets. | | Yes, the observation's valid, but... I don't know. When the | conversation keeps happening the same way, over may topics, | you have to figure there's something deeper going on. | zepto wrote: | There's obviously something deeper going on. | | Can you say what you think it is? | flir wrote: | Ironically, no. I only noticed the pattern ;) | simonbarker87 wrote: | But they have no thoughts on a solution at all? Nothing? Not | even an inkling of a suggestion to continue the discussion? | 8note wrote: | It's often useful to split up a solution between defining | the requirements in one doc, and the design in a separate | one. If you bleed design ideas into the requirements, you | can get tunnel vision | protomyth wrote: | Because the author doesn't know of an actual solution. | Sometimes that happens. Most catch-22 situations really don't | have a good solution without some external force (in this case | the mob) being removed / mitigated. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | >I'm not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men | clamming up. | | Well gee how about people stop blaming white males for every | problem in the world, cancelling them for the slightest | "microaggression", etc. Maybe that would make society a bit more | equal? | | It should would be nice to talk openly with coworkers and peers | without worrying about offending someone over the slightest | thing. | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological | flamewar hell. It's against the site guidelines because we're | trying for something different here. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | Please note these guidelines also: | | " _Don 't be snarky._" | | " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not | less, as a topic gets more divisive._ " | asjldkfin wrote: | I feel like history is going to look at this phenomenon as a | strange curiosity, the same way we look at the Inquisition or the | Salem Witch Trials today or even some of the communist | revolutions. | | People will say "It's pretty unbelievable that happened, because | no sane individual would ever condone something so extreme." | blippage wrote: | My own pet theory is that each age has a Great Insanity, almost | like it's some kind of cosmic human constant. The particular | insanity varies from generation to generation, but it still | exists. | | It might be witches in one generation, flying saucers, | communists in another, Jews in another, or blacks; the | possibilities are inexhaustible. We don't know what the next | Insanity will be, only that there will be one. | | I have a hunch that, roll on a hundred years, everything will | turn full circle and we'll be back to segregation of the sexes. | "Of course the whole thing was a folly," future generation will | claim, "what absurd notion led them to the idea that men and | women were the same anyway?" | | Each generation has the conceit that it is more enlightened | than the last, little realising that they are no smarter than | the one before. | hackflip wrote: | I suspect (most) individuals are behaving rationally (in the | own best interest), but in aggregate it leads to the group | collectively behaving incredibly irrationally. | dijit wrote: | It is absolutely unforgivable that we allow terms such as | "mansplaining" to exist and be used unfettered and then on the | other had deride their position because _! men not explaining | things candidly !_ | | Something has to give. | | Obviously obnoxious behaviour should be curbed but the usage of | mansplaing (and I would argue: the minting of the term when we | have an equivalent in "condescending") | | I don't even know what to say. I know I am rather shy to give | advice to women because I've been bullied on Twitter for | explaining things even when SOMEONE ASKED FOR CLARITY! | blast wrote: | Did you think the article was deriding men for not being | candid? It didn't seem that way to me. In fact it seemed like | she had the opposite intention. | dijit wrote: | I think she is lamenting the situation. When in a similar | situation I would do the same thing, I'm certain. I'm | explaining why. | | Before the Twitter mobs attacked me I would have been more | open mouthed, now I'm aware of how sensitive people are and I | try to avoid them feeling uncomfortable so I will choose my | words much more carefully. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I think of "mansplaining" as men giving unsolicited advice | rooted in assuming women are just stupid and failing to | recognize that things work differently for women, so women can | do the same things men do and get different results, which | means women do things differently from men and sometimes there | seems to be no good means for a woman to do anything. | | Kind of like male construction workers can take their shirts | off if they get too hot and female construction workers can't. | (Real case I read about: Two female construction workers | decided to wear bikini tops so they could take their shirts off | in the heat and the busty, attractive lady was fired because | this was a distraction potentially causing more accidents by | the male construction workers. The skinny, flat chested girl | wasn't fired because it wasn't literally turning heads when she | pulled her shirt off and worked in a bikini top.) | starkd wrote: | Well, to be fair, a large busted female taking her top off at | a construction site would be a distraction in a way that a | flat-chested girl would not. In a way that safety could be | affected. It would be an anomaly that would instigate a | reflexive reaction. | DoreenMichele wrote: | So you're saying you agree with me: The world works | different for women than men, so telling a woman "If you're | sweating while working hard in the heat, take your top | off." would be actively bad advice that assumes she's | merely stupid for not doing so? | [deleted] | starkd wrote: | Yes. Thanks for the clarification. | DoreenMichele wrote: | Oh, no problem. Have a great day. | spockz wrote: | It is ~~idiotic~~ alien to my world view to fire someone for | having to take care of them selves not to overheat. Perhaps a | better solution could have been providing more shade, rest, | or cooling vests to everyone. And/or to re educate the male | workforce not to be distracted so much that it would cause | safety incidents. (I struggle to see how this would lead to | serious issues. Is somebody going to be distracted so badly | they are going to pour concrete over their colleague instead | of in the hole?) | | I'd say these situations show that we must have more | diversity, not less, in all our interactions so that we learn | to become more used to differences (insert | race/gender/whatever else some people trip over.) | | However idiotic it may seem, in a non-safe, litigating | environment one can, sadly, expect these knee jerk reactions. | The only way forward is to make our society a safer place. | This probably relies on all parties becoming more aware of | the effects of their actions as well on the receiving side | having a buffer and being tolerant such that we don't get a | cascade effect. | | Edit: I mean the above paragraph in the sense that just like | aircraft investigations are about finding a root cause | instead of blaming, discussions should be more about | achieving harmony together or to agree to disagree. | rjsw wrote: | Men explain things to each other and there is a whole | etiquette around doing it. Doesn't matter if the listener has | a better, more original version of the story they will still | listen. How else would oral histories get rehearsed and | memorised. | [deleted] | TameAntelope wrote: | What do people think of the idea that this is a cost worth | paying? The transaction is, "sometimes less candor" for, | "oftentimes less discrimination". | | I think it's true and fair to say that caring more about how | people are perceiving you results in drawbacks, and the world we | live in where people do watch how their actions effect others | isn't a perfect, problem-free world. | | It makes intuitive sense to me that sometimes, when we work to | raise people up, we do so at some cost to the people who are | already at the top. This could be an example of that, I think. | ambicapter wrote: | The way I read the article, the majority of the cost is not on | those "already at the top". Its on the women founders who are | trying to make it. | errantspark wrote: | 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 for those trodden upon. I don't | think the case is so clear cut and I worry about the deafening | silence when I look for introspection among those riding this | wave of power. People who do not question the righteousness of | their cause are frightening, whatever the cause may be. Nothing | is righteous, everything is complex, I wish this was something | that we could hold tightly in our collective consciousness. | Subtlety and nuance is never as easy or attractive as brashness. | I guess that's the nature of the beast, 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. | | "You must beware of shadows." | | page 109 of The Little Schemer | theptip wrote: | It's worth noting this issue/disutility. But I don't give it a | lot of weight vs. the historical default. | | Presumably this doesn't occur if a female VC is giving that | advice to females founders; maybe this will be an additional | incentive to actually promote some women to be partners. VC is | one of the most male-dominated professions around. | | More generally, it's easy to look at just the costs of a social | change, without remembering to weight against the benefits. If | this issue is one of the costs, and reduced sexual harassment of | female founders is the benefit, then I would ask women who have | been in this position how they weigh the two (having not | experienced either I wouldn't presume to know how much the | benefit is actually worth to female founders, and since the costs | and benefits are both incident on them, it's not really my place | to choose). | | But I'd hazard a guess that most women would prefer not to get | hit on / harassed as they fundraise, at the expense of sometimes | not getting fully candid feedback. | dalbasal wrote: | I agree, but I don't think that means you can only ever speak | about the gains. _Ignoring_ costs leads down disingenuous | roads, and not necessarily the best path to change. | | If the resulting cultural is _permanently_ clammier | professional relationships between men and women.. I have a | hard time believing it 's things going right. OTOH, I don't | really think there is a permanent "clamming up." Hopefully it | passes. It's not like everyone was gender blind in 2015 either. | | Regardless of what we think of wider issues, I think Femfo is | probably observing something real. | luckylion wrote: | > Presumably this doesn't occur if a female VC is giving that | advice to females founders | | "She has internalized misogyny". Being a woman doesn't exempt | you from being targeted by the woke mob. | neurotech1 wrote: | Two points, although not specific to female founders: | | Elon Musk's advice: Solicit Negative (constructive) feedback. | | https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/08/elon-musks-advice-to-ceos.ht... | | Also, Eespecially for young founders and CEOs, they should study | and obtain coaching on how to develop and improve their | leadership skills. | throwaway861229 wrote: | I have been extremely fortuante that women have always found me | very attractive and there is not a single job I've had where | female co-workers didn't make comments at work which would not | have been seen as extremely inappropriate the other way around. | Even when I was 19 and I got my first job some 30+/40+ year old | female co-workers heavily flirted with me in the most | inappropriate way. I'm not gonna lie, I enjoyed it for many years | and definitely have had many fond memories because of it, but | equally it has shaped me of how I think of some of the outrage | which is happening nowadays the other way around. | | I even had married women behave extremely inapproriate, with some | groping me in various places, getting me drunk at work parties | and trying to get me make a first move if they felt bad about | doing it themselves. | | It's not like all women at work acted unprofessionally with me, | but there was enough inappropriate behaviour that everyone knew | about it and guess what, not a single women told another women | that this behaviour was not ok. | | Interestingly, after I got into a serious relationship and | stopped to accept such behaviour I have had many women above me | to turn on me and treat me as if I offended them by not flirting | back. | | All I know is that all humans are the same. Let's pay women an | equal wage but please let's not pretend that women in power are | any better than men. | hiofewuhfribfjj wrote: | Our culture and our behaviors are a really vast field. It's | easy to skew the perception of things when you select and | repeat only the part you want. | | For example you mention wage, and that's because it's repeated | over and over again. But how about life expectancy? Is is | considered a major sexism problem? Can we fix that gap? | | I agree with your post 100%, we are not judged equally. | rhizome wrote: | Nice humblebrag, but at the end of it all, "all humans are the | same" is a thought-terminating cliche. | sedatk wrote: | > Nice humblebrag | | Yeah, a great brand-building exercise for throwaway861229. | majkinetor wrote: | Yeah, attractive males can say bunch of "nasty" stuff to | females and it is considered flirting rather then mobbing | | As always, context is everything. | | > after I got married and stopped to accept such behaviour | | Man should never stop accepting such behavior ... | stcredzero wrote: | Another word for "Clamming Up" is "The Thermocline of Truth." | | https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-... | | "Clamming Up" because of power dynamics is _inherent_ to | hierarchy. This is why relationships with co-founders and | employees need to be nurtured carefully. It 's the same set of | dynamics that happen inside a band. | | If you always want candid advice, honest feedback, and critical | though unpleasant information to flow freely and undistorted, | then you must remember that _actions speak louder than words_. If | someone tried to tell you something you really need to hear, | though you may not have wanted to hear it, what did you do? How | did you react? It 's not enough to just _say_ that you 're for | honesty and openness. It's not enough to _say_ you value someone | 's opinion. You have to actually _do_ that! | | Did you counter-attack? Did you order your underling to never | speak of "it" again? Did you use the differential in power to | just shut-up and shut-off? If you were asked to give a detailed | account of what the other person had to say, would _they_ be | satisfied that you gave a full and fair account of what they were | trying to convey? Would you even be able to recall such details, | or would your account be sketchy and vague? | | Paying your employees well and having a great environment is | actually a double-edged sword, here. What happens, if one day, | your early employee comes to you with something they know you | don't want to hear, and you react badly? What if you raise your | voice and manage to make them feel threatened. That employee will | get the message that, despite your lip-service, you don't want to | hear it. What's that employee going to do? It's not too unlikely | they will "get the message" and clam up, go with the flow, and | play it safe to keep their cushy 6-figure job. The flow of candid | information from that employee will drop by a lot! | | Now, to bring things back to the semi-political: If just having | hierarchy/authority, period, can raise such sticky problems in | communication and corporate epistemology, then let me ask this: | What effect would granting power to accusations without evidence | have? This is not an argument for the blanket elimination of | accusations. Rather, it's an argument for the importance of | *evidence." | haltingproblem wrote: | [deleted] | eli wrote: | How come other professions like Law and Medicine were able to | make huge progress overcoming similar problems while tech | continues to lag behind? | | This is not an intractable problem. | xenihn wrote: | I think top-tier law is still overwhelmingly male. Read up on | the double bell-curve for the legal industry, which is | quickly becoming a problem for tech as well. Though for the | legal industry, there's gatekeeping in the form of school | pedigree. | | For medicine, it's easier to balance the ratios when you can | fully control the pipeline, and also control the total number | of new practitioners entering the workforce regardless of | demand. | | If you only have 28,000 residency slots a year, institutions | can pick whoever they want, and get the diversity numbers | that they want. They decide who eventually gets to work in | the field. Employers and customers don't have any real | choice. They're going to get whatever the schools provide, | and if they don't like it, they can go without doctors. | | Modern tech is nothing like that, but it could be someday. | Imagine if schools decided who could be professionally | employed as a software engineer. | raarts wrote: | One thing I read is that the biggest difference between men | and women has been found to be interest in things vs interest | in people. | | If true this could explain the differences in attraction of | various fields. | haltingproblem wrote: | Yes, every evolutionary psychologist talks about it. And | you can see it in the outcomes - one of them being men | commit most violent crime (>80%) and usually on one | another. | eli wrote: | I don't buy it. | haltingproblem wrote: | [deleted] | eli wrote: | I would speculate law and medicine made conscious and | considered effort to increase diversity, and tech did not. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | I would speculate law and medicine appeal to people | differently than tech. | | ON AVERAGE, men and women differ in biological traits and | desires. We see this in massively egalitarian societies | like in Norway who have huge sex based gaps in | employments yet the most effort to be egalitarian. | Interesting. | haltingproblem wrote: | Your speculation is not speculation but actually | supported by data from Norway, Sweden, etc. | | I made that point earlier but it does not go over well | with the gender is social constructionism folks. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word | readily available than _sexism_ for trying to talk about patterns | like this but when I use the word _sexism_ , I think people think | I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be | assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what | I'm trying to say. | | I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my | experience is that it's due to patterns of this sort and not | because most men intentionally want me to fail. But the | cumulative effect of most men erring on the side of protecting | themselves and not wanting to take risks to engage with me | meaningfully really adds up over time and I think that | tremendously holds women back generally. | | I think gendered patterns of social engagement also contributed | to the Theranos debacle. I've said that before and I feel like it | tends to get misunderstood as well. (Though in the case of | Theranos it runs a lot deeper in that she was actually sleeping | with an investor.) | cistercianic wrote: | >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? | DoreenMichele wrote: | No. | | But I believe I shouldn't have to literally starve and be | homeless for years for the crime of being born with girl bits | between my legs, which is more or less part of my back story | here. | cistercianic wrote: | edit: removing my comment as this probably isn't a fruitful | avenue of conversation. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I did freelance work to accommodate my health situation. | I was also the apparently highest ranked woman on HN and | failing to turn that into professional connections and | professional development and adequate income. | | I believe my gender is a factor in that failing to become | what I desired. Every single time I comment on that, | without fail, someone acts like I am utterly full of shit | and I get really awful and dismissive replies that | completely fail to acknowledge that maybe I have a point | and maybe my gender actually was a factor in my low | income. (And still is.) | xiphias2 wrote: | Did you write about it in detail somewhere? I would like | to read it if you had. | | Also in my life professional and personal connections are | not totally separated, as I view a person as a person. As | an example helped my ex partners very significantly in | their professional life (while they helped me in other | ways). | DoreenMichele wrote: | There is no nice little write up somewhere. | | I have written about it -- quite a lot over the years, in | fact. I did so to manage the situation as best I could | under difficult circumstances and those many posts have | been pretty consistently redacted over the years. | | I'm frankly really freaking tired of writing about it and | don't really feel a strong desire to try to find some | means to write about it as some kind of edutainment for | random internet strangers, so don't hold your breath | waiting for me to do a write up. That's probably not | really in my best interest and I'm just amazingly | exhausted with the whole thing at this point. | xiphias2 wrote: | Sure, no problem, I understand. I often feel that both | sexes have lots of their own problems and we won't ever | be able to empatize with eachother however strongly we | want to. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | Online relationships have a shred of value of what a | personal one does. I don't know you but to me it sounds | more like you didn't want to work for peanuts at a | company and instead risked being an entrepreneur or | something. | saberdancer wrote: | "I'm a freelancer. I polish resumes, I do a little | website work and I do some writing." | | Polishing resumes and website work don't sound like | highly paid jobs, regardless of your ranking on HN. This | is probably bigger issue then your gender in your income. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I'm not claiming and have never claimed that my gender is | the sole factor. I also have a serious medical condition | and that's a big problem. | | But the issue is that I get told, both implicitly and | explicitly, that my gender isn't really an issue at all. | Even your comment basically hand waves off my gender as a | factor. | | I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I appear | to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the | leader board. | | I don't even need that much income. If I could just get | _enough_ resume work, I would be content to do resume | work part-time at $50 /page. That would work for me and I | can't even arrange that. | | I believe my gender is _a factor_ in my failure to | adequately meet my financial needs. It is not at all | constructive for people to keep telling me the many, many | other reasons I am poor as a means to implicitly say | "Sure, sexism is a factor, but it's not the only factor, | so quit pointing it out because it makes the guys | uncomfortable." | | That practice is exactly why so many women (people of | color, etc) are so very angry. If people would simply | acknowledge that my gender is actually something | complicating my efforts to network and establish an | adequate income and then spend time wondering what would | work for me instead of dismissing it as "not the real | reason" I'm poor, I would probably be okay financially. | | I'm not asking to get rich overnight here. | saberdancer wrote: | I accept that gender could be a factor as well, but | gender is not something that a comment on HN can change | (or should for that matter). Your gender will not | (probably) change and we can't really change the culture | quickly either. | | My point is that if you have low income, it would be | better to focus on improving skills you are offering | rather than try to solve "women are paid less" problem. | For example, just presenting yourself as a website | builder sounds more profitable than someone who edits | resumes. | | By the way is HN rank really that useful? For example I | never knew there is a HN leader board or how to access | it. | | Thank you for the explanation, I wish you all the best. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I have focused on building my skills. | | I don't present myself on HN as "a website builder" | because I do little plug and play websites (blogspot, | wordpress) and I'm not really a programmer. My knowledge | of how to build a useful website is potentially of value | to people in the small town I live in where local talent | is sorely lacking. It's not anything people on HN are | likely to want to hire me for. | | I'm amazingly, desperately tired of discussing this. | Thank you for acknowledging my point. I don't really want | to dig into things like the value of HN rank further. It | doesn't do a helluva lot of good. | | I bring it up to make the point that "If I am doing it | wrong, show me the woman that is supposedly doing it | right so I can take pointers from her." and that seems to | not be what anyone ever hears. | | I appear to be the highest ranked woman here, ergo I | appear to be the woman who has most closely "mastered" | successfully talking to the guys here and I remain | frustrated as all hell and dirt poor. So there doesn't | appear to be a good answer here. | csmpltn wrote: | > I appear to be the highest ranked woman here | | What do you mean? | | > show me the woman that is supposedly doing it right so | I can take pointers from her | | There are successfull women everywhere. What are you on | about? | DoreenMichele wrote: | _> I appear to be the highest ranked woman here | | What do you mean?