Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

Which is why this needs to be discussed: So a path forward can be found. Our current default patterns aren't working well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agreed same here.

Unfortunately I think the reality will be that male founders may get even more funding than before, which will then lead to a potentially wider gap.

And then the cycle will continue, a misread of the situation as sexism or more accusations of sexism than before will lead to more people staying with the easy choice of being silent.

I'm reminded of that quote, "better to be silent and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove any doubt people have." The same thing is true for investors but with idiot replaced by sexist.

But yes, doing it safely requires skill.

I’m not sure why female founders are being portrayed as a different species? They’re humans. They know about sexism. They know when what they’re seeing is sexism vs critical feedback. And they will understand if you express your concerns with that.

Indirectly: Men should be wary of partnering up with women because investors might see such a partnership as "danger zone" and pass.

I KNOW sexism exists and should be eradicated. Unfortunately the current way of doing things cause lots of unintended consequences for women. I (a man), for one, refuse to put myself in a position where I'll have to make explicit decisions for men vs. women on the merit of their work because there is a chance that if the woman "loses" they'll label me a sexist (they can genuinely feel that way, but I know that my intentions are not towards gender discrimination - unfortunately there is no way to convince her of that if that happens). That means I tend to not work with women, even though I hate passing on people that will do the work well. If they have a history with such activism, it is worse because whatever happens, if they are terminated for any reason, it will most probably be labeled discrimination. If they have a social media following, I'm screwed. So it is difficult. I don't want to pass on them but the potential consequences for any misunderstanding are too large. I don't want to live and work while walking on eggshells.

Regardless of gender, the other issue is if they're crazy or unable to accept feedback, then they may try to make you look bad. It's probably a good idea to socially screen all founders carefully so you know who you're dealing with.

It's only sexism if it happens to a woman, therefore the word "feminism" itself isn't inherently sexist.

It's only racist if it happens to someone of color. White people can't be discriminated against by definition. Anyone who believes in "reverse discrimination" is a