_ | | I have more than 32k karma under this handle. I had like | 25k karma under a previous handle. That handle appears to | be the only openly female handle to have ever spent time | on the HN leader board. | c0d4h wrote: | 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. | cistercianic wrote: | edit: removing my comment as this seems to be an | uncharitable reading. | dang wrote: | You're breaking the site guidelines badly in this thread. | Note this one, from | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: | | " _Please respond to the strongest plausible | interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one | that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._" | yaml-ops-guy wrote: | You should re-read the second sentence of what was | _actually_ typed. Maybe a few times. Your | characterization is _flagrantly_ opposite of what this | person shared. | ridethebike wrote: | Wasn't Theranos debacle because the tech was never going to | work due to it being borderline snake oil and whishful thinking | hyped by con(wom)man? | entee wrote: | It should be noted that past the early stages virtually none | of that investment and valuation came from institutional VCs | and people who had a clue. The valuation was driven by rich | people who didn't know any better and they sadly got | defrauded. | DoreenMichele wrote: | Yes, but it was called a "decacorn" because it was valued at | $10 billion dollars and its valuation dropped overnight to | zero when it was outed as a fraud. | | I posit that it wouldn't have gotten so crazy overvalued if | it hadn't been headed by a pretty young woman. But trying to | explain that is probably "off topic" and just thinking about | trying to explain it makes me tired. I'd rather not. | magicalhippo wrote: | > crazy overvalued | | I didn't pay too close attention to the story. If they had | managed to produce the tech they claimed for the price they | claimed, would $10 billion be crazy overvalued? | DoreenMichele wrote: | I have no idea. Possibly not. | | The issue is this: Would a man have gotten a $10 billion | valuation based on hot air and zero results for years and | years? Or would someone have called him on his shit a lot | earlier? | | She was literally sleeping with and living with a much | older male investor* while publicly claiming to be | celibate in her twenties due to her extreme devotion to | her career and business. I always figured that was | bullshit and she was probably sleeping with someone and | "I'm celibate" was probably a cover story. | | And no one went looking for that because of fear of being | called sexist, I guess. I hesitated to give that opinion | on HN for fear of back lash. | | But as a woman with six year of college and yadda, when I | meet accomplished men in positions to open doors for me, | a lot of them find me attractive and this actively closes | doors in my face. I'm not willing to sleep with a man to | open doors, not because I have some kind of moral | objection to that but because I don't believe it actually | works. | | It didn't actually work for Elizabeth Holmes. Sleeping | with an investor did not, in fact, help her succeed in | the world of business. It merely helped her cover up | fraud while her problems grew larger until it resulted in | both criminal and civil suits and her name is mud. She | will never really recover from this debacle. | | So I don't think sleeping with men to open doors works. I | think sleeping with rich and powerful men would get me | sex and maybe would let me be a "kept woman" but it | wouldn't get me taken seriously as a business woman and | it wouldn't teach me how business is done and it wouldn't | have some men giving me meaty, constructive feedback. | | * Edit: To be crystal clear here, I mean someone who | invested in Theranos, I don't mean "Someone whose job | title was _investor_. " This was a clear conflict of | interest. | legostormtroopr wrote: | > If they had managed to produce the tech they claimed | for the price they claimed, would $10 billion be crazy | overvalued? | | Yes, but in the same way that a company that promises | faster-than-light travel would be worth $10 billion | dollars. | | Theranos' tech was so far beyond the realms of any | reasonable science, yet people still invested. | Thorentis wrote: | What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear | of being labeled as a sexist. | rocqua wrote: | Its treating people different based on gender. It depends | very much on semantics whether you call that sexism. It is | certainly not the form of sexism that people these days are | most worried about. | tolbish wrote: | That would be discrimination based on sex, but no it would | not be sexist in this case. Now if, for example, he treated | people based on gender because he felt women belong in the | kitchen, then that would be both sexist and discriminatory. | | The words sexism/racism often get confused with | discrimination. | awb wrote: | > The words sexism/racism often get confused with | discrimination. | | Oxford definition of "sexism" via Google: | | > prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically | against women, on the basis of sex | | The definition of sexism seems to include discrimination. | What definition are you using? | dageshi wrote: | Genuine question, if you were a man in that situation, what | would you do? | DoreenMichele wrote: | In what situation? | dageshi wrote: | Well the situation in the article seems like a good | example, you think the female ceo should swap with the male | co founder. You're invested but not massively and you've | not really known either for years. | Blikkentrekker wrote: | I am male, and I would say so. | | I do not live in the Anglo Saxon world; know this well. | | I would say so, and the thought that anyone would level | some of these weird gender arguments I've primarily seen | from Anglo-Saxon news sources wouldn't cross my mind, for | it has never happened to me in my life. -- and I am not | entirely sure as to how much I should believe such | stories I read on the internet that speak of how | seemingly every single issue in Anglo-Saxon culture is | phrased in terms of an imaginary gender war. | | I have never in such professional disputes in my life | felt as though gender were used as an excuse, or reason, | I have never in my life been accused of sexism when I | criticized female staffmembers, and I have never seen it | happen to anyone else either, I have never seen anyone go | that route as a matter of defence. | | Perhaps, a difference is that Dutch professional analyses | ten to be more numerical, and that the Anglo-Saxon more | often wings it based on feeling rather than numbers. It | is o course far harder to argue with numbers. | DoreenMichele wrote: | The odds are good I would err on the side of not risking | it | | Which is why this needs to be discussed: So a path | forward can be found. Our current default patterns aren't | working well. | worker767424 wrote: | The only path forward is for enough high-profile, hyper- | woke behavior examples to get negative public exposure. | As long as men are afraid of accidentally becoming the | target of the next donglegate, it's safer to just not | engage. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I agree with what I think you are going for: That this | super blamey "hyper woke" bullshit needs to stop if we | are going to make any real forward progress on issues | like this one. | | In my experience, one good example of how to do it right | is vastly more powerful in solving social ills than _any_ | number of people being hung high and scapegoated for | getting it wrong. | | In fact, I generally feel that scapegoating people in a | system where there are no good answers is actively | counterproductive and helps keep things stuck. Hanging | someone high for not knowing "the right answer" in a | system that gives zero good options for how to handle X | implicitly suggests that good answers exist and | implicitly denies the reality that "We don't know how to | do this dance. We don't have an answer for that." | | It implicitly suggests there is a means to get this right | when the reality is there isn't. So it actively distracts | from real problem solving. | | I would like to see more real problem solving in this | space. As a dirt poor woman, I have a vested interest in | seeing a world where there are answers for how to do this | dance. | | So far, I am mostly coming up empty under circumstances | that suggest to me that my behavior is not the problem. | The problem is the lack of good answers for how to do | this dance. | dkersten wrote: | Completely agree. Scapegoating can't have positive | effects. At best, it causes what we see here: people | staying silent in fear. At worst, it just alienates | people and causes them to dig their heels in, doubling | down on whatever bad behavior they're scapegoated for | because they've got nothing left to lose. It rarely, if | ever, actually improves behavior. | | I recently had a conversation where the lady I was | talking to basically said (paraphrasing for brevity) _" | all men bad, always"_ and I'm really not sure what she | even wanted to achieve. Some kind of perceived revenge | maybe? I ended up disengaging and it left me feeling | rather deflated. If I'm bad by default and there's | nothing I can do to change that, why care at all? Luckily | I know that most women are much more reasonable so I will | continue to strive to treat everybody equally and how I | want to be treated. | | But I do worry sometimes that even that can backfire, | because I've witnessed another situation (on Twitter) | where a lady complained that men who didn't get her joke | tweet were mansplaining about how what she wrote was | wrong, that they were explaining her (purposeful) error | to her because she was a woman. Except others replied | with their own versions of the joke and they too were | getting "mainsplained" too, even though many were | themselves men. That is, some people were | misunderstanding the joke and commenting, it wasn't | anything to do with her being a woman. But she turned it | into a gender issue. | | So if I want to treat everyone equal, but that equal | treatment can be seen as mansplaining or other negative | gendered thing, that makes me more likely to disengage | out of fear and then I'm not treating people equally, but | not out of malice or feeling of superiority, just out of | fear... | | Its a big problem and I don't know the answer either. | cwhiz wrote: | It's easy. Investment is a math game. What is the upside | and downside of either action? | | First choice, I remain silent. Best case, the female CEO | kills it and I make some money. Worst case she flops and | I lose my investment. Potentially great upside, | relatively minor downside. | | Second choice, I suggest a change. Best case the company | does well and I make money. Worst case I'm labeled a | sexist and I'm effectively ejected from the startup | world. Potentially great upside, but unlimited losses. | | Easy choice. I stay silent. | go13 wrote: | As usually, in western gynocentric social order, men are evil | and the problem and women are like kids: should have all | privileges and carry no responsibility. | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads into gender flamewar hell. This | sort of generic tangent is exactly what the site guidelines | ask you not to post here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking | to the rules, we'd be grateful. | | Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for | ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless | of what ideology they're battling for or against, because | it's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for. | Curious conversation and ideological battle can't coexist any | more than frisbee in a park can coexist with tank warfare. | We're trying to optimize for curiosity here. Please use HN in | the intended spirit from now on. | go13 wrote: | okay, noted | dang wrote: | Appreciated! | [deleted] | [deleted] | dijit wrote: | This is not a constructive or helpful comment. | [deleted] | nullsense wrote: | It's more like reverse sexism here. I totally get the behaviour | here. You simply don't want to be on the receiving end of | potential backlash when you're just trying to help someone. The | calculus being you feel as if you might make a genuine remark | only to receive a response interpreting said remark as the | product of sexism e.g "out of persons A and B, I think B should | run the company" where A is a woman and B is a man is simply | far too likely to be met with "well of course a man would pick | another man" than "it seems they carefully evaluated the | attributes and qualities of A and B and B is likely better | suited". The former response is itself sexist as it's basing | assumptions about the decision on attributes of gender first | and foremost, hence it's a sort of reverse sexism if you will. | And the man's move here is sexist also in the regard that his | calculus of the reverse sexism response is also based on the | assumption that this dynamic exists and presents a real danger | and it's all based primarily on gender too. | | Sexism all the way down on both sides. | | I've come to understand in life through experience there are a | very thorny class of problems that I don't know of a proper | name for, but have formulated my own concept of the "non-native | speakers dilemma". It goes as follows: | | You're on a bus and while listening to two strangers conversing | you realise you can't quite understand what they're talking | about. As a native speaker you feel perfectly confident that | you know the language and you are simply missing context shared | only by the individuals talking and hence it isn't possible for | you to understand the conversation, and not because you don't | know the language. If you are a non-native speaker, and | depending on your level, you often start to doubt your | abilities, and can never be fully sure if you simply don't | understand because you're missing context that's not possible | for you to obtain or there are gaps in your language skills | that still need to be filled. | | I had this realisation on the bus about a decade ago when | learning Japanese. But I've often thought back to it in certain | situations and these kind in particular seem to crop up a lot. | | One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to | another female non-engineer outside their workplace just about | their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female engineer | remark something along the lines of "the Architect often shoots | down my ideas because I'm female". | | I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the | architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I | don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm | female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm | an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has | some flaws in it that he can see that I can't. | | In this case I'm a "native speaker" so to speak, so I can be | perfectly confident my thinking is accurate with respect to the | reason why it's getting rejected. The female engineer is the so | called "non-native speaker" where this pernicious dynamic | exists making it nigh on impossible to confident that your | assessment is accurate. | | Curious if that metaphor makes sense to others, or if others | ever noticed the same thing? | [deleted] | nonplussed wrote: | One of the toughest things about discrimination is being able | to prove it. I'm a white man, but I spent time living in | Japan where I was an obvious minority. | | Some situations were clear to me that I was being treated a | particular way because of my race. But then others were not | so clear cut. | | For example, one time I was talking in Japanese with a group | and someone kept repeating what I said like "He said...". I | was getting angry at that as I took it to mean that they were | basically "translating" my Japanese for others. But then | later, I was watching a Japanese TV drama and the same thing | happened on there (with only Japanese speaking). That made me | think that maybe this was just a cultural thing that people | do and didn't have any reflection on me personally. | | Having mentored a female engineer, I've seen that if you are | constantly on the lookout for signs of discrimination against | you, you will find so much of it. You'll go crazy thinking | the whole world is out to get you because of your sex, race, | etc. It's tough because there are no doubt situations where | that does happen. But there are also situations where a white | man would have been given the same feedback or treated in the | same way. As a minority though, you only have your own | experience to go on. It becomes tough to recognize what is | legitimate discrimination vs what is just ordinarily | communication. | magicalhippo wrote: | I have this issue with my SO where I'll sigh heavily and | she'll interpret it as me disapproving of whatever she just | did or did not do, inventing scenarios in case there's no | immediately obvious cause. | | Instead my head is somewhere else entirely, and I might | have been annoyed at myself for forgetting to pick | something up at the store or whatever. | | We've gotten better at handling it, I try to remind myself | to immediately tell her it wasn't her, and she asking me | what it was if I forget. But there has been a lot of | unnecessary bad times that originated from such episodes... | etempleton wrote: | This. It can be a challenge for anyone in the workplace, | but I imagine it is harder for minorities. | | One of the best pieces of career advice I have ever taken | was from this TED talk: https://youtu.be/KzSAFJBLyn4 | | The section on Abraham Lincoln. Perceive no slights. It | changed the way I approach people at work. | [deleted] | DoreenMichele wrote: | _One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to | another female non-engineer outside their workplace just | about their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female | engineer remark something along the lines of "the Architect | often shoots down my ideas because I'm female". | | I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the | architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I | don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because | I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because | I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea | has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't._ | | One of the really good things for me about hanging on HN is | hearing "X happens to me too as a man because (reasons) and | has nothing to do with gender." That's been enormously | helpful to me in trying to find a path forward in my own | life. | | I hope you get constructive engagement of your points. I | don't like the characterization that it's sexism on both | sides but that's not intended to be a big attack or | something. I think we don't have good language for talking | about these issues that acknowledge in a non-blamey fashion | that "Gender is, in fact, a factor in outcomes and it's | complicated." | | So far, we mostly do a sucky job of trying to discuss this at | all. It ends up being people on both sides pointing fingers | and even if you are bending over backwards to not point | fingers, it will get interpreted as such by a lot of people | and that tends to go bad places, not good. | SunlightEdge wrote: | Mmmmmm the problem I have found with feminist literature is | that it often talks about the advantages of men and the | disadvantages of women (which is all fair enough) but it | doesn't really talk about the advantages of women and the | disadvantages of men. To generalise, it doesn't attempt to | critique its own model. I'm all for encouraging equality | etc. and do my best to avoid identity politics discussions | but at the back of my mind this is what I'm thinking when I | over hear a woman/man complain about sexism. e.g. Are you | really sure that this is true? | | Yes things can be improved. But at some point will critical | thinking and the benefit of the doubt be encouraged in | society? | | Or are we doomed to the media/twitter blowing up things out | of proportion and people looking through prisms of | victimhood. | DoreenMichele wrote: | _Mmmmmm the problem I have found with feminist literature | is that it often talks about the advantages of men and | the disadvantages of women (which is all fair enough) but | it doesn 't really talk about the advantages of women and | the disadvantages of men._ | | I don't self identify as a _feminist_. I never have. I | generally agree with this criticism. | etempleton wrote: | A difficulty of being a minority of any stripe must be the | not knowing. | | Was the architect dismissive of my ideas because I am a | woman? Because he shoots down everyone's ideas? Because he | has a specific problem with me? Because my ideas are bad? | | One of the greatest challenges I had to overcome in my | career was not reading too much into the actions of others. | When you do you can easily be offended by everything. | DoreenMichele wrote: | _A difficulty of being a minority of any stripe must be | the not knowing._ | | It's incredibly hard to keep having an open mind, keep | trying to figure out "Is this actually constructive | criticism or toxic bullshit?" and keep trying to engage | in good faith in the face of certain patterns. It's just | exhausting. It takes all your time and mental and | emotional energy to try to sort it out, which detracts | from putting energy into things that will actually | advance your career. | | You can spend hours and hours wondering "What did he mean | by that?" in an exchange that lasted under a minute. And | you may never figure it out. | | It's vastly easier to just start erring on the side of | "You're all just sexist pigs!" Though, unfortunately, | that seems to make the problem more intractable and | unresolvable, but it makes is a little easier on a day- | to-day basis to cope in the face of a situation that is | inherently excessively hard to parse and navigate. | internetslave wrote: | Basically the me too movement and the way in which men cannot | defend themselves from sexual accusations back fired. Very | predictable that this happened, there's no easy solution. | haecceity wrote: | Founders swapping titles is enough to decide success of a | company? Interesting relationship dynamic. | prewett wrote: | Probably more like doing what you're better at. Maybe one had | the idea and the original vision, so they became CEO by | default, whereas they might actually better at developing the | product and should do the CTO role instead. But since it's | their idea, they are relatively good at evangelising it and | relating to the public, investors, and customers. However, the | other might be much better at that than at CTO, so the company | would benefit by swapping roles. | csours wrote: | This 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. | snicksnak wrote: | This trend isn't going away anytime soon, In fact I think it's | just ramping up and is accelerating, especially with the racism | narrative the main stream media outlets started to heavily push | ~2 years ago and the big identity movement. It will continue | until there is consensus, that this climate is bad, for everyone | involved. I don't see that happen anytime soon, the cancelations | will continue until moral improves. | xiphias2 wrote: | 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. | asjldkfin wrote: | It doesn't help that the benchmark for oppression gets lower | every day. It used to be a concerted, systematic action that's | targeted at a small group. Today, it's pretty much anything which | hurts one's feelings. | | Here's a hot take: This is what happens when kids don't get | bullied at school. They don't learn to build the necessary | emotional circuitry and calluses to deal with emotional damage. | TLightful wrote: | Hot == dumb@ss | asjldkfin wrote: | That's what they called Galileo too. Alas, I will suffer for | truth. | | https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/melodrama.png | renewiltord wrote: | I don't know where all this "only massive suffering builds | strength" stuff comes from. | | I'm pretty sure this is analogous to the way you build up | muscle: you don't try to squat 300 lbs, tear your hip flexors, | and destroy your knees on day one. In fact, repeated injury | makes you weaker. | | Most social groups do have a mechanism to softly introduce low | intensity conflict as play (which may help with emotional | strength). Practically any group has escalating banter with | escalating intimacy, for instance, permitting growth of | emotional resilience in a progressive manner. | | I was never bullied in school and I'm generally quite socially | comfortable in many situations. | dang wrote: | Please don't post flamebait to HN. This can't lead to anything | good. | | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613220. | PaulHoule wrote: | This happens if you are the one person of race A in a group of | race B too. | alea_iacta_est wrote: | Tribalism is the new diversity. Embrace it. | dang wrote: | Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments here. | fhifjfhjjjk wrote: | This is the grave that has been dug. Why would I give advice for | no benefit to myself, AND open myself up to downside risk? | soneca wrote: | 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 considered his investment not | enough to be worthy bothering to try to find a way to give the | same advice in a non-sexist way. | | My final take of the article is: founders, don't listen to advice | made by investors who invested a small enough portion of their | portfolio to even care if your chances as a company to be | successful improve or not. | phkahler wrote: | >> Ultimately I think it's on men to learn how to handle giving | candid advice in a non-sexist manner. | | And how would that be in this case? | igorkraw wrote: | "Hey XXX,and YYY, do you have time for a discussion tomorrow | at lunch? I noticed some things that make me think the | company could benefit from you two swapping some | responsibilities. I've noticed XXX struggles to aaa,for | example aaa1, aaa2 and at aaa3, and at aaa4 YYY seemed to | feel very comfortable doing aaa despite having less | experienced, and conversely I think XXX's experience might be | better suited for bbb, because of my experience at CCCC. | Happy to share more of my thoughts and get your own opionion | on this at lunch" | | I actually fail to see how you can respectfully tell someone | you think they should swap roles and _be_ sexist. Sure, if | your whole argument is that "XXX isn't coming of agressive | enough to survive in this boys game" then you might be | accused of sexism...for _some_ reason | phkahler wrote: | That's a nice thought, and might work if the person can | articulate the differences well enough. But the entire | point of the article is that no matter the argument or | ability to make it, there is a fear that the woman might | claim sexism simply because he suggested she step out of | the CEO role and let the other person (a man) have it | (reasons be damned). Even if everything was fine among | those 3 people, someone else might take to twitter and | frame it as sexist - especially if the advice was taken. | igorkraw wrote: | And I am calling that fear bullshit. If you cannot | articulate the differences, then why are you making the | suggestion? A "gut feeling"? Well, then that might be | sexist and deserve being called out as BS. And if | everything was fine between those 3 people...just clarify | things on twitter? | | The fear of a hypothetical "someone" taking something | "totally reasonable" out of context is, in my experience, | held mainly by people who have a private definition of | "totally reasonable" not held by the majority and who'd | like to continue holding it without consequences. | KODeKarnage wrote: | You might want a little self-reflection about that last | sentence and how it paints you as precisely the sort of | person that others are rightfully worried about. | simonbarker87 wrote: | You can't control how a recipient will receive advice and how | they may choose to twist/change it. | majkinetor wrote: | When you cancel man for saying stuff and then you later complain | no man wants to hang out with you... | darkerside wrote: | It's not just about giving feedback, it's also about how you give | it. "You should switch roles" is a terrible piece of feedback. | "You are failing to do X, Y, and Z; and Fred is doing those | things very well" is much better. It allows for autonomy in | determining how the team wants to handle said feedback, whether | it's swapping roles, improving at current roles, or going out and | finding more aligned investors. | | Maybe doing it the first way works, too, but I think it is poor, | lazy communication that used the zeitgeist as a crutch to make a | difficult point. That doesn't mean it can't be done well and | respectfully, which the given example perhaps did not. | wrnr wrote: | Good looking women (and men) have an easier time making progress | in their carrier at least up to the point when everybody starts | assuming they just got where they are because of their looks. | | Companies with an explicit diversity and inclusion statement on | their job applications get more minority applicants but hire | proportionally less minority candidates, speculation range from | smug interviewers to interviewees being too concerned with being | themselves. | | Everyone playing the suppression olympics loses in the end. | benhoyt wrote: | > Companies with an explicit diversity and inclusion statement | on their job applications get more minority applicants but hire | proportionally less minority candidates | | I'm curious: do you have a source for that? | wrnr wrote: | google HBR yourself | buzzerbetrayed wrote: | > I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for | trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word | sexism | | I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than sexism. My | question is, is this even sexism at all? How many men can get | publicly denounced as "sexists" and have their life ruined | because they didn't speak carefully enough, before it is simply | just "smart" rather than "sexist" to be extra careful with how | you speak to women. | | To take the example to an extreme just to illustrate the point: | If, in a hypothetical world, men served jail time for making eye | contact with women, would it be sexist for men to stare at their | feet when women are around? | | I am 100% convinced that sexism does exist and is not all that | uncommon (I've seen my wife deal with it a bit in the workplace). | I'm just not convinced this is an example of it. Seems more like | it's the "safe" choice for a man in 2021. Both men and women | would benefit if we worked to make it not that way. | dang wrote: | > If, in a hypothetical world, men served jail time for making | eye contact with women | | Please don't post flamebait to HN. Nothing good can come of | this. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | Edit: please don't use HN for ideological battle. You've been | doing it repeatedly, and it's not what this site is for. | | I've detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613374. | dalbasal wrote: | >> _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 | "exclusionary assholes" or unintended chilling effects. | | Gravity in a box is equivalent to acceleration. | | That said, you have a point too. From your (me also) | perspective, there's a snookered conclusion to this story. | Inasmuch as Twitter mobs are scary, some people are opting out | of joining the girls for a drink.. sometimes advisably. | robertlagrant wrote: | > 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. | c5o49t5b4QN4TU5 wrote: | I'm a white cis male, and I work as a software engineer at a | Silicon Valley unicorn. My employer is a perennial darling of the | HN crowd, and is likely to continue its rocket ride in the years | to come. | | I'll be completely candid here: I have some kind of problem with | women. This isn't to say that I don't like women or don't want | women to succeed. I just don't want to associate with or be seen | around women. I'm sure there's some kind of deep reason for this, | but I haven't exactly been looking for it. | | On the other hand, I'm a huge believer in the "live and let live" | principle. I found a good way of reconciling these two sides of | my personality. Whenever I'm thrust into a situation in which I | must interact with women, I gracefully extricate myself from it. | | I'm very sneaky about this too. Sometimes my departure can be | performed swiftly, but other times I must maneuver over a period | of days or weeks to get myself away from an unpleasant situation. | I'm never overt about it, I never hurt anyone in the process, and | I'm pretty confident that no one has any idea that I'm like this. | | In the past I've had to abandon projects I was working on, and | even ditched maintainership of a popular open source project | because a female coworker started contributing to it. Given that | I've been doing this for a couple of decades, I'm willing to say | that I'd do more or less anything to get away from women, as long | as no one gets hurt. Yes, it might take a while, and I might need | to make some sacrifices, but I'll eventually get away. | | Of course this started way before Twitter mobs and cancel culture | became a thing, so I can't claim prescience. But I do permit | myself a little smugness at this point in time. I think I'm | pretty much cancel-proof. | DoreenMichele wrote: | Thank you for admitting this. | hobs wrote: | Your methods and conclusions make no sense - associating with | women doesn't get you canceled, Kevin Spacey didn't molest any | women as far as I know. | | Smugness makes no sense when what it appears is you have some | deep rooted psychological issues that need addressing. | wontendwell wrote: | I am going to be honest and admit I have a problem with women | also and would much prefer to work only with other men. | | In addition, I lament that it is iillegal for men to have | their own organizations of any kind. It is not legal for men | to have their own clubs or organizations in the Western | world. It is illegal for men, and particularly white men, to | self select and self organize. This is a factual statement. | | I do wonder how this will play out in the end. | NationalPark wrote: | I think that statement is a little underfactualized. In the | U.S., private clubs and religious groups can both legally | discriminate by gender. The Civil Rights Act protections | apply to public-facing businesses. And generally speaking, | legal protections in the U.S. are by class, not with | specifically enumerated members of a class, so the | "particularly white men" notion is not really accurate when | it comes to employment protections, although I imagine you | were thinking about affirmative action or similar policies | at universities. | arp242 wrote: | > In addition, I lament that it is iillegal for men to have | their own organizations of any kind. It is not legal for | men to have their own clubs or organizations in the Western | world. It is illegal for men, and particularly white men, | to self select and self organize. This is a factual | statement. | | I don't think it's "illegal"; the problem is that these | kind of organisations tend to veer towards the toxic and | hateful. | | Incels are an excellent example of this; the entire concept | was started by a woman struggling with her own involuntary | celibacy and started a support forum. Good initiative. But | over time things have become ... well, rather different. | | A lot of the so-called "men's rights" groups have some | legitimate grievances, and I have seen more than a few | outspoken feminists underscore this. But having legitimate | grievances doesn't excuse their terrible behaviour and | attitude. | | There are some decent groups for this; /r/MensLib on Reddit | is pretty good. But the average is not exactly great. | dang wrote: | I've banned this account. Laments for the absence of white- | men clubs? No. | | Creating accounts to post like this will eventually get | your main account banned as well, so please don't. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | bylfdsa wrote: | I find this view interesting, I have a close friend (not in | tech) that also doesn't want to work with women. | | My own view is that I have no problem working with women | (though there are some women I would refuse to work with or | be around in a social setting b/c of the risk). I suspect I | don't mind because I've had a positive experience working | in a research lab were the PI was a female, as well as one | of the research assistants that I closely worked with: I | did one aspect of hardware/software, she did the other. | [deleted] | dang wrote: | We bend in favor of comments that share personal experience, | but after rereading this one several times, I think it crosses | into trolling ("I'd do more or less anything to get away from | women", etc.) and have banned the account. | | Edit: also, please stop creating accounts for every few | comments you post. We ban accounts that do that. This is in the | site guidelines: | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't | use your real name, but for HN to be a community, users need | some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as | well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a | different kind of forum. | https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... | | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613077. | eevilspock wrote: | My knee-jerk reaction was _misogyny_. | | Then, no, you're describing | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynophobia | | > Gynophobia should not be confused with misogyny, the hatred, | contempt for and prejudice against women | | Ok. That's sad. Best wishes. | | But then, finally, your admitted smugness bothers me, as it | reveals a deep lack of empathy for woman and why the culture is | necessarily going through these fits and throws. | | To what degree is your "live and let live" actually "live and | let live or die, it's not my problem"? | random5634 wrote: | 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. | | In a previous life, I'd worked in a awesome (female led!) product | company. While I had no experience prior to this, I quickly | realized that the product itself and its quality etc was almost | irrelevant to success, the X and Y mentioned by the male panelist | was unfortunately everything, which you'd only know if you were | in the space itself. The female led company I worked for was | bought out by a (male led) competitor, who then using much strong | x and y skills - cleaned up. Company I worked for got basically | nothing. | | Fast forward - my friends business not doing so great, she asks | me for feedback. I said nothing other than enthusiasm. Partly | because I was really enthusiastic - she'd put her heart into this | project. But her comment on social was in my mind - I had no | desire to be next sexist guy "shooting down" an idea | | She's out of the business I think mostly. Anyways, this parallels | the take of the article. | mensetmanusman wrote: | The solution to this is simple: | | Practice your communication skills. If you can't think of a way | to phrase advice that might be offensive, you are failing in | intermediate communication skills. | | If you think it might be offensive, ask a close female in your | life, your sister, your mother, grandma, etc. | | It's in everyone's best interest to treat others with love and | respect. | | For extra safety, if you really think there is a risk, actually | record the audio encounter for back up. | | If you actually go through these steps for building towards good | communication, it's highly unlikely you would ever have to use | the recording in defense. | KODeKarnage wrote: | The problem being highlighted here isn't bad communicators. The | problem is good communicators being incentivized out of | communicating. It says something about you that you could not | comprehend something that obvious. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | 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 | the most, 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 did make a concerted effort to let the woman talk | more, and I'm glad I did, because she had good things to say. | | I'm aware that I have the same biases as the rest of society. I | do my best to recognize them, and, where applicable, to add a | _small_ mental counterweight before making decisions. I don 't | think this _always_ leads to better outcomes, but I do think it | 's a net positive. If investors act on similar frameworks, | they've probably doomed some companies and saved others. The | future is unknowable, and we'll never know what would have | happened. | | I wish _this_ investor hadn 't made his decision out of fear. He | should have made it out of a desire to be a better person, or a | more successful VC. I'm not a fan of online mobs. But I _do_ | think it 's worth taking the social science into account when | making decisions. None of us are immune. | lightgreen wrote: | It is not necessarily your bias against women. It is equally | possible that the woman is not self-confident enough to | interrupt you more often. | | Recently I had a zoom meeting with two women. One of them was a | bit shy and quiet, and the other one constantly interrupted me | and the other woman. There was nothing gender-specific in that | encounter. | | Similarly, in other meetings there are often some men who stay | quiet (but obvs nobody cares about them). | | Possibly we should let shy people talk more. Regardless of | whether they are women, men, black, gay or whatever. | | Or maybe not. Maybe you need to be self-confident and a bit | bold to lead, because if you don't, you won't be a good leader | anyways even if you were given time to speak regardless of your | sex. I don't know. | | Don't look for sexism in every encounter. | antiterra wrote: | Yes, woke culture creates an atmosphere where men and non- | minorities may be overly cautious about what they do and say, | possibly to everyone's detriment. | | But let's be clear here. That's not the root cause. The root | cause is the undeniably real treatment of women and minorities | that created that reactionary mode. | | A number of people I talk to (curiously, they tend to be | production engineers) think we live in a meritocracy where racism | and sexism have virtually been erased. They usually believe a | calvinist work ethic and capacity for enduring suffering creates | an equal opportunity for everyone. But that's just not true. I've | seen cabs skip Black people hailing them to stop at me. I have | heard the n-word used disparagingly, liberally and freely at | informal gatherings in central Pennsylvania or by drivers for car | dealership service centers. | | I am very close to a woman lawyer who is regularly challenged | about her school and where she passed the bar in a way that | doesn't match the experience of her male colleagues. I have seen | video clips of a professor making inappropriate remarks about a | student's looks during a review of her work. It's anecdotal, but | not hard to find. | | So, when you are upset that everyone is holding statements up to | the light and wondering if someone's ethnicity or gender is | behind them, blame the people who actually caused it. It's not | the fault of 'woke' people or those who 'virtue signal.' It's | people who are actually, consciously or not, discriminating and | perpetuating discrimination. They are at fault. | will4274 wrote: | > A number of people I talk to (curiously they tend to be | production engineers) think we live in a meritocracy where | racism and sexism have virtually been erased. | | Do they? I don't think I know anybody like this. Most of the | people I know think we live in a flawed and complex world. | That's why so many of them are less forthcoming with casual | acquaintances, in "mixed company" as they say, as this article | describes. | | Not to doubt too agressively, but are you sure those people you | know believe what you think they believe? | antiterra wrote: | Absolutely. After hours in a break area, people would be much | more candid when they think everyone agrees with them, and | then they state this out loud. | | I have chat logs with a PE at a FAANG who starts off by | declaring that diversity is bullshit, not just efforts but | the goal itself, and that race or gender is no impediment to | success. | | What's even more demonstrative is so many here saying they | are afraid to comment without making a new account because of | 'woke' culture, but those are likely the people downvoting me | to oblivion for suggesting that racists and sexists are the | root cause of the situation. | will4274 wrote: | I don't really understand. How could somebody | simultaneously believe we live in a meritocracy and be | afraid of a woke mob attacking them for saying something | they believe is correct? Surely in a meritocracy, the mob | would praise their correct thinking, not attack them? | | Are you sure those people weren't saying that it was best | to _act like_ a meritocracy (as opposed to one actually | existing today)? | PartiallyTyped wrote: | You assume a mob is rational and therefore will not | attack someone if that person is in the right. A mob can | not and will never be rational by construction. | antiterra wrote: | It's more that they believe woke culture is the core | impediment to said meritocracy. | pdx6 wrote: | For candor, reduce the risk of blow back by giving the advice in | person or over the phone. California law is very strict in | recording conversations. | | Yes, a guy could screw it up and say something potentially sexist | or just dumb -- but for success what someone is doing wrong needs | to be expressed. | exhilaration wrote: | Personally I would take it further and make my own | surreptitious recording of the conversation as a CYA tactic. | nphardorworse wrote: | What a BS article. How about we give advice and feedback that | is... not sexist? Crazy idea, right?! If you say things that are | not sexist nobody will accuse you of sexism. Simple as that. And | if you don't know what is and what is not sexist then most likely | you are sexist. Then go and educate yourself on the topic, and | don't waste time writing excuses on online forums. | blast wrote: | > If you say things that are not sexist nobody will accuse you | of sexism | | The article is all about how that is, unfortunately, false. | 8note wrote: | The distinction is that there are things, specifically | criticism, that can be interpreted as sexism independently of | whether it is based on the sex of the criticised. | | In the listed example, it's sexist to not suggest that the man | becomes CEO instead of the current woman CEO | at_a_remove wrote: | The payout matrix for "give honest advice / don't give honest | advice" has changed, radically. Then some people noticed that, | and then their behavior changed to match. It isn't punishing | anyone, it's adaptation to a new risk. The "Pence Fence" is a | defensive strategem and it didn't arise in a vacuum. It is a | _costly_ defense, too, so it being kept up is likely worth the | cost to mitigate the risk. | | Most of what comes after when discussing the issue is "how to | 'fix' this 'problem.'" by encouraging men to speak _anyway_. But | that is the wrong approach, because it relies on people changing | their behavior back like hurling themselves on grenades -- you | can 't count on it. Still high-risk, low-reward. Perhaps even no- | reward. Making plans on people (well, men in this instance but it | could be anyone) being irrationally drawn to self-sacrifice is | not going to pan out, _especially_ if your reputation is | destroyed in the mix after. Leaping on grenades typically earns a | medal, but here it gets you vilification. | worik wrote: | Clearly shows the need for diversity at all levels of the economy | and what a problem the dominance of white men (some of my best | friends are white men) has been | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | 70% of america is white. Can you please let us know the exact | percentage of white men that is acceptable for every industry? | fghfghfghfghfgh wrote: | I think your comment perfectly shows to which extreme it has | become acceptable to criticize a group of people simply from | their skin color | stonogo wrote: | And the consequences of being accused of sexism by an | online mob have now become so extreme that many investors | don't want to risk it anymore. | | Forgive me, but, what exactly are these "consequences"? I can see | it for e.g. line employees, especially in communications or media | roles, but for investors? What happens, they lose some Twitter | followers? Slightly fewer companies beg them for money? I've | never ever heard of an investor suffering _at all_ because of | social media outrage and I 'm tempted to speculate it's never | happened. | xenihn wrote: | They're not going to wind up homeless or in prison, but they | still care about their reputation. If that's harmed, it's going | to affect their ability to get richer. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | Investors only make money when people accept their money... | like any other business. It's especially a risk now with VC | money basically easier to get than a drink at 7-11 | stonogo wrote: | I'm really looking for examples here. Nobody seems to be able | to provide me one investor who is left in the lurch over this | sort of thing. | KODeKarnage wrote: | There are more important things than money. Having your name | dragged through the mud, having people presume you are a | disgusting sexist before they have even met you, these are | things that can destroy a person regardless of their wealth. | trinovantes wrote: | It's similar to how we get little/no feedback from job interviews | and applications because of a couple of outliers making giving | feedback not worth the trouble | | Has it always been this way or was there a time long ago where | it's common to receive feedback? (I've only been working | professionally for ~5 years) | sdeframond wrote: | IME, Not getting feedback from job interviews is mainly because | 1) recruiters are incentivized for closing candidates, not | cultivating brand awareness, and 2) giving actual meaningful | feedback is hard, so it seems worthless to give a canned | response. | LockAndLol wrote: | It's not news. A female entrepreneur observed similar patterns | and talked about it in a TED talk: | | Is Modern Feminism starting to undermine Itself? | Jess Butcher | | TEDxAstonUniversity | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIgytWyo_A | | Unfortunately, I think those kind of videos do no reach their | required target: new age feminists. It doesn't help either that | the comments on the video are mostly made by men, who are angry | at the current social situation in the anglophone countries. | | IMO, these social issues are pretty inconsequential compared to | the bigger problems we face: climate change and wealth+income | inequality worldwide. I believe that social inequality would | drastically improve if we concentrated on those major problems | first. | | Education is the linchpin, imo. Were we to work backwards from | that, our world would radically change. You can't concentrate on | education if you have to worry about housing, food, transport, | and access to education. So, those should be as cheap as possible | for every citizen. | | Educators should have amongst the highest paying jobs in the | country and competition should be fierce to become one at any | level. | | With an educated populace, there's no telling what we could | achieve. We could think and reason for ourselves instead of | listening to pundits. We could actually discuss things instead of | scream at each other all the time. | | But eh... y'all would rather fund another war on some poor | country over oil, support another big corp to underpay people you | don't care about, huddle into groups and be belligerent against | those your group deems the enemy, vote for people who wield fear | as a tool, or just be indifferent to the world around you as long | as you're doing fine... | jhatemyjob wrote: | Murderers, AND covid!! Just wear a mask!!!! It *literally* saves | lives!!! | dang wrote: | Please don't do this here. | | We detached this comment from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613220. | jhatemyjob wrote: | Why not? | throwitaway12 wrote: | I am so thankful to work in an environment where everyone is | just... normal. | | We don't have to walk on egg shells when speaking. Men and women | can still interact like it was before I started reading about | such insanity. | TameAntelope wrote: | That's going to be true right up until someone crosses a line | or someone feels like a line was crossed, and then the entire | structure will collapse on top of you, possibly killing a few | people's careers in the process. | | "Just be cool" is not a strategy. | centimeter wrote: | This will hit your company/industry eventually. | kbelder wrote: | What state? I'm assuming not California. | gweinberg wrote: | Then why post from a throwaway account? | SilverRed wrote: | Because their workplace might be normal but the wider web is | not so a comment like this could hurt future job | opportunities. Especially on HN where you are not able to | delete your account or comments. | bonestamp2 wrote: | Agreed. I talk to the women I work with the same way I talk to | the men. If I didn't, then I'm probably not talking to the men | appropriately either. I think that is the right thing to do | morally and that says a lot about a person's integrity, which | means they trust you when you say something. So, there's no | reason to think something is anything other than what you say | it is. | | Another important ingredient in that is saying, "I don't know" | a lot. Then when you tell them something, they know you're not | bullshitting them. So again, there is no reason for someone to | think something is anything other than what you say it is. | ryanmarsh wrote: | This is true, even from (oddly) investors. Met a solo female | founder at a coffee shop this week (my state is open). She's a | non-technical founder, building an app which is a marketplace | that also will compete with Yelp or Google Maps, for a customer | segment with no money also hit hard by COVID. All she's heard to | date is positive things from everyone. Her app is buggy trash | with terrible UX developed offshore at bargain basement rates. | Since she's nontechnical it took a while to help her ascertain | that it was done in React Native. We had a very long conversation | about business principles (lessons I've learned the hard way | mostly), all of them came as a very painful shock, like | validating the business model before doing a full build out of | the app, simple things. Look, I've seem some insane shit succeed | and I wish her the best, but somebody filled her head with dreamy | bullshit and she knew nothing of business including her market | and nobody had yet to ask her a single hard question. All of the | questions I asked seemed table stakes, just making conversation | about her business, she couldn't answer. Yet an investor from | Mexico had given her $10k, to match her personal $7k investment, | to build an app. | | At some point I had to stop the conversation because I realized | that what I was doing was giving her the first honest | conversation about her business she'd ever had with anyone and to | be honest I wasn't really the person to be giving any advice. | Mostly I just asked questions and shared some lessons from | similar experiences. | | tl;dr: somebody lied to this gal (perhaps through omission) and | she's going to learn some hard lessons. | | Apologies for any typos. | rapind wrote: | Eventually the only people left on Twitter will be extremists and | marketers. | Der_Einzige wrote: | 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 assertiveness" vs its toxic | counterparts. Failure to do this will essentially neuter men over | the long term - and it will lead to "men clamming up" or worse, a | significant surge in the number of men who "go their own way" be | it in the job or at home in their personal life. | | https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/29/men-wom... | | https://www.marketwatch.com/story/men-are-afraid-to-mentor-f... | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2019/01/09/dear-sir-do... | | https://kelainetaylor.medium.com/to-the-men-whose-response-t... | anonfornoreason wrote: | One of the most offended I've seen my wife be was when she was | told the only reason she wanted an assertive man was because | she was brainwashed and deep down didn't want it and was | actually oppressed. She was a victim of the white male | patriarchy and by being part of it she was an implicit | supporter of racism. Meaning she had her agency to be her own | person and have her own desires taken away from her, at least | in this person's eyes. She ended up not talking to this other | person because she couldn't get over the condescension. The | feeling that the other person thought they were more | enlightened or better than her. The only times I have stopped | friendships have been similar - feeling like the other person | looked down on me because of my choices or who I was. | | I think there is a lot of pain brewing, and whether or not | people come out the other side of it more entrenched in their | worldview, or with more humility after having learned from the | wild ride we are currently on. | | Heck maybe I'll come out the other side finally believing that | there is only one true way to look at people and relationships | and power differences, and any deviation from that is violence. | blabitty wrote: | 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. | Der_Einzige wrote: | 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. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | Or sodomizing a minor like roman polanski... | PartiallyTyped wrote: | I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me why | this comment was downvoted. | | It takes a stance based on the parent comment and gives an | example where they believe looks had considerable | differences in the behavior of society towards somebody. | The example is not perhaps the best, but the fact that | society actually shows favouritism towards attractive | people should not be controversial. | oblio wrote: | I guess there's going to be a calibration period. The pendulum | was stuck, it's started swinging, and the first few swings are | completely out of whack. We'll get there, eventually. | lupire wrote: | There's no reason to assume that. The system could be | destabilized because while a pendulum with two sides has a | stable a world with many many competing interests and | nonlinear feedback systems might not. | oblio wrote: | Thankfully for us, men, apparently we're about 50% of the | population and you know, traditionally, we've held 99% of | the power in the world. | | I'm not super worried that we'll be crushed under a | matriarchy. Heck, in some regards a matriarchy might be a | bit gentler than a patriarchy :-) | | Edit: I seem to have touched a nerve, a lot of | weak/sensitive men around here, it seems. | ThrowawayR2 wrote: | I'm not worried about a matriarchy either; what I _am_ | worried about is a permanent state of cold war between | identity groups, which is where it seems we 're headed. | oblio wrote: | This is a gross exaggeration. Power struggles have been | with us since the beginning of time. | | Men and women will get along as they always have, with | ups and downs. There are no "identity groups" because we | aren't and can't be enemies. There are just a few loonies | on both sides making a ton of noise, and they're getting | amplified by the internet. They'll either get boring at | some point or just be ignored completely from the outside | of their circles. | mrweasel wrote: | Some very real issue have been highlighted in the last few | years, issues that we really should have dealt with decades | ago and I think you're right, there's currently an | overreaction from society. That's will correct it self, even | if some may still not like where we end up. | | Sadly if you're concerned with these overreaction, and voice | those concerns, you will be labelled as being against the | chance. You quickly learn to shut up and just wait it out. | oblio wrote: | > Sadly if you're concerned with these overreaction, and | voice those concerns, you will be labelled as being against | the change. You quickly learn to shut up and just wait it | out. | | This is a smart move for any kind of group/mob | move/reaction, by the way. In much more extreme cases you'd | be the smart, polite, but dead guy in the crowd, otherwise. | | Crowds as a whole are rash and emotional, you can't reason | with them. There's a reason Animal Farm had 10 word | slogans, at most ;-) | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | Didn't you see the pew research poll of male virginity at like | 25%? | | Were already there. And it's not gonna get better. | [deleted] | snissn wrote: | should be more female investors | blast wrote: | Considering that the topic is "men clamming up" I don't think | that's a fair criticism. The author has a right to choose what | her topic is. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | So every article must address both sides? Always? This is like | complaining that one picture of black harvard law graduates | didn't include black women (yes, I actually saw this on | linkedin) | | This article is clearly about how all of these false | accusations and woke mobs ultimately harm minorities. | calylex wrote: | Please stop treating social issues like this as if they're | Physics. There is no clear path to an answer and the more we try | to reason and argue about these topics _logically_ the more | futile the attempt, it 's like kicking harder and harder while in | stuck in quicksand. | | The effects of trying to find the truth show themselves as bi- | products that affect culture and society in unhealthy and | unforeseen ways. You can never know the intent of someone or why | they act the way they do, you can only guess and even that takes | a special type of person who feels comfortable enough doing so | (reads lawyers) and a framework that encourages such speculation | (legal system [0] or stock market.) Speculative systems are toxic | and are festering ground for bias. If we want to live in a world | ruled by truth and facts ironically the way to do it is not by | forcing ourselves to understand something that is not Physics as | if it is and by the same methods. | | Ignore everything that pops up on these topics if your goal is to | create a better society for all. | | [0] some legal cases are clear cut, I'm not referring to those. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | 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 can he | definitively attribute that experience to racism? Even if it was, | that was not the point of the conversation. We were all sharing | our experiences on that topic and no one mentioned race. 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. | random5634 wrote: | Separately, another area where upside / downside risk of | providing feedback is no longer good is in feedback to rejected | candidates for positions. | | Folks have said this can still be done, but our office was burnt | by giving feedback, and the person in general likes to argue with | it which is already a drain. | | So anyways, no more feedback to folks not hired - period! Luckily | this applies to all hires, you don't know at the early stage if | someone is in a protected class. | sendtown_expwy wrote: | This is a really great piece. While it's unfortunate this | phenomenon occurs, in a way it's also an opportunity for the many | talented female VCs in the industry. I hope they capitalize on | it! | sokoloff wrote: | I've seen professional women get negative feedback when they | favored a qualified man over a slightly less qualified woman. I | can imagine a female VC would be under the same pressure to | remain silent lest they be lit up on Twitter for being female | and yet still sexist. | blippage wrote: | "Internalised misogyny", perhaps? | | I mean, why not, right? If gays can allegedly have | "internalised homophobia", then why can't women have | "internalised misogyny". | | And so it goes. When we jettison reason, everyone gets to say | what they want, and no-one gets to say that one conclusion is | more soundly-based that another. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | No, this is not a thing. | worker767424 wrote: | Lots on green usernames in this thread. | dang wrote: | Some are trolls and/or flamewar-stokers while others are | substantive contributors. That's a problem with any forum with | a low barrier to entry. Users can help by flagging the trollish | and flamewar posts. To flag a comment, click on its timestamp | to go to its page, then click the 'flag' link at the top. | (There's a small karma threshold before flag links appear.) | | We sometimes close threads to new accounts when the situation | is overwhelming, but I wouldn't want to do that in a case like | this. Generally on HN, we try to err on the side of privileging | positive contributions rather than filtering out negative ones, | and we rely on community moderation and moderator moderation to | try to dampen the latter. It only works partially, but it's | better than punishing the positive contributors, and definitely | better than being a closed community. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | yeah because you can't talk about this stuff openly without | getting cancelled, unless you aren't white or male. | seoaeu wrote: | > unless you aren't white or male. | | Kind of says something when this is seen as an exceptional | case, given that a significant majority of people aren't | white men... | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | Whites are about 70% of American, and half of those are | men, so in American, yeah they are. This is an American | site, and the context of these conversations are America, | so there's nothing exceptional about this. | seoaeu wrote: | That works out to 35%. We seem to be in agreement? | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | Do you not understand what a majority means? Maybe you | should add up the rest of the numbers | anchpop wrote: | > unless you aren't white or male | | You mentioned that this was seen as an exceptional case. | It is exceptional. The vast majority of americans are | white or male. | Veen wrote: | What do you infer from that? I infer that lots of people are | using throwaways because they want to express an opinion | without risking the consequences the article alludes to. | baby wrote: | It's dangerous, it paints a very different picture of the | situation. For example, we saw how many fascists were dormant | until it became OK to be a fascist. | ta-ffsmcu wrote: | I can see this happening with myself (male, for the record). I'm | usually someone who gives feedback quite frankly, am more | critical of others' (and my own) work than average, etc. | | Over recent years I've read so much about women being passed | over, cut off, terms like "microaggressions", women getting less | talking time in meetings, etc., that's it's made me extremely | self conscious. | | It's not even that I'm afraid of getting in any actual trouble if | I say or do something wrong, it's just that I'm generally already | somewhat anxious about how I behave around others and this has | made me extremely aware of any time I might be too harsh, not | really listen to someone, etc., that I've probably gotten overly | sensitive. | akudha wrote: | I feel the same way. A lot of the emphasis is placed on the | words and not enough on the context, intent behind those words | (by everyone, not specific to male or female or any other group | here). People have learned to keep quiet. And when they do | speak, they use highly polished, politically correct language | (silly example - first time my manager said he is taking a "bio | break", I was confused. Took me a second to understand he is | going to the bathroom). | | This happens in the media a lot too (left and right). A single | sentence (or even part of a sentence) can be plucked out of an | interview, shown out of context and boom - the person seems | like a monster. Someone might have best intentions, but not be | very polished in expressing them. So why risk talking at all, | unless we are 100% sure it cannot be misconstrued in any way? | It is just easier to keep quiet. Which results in loss of | lively, valuable discussions. | | Some comedian (forgot who it was) mentioned that they don't | like performing in colleges anymore as the audience is too | sensitive. That is the situation we are in. | nwallin wrote: | > Some comedian (forgot who it was) mentioned that they don't | like performing in colleges anymore | | Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have stated that they are not | willing to perform at colleges. There are probably more, but | with smaller names. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | I find it funny because they love to talk about implicit bias | and microaggressions, and all these other things that "white | men" are not aware of, but then cancel them when white men do | something wrong. Where is the opportunity to learn and grow? | scythe wrote: | It's interesting that _Twitter_ doesn 't get more attention here | as a center of activity. Apparently, taking down Harvey Weinstein | means you can do no wrong. The problem with Twitter isn't just | that they get people fired because people say mean things on the | Internet. The problem is also that they incite and organize | illegal activities like targeted harassment, threatening phone | calls and vandalism, as well as the questionably legal tactic of | disrupting businesses' operations so they will comply with a | mobs' demands. | | When 4chan did this, they were investigated by the FBI. Reddit | received a lot of flack for its own vigilante brigades after a | mistargeted attempt to "catch the Boston bomber", and had to take | action (still incomplete) against raiding. | | Facebook and Twitter with their multi-billion market caps have | just barely begun to wake up to what their platforms are capable | of producing. The effects observed with these investors are not | exactly unique to tech finance. | | I think something like Wikipedia's protected article policy could | help. When something becomes problematic, discussion can be | limited to confirmed users, who in turn have more to lose by | being banned. This allows Twitter to respond before "censorship" | is justified. | luckylion wrote: | Does that actually happen on Facebook? I've seen it happen on | Twitter multiple times, and across countries, but I don't | associate Facebook with raids and targeted harassment. | | It feels like Twitter's user base is _much_ more radical, and | the focus of the product on instant public messaging might add | fuel, while Facebook 's group system generally limits the | spread and seems to be more geared towards asynchronous sharing | (+messenger, but that's more of a chat, not public). | spoonjim wrote: | I don't know what it is but something about the vibe here feels | fake. Like the opening anecdote with the investor definitely | sounds fabricated -- too "Aesop's Fables" for me. | nooyurrsdey wrote: | A quick reminder to read the article before commenting. HN | usually has a better track record of this, but this is a | particular issue people are sensitive about so don't draw your | conclusions from the title alone. | ourmandave wrote: | If Amazon ever cracks down on fake 5-star review bots (yeah, I | know), maybe those clowns can start a new service. | | If you're falsely accused of being That Guy, you can just hire | them to fill your twitter feed with glowing reviews of your | character from "women". | | Or crank up the Ashley Madison fembots to do it. | christefano wrote: | "One worrying trend I've observed among my male investor friends | is that they're much more wary of giving candid advice to women | founders than they used to be. They are afraid of saying anything | that a female founder might misinterpret as sexism. So, when | giving feedback to a woman they don't know well enough to trust, | they talk with less candor than they would with a male founder.1 | When this happens, women are missing out on potentially valuable | advice." | | Oh. My. God. Just ask the person if they want your advice. | | It's the same in the (presumably male-dominated) workplace as it | is in anywhere, such as giving unsolicited advice to someone at | the (usually male-dominated) rock gym. | nathias wrote: | Society used to have a solution to this problem, it was a very | rigorous set of manners and customs, protocol for how to address | people that occupy different positions in the social hierarchy. | After woman's emancipation and abolition of aristocracy such | protocols became redundant, because at least ideologically we | were all equal, and now this ideology is gone and a new one will | probably require a new set of such social protocols ... | mmaunder wrote: | I wrote a long reply to this and then binned it. Perhaps that | captures the essence of what I was going to say. | unknownus3r wrote: | I even made a throwaway account before I binned mine! | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | There are quite a few throwaways in this thread. | | First they came... | dang wrote: | Tired ideological tropes are flamebait. Please don't do that | here. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | mrweasel wrote: | Same here, it's not really worth trying. You feel like you're | being completely reasonable, but you just know that any mistake | in wording, minor details or missteps, is going to be used to | attack you. Any relevant comment or question you have will be | sidesteps, to attack and label you. | mattlondon wrote: | 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_ leads to? If you said "chilling | effect" then you are bang on. It is a bloody minefield. Keep your | head down, never talk about non-work stuff, refuse to provide | feedback or do interviews, refuse to help people out unless it is | directly your job' responsibility to do so etc and hope you don't | get fired. | | It genuinely feels like I have a target on my back. | TLightful wrote: | 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. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | Given the context is the dogmatic approach to office culture, | this comment is super ironic. Of course the firings were a | correct decision from your (insane and skewed) perspective. | zepto wrote: | Firing is a straw man. | | Obviously it's usually justified because there are legal | consequences otherwise. | | The problem is all the other things that can happen that | aren't _firing_. | dang wrote: | Please don't break the site guidelines like that. Getting | downvoted sucks, but it happens to everyone and one condition | of participating in threads here is not to make them go | haywire when it happens. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | Edit: you've unfortunately been posting flamebait and/or | unsubstantive comments repeatedly elsewhere as well. Can you | please not? We're trying for something different here. | worik wrote: | Not good. | | Some of us have felt like that for thirty years. | | Once apon a time there were a group of people who swaggered | through life saying whatever popped into their brains whom ever | it offended or belittled. They engaged in metaphorical, but | brutal, wrestling matches not just with each other but with any | body who crossed their paths. | | Now life is very hard for them. | | Should have happened thirty years ago. Has it gone too far? | Probably. <sound of a very small violin> | ajnin wrote: | What is that "group of people" you're talking about, can you | be more specific ? | | Are you attributing certain characteristics to people only | because they are part of that group ? | | Should people that are born into that group without a choice | be punished for what other members did or are accused of | having done in the past ? | zepto wrote: | Ok - but are you sure the people who are feeling like this | _now_ have anything to do with what was happening thirty | years ago? | worik wrote: | Mostly they were not born! | asjldkfin wrote: | My problem with "woke culture" is that it's constantly | fighting an imaginary enemy, some abstract concept that's | been conjured up. | | I hazard to say this post is a good example of the problem. | Griffinsauce wrote: | An enemy is not imaginary if you yourself did not | experience it. | asjldkfin wrote: | That's true, but just because I didn't experience it | doesn't mean imaginary enemies isn't a well-worn tactic | used in society. | | The Jews were demonized by Christians in the ye-old days | based on imaginary qualities that simply weren't true. | | So were the Land-lords. | | So were the "witches" and the "heretics". | worik wrote: | So was I | tryonenow wrote: | And a the interpretation of an experience, however | personal, is not some singular, universal truth. | [deleted] | xenihn wrote: | >Now life is very hard for them. | | Not them, but people physically similar to them. An important | distinction. The people you're actually describing are | generally retired or dead. | marsrover wrote: | If I ever get fired for not being woke enough, I am going to | breathe a sigh of relief. | | I'm 100% tired of all of it, to the point that I almost want | someone to cancel me. | void_mint wrote: | Maybe seek therapy? "I want to be publicly labelled as an | abuser" seems like an unhealthy thought pattern. If this is | causing you that much grief, you should seriously consider | talking to someone. It might make you feel a lot better, and | you won't even have to have your life ruined. | | _edit_ Please explain downvotes? Suggesting a person saying | "I want someone to cancel me" seek help is downvote worthy | now? | whydoineedone wrote: | why continue to work there, buddy? I actually switched careers | out of my position because that's what it was like in 2016. | jimbob45 wrote: | The only solution to cancel culture is to cancel those out of | your life who would cancel you. I would be doing the same thing | if I was in your shoes. | | On the bright side, this is hopefully a healthy opportunity for | us all to find some friends outside of work. | thereare5lights wrote: | I'm usually against cancel culture. Except against those that | partake in it. I'll admit I feel a lot of schadenfreude when | those people get canceled themselves and they're held to | their own standards. | Darmody wrote: | That's like fighting for freedom of speech forbidding those | who are against it to speak. | jimbob45 wrote: | The important question today is what we would have done if | Joseph McCarthy had been right. If (in some bizarre | parallel universe) he was somehow right about Communists | doing...Communist things and we all definitely agreed on | this, would we have applauded his tactics? | | The cancel culture crowd today seem to think yes. They look | to him as an idol and see his only flaw as his unjust | cause. | | I don't think I agree. Extrajudiciality should be shunned | in all its forms _even if_ it leads to bad people meeting | bad ends. | kumarm wrote: | 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. | sputr wrote: | 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. | dang wrote: | > _Maybe try listening for a change._ | | Please omit personal swipes from your HN posts, no matter | how wrong another comment is or you feel it is. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | colechristensen wrote: | 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. | Swenrekcah wrote: | The problem isn't to treat people with respect. The problem | is that some few people are absolutely hellbent on | interpreting any interaction through a lens of sexism or | racism, and a large silent majority allows them for fear of | drawing unwanted attention and/or harm. | | This is not to say that sexism or racism isn't or hasn't been | a large problem, but the correction pendulum has really swung | way too far for some people and that is actually not at all | helpful since it only builds up resentment among people who | actually are supporters of the cause of equality. | Nextgrid wrote: | > The problem is that some few people are absolutely | hellbent on interpreting any interaction through a lens of | sexism or racism, and a large silent majority allows them | for fear of drawing unwanted attention and/or harm. | | A lot of people might not just be that good at what they do | but manage to advance by way of their gender/race and scare | away any negative feedback. Thus, given that their skills | themselves won't save them, leveraging mob justice to do so | is a viable strategy for them. | mrxd wrote: | Yes, that's what it's about. Turnabout is fair play. You | should think through the long term consequences of that. | | I wish you weren't getting downvoted because I think your | comment reveals so much. | zdragnar wrote: | Eye for an eye really isn't a great way to run a society. | rorykoehler wrote: | What other side? This whole othering of people is just | regressive tribalism. | hkt wrote: | OP is perhaps suggesting that a system where nobody feels | like they have a target on their back is possible. Such that | we don't (as you appear to tacitly admit we do) simply | creature a culture that is still toxic, but for different | people. | | So, no, it isn't a problem to respect everyone. | celticninja wrote: | No, that's not the problem. It's that offense is easy to take | at anything and companies erring on the side of caution will | prefer to get rid so they appear to be doing something. | Whether it is right or not doesn't matter by the time the | truth is out the actions have been taken. | Causality1 wrote: | I utterly adore that my workplace has a strict ban on using any | company resources such as the email system for non-work related | business. The one time in eight years someone sent a political | email they were formally reprimanded. | ocdtrekkie wrote: | This is more common than not in traditional enterprises and | businesses. It feels like a unique trait of the Silicon | Valley bubble (and places testing to emulate it). | randomopining wrote: | Ew! White man expressing himself! | | Please don't express your experiences or opinions on things. If | you were one of these _____ , we would love to hear your life | experiences or opinions on things. Because you were not born | one of these ____, we don't. | | Regards, Your Morally Superior GroupThink Social Overlords | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, | regardless of how strongly you feel about a topic. Nothing | good can come of this--just internet hellfire, which leads to | scorched earth, which is all the same, which is | uninteresting. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu. | .. | BonoboIO wrote: | I could not see myself working for such a company. | colechristensen wrote: | Document the hostile work environment in a journal, look for | new positions, and quit when it becomes too much of a threat to | your wellbeing. If you decide to quit or get fired, use your | documentation of the environment as a basis for filing for | unemployment benefits or if it merits it, higher levels of | complaint/compensation. | | The "progressive" cause is just as capable of doing wrong as | the "conservative" cause; there is this general perception that | being "woke" is the moral high ground and if you're against the | "conservative" people who are jerks then you and your peers do | no wrong. | | In fact it seems like the conservative jerks and the "woke" | jerks are doing the exact same thing - abusing groups of | peoples and behaviors in order to show off their moral | superiority. | | A bunch of young people in the past generations left the church | because they saw church people hating on folks who didn't fit | their definition of "good people" and saw that definition | distorted into abusing folks that deserved to be who they were. | The exact same behaviors are showing up and getting stronger in | the "woke" community, just with different targets. I'm still | waiting for the popular backlash against the "woke" agenda - | probably just the next generation of kids rebelling against | their parents' ideals. | | I have a target on my back too and occasionally am treated like | a predator, but I also have the privilege that though it isn't | harmless to me, I usually have the ability to get up and exit | the situation treating me poorly. This is what everybody should | try to cultivate - the freedom to quit a bad situation and not | be a slave to a particular job, group of people, life plan, | etc. When you can say "I would like to do this but I have other | options" then it becomes a whole lot harder to be abused | because when bad things happen you can just say goodbye. | baby wrote: | There's an extreme right, and there's an extreme left. Right | now the whole right is an extreme right, whereas the left is | divided between more moderate and cancel culture. Apparently | tucker said that the right would go into full fascist mode | because of BLM/antifa (lol), I'm wondering if the left is | going full woke because of the right going fascist. People | are being triggered by the other side, and becoming | extremists themselves. There's no moving forward with | division, this whole thing is probably good for the rest of | the world. | hnfong wrote: | > whereas the left is divided between more moderate and | cancel culture. Apparently tucker said that the right would | go into full fascist mode | | What you described might just be a self-fulfilling | prophecy. If the moderate right routinely gets bundled with | the far right extremists (and often anti-vac, conspiracy | theory and whatever) for voicing out their right leaning | (but moderate) opinions, then they might just choose to | censor themselves instead. | baby wrote: | The good thing is that we realized how bad it was back in | 2016 (and again in 2020 considering the amount of people | who went out to vote for the orange man). | colechristensen wrote: | There is a whole spectrum, and a silent majority in the | middle that doesn't want to engage with either aggressive | extreme. | | And in both cases, the extreme isn't particularly rare. | Discussing which side has a worse distribution isn't easy | to do accurately or particularly helpful | efficax wrote: | 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 | CodeGlitch wrote: | It's his "lived experience", so you should respect that. | | I'm only half joking... | na85 wrote: | >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 | | This is a great example. The Elect tolerate nothing less than | full throated support of the cause/outrage du jour, and | anyone taking a moderate position is branded a problem, just | as you've done here. | TLightful wrote: | Advice, be cool, understanding ... and maybe you wouldn't | be appear to be a d0uche. | na85 wrote: | Can you please be specific about what you read in my | comment that makes you feel I'm a "d0uche"? | teddyh wrote: | I am not 'TLightful', but I'm guessing it's because you | used the term "The Elect", which only certain groups use. | It's one of the shibboleths of these modern times. | na85 wrote: | I've only ever seen the term written in an essay by a | black author denouncing identity politics. What groups | are you referring to? | colechristensen wrote: | Your experience in an environment doesn't match someone | else's experience in an environment you think is similar, so | they are wrong and you are right? | | Isn't this a core of the whole "woke" thing? Just because you | have a nice experience doesn't mean everybody does and you | shouldn't silence somebody not having a good time because you | don't understand or have the same experience. | cynusx wrote: | If you are a woman you can easily counter this behavior by | labelling it and saying that you don't have a porcelain skin. | Bonuspoints if you laugh about a guy giving you super bad | feedback and how this did not bother you. | | Putting people at ease around you (especially customers) is a | critical entrepreneurial skill. | | You can't blame people for being cautious when a lot of people | are buying into victim-narratives and convinced to act against | their "oppressors". | julianmarq wrote: | The problem with this "solution" is that the risk is still too | high to bother risking it. Even if the woman is unlikely to | assume bad faith (and the likelihood is such, outrage mobs are | a minority, even if one with too much weight for its size), | nothing guarantees she won't change her mind later and assume | that the criticism was because of sexism after all. | | And even if one were to believe that that is unlikely too, | nothing guarantees that _someone else_ won 't think it sexist. | For example, I remember some panel with four scientists (three | men and one woman) that was discussed in HN a while ago; at | some point, someone in the audience (I think she was a | journalist) yelled at the moderator to "let her speak"... Even | though _the scientist herself didn 't think the moderator was | doing anything wrong_. | jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: | This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can | only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on | the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure | 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to | make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation | changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood | but now it's deemed too risky because the media makes it seem | like there are murderers lurking around every corner. | foobiekr wrote: | The risk of the unpredictable, catastrophic risks that children | face when they roam lower than it has ever been. | | The risk of an unpredictable, catastrophic event for a man is | higher than it has ever been. | | I don't think that's a good analogy. | pron wrote: | Imagine a woman were to say, if we don't put an end to casual | sexism, the end result we're heading for is that men will take | any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her in a dungeon. | | A much more realistic and likely outcome, and a far less | hysterical perspective than yours, is that the needle was way | too far one way, now people are learning to cope with it | shifting, and if we try to be more empathetic, perhaps getting | help when we need to, we can shift it to a better place than it | was before. | | How do I know this? Because identical dynamics play over and | over, change is scary, even if it is for the better, and people | have opposed it on similar grounds -- it would lead to | absurdities and worst outcomes for everyone involved -- since | time immemorial. For example, see some arguments against women | suffrage from just over a hundred years ago [1]: | | > Because the acquirement of the Parliamentary vote would | logically involve admission to Parliament itself, and to all | Government offices. It is scarcely possible to imagine a woman | being Minister for War, and yet the principles of the | Suffragettes involve that and many similar absurdities. | | > Because Woman Suffrage is based on the idea of the equality | of the sexes, and tends to establish those competitive | relations which will destroy chivalrous consideration. | | And, of course, women do not _want_ the vote [2] | | The belief that we can -- and must -- work tirelessly change | the world by, say, allowing humans to fly and even reach other | planets, but when it comes to how people should speak to one | another, well, that's too difficult to change, there's no point | in trying, and if we try then the outcome will obviously be | bad, just seems so bizarre. | | [1]: https://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm | | [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1903/09/why- | wom... | dang wrote: | > men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her | in a dungeon. | | > And, of course, women do not want the vote | | Please keep this sort of flamebait out of your HN posts. It's | guaranteed to make everything worse, and you can make your | substantive points without it. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | pron wrote: | The second was a quote from numerous reasoned arguments | (which I linked to) posted in similar forums in the ear | 20th century. Anyway, this thread is so terrifying (and | brings back bad memories from my time in SV) that the | natural reaction should be to scream in horror and not make | any "substantive points." I am even more worried and, | frankly, hurt that you don't see that. The most I could | manage is try to hold a mirror up so that some people might | see what they sound like to others. | dang wrote: | Usually when people describe their internet comments with | phrases like "hold up a mirror" they're coming across as | far more aggressive than they think they are. Everyone | always feels like they're just playing defense while the | others are committing outrages. | | As for how shitty this thread is, I've spent the last | several hours posting dozens of comments, feebly trying | to do something about that. All I'm asking you (and | others) is not to make it worse yet. Gratuitous | provocation takes discussion straight to failure modes. | We're all worse off if that happens, so we're better off | if it doesn't happen. | | How that's a reason not to make substantive points, or | what it has to do with SV, I'm not following. The vast | majority of HN is far away from SV, all over the world, | and I can assure you with high confidence that there is | no correlation between posts being shitty and posts being | from SV. Actually there is probably a mild negative | correlation, just because people in SV have been through | so many iterations of this discussion, for so many more | years than most places, that they're less likely to get | activated with naive outrage. | pron wrote: | I don't think that trying to appear _less_ aggressive is | the correct ethical response to the putrid horror show | unfolding here. Aiming for a civil discussion of "the | woman problem" is _not_ the right goal here. The correct | answer to how should we best debate the question, But | What Shall We Do About the Women? is _not_ to have such a | discussion at all. Just the fact that how to treat women | is even considered an appropriate topic for discussion is | enough to deter any human that isn 't on the autistic | spectrum from approaching this community, and the | industry sector it represents. If the dehumanising, | humiliating monstrosity of this "discussion" is hard to | see, try replacing "women" on this page with "Irish" or | "Jews." | dang wrote: | I'm just asking you not to omit gratuitous flamebait like | "men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock | her in a dungeon" and "women do not want the vote" from | your HN comments. It's obviously against the site | guidelines, and pouring kerosene on flames is arson even | if the building was already burning. | | People who feel strongly on topics routinely use language | like "putrid horror show" to justify their own breaking | of the site guidelines and making a discussion even worse | than it already is. This sort of "why bother" and/or | "fuck it" attitude contributes to the situation you claim | to deplore. The fact that users do this is part of why | things are so bad in the first place. No one wants to | look at the "putridity" of their own contributions--the | problem is always caused by others, never by self. | | The only solution I can see to this is to prioritize | taking care of the commons, regardless of how bad things | are or you feel they are. | pron wrote: | I don't think you understand the seriousness of what's | unfolding here, and the level of virulent dehumanisation | expressed. There is no right way to discuss "The Woman | Question" any more than there is a right way to discuss | "The Jewish Question." The _tone_ of discussion is | insignificant in comparison to conducting it in the first | place. | dang wrote: | Where you get these thoughts that you imagine moderators | think, I don't know, but I don't recognize any of them. I | don't give a shit about tone. I'm simply trying to | support an internet forum in not going to hell and asking | you not to make that job harder. | | What I hear you saying is that it's already gone to hell, | so it doesn't matter what you do. Actually it matters a | lot what you do. Every user here needs to abide by the | site guidelines. | | Bringing up "Jewish Question" is singularly unhelpful and | more gratuitous provocation. It seems to me that you're | the main person framing this thread as "Woman Question" | to begin with, and then using that as an excuse to | justify pouring kerosene of your own. That's not cool. | | What I've noticed is that users with strong ideological | passions tend to describe as "putrid" and "cesspool" and | so on, any discussion in which their own ideology isn't | imposed as the dominant one. That's understandable, but | it's not a realistic demand. HN is a large forum which is | as divided on ideological topics as any other large | population sample--moreover this population sample is all | over the world, which unfortunately makes people far more | prone to interpret others' statements as "putrid" without | it even dawning on anyone that that's a factor. | | Much as I might wish it, we don't have the power to | change how divided this community is. All we can do is | look for ways to nudge users into having thoughtful | discussion despite divisions. Everyone has a different | sense of what that might look like, and we can talk about | how to do that, but we don't have the power to make | people agree. | pron wrote: | There is a great moderation tool for such a discussion: | not to have it. I think my framing is helpful, because | clearly you're not seeing what I'm seeing. Here are three | comments I picked from the top five at the moment (so, | almost at random); there are far worse ones: | | > As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days | looking at the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns | and cost benefit analyses, so why would I take a human | capital risk? My entire business is based on my | reputation and I've seen what happens to the people who | get comments like "not the best with Jews at conferences" | ... I can count on two hands the number of Jews I would | feel comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I | would a non-Jew. | | > I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than | antisemitism. My question is, is this even antisemitism | at all? How many people can get publicly denounced as | "antisemites" and have their life ruined because they | didn't speak carefully enough, before it is simply just | "smart" rather than "antisemitic" to be extra careful | with how you speak to Jews. | | > Imagine what it's like being the intended target and | not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that | non-Jews are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that | Jews are feeling the secondary effects of that? | dang wrote: | I'm completely overwhelmed by the quantity of comments | here. I don't have a chance of even seeing them all, let | alone read them all, let alone patiently and | painstakingly moderate them all. One reason for that | (today) is that I've been writing long, careful replies | to you in the hope of explaining the kind of comments | we're looking for here and why we need you to eschew | gratutitous provocation. | | In response, you made a bunch of quotes in which you | replaced the word "women" with "Jews". I just spent | several minutes trying to track down those comments | before I realized that you were pulling that trick. I'm | really shocked that you would stoop to that. | | The flamewar trope "I'm going to replace $group1 with | $group2 just to show how $xist your comment is" is one of | the most common. Usually it's the people on the opposite | ideological side who do that, and often garden-variety | trolls. This is a strong marker of cheap flamewar and a | good example of how the ideological enemies who | perpetuate these flamewars actually resemble each other | more than they do anyone else. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | Thank you so much for everything you do dang! | pron wrote: | Maybe, but right now I can't think of another way of | showing how illegitimate it is to have a discussion over | how best to treat a discriminated group of people, | especially when when that group is so underrepresented on | this forum. There is just no right way to have this | discussion at all. If discussions on a tech forum look | like they're minutes from a men's rights group meeting, | then that's a _huge_ problem. | dang wrote: | If you can't think of another way of "showing how | illegitimate it is" than altering quotes for shock value, | it seems to me that may be because your view of the | thread and the community is not actually accurate. I've | looked again, and I don't think your description is fair. | The OP seems to me legitimate; painful, but not | gratuitous. As for the thread, many of the comments are | thoughtful. I don't agree with or like all of them-- | actually I don't agree with or like most of them--but I | think you're misassessing the amount of bad faith in the | community. That's a big deal because, as I tried to | explain above, when people do that it tends to take them | to a why-bother/fuck-it place, from which they end up | creating the very thing they were deploring. | | It's unfortunately extremely easy and common for people | to mistake a divided community for a "putrid horror | show", dominated by demons [1] or, as the internet likes | to call them, "terrible persons", when in reality most | people here just have a lot of different backgrounds and | experiences from one another [2]. I'm not saying that's | the only factor in all cases--anyone can scan my | moderation comments in this thread to find examples to | the contrary (e.g. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613942). But I | still think the HN guidelines are right to say " _Please | respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what | someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to | criticize. Assume good faith._" ...and I think that if | you took that guideline more to heart, you might see the | bulk of the thread a little differently. (I don't mean | the long tail of trolls and flames--those are always with | us.) | | [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=f | alse&so... | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 | pvg wrote: | Hang on, do you mean the comment that started this is | 'painful but not gratuitous'? Because: | | _This is kind of the end result we 're heading for, | where you can only talk candidly with people who are | equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy._ | | Seems pretty clearly gratuitous flamebait. Oppression | hierarchy? We're heading to where nobody can frankly | speak to anyone? This is 'first they came', in different | words and is equally cheap and dumb. | dang wrote: | No, by OP I meant the original submission. | pron wrote: | The people aren't monsters; it's the dynamics of such | discussions -- an emergent property -- that breeds such | results. My problem isn't bad faith of the participants; | I'm sure people are authentic. It is that HN finds it | appropriate to host and publicise a discussion in an | overwhelmingly male forum on how to best treat women in | the workplace (and not from the professional HR | perspective). The very thing I was deploring in the first | place is the thought that such a discussion in such a | forum is ethically legitimate. | | BTW, I am not talking about the actual article. It's | fine. I'm merely talking about the ensuing "debate." | skjfdoslifjeifj wrote: | > There is a great moderation tool for such a discussion: | not to have it | | Do you honestly think the situation improves if the | discussion is censored here? Whether you like it or not | these industry discussions, and much worse, are happening | elsewhere and censoring relatively timid discussions like | this only makes matters worse. There are 490 comments at | the time of this post and I'd bet the vast majority of | them are relatively benign. | pron wrote: | Absolutely. Respectable media platforms and discussion | forums have always "censored" some topics (if by that you | mean that they've chosen to exercise their freedom of | speech to choose what they deem worthy of publication); | that's precisely the one thing that separates them from | unrespectable ones. Right now there are a lot of | discussions going on about blacks or Jews, but that | doesn't mean a respectable forum should lend the subject | legitimacy by hosting it. | [deleted] | idyio wrote: | > _people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression | hierarchy_ | | This supposed hierarchy of oppression, based on identity | characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality, really is | the biggest scam going. | | Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained | by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet, | identarians insist on shoehorning everything into their flawed | worldview. | | The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of this - | police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in society, but | it doesn't just apply to black people. It's anyone the police | feel they can get away with abusing. Just look at how they | treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so on, regardless of | race. | | Another is celebrating people as tokens regardless of their | actions. First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA - | okay, but what sort of shitty role model is this? Rather | reminds me of: | https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co90umqUsAAdgQI?format=jpg | | We would all do well to be critical of how identity politics is | being used to mask the real root causes of oppression in our | society. The so-called left wing of politics is the worst for | this too, and I say this as a life-long leftist. Why make | everything about identity; where has the traditional focus on | class gone? | yarcob wrote: | > Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be | explained by wealth disparities | | I recently talked to a mom who visited her adult foster | daughter with a different skin tone. Her daughter reminded | her to make sure she doesn't forget her ID in the hotel. | | The mom was confused. They were just going to take a walk in | Munich. Why would she need an ID? She never has an ID on her | when she goes for a walk. | | The daughter said, because the police, they stop you and ask | to see your ID! | | Mom couldn't believe it that the police was so different in | Munich. Then it dawned on her. Foster daughter had brown | skin, so she was randomly stopped by police and asked for ID | because she looks like an immigrant. | | Mom was white and has never ever been stopped by police | before. | | The police absolutely treat people different because of race. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Foster daughter had brown skin, so she was randomly | stopped by police and asked for ID because she looks like | an immigrant. | | This conclusion isn't quite there. | | In China, foreigners are notionally required to carry their | passport with them. I have never actually obeyed that, | because it is a very bad idea. And it's never mattered, | because although I'm obligated to produce it on demand, | that demand has never been made. | | It's not because I blend in. Any idiot can see that I'm not | Chinese. "Looking like an immigrant" is not sufficient to | be stopped by the police. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | ok but the parent comment was discussing policing and | blackness in America, I don't agree with their conclusions | but at any rate comparing that situation to policing in | Munich doesn't really make much sense. | veridies wrote: | I think the point is that white people are likely to lack | this lived experience. If there's a massive difference in | opinion about racism in the country between white and | black Americans, that difference of opinion may be due to | factors that white people can't easily see. | tdeck wrote: | > It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. | | And a core premise of the Black Lives Matter movement is that | Black people are generally an easier target that the police | can get away with abusing, and police know this. Police can | also typically identify Black people easily on sight, putting | them at greater risk. Class is a valuable lens through which | to view systems of oppression, but we shouldn't neglect these | other dimensions of race, gender, etc... that are clearly a | part of our society. | fao_ wrote: | > The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of | this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in | society, but it doesn't just apply to black people. It's | anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. Just | look at how they treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so | on, regardless of race. | | And if you actually stuck around in leftist circles you would | see how the "indentarians" as you so called them are in | opposition to _those_ , too. | | > First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA - okay, | but what sort of shitty role model is this? | | Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical of | her too! Indeed! | | I think you've essentially misunderstood why there was a push | against solely class-based analysis, and why identity- | specific systemic oppression was introduced to this concept | -- the two are not in opposition. The reason it was brought | in was because measures to deconstruct and eliminate class- | based oppression, often kept systemic inequality between | identity. | | For example, the push to eliminate sexism has for the most | part only advantaged white women (You'll have to trust me on | the proof for this since I'm writing this while on the go -- | however look up books like Carceral Capitalism and "Why I | Don't Talk To White People About Race" for examples). The | introduction of _how your identity impacts how class | boundaries affect you_ was necessary to better understand the | dynamics and better shed and cast off systems of oppression | sidlls wrote: | I can see your comment in the context of democratic party | circles, but not leftist circles, at least in the US. I | have difficulty placing it in the leftist circles I run in, | which generally view politics in the US as consisting of a | center/far right party (democrats) and reactionary fascists | (republicans). | | > Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical | of her too! Indeed! | | I'm quite skeptical of this claim. For the most part the | people pushing race and gender identity narratives in the | US had at best mild criticism of Ms. Harris, and were | mainly focused on her multi-racial identity and its | historical significance. Almost as if her terrible politics | simply didn't matter because of her identity. | blt wrote: | But the Black Lives Matter movement never proclaimed that | police brutality only applies to Black people. | geoduck14 wrote: | Yes they did. And they actively targeted people who stood | up for Asian lives or "All Lives Matter" | mcguire wrote: | All of the "All Lives Matter" people I've interacted with | have been trying to minimize the problems. | sidlls wrote: | Consider that it's common for anyone who suggests the | impoverished of any race are more susceptible to police | violence to be quickly and roundly piled on for trying to | erase race or for supposedly engaging in "pity poor whites" | rhetoric. It doesn't even matter if "and impoverished black | people even more so" is included. The fact that one isn't | solely focused on the racial minority in this context is | grounds enough for social scorn and ridicule. | | There is a very real problem with "oppression olympics" | centered on racial identity, in this country. | Thorentis wrote: | The title kinda implies it. | indeedmug wrote: | I don't know why people keep adding "Only" in front of | "Black Lives Matter". | protomyth wrote: | Because when you point out the group that is MOST likely | to be killed in a police encounter is Native Americans, | you are branded a racist. https://lakota-prod.s3-us- | west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/Nativ... | mensetmanusman wrote: | I have heard conservatives get on board if the word 'all' | is added before. | zdragnar wrote: | Because proclaiming that all lives matter was interpreted | often and publicly as racist against black people. | buzzerbetrayed wrote: | Well you instantly become a white supremacism if you say | "All Lives Matter" so you can't blame people for feeling | like they're getting mixed signals. | undefined1 wrote: | > Why make everything about identity; where has the | traditional focus on class gone? | | that's the point of identity politics, to take away that | focus by distracting and dividing the working class | | https://i.imgur.com/wusW5Rn.jpg | Veen wrote: | > Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be | explained by wealth disparities | | Yes, and almost none of the people founding startups in | Silicon Valley are oppressed by any reasonable understanding | that concept. | goatinaboat wrote: | _none of the people founding startups in Silicon Valley are | oppressed by any reasonable understanding that concept_ | | I've never understood why they are so desperate to be | oppressed that they have to invent new categories to be | part of then claim to be oppressed when literally no one | even knows what they are. | cozuya wrote: | Ah yes, the life long leftist who made a throwaway account on | Hacker News to parrot right wing talking points and post an | image of a right wing meme. | Thorentis wrote: | The fact that so many large corporations are eager to throw | money at BLM, change their corporate logos to black, etc. | while doing nothing tangible to address the real issues, | proves to me that the current identity politics narrative is | serving the elite very well. | afarrell wrote: | > while doing nothing tangible to address the real issues | | Doing things to solve the real issues would run into | difficult real-world problems both symbolic _and_ | logistical /physical. Overcoming them require having | conversations where people | | 1. Do creative problem-solving | | 2. Say "well, actually..." about practical implementation | details. | | 3. Speak honestly about the real difficulties and risks of | unintended consequences. | | 4. Admit to failure and error and even inattention. | | All of which is blocked by similar social dynamics to the | ones discussed in the article. | mcguire wrote: | " _Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be | explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of | power. ... The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling | example of this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing | problem in society, but it doesn 't just apply to black | people. It's anyone the police feel they can get away with | abusing. Just look at how they treat homeless people, drug | addicts, and so on, regardless of race._" | | You're not wrong about that. But many people face further | oppression based on their race, gender, and sexuality, in | addition to wealth and class. | Blikkentrekker wrote: | Who are "we"? Anglo-Saxons? Unite States Citizens? or even only | a subset of the later? particularly those active in finance and | other fields where a man's social conformance weighs more than | his skills. | | I can't say that I have ever in my life noticed much of the | Anglo-Saxon gender, race, and other such politics in real life | and I remain sceptical as to what extent it is actually true | within Anglo-Saxon offices, for I find that all "sides" of the | issue seem to offer very different, contradictory experiences, | and mostly reads as a rather exagerated an implausible story of | how bad it is for one's own side. | | Though there might be a kernel of truth behind some of it, most | of it reads as though the writers see boogymen, and | unreasonable fear, and I will say that when actual hard | statistics be available, they almost always paint a very | difficult picture than what is complained about in all these | "culture war" discussions, and that certainly goes for all | sides. | cronix wrote: | > where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or | lower than you on the oppression hierarchy | | Wouldn't someone talking to someone "lower" on the "oppression | hierarchy" just be what we basically have today? That sounds | like "privilege," or an "imbalanced power dynamic." I think | you'll only be able to talk to equals, whatever that is, and by | whatever metric is en vogue for that day. | [deleted] | ZitchDog wrote: | I believe when OP says "lower on the oppression hierarchy" | they mean we only talk candidly with those who are as | oppressed as us or less. i.e. someone higher on the | oppression hierarchy would be more oppressed. | da_big_ghey wrote: | yes, i have been perceiving same as he sayed. my thinking | is that this is a bad thing for persons who are having less | advantages: if white manager can give forthright feedback | to only white persons this is actual bad for black one and | maybe will harm the black one more than it help. this is | likewise if most in office are feeling less cameraderie | with a black for that they are not able speaking so openly | and believe they are having to guard tongues. i wonder | about these un-intended consecuences. | ambicapter wrote: | That is the gist of the article linked up top, yes. | lazide wrote: | People don't talk candidly most of the time now to those | lower on the hierarchy. In many Corp environments, almost no | one talks candidly to anyone - too many minefields. | | You'd generally only talk candidly to those who were not just | peers, but you already had a deep seated existing rapport | with and trust. Friends? | | Everyone else gets the politically safe story that is | supposed to be told. I've seen it in action, and it makes me | sad because it becomes fundamentally corrosive. | | And if you think for some people that doesn't include the | right kind of outrage discussion or telling the right stories | to the visible oppressed minority they're mentoring so they | can get the right checkbox when they hopefully get considered | for SVP (or as plan B, their mentee does) - I've also got a | bridge to sell you. | retrac wrote: | I do some work with HIV prevention. Sometimes I give talks | where I'm very blunt about the realities of HIV among men who | have sex with men. I've watched people immediately shift from | mild hostility and discomfort to wholehearted acceptance of | what I am saying, when I tell them I'm gay myself. | | In that circumstance, I think it is clear that my sexual | orientation is the basis by which they are judging the | authoritativeness I have to speak on the topic. Never mind | the formal qualifications, or the logic or veracity of what I | am actually saying. Like, I know we all have little | unconscious checklists like that for judging whether someone | is credible, but it is uncomfortable to see the effect live. | setpatchaddress wrote: | This suggests that a possible answer to TFA could be to | find a trusted female peer to carry the message. | foobiekr wrote: | You'd think so, but I have seen this specific idea play | out and in one case the "trusted female peer" accused the | person doing the asking of expecting her to do his | emotional labor. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Interesting, can you give an example of a fact that is | initially resisted but is then accepted when you provide | additional personal experience. | retrac wrote: | It's the most obvious one. According to Public Health | Canada, men who have sex with men are 71x more likely to | become HIV+ during their lives than men who have sex with | women. Based on the infection rate modelling of the early | 2010s for which we have data, a young gay man in Toronto | has about 30% odds of becoming HIV+ in his lifetime. | | Wide eyes. Disbelief. That can't possibly be right. With | all the people I have watched become HIV+ over the years, | it is of course very believable to me. But the data from | PHAC is reliable enough, and it speaks for itself. I | shouldn't need to make it believable. But of course | people are not emotionless abstract rational machines, | and that's why I'm doing these sort of talks rather than | emailing out memos with charts. | | (The good news at least is those numbers are almost | certainly coming down with new medical interventions like | PrEP, earlier treatment and routine testing, which are my | main points these days. I might actually get to be happy | with the numbers in the national HIV tracking data when | it's compiled for 2021.) | mcguire wrote: | https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/the- | messe... | | The Messenger Is the Message: Science Talk podcast, June | 2020. | duckfang wrote: | As a bisexual male, I think a good part of disdain about | connecting HIV and gay goes to the older naming of the | disease: GRID. gay-related immune deficiency | | It also dates me, but I had a blood transfusion in 1982. At | that time, it was a Russian Roulette if I ended up with HIV | blood or not. I didn't. Had I been innfected, I would have | ended up like Ryan White. | randallsquared wrote: | Even knowing the term GRID dates you. :) Per https://en.w | ikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS#1981%E2%80... , the | "GRID" moniker was only used for under two years, _forty | years ago_. I think it 's unlikely that the name is to | blame. | [deleted] | DenisM wrote: | Quite illustrative. People have referential groups, that's | human nature. One could work with the framework to achieve | desired result and hopefully minimize externalities, or one | can lament biases and lambast the biased people for extra | whatever points. | | This is not a dig at you, btw, it seems clear that you're | making the best of the situation. | fastball wrote: | You see this on Reddit all the time, every day. | | Someone wants to disagree with whatever nonsense the | hivemind is raving about in the moment, but in order to do | so they have to prostrate themselves and make it clear | _whose side they 're on_ before they make their (often very | valid) point. | | e.g. "I hate Trump just has much as the rest of you but..." | or "Look we need to be super supportive of X group and my | dad is actually X but..." | kodah wrote: | That happens all the time here too, which is an | interesting note. | Shugarl wrote: | Doesn't this happen in pretty much any group ? The more | what you say goes against the consensus, the more the | group will reject it. | retsibsi wrote: | That definitely happens, but sometimes the motivation is | a bit more nuanced than just crawling to the mob. With | everything so tribalised, and most people unwilling to | stick their neck out and call their ingroup on its | bullshit, we end up in situations where anyone expressing | a dissenting opinion _is_ quite likely to be an extremist | of some kind -- or at least solidly on the 'other side' | -- because they are the ones most likely to be motivated | to speak up. | | So if I preface an opinion with 'X, but', it may not be | all about begging for the right to dissent; I may have | good reason to think that, without the preface, what I | say will signal some beliefs or values that I don't hold. | If those things are genuinely hurtful to a vulnerable | group, or simply reprehensible to me, then I have good | reason to disavow them, regardless of whether I need to | do so in order to be heard. | Fordec wrote: | Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, good | people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. But the | social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear of first | dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how women have to | treat men on their day to day. I've yet to encounter a woman | who has gone from internalizing this aspect of society to | dropping their priors and living care free without fear of men | they don't know / met for the first time. | | They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how things | are. And things have not found a way to change to a more easy | going society. If anything things have just hardened up as | information and media have become more prevalent. In | comparison, powerful people fearing being potentially | (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to their entire | career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager that the OP of | this article doesn't have a solution to the problem of trust by | investors, because women have yet to discover the solution to | their own generalized mistrust of men outside their direct | social circle despite how long that situation has gone on for. | | Until the risk / reward dynamic changes (and I do not see how | it could without making people less accountable), I fully | anticipate that this self censorship in society will not only | just continue, but will yet increase further in an information | society where powerful people can be made accountable by the | public as stories of people being held to account to their | actions, regardless of whether those actions were deliberate, | accidental or misunderstandings. | neonological wrote: | >Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, | good people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. | But the social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear | of first dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how | women have to treat men on their day to day. I've yet to | encounter a woman who has gone from internalizing this aspect | of society to dropping their priors and living care free | without fear of men they don't know / met for the first time. | | Before you get outraged I just want to caveat this by saying | that what I'm about to say is just controversial and | anecdotal. If you share a different opinion than fine, this | is just my opinion. | | The general fear women have of men that permeates all of | their behavior is more of a biologically programmed fear than | it is a an environmentally programmed one. What makes me say | this? Because, anecdotally, women have this fear even when | there is ZERO prior trauma. Although they can train this fear | away, practically all women are naturally more guarded when | among unfamiliar men, even with No prior Trauma. | | I've been been in tons of fists fights when I was a kid. | There are many times where I've lost and was beaten until my | face was a bloody mess by other dudes. This is 100x more | trauma than an average woman will ever go through and even I | don't live in fear of "men." | | Now this is not scientific evidence but anecdotal evidence is | not invalid. It's the only way to talk about such subjects | short of doing a 10 year scientific study. So you may have a | different experience and I respect that but I also | respectfully ask anyone who replies not to start a gender | flame war and get outraged at my viewpoint. | | >They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how | things are. And things have not found a way to change to a | more easy going society. If anything things have just | hardened up as information and media have become more | prevalent. In comparison, powerful people fearing being | potentially (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to | their entire career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager | that the OP of this article doesn't have a solution to the | problem of trust by investors, because women have yet to | discover the solution to their own generalized mistrust of | men outside their direct social circle despite how long that | situation has gone on for. | | You used the word "decades," and this is what the wrong part | of your statement. It is actually factually wrong and there | is tons of anthropological research to back this up. The word | you should have used was "centuries." Practically all of | human civilization has been patriarchal. They have never | identified in the history of archaeology and anthropology any | human civilization where the dominant sex was not Men. This | fact flies across time and across geographic boundaries of | countless cultures. There is not a single exception. There | are civilizations where women took on roles that are | traditionally "male" but there has never been a civilization | that has been consistently matriarchal. Thus from this | perspective it is arguable that patriarchy could be | biologically ingrained and that modern civilization is | currently trending beyond out biological imperative. | | The additional rights afforded by women today is largely a | modern and very unique phenomenon. According to the current | school of thought in academia much of it is attributed to | changes in technology. Sewage, tampons, etc. | axguscbklp wrote: | There is another possible source of fear - in addition to | biology and trauma, there is also observation together with | reason. Even if one has zero prior trauma, it's not hard | for one to realize that men are on average an order of | magnitude more violent than women are. | | My own experiences with fighting have not given me a fear | of men in general, but they have certainly contributed to a | caution that I have around certain types of men - in | particular, around men who have either an animalistic | concern with territoriality and status, a socioeconomic | desperation that makes them willing to rob outsiders, or | both. I try to steer clear not only of men of this type but | also of entire demographics and parts of the world in which | they are common. | Fordec wrote: | I caveated decades with "at least", not because I think | that things were going swimmingly in the 1800s or earlier | but more around when women attained more freedom in society | to associate with who they wish by their _choice_ than in | the authoritarian sense of the older patriarchal societies. | I 'm referring to the choice aspect of ones own actions, | not just the historical context. | | I do not subscribe to the belief that patriarchy is | biological because there is numerous empirical examples of | historical matriarchal societies in places such as South | America, Asia, Native American Hopi tribe, Celtic society, | Germany and Estonia including in the recorded history of my | own non-American society. | Der_Einzige wrote: | Why are you being downvoted? You're right! | Natsu wrote: | It's a sort of similar to the prisoner's dilemma. It's hard to | keep a community cooperative when there are defectors about and | our impression of how likely others are to defect on us | influences how willing we are to cooperate. | | That's why you see people looking for smaller, more trust-bound | online communities to associate with. | neonological wrote: | I don't blame the media for this. The media just magnifies a | very real and sizable aspect of our culture that already | exists. | | Just like how these people are seeking someone to blame, you | are seeking the same when you blame the media. It's not just | the media, what's going on here is something we're all | responsible for. | mensetmanusman wrote: | The magnification distorts reality and alters peoples | behavior such that everyone is a little bit more irrational. | rapind wrote: | "Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but | now it's deemed too risky because the media makes it seem like | there are murderers lurking around every corner." | | They're called cars. Houses are packed tighter and there's more | cars per household than when I was growing up (maybe due to | everyone being double income now). Streets are also narrower | and most have street parking, creating visibility issues. Go | check out a development than went up 40-50 years ago compared | to one that went up in the last 5 years. The difference is | pretty stark and pretty hostile to kids running around doing | kid stuff. | | I don't think media's focus on _bad guys_ has nearly the impact | that the enormous increase in cars has had. | fastball wrote: | Honestly, this is pretty trivially avoided. My parents | drilled it into my head to look both ways before going into a | street. I always look ways before going into the street. It's | really not difficult. | jefftk wrote: | It is trivially avoided once the kids are old enough, but | there's a long period during which kids would be safe | enough to roam around in the absence of cars, but aren't in | the current environment. | | We live a block from the playground, close enough that I | can almost see it from our window, but you can't get there | without crossing the street. So our kids (7y, 5y) can only | go there with a grown up. I've worked on teaching them how | to cross the street safely, but they're just not good | enough at checking for cars yet. | rocqua wrote: | One explanation here is certainly the media being | sensationalist for sensation's sake. An alternative is that | some in media might think the crackdown on sexism is bad. Hence | they focus on the bad effects. Whether this is explicit | propaganda or honest reporting on what they consider the more | important issue almost seems like a semantic question. | | I suspect both elements play a role. How big a role I have | little idea. | sneak wrote: | > _One explanation here is certainly the media being | sensationalist for sensation 's sake._ | | Sadly I think it may be for profits, for survival's sake. The | media business is very different now than it was pre- | Zuckerberg. | anonporridge wrote: | It's a matter of risk mitigation. | | Either a person accepts extreme, but very unlikely, risk by | exercising perfect candor with everyone or they decide to clam | up around people lower on the 'oppression hierarchy' which | costs them almost nothing to do. | | Why would any rational actor not choose option B unless they're | getting some reward great enough to offset the risk of option | A? | stcredzero wrote: | https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis- | the-... | mojo982 wrote: | Thank you for sharing this. This issue is constant but I've | never had it explained so well. | semi-extrinsic wrote: | I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an | underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes | always lead to overshoot. | | I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the | amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years | ago. I believe Northern Europe has been trending slowly towards | gender equality since the 90s, and thus the amount of overshoot | here is much less from the recent rapid changes like #meetoo. | | Also our kids roam around the neighbourhood freely. We're | thinking of giving our 9-year-old a cellphone soon, for now she | just has an analog watch and we agree on what time she has to | be home by. | | If you look at statistics, the rate of women murdered per | capita, and the rate of women who experience sexualized | violence per capita, are around 5x higher in the US than in | Northern Europe. The murder rate here for children (excluding | by their own parents) is below 1 per million children per year. | | We're definitely not perfect, we have a long way to go still, | but we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the | status pre-2017. | anon_tor_12345 wrote: | >I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an | underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes | always lead to overshoot. | | this is the way | | >Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, | was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybaus[27] as comprising | three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving | rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or | negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being | resolved by means of a synthesis. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic | neonological wrote: | > I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an | underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes | always lead to overshoot. | | No I don't think it's this. I think it's the advent of the | internet. The internet changed everything. What you will find | is that the internet is responsible for making everything | look like an "overshoot." | belorn wrote: | 30 years ago the feminist and equality movement was very | different from today's view, and not all for the worse. A lot | of focus was then to eliminate gender in the ways people were | treated, with the more extreme parts of the movement wanting | to eliminate gender roles all together. Gender segregation in | Northern Europe held the best numbers 30-40 years ago, and | has only gotten worse since with pretty large strides. Gender | segregation today is more like the 1920 than the 1990's. | | women murdered per capita has indeed gone down, but so have | the general murder rate. Men are still murdered far more | often than women, and reached the highest ratio ever measured | in the last summery by the government agency BRA, with around | 77% to 23%. I would be careful to attribute such numbers to | gender equality, especially since the trend seems to continue | upwards. | | The statistics for assault and sexual assault has similar | complexity. The combined risk of being assaulted or sexual | assaulted has been historically similar for both women and | men, with assault being more common for men and sexual | assault for women. Between 2012 and 2018 there were a major | increase in sexual assault, and especially rape after 2015. | The reason for this can't really be discussed since it | involve an other political hot topic. | | It still might be a rapid change that is causing people to | overshoot, but it is likely a much harder token to measure. | Changes in political power. | hhjinks wrote: | There's no such thing as overcorrection when _any_ correction | in the direction we're seeing on display in this article is a | net negative for literally everyone involved. Women get worse | advice, men tip-toe around women, and society loses out on | potentially valuable investments. | dahfizz wrote: | > I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the | amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years | ago. | | What is the mechanism for this? The majority of the "woke" | twitter mob is 30 or younger. | stcredzero wrote: | Knowledge of history has gone down, year over year. | Students are more likely to get a propagandized and highly | skewed caricature of history that leaves out certain | "inconvenient truths." This is also an overcorrection. | oneplane wrote: | Which students, and where? I don't see that happening | locally, but perhaps it's different where you are? | monocasa wrote: | Yeah, I see the opposite around me too. I literally had | textbooks that referred to the Civil War as "The War of | Northern Aggression" at the turn of the millennium. | stcredzero wrote: | That's not the opposite of what I wrote above. That's | merely _another_ kind of _overcorrection!_ | monocasa wrote: | I'm seeing a much more nuanced and complete understanding | of history out of children these days than what was | taught to me is my point, in contrast to what you're | saying. | | Can you give some specific examples? | parineum wrote: | Not the parent but I can see where you're both coming | from. I think there's a lot more in depth look at US | history, specifically the warts, than when I was a kid | but I also think there's a lot less pre-US American | history where the focus would be on _why_ the founding | fathers were (partially) great men. | | That seems like an over correction to me and I think that | it shows in the push to tear down monuments of great | people in American history who were largely products of | their time. | | For example, it's hard to overstate how important it was | that George Washington gave up the presidency. He set the | stage for the peaceful transition of power in the US and | even the world. But he also was a rich guy who owned | slaves. | | It's not nuance that's missing, it's the concept of | duality. | monocasa wrote: | What makes you think they're not being taught that still? | oneplane wrote: | Isn't there some sort of vetting and accreditation system | that would prevent that type of 'creative' stuff from | getting in to an educational system? | monocasa wrote: | The United Daughters of the Confederacy had embedded | themselves in the vetting and accreditation system | specifically to get this outcome. | | https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how- | conf... | stcredzero wrote: | Well over 90% of people those ages I interacted with | online are _for_ throwing out principles like Free Speech | and innocent until proven guilty -- it just depends on | the context for them. To understand those principles, it | 's necessary to understand their historical origins. | Virtually _none_ of the young people in such | conversations understood those things and none of them | cared. All basically responded to such information as if | it was trash. Stuff like, the Magna Carta and The Bill of | Rights. | kenjackson wrote: | You need to find new online circles. I know if no young | kids who are against free speech and innocent until | proven guilty. But they also feel like they don't | "personally" need to give everyone the benefit of the | doubt. | oneplane wrote: | Odd, you'd think that if they are students (and | therefore, study), they would be familiar with the | concept of creating an informed opinion. Pretty much | everyone I've talked to locally has enough knowledge on | the UNHCR, Geneva Convention and Fundamental Principles | (comparable to a 'constitution' - the base of all other | law) and even simpler things like the Trias Politica. | | Perhaps there is a difference in that is classified as a | genre of 'student' or it's a difference in age group (be | it older or younger). It's hard to make comparisons | across the world :-) | | On the other hand, any case where the people that are | forming the 'next' generation don't know how the basic | principles of their society work is a sad/bad case. | refenestrator wrote: | There are significant depts in the university that are | now more focused on teaching a particular angle/ideology | than they are in teaching critical thinking or a survey | of beliefs. | franga2000 wrote: | Small sample, since I come from a country of only 2M | people, but there's a growing number of people, including | historians and history teachers, that are trying to | rewrite WW2 history by framing the Nazi-collaborating | groups as the good guys, fighting for our country to rid | us of the communist evil that was the liberation front - | and everyone is just eating it up. The ordinary people | risking their lives to fight literal Nazis are now | depicted as the "aggressors" and the people that marched | on our own cities under Hitler's flag are the good guys?? | Why, because the mere idea of communists doing something | good is so dangerous to neoliberalist society that we'd | rather call literal Nazis the good guys??? But if you say | "communism bad, they fought communists => they were the | good guys" and conveniently fail to mention the whole | Nazi-collaborating thing, no student will question it | because they really don't care anyways. | | // Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant, but yes, | there's definitely a lack of understanding of history in | schools these days and certainly some pretty powerful | propaganda | ajmadesc wrote: | Thisis a baseless claim. Personal experience doesn't | count. | | The overwhelming majority of history education leaves out | inconvenient truth of vile and anti democratic acts | committed in the name of American Capital interests. | stcredzero wrote: | _I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an | underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes | always lead to overshoot._ | | "Underdamped system" is very apt here. There are some | positive feedback factors which exacerbate the situation in | the "underdamped system." If you give over power to a mob, | then the very principles which act as damping can be | completely abandoned. Things like "innocent until proven | guilty," and the valuing of evidence. | | The answer to unchecked, abused, one-sided power _is not_ | more unchecked, one-sided power with the vector rotated 180 | degrees. That 's just welcoming more dysfunction and abuse. | | _we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the | status pre-2017_ | | We are starting from a place where typical middle-school, | high school, and college kids are likely to answer with | expletives towards the principles mentioned above -- | depending on the context in which you ask their opinion. | | EDIT: Way back when, when I was watching that Vice report | about the Evergreen State College activists, and one of them | said, "...then f#ck your Free Speech!" I became very afraid | that our society was in for a world of hurt. I'm pretty sure | Gandhi and MLK were for Free Speech and the other principles | mentioned above. | skjfdoslifjeifj wrote: | One of my main concerns is that almost all legitimate | discussion is now happening in private invite only communities | because people are too risk averse to continue to chat on | public sites that will be indexed forever in a culture where | they can be cancelled for even a slightly uncouth opinion. | Almost all of my consumption and contribution on the Internet | is now in private communities that are quite strict about | invites and the trend among my colleagues is similar. | | When I was younger I learned so much and established many | valuable relationships by having discussions on public | services/websites. Many legends in the field were quite | accessible on public sites and mailing lists. My life would be | much worse if I hadn't had those experiences and it feels like | a lot of younger people that don't have connections to the SV | bubble are now going to miss out on similar experiences. | | This isn't to say that we should be tolerant of everything but | it definitely feels like we've swung too far in the opposite | direction. | remarkEon wrote: | Not saying I do this, necessarily, but friends of mine who | are active in policy circles write for various publications | under pseudonyms now for this reason. The development of the | idea happens in private group chats, where everyone is using | their IRL name, but the publication happens under a pen name. | | I really don't know if this is a positive change for how | policy gets made, but it is happening actively right now. | spoonjim wrote: | Can you link to some examples of policy papers written | under pseudonyms? | remarkEon wrote: | Obviously no? That would defeat the purpose. | | I understand what you're getting at though. I just made a | claim that people in policy circles are writing things | under pseudonyms. You want evidence for this | (justifiably), but this would require me to essentially | out the pen names. Sorry, not going to happen. | birken wrote: | Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in | private already? This article is pointing out situations | where even in private people might not want to give out | candid feedback, which seems like a different concern that | what you are saying. | | I'm a pretty active person online and I genuinely do not | understand your concern. If you want to say something | controversial online, just do so anonymously like you are | doing now. If you want to give somebody candid advice I'm not | sure why you'd do that in public anyways. | skjfdoslifjeifj wrote: | My apologies, I should have made clear that my post wasn't | directed at the article. | | > Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in | private already? | | Probably, but I think there was still much more interesting | discussion going on publicly in years past. It's anecdotal | but I've definitely seen a huge spike in how many of my | colleagues are retreating entirely to private communities | and most of them never make public comments anymore. That's | disappointing to me because I think there's a lot of value | in having these discussions in the open with respected and | accomplished names attached. It also gives a level of | perceived accessibility that I think is important. | kenjackson wrote: | "but I think there was still much more interesting | discussion going on publicly in years past." | | Really? Prior to anonymous Internet comments there were | even fewer discussions. I think recent years is when | we've finally began to understand how people really feel. | skjfdoslifjeifj wrote: | You are correct. I should have limited my statement to | discussions between people using their real identities. I | also think this is subjective depending on how much value | you place on being able to identify the participants. For | example, in language related discussions I think it's | extremely valuable to have people like SPJ, Anders | Hejlsberg, Andrei Alexandrescu etc. as active AND | identifiable participants. When I was in high school, | during the very early days of Slashdot, quite a few | highly respected developers, professors and authors would | comment regularly under their own names. Reading their | comments and having discussions with them definitely | changed my life and I think it would be sad to see all | these discussions move into private spaces or under | anonymity due to fear of the mob. | anonymousDan wrote: | Can you give an example of what you mean by 'private | communities'? Are they online? Can you give an example? | geoduck14 wrote: | I respectfully disagree. | | Feedback is best received when you relate to the person who is | giving it and you trust the giver has your best interest at | heart. | | While the "current environment" may make it so women are more | weary of men (and thus less likely to receive feedback) - I | think there is a stronger current. | | White male investors see people outside of their social group | and realize that their advice might not be well received- not | because of a flame war, but simply because they don't look like | them. I'm fully convinced this effect is visible with all mixes | of social groups (race, gender, religion, national origin, job | family). | | This effect sucks, and we should be looking for ways to unite | ourselves to other people so that we can receive hard advice | and also give hard advice. | johnrichardson wrote: | Hogwash! Cultural enrichment has no downsides, ever! We just | aren't diversifying hard enough, comrade. | throwaway_-_-_- wrote: | 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 advice to her mentee was "Think about | what a white man would do" and everyone applaud such an | insightful advice. So identifying such an opportunity, I said the | exact same thing word for word, basically "I see you're | hesitating to take credit for your work. Think about what a white | man would do." | | Immediately after saying that, I could tell it wasn't taken well, | and she asked "what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an | answer for that which wouldn't be taken in a really bad way, so I | backpedaled. She later reported me to an administrative person | who luckily felt it was too vague to file a serious report about, | but told me to watch what I say. | | But I do have a solution (my trick). From that point on, I | definitely give more subtle advice unless they have passed my | test, which is I see how they react to situations where they | could give the benefit of the doubt to others in vague | situations. Sometimes, I'll bring up a past story about another | anonymous person and see if they are outraged and want to get | them in trouble. Only the ones who remark that they probably had | good intentions, and don't react too strongly, I'll give more | candid advice to. | stonogo wrote: | I'm not sure what you want readers to take away from this, but | it sounds to me like you could use some help learning to | communicate. Regardless of whether it contains the words "white | man" or not, you should probably be able to explain any | sentence you utter to another person. If you can't, I | respectfully suggest that specific utterance would be better | off unspoken. | | In this case a simple followup of "you deserve more credit and | I want you to feel able to advocate for yourself" would have | cleared up the confusion and avoided a lot of trouble, and you | wouldn't have had to invent a story-telling system in order to | filter out people who believe in accountability. | Der_Einzige wrote: | This situation is extremely sad because the whole "have the | confidence of a medicine white man" thing is a common slogan | used by feminists to try to combat the general lower levels of | self-confidence among women. | | I guess you yourself repeating the same woke quite took away | the uniqueness of the idea as it would be articulated by a non | privledged individual. | | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-15/carry-yourself-with-t... | insensible wrote: | I made a successful complaint to my HR department when | someone used that very phrase. I very much agreed with the | part of the person's intent to support and embolden the | woman. But it's not OK to attack other people in the effort | to support someone. Why not say something positive like | "other people can do it, so can you"? | BonoboIO wrote: | What was the outcome of your complaint to the HR | department? | edoceo wrote: | When I see that I tell folk: "Talk about how awesome you are | loudly and frequently! Every other idiot does it. Difference is | you're awesome. Make sure the world know" | lupire wrote: | 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. | Ma8ee wrote: | I think he tried to use mature, respectful language. But he | apparently anyway put his foot in his mouth. | | Of course everyone should do their best in being sensitive in | their ways of expressing themselves. But many people could | definitely show a little bit more generosity in their | interpretations and not jump on every chance to interpret | something like racism or sexism. | dragonwriter wrote: | > I think he tried to use mature, respectful language. | | Resorting to advice that consists _entirely_ of race | /gender stereotyping isn't "mature, respectful language". | dbsmith83 wrote: | 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. | Hitton wrote: | She was kinda right to report you. Your advice was stupid | sexist and racist empty phrase and she, in contrast to you, was | smart enough to notice it and actually question it. Your back- | pedalling just reinforced her already bad opinion of you. Next | time try to think before parroting some "guru"'s advice. | Jabbles wrote: | _" what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an answer for | that_ | | This seems to fit the definition of cargo cult. | | You clearly had good intentions, but you can't go around saying | phrases without being able to back them up. This should be | familiar to you from technical situations - consider: _" prefer | composition over inheritance"_ - reasonable advice, but be | prepared to explain yourself, not just parrot it. | BobbyJo wrote: | It's contextually a lot different though. In this case, it's | not that he didn't have an answer or a means to clarify, it's | that, based on her initial reaction, he didn't have one he | wasn't sure would dig a deeper hole. | | I doubt anyone out there will have a similar visceral | reaction to discussing code architecture. | Jabbles wrote: | I suspect anyone who could clarify that remark would have | known not to open with it. | BobbyJo wrote: | I disagree. I can think of many ways to clarify the | remark in a manner that I personally wouldn't see | anything wrong with. At the same time, I can imagine a | person intent on outrage finding a reason to be mad about | any one of them. I generally assume that people I'm | engaged with professionally aren't looking for | opportunities to be mad. | Jabbles wrote: | Why do you not assume that the person in this story is | not then? | | In what way can someone disagree with you about the | offensiveness of something you say, without you labelling | them as "intent on outrage"? | BobbyJo wrote: | Its subjective. Personally, I don't think it's reasonable | to become upset by a single comment, made with good | intentions, as happened in the story, certainly not upset | enough to want professional consequences for the other | party. | | Even a single comment made with ill intent I don't think | would push me all the way to pursuing professional | recourse, not without me trying to 'fix' things on my own | first. | bitcharmer wrote: | So what would a white man do? | [deleted] | oblio wrote: | You tried to be clever and it backfired :-) | | What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more assertive"/"don't be | afraid of taking credit for your work"? | marcinzm wrote: | > What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more | assertive"/"don't be afraid of taking credit for your work"? | | I don't see those as useful since it doesn't provide the | person any actual guidance or reference point. What does | assertive mean? What should I exactly do? How do I do it? | "Act like X" provides a well known reference point that they | can use to adjust their behavior based on. They can remember | all the times they've seen X do something in a similar | situation and then just act like that. | oblio wrote: | That's hilarious. | | If you want to make it super explicit, come up with | examples. "Be bolder, for example for this project I saw | you doing 80% of the work, you should get to headline the | presentation and have top billing on the authors page". | | "Act like X" is also potentially useful, if you make it | explicit. Explicit is not "Act like a white man" (whaaaa?). | Explicit: is "Act like Bob, for example do you remember | when HR said he couldn't have a new screen and he | insisted"? | marcinzm wrote: | But all that does in practice is that only those who can | come up with perfectly worded advice on the spot that | will not offend anyone will be giving advice to people | who might become offended. Which actually hurts the | underprivileged since they will now receive a | significantly reduced amount of advice. | oblio wrote: | Why perfectly worded? I guess it depends on the person, | but coming up with examples should be easy, in my | experience. | | It's just an extension of the classic "show, don't tell". | dbsmith83 wrote: | Most advice to give has already been thought about. And | if not, you can simply say "Let me get back to you with | feedback on ___" | dbsmith83 wrote: | "Act like X" in this situation is not a well known | reference point and not a good way to express the idea. | Know how we know that? Because the person who said it | offended someone and then got reported. Please, quit trying | to justify using racially-charged language in this | situation | marcinzm wrote: | By that definition of something being problematic | "someone you said it to got offended" the OP has resolved | the issue. Now people he talks to no longer are offended | by what he says. I suspect however that you don't like | his solution to the problem even though it resolves the | very definition of it being an issue you bring up. | dbsmith83 wrote: | It doesn't actually resolve anything. Just because | someone passed a test to see if X was offensive, it | doesn't mean they won't find Y offensive. So no, I don't | like this 'solution', because it's not a good one. It | takes risk where none is needed. | colechristensen wrote: | There is a lot of value in the "imagine what someone else | would think or do" mechanic of giving people advice. There | certainly are dragons in asking somebody to act like a white | dude, so don't do that. | | "Be bolder" is different than "what do you think a bold | person would do?" | | I have had many conversations with people going through a | tough time and unsure of what to do or how to feel in a | situation and there is this trick to getting people to think | differently that almost always works... ask the question | | "What would a reasonable person do in your situation?" | | Suddenly the person having trouble coming up with the answer | "What should I do?" has a perfect answer to "What would a | reasonable person do?" | | It's a psychological trick that goes after how one thinks | about one's self and how one thinks about someone else being | quite different. If you refocus your attention to view | yourself from an external objective, you often end up with | much better judgement. | steve_g wrote: | "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 good way to make the point. | Darmody wrote: | I can't imagine how someone would think that is a good | suggestion. | | Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always | take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing, | they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman, | is not as smart as a white man. | | I'm a white man surrounded by mostly white people working on | a field with mostly white men and I can't say what a white | man would do in certain situations because we're all | different and we all think differently. | paulryanrogers wrote: | A generous interpretation would be that a white man | typically mentions their accomplishments without | reservation. I.e. they are comfortable speaking up in | almost any circumstance. (They most often are in secure in | their employment and role.) | ALittleLight wrote: | I don't think that's generous at all. It's characterizing | all white men. If I told a bad math student to think what | an Asian person would do would you take the "generous | interpretation" of "study more"? | | Why not just say what you mean without the racial | stereotypes? | dahfizz wrote: | > her advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white | man would do" and everyone applaud such an insightful | advice. | | > Why not just say what you mean without the racial | stereotypes? | | Nothing is going to win cheap applause at a diversity | panel than saying "white man bad". | paulryanrogers wrote: | Generous as in assuming the most graceful interpretation. | Not intending to bucket people. | ALittleLight wrote: | Claiming that "What would a white man do?" Is not | intending to bucket people has moved beyond | "interpretation" and into gaslighting. The entirety of | the advice is bucketing people. | | "Graceful interpretation" does not mean that you ignore | the advice and substitute for it what would have been | good advice. | sackofmugs wrote: | 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. | ALittleLight wrote: | There's a difference between wordcrafting and giving | obviously preposterous advice like "What would a white man | do?" | | If I was giving advice to someone who was too assertive and | taking too much credit, I would never say "Think about what | a black woman would do." Things like this are so | transparently racist it shouldn't even need to be | explained. You are simultaneously characterizing a race and | gender of people and also telling someone else to act like | a different race and gender. | | The reason the advice was poorly received is because it is | nonsense. The recipient of the advice asked the perfect | question - "what does it mean to act like a white man?" The | OP, when asked, also doesn't seem to know what it means. | I'd say there is a lesson there - don't repeat something | just because it was will received when you originally heard | it. You may not understand it. It may be something of an | emperor's new clothes situation where nobody can question | the person who gave the original advice, but that doesn't | make it good. | ImprobableTruth wrote: | 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'? | ativzzz wrote: | Clearly, the black female employee didn't interpret it that | way, so your ability to empathize may be lacking. | karpierz wrote: | There are some pretty clear alternate interpretations: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613528 | dragonwriter wrote: | > No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous? | | That it is unclear is obvious in that the person using the | stereotype couldn't identify the concrete, actionable | behavior they intended to encourage when directly | questioned. | nonplussed wrote: | It's ambiguous because white men don't all act the same | way. There are plenty of non confident, hesitant white men. | CodeGlitch wrote: | Thought experiment: | | I do wonder if some boss in the future will only employ | straight white males simply to avoid people "offending" others | (it's hard to offend a straight white male in this new woke | ideology). Of course this has the opposite effect to what the | woke seem to want, but this is the world we have built | ourselves. | laurent92 wrote: | I do. | | I used to work in a diversity company where white males were | usually not promoted nor valued, or those who were promoted | were absolutely excellent. I specifically remember having | trouble explaining a bug to a boss, then I noticed she didn't | know what an HTTP header was. It happens, when you're | promoted so fast that you don't spend time as a dev. | | Anyway, exited, created my company, but seriously, I'm | extremely bitter about diversity, it's just a way to enslave | us and let us run the rat's race while collecting taxes and | job creation on us. They ain't gonna win anything if they | push white males so much out that they are bitter by the time | they create their company. Racism is just a reaction to being | treated badly. | worik wrote: | Diversity is a competitive advantage. | CodeGlitch wrote: | This is cargo-cult thinking. | | Let's say you never employ any women in your org: this | means you never have to deal with pregnancies and lengthy | maternity leave, hospital visits, etc. Straight away you | have an advantage over your competition simply due to the | extra man-hours (heh!). In software dev I've never | encountered a situation where having women devs would make | a blind bit of difference to the outcome. | | Of course this is deeply unfair on women, and we all want | to live in a fairer society, I just don't think the woke | ideology is the solution. | worik wrote: | And imagine, that for some reason, women are not | attracted to your products? That is half the market. | | I remember car companies working this out back in the | eighties. The companies that understood that women have | their own needs in a car that men did not share, yet | women are a important part of family purchase decisions, | did better. | BonoboIO wrote: | In some software markets their is no advantage to employ | a woman as the poster said. Backend developing and so on. | | BUT you have a point, the market is 50% plus women and | you are missing a lot of valuable influence and | competence. | CodeGlitch wrote: | Of course employing someone to help you target your | product to as many people as possible makes sense. But | employing someone just because they tick an (arbitrary) | box makes no sense in a competitive field. | | Just think about sports teams. | laurent92 wrote: | And no HR department. No complaints, fewer sick leave, | everyone focussed on meritocracy = no competition on | victimisation = little need for paperwork / risk | mitigation = no HR, and no meetings about this. It's a | huge business expenditure, worth a good 15% of the total | mass. | BobbyJo wrote: | The competitive advantage is hard to quantify though, | whereas the disadvantage can be felt directly and | immediately if you aren't careful. If someone gets burned, | it's hard to see how a vague notion of some intangible | advantage would push them to risk a repeat. | | As a white male from a poor southern family (not very | tolerant) I've had to learn a few hard lessons on similar | fronts. I know I don't have a good gauge for what is and | isn't ok, even now. Given that in many occasions even | mirroring words or behaviors can be a no-no, the only way | I've learned that is 100% effective at not causing problems | is shutting up, which I'm generally pretty bad at. Luckily | I've had mostly understanding and light hearted coworkers, | so I haven't been outright ruined yet, but I can think of | more than one occasion that likely would have turned my | life upside down if the audience was less sensitive to my | intent. | gbear0 wrote: | I disagree. | | Diversity CAN BE a competitive advantage if everyone else | is carving out a strict path. But if everyone is extremely | diverse then heterogeneity could actually be the | competitive advantage, allowing a business to specialize | more or take advantage of certain economies of scale etc. | etc. | | Also, I find that more often than not, too much diversity | leads to internal conflict because ideas differ too much, | which can turn into a competitive disadvantage. | fegu wrote: | Apparently the research on that is sketchy. It is only an | advantage if specifically sought out and used. It requires | work. Otherwise it can just lead to bad communication and | less team spirit. (I am paraphrasing a recent article from | somewhere) | mattlondon wrote: | Perhaps phrase it as an open-question, rather than something | that can be open to interpretation. | | "How do you feel it went when people were talking about the | work done on the project?" Allow them to chat ..."Do you think | the credit was equally shared out?" | worik wrote: | I am very glad you rethought that racist sexist approach. It | was a learning experience for you. I am glad it did you no | harm, even better. | | People need to be tolerant of casual racism and sexism, up to a | point. People have been raised like this, advised to to act | like this, they need a chance to learn. It is tough on those on | the receiving end, and unjust. But the world will not change | over night and the prejudice is so ingrained at every level of | our society. | | This poster here shows that prejudice can be easily overcome if | not combined with bigotry | BonoboIO wrote: | "racist sexist approach" | | well ... interpreting everything in the worst way possible | will lead to the outcome that the poster will never say | anything again. And that will help no one! | le-mark wrote: | It's remarkable the level you go to to bridge this gap even | after being burned, literally no one else would, I wouldn't. Is | it worth my job, career, families future? That's the calculus | and risk imo. | ddingus wrote: | "Think about what a white man would do" | | This does contain the essence of your advice; namely, to take | credit for work more often, and or more clearly. | | My approach is very different. | | And I have had the pleasure of mentoring women into male | dominated roles a time or two. Fortunately, we were able to | establish trust and another male coworker involved in mentoring | worked in a similar way. There were challenges, but we made | them team ones, not just hers. That made a big difference, | IMHO. | | What we did was take gender out of it early on, unless it made | sense. | | In this case, the advice would be, "you should take credit | more." And the follow on would be ways to do that and to | support the person who will benefit from doing it. That can be | as simple as some recognition and sharing later: | | "I saw you go for it. Nice! So, how do you feel about it? What | happened? Will you do it again?" Etc... | | Where gender does come up, that discussion almost always | involved a telling of things. And the reason, explained if need | be, is just simple understanding. | | "How is it for you?" | | And that helps with, "what if it were me?" | | And then advice makes sense, because there is context, a shared | basis. | | That is not always needed. Hard to say when it is. But when it | is, having it really helps get past or through whatever the | challenge is. | | I have been fortunate to have women in my life who will share, | who I have worked with, who I have helped, and who have helped | me. And the things they share have highlighted the fact that | their experience is different. Same goes for many attributes, | race, beauty, etc... | | Often, the barrier to sharing and understanding boils down to | some shame, or blame, or admission of weakness, or the | perception of making excuses. And while those things can be | part of the discussion, it is unhealthy to presume they are, | and my experience shows me that presumption happens more than | it should. | | And that all contributes to how hard this matter is, or can be. | | I am a guy, and have found myself discriminated against for | seriously considering, "what if it were me?" Or for asking, | "How is it for her, or them?" | | It is almost like a betrayal, or threat... something I am | expressing poorly. Sorry for that, I just do not have precise | words. | | Often we are asking people different from us to see things from | a more familiar point of view. More familiar to us, but what | good is that when it simply is foreign to them? | | I resolved it this way: we should be seeking a better | perception of what it is like for people very different from | us. Mutual understanding and respect, consideration. | | In my view, there should be no shame in any of that. But there | is! And all this is harder. | | Since that time, I have paid a lot more attention to these | dynamics. Barriers to understanding one another better present | real costs and risks that can be avoided, again in my view. | thereare5lights wrote: | Your "trick" shows whether or not the other person will | consider the whole range of things you could have meant instead | of assuming the most likely thing in their judgement. So it's | useful. It reminds me of shit tests in dating where you trigger | situations just to see their reactions to certain situations. | | Regarding why you can't just say the same thing word for word, | that's because shared context matters. | | This is basic social skills. If you don't have the same shared | background and context, then it's unclear if you mean one thing | or the other. | | So when one woman says "Think about what a white man would do", | to another woman, there's the implication that they're talking | about their shared experiences regarding society's expectations | around women. | | When a man says that to a woman, especially it's a white man | saying that to a black woman, your contexts and backgrounds are | so wildly different that surface area of what you could mean is | quite large. | | So when you had the chance to clarify yourself and you | backpedaled, that made it look even worse because it implied | that you had bad intentions and were trying to take your words | back. | | So yes, it's true. You can't say the same thing word for word | as one person say to another if you and the other person do not | share the same contexts. | dragonwriter wrote: | > had recently attended a diversity panel where someone in a | similar role as me said that in a similar situation, and her | advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white man would | do" and everyone applaud such an insightful advice. So | identifying such an opportunity, I said the exact same thing | word for word, basically "I see you're hesitating to take | credit for your work. Think about what a white man would do." | | That's...horrible advice generally, though there are specific | circumstances where it might be useful, and it is tragic if it | was an example used in a _diversity panel_ as anything but a | negative example without a whole lot of context because it (1) | appeals to race /gender stereotypes, and (2) requires, for it | to even approximate actionable advice, for the mentor and | mentee to _share_ race /gender stereotypes. In fact, I've been | to lots of such panels/trainings, and fairly commonly seen | exactly that used as a negative example. | | What would be more useful if your first instinct is to give | this advice is to first unpack what behavior you are | stereotyping as white/male behavior that you actually want to | encourage, and then just advise that behavior _without appeal | to race and gender stereotypes_. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | South park did an episode on that mentality where cartman | helped minority kids in an inner city school graduate. | adflux wrote: | How can I reach these kiiiiiiiidssss | ativzzz wrote: | I'm not saying what she did is right, but you unnecessarily | brought in race into a situation that could easily have been | handled without race. | | > I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work | | Could easily be followed up with actionable items to take | credit for her work: do a company/department wide presentation | for instance. Instead you gave her vague non-advice. I'm a | white man and I have no idea what a white man would do because | I know a ton of different white men who would all do very | different things. | soneca wrote: | I think the learning for you should be: don't repeat other | people's words without understanding what they are supposed to | mean, what's the context, what's the reasoning behind them. I | would say that a proper answer to _"What do you mean?"_ (or | even better, a well communicated preamble before the phrase) | would pass the right message and not sound ofensive. | baby wrote: | As an Asian guy I probably would have reported you if you had | told me something like this :D | | My advice to you: "Think about what you would have told a white | man" | BonoboIO wrote: | "Think about what you would have told a white man" | | Well that leads to something like "Toughen Up, It's Part of | the Job". | | I don't think it helps to activly missunderstand people, when | they are trying to be helpful EVEN if their trying is in the | wrong. Try to think about the intention and maybe ask what | they really meant by that. | baby wrote: | How is it? My advice is to avoid telling such bullshit | based on how I look. | BonoboIO wrote: | I did't want to hurt you, but i don't see the path to a | better world to just think the worst of people. The most | people want to be good and create good things, sometimes | they don't know better ... | baby wrote: | True, the problem is that we get so much shit on the | daily based on how we look that at some point we just | have to fight back. | BonoboIO wrote: | I don't say you should not fight back. Racism has to be | fought! | | I hope we can all agree that in 90% of the cases we can | hear on the tone in the voice what the poster meant. If | unclear ask and if racism occurs report the ** out of him | :D | throwaway113421 wrote: | It seems as if there's an idea that if we install women in | corporate leadership skills we'll get better corporate governance | overall. In my experience women's ego can be just as fragile as | men's. And guaranteed corporate governance is not necessarily | true. | | One company I worked for ended up being no different than the | good-ol-boy system, except all the men were women -- looking out | and protecting each other, figuring out how to screw with | employee's yearly reviews in order to game the system for the | cabal of women leaders. This was getting to the point that the | management chain was vacationing with each other in the south of | France. | | In one particularly painful case, they celebrated a big cloud | move to AWS with T-shirts. The devops engineers who did all the | painful up front work to make it happen got t-shirts. When the | devops team completely turned over, they left the t-shirts | hanging in their cubicles. | oirjjlksjmfljaj wrote: | There's a rhetorical pattern I see in many articles, this one | included, that perpetuates the issue this article is trying to | address: men are the problem. Before, it was men saying bad | things. Now, it's that men aren't saying things at all. | | "I'm not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men | clamming up." If not, then perhaps that's the wrong problem | statement, and solutions will become more readily obvious and | suggestible when not coached as the problem of men. | | That's as candid as I can make it, and I feel that I have to use | a throwaway account to do so. | hiofewuhfribfjj wrote: | It's clearly a sign of sexism in our culture. Sexism against | men that is. | | And yes I feel like using throwaway too, happy times. | bvaldivielso wrote: | That's not at all the way I interpret the article. The author | empathizes with the male investors, and justifies their | behaviour. If anything, she's blaming society, not men. | oirjjlksjmfljaj wrote: | The author literally calls it "the problem of men clamming | up." Empathy or not, they're saying the problem is male | behavior. This could be framed as "the problem of taking | grievances to the mob" or "the problem of overattributing | behavior" or anything that puts responsibility for change on | some group other than men, but it does not. Whether they're | to blame or not, men are the ones behaving incorrectly. | bvaldivielso wrote: | > "the problem of men clamming up" | | Even when phrased that way, I don't perceive that the | author is _blaming_ men. The author is critical of the mob, | and the dangers of being incorrectly perceived as sexist | and ruining one's reputation. You may insist on your | interpretation, and fixate your attention on a couple of | sentences that ring the wrong way to you, but I think you | are missing out on the nuance. | Closi wrote: | I disagree, the author seems to blame women: | | > "If there weren't both women who made false accusations | and an audience eager to hear and magnify such accusations, | then the upstanding investors would have nothing to fear | about being candid. But, unfortunately, both do exist." | julianmarq wrote: | Agreed, I'm definitely not comfortable with her phrasing in | several sections of the article, and it clearly has an impact, | since one of the top comments labels this behavior by men as | "sexist". | | The author is, _perhaps_ inadvertently, contributing to the | problem. | | BTW, yeah, this is one of my alt accounts. | maxerickson wrote: | The structural sexism in this story is arguably the investor | choosing to spare himself the minor risk to reputation, the | assumption that the CEO isn't likely enough to listen to the | advice fairly for it to be worth giving. | | (it's not at all a given that the situation would blow up in his | face...) | flumpcakes wrote: | > (it's not at all a given that the situation would blow up in | his face...) | | The article was talking about risk. Risk isn't binary, if it | was then there wouldn't be a risk... | | > minor risk to reputation | | I think the article, and at least from some candid comments in | this thread, indicate that people perceive this risk as much | more than minor. Almost as if not being labeled a racist or | sexist or homophobic (founded or not) is worth a few $m lost | from the inaction taken to avoid that labeling. | maxerickson wrote: | Right, they are cowards that put their perception of some | risk ahead of doing the right thing, and they only act like | that when they deal with women. | | Like what do they do if a man falsely accuses them of some | trespass? | neonological wrote: | I went into this article thinking it was going to be an outrage | piece about men being sexist towards women. Instead it's about | men being afraid of being accused of being sexist. | | This is a very real issue. It's already gotten to the point where | the people behind the movement are hysterically unreasonable and | irrational. Literally even feminists who are integral parts of | the movement itself aren't safe from their own vitriol. | | Below is an TED talk about the story of a activist feminist who | had her entire activist career destroyed simply by saying | something that the cancel culture disagreed with: | | https://youtu.be/3WMuzhQXJoY | ridethebike wrote: | >> And the consequences of being accused of sexism by an online | mob have now become so extreme that many investors don't want to | risk it anymore. | | I'm glad someone said it and I'm glad that that someone is a | woman so that there's a chance this message won't immediately get | drowned in sexism/male privilege accusations. | hawkice wrote: | 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, but not being credible for a certain attack is an | interesting advantage. Perhaps vulgar and obnoxious people will | be easier to work with too. I will look for a way to get mobbed | that doesn't violate my moral code, might as well break the seal | on that so I never make anyone nervous. | Baobei wrote: | Female founder here. Just wanted to say I'm much more interested | in advice and feedback from other successful founders than | investors. | | It also seems like investors are more concerned about reputation | than founders. | flumpcakes wrote: | Isn't that setting yourself up for a selection bias? | | Where as an investor probably has a wider range of experience | to draw advice from, potentially having seen companies both | succeed and fail. | BonoboIO wrote: | In our middle european country there was the initiative to end | the discrimination to not employ people based on various markers | race, skin color, gender, sex, age, education history (maybe | switiching industries in your fourties) ... | | If the potential employer rejected your job application with a | reason you could fight him in court for discrimination and get | compensation even if the employer. | | Great intention, but it backfired ... after some companies got | sued for legitimate and illegitimate reasons NOBODY answers with | a reason why your application was not considered. They maybe hint | what was wrong or not ideal. | tlogan wrote: | Sadly, the current direction in the industry is: "let's cover our | ass". Which eventually ends up with: less mentoring for women, | less promotion, etc. | | The problem is that our system and society will not reward | companies which do right things (hire, promote, etc.) but it will | punish companies for slight irregularities. | a3n wrote: | That's been the way forever, the players just change over time. | It used to mean prison torture and death to criticize the | church. So people didn't. Now they do. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-28 23:00 UTC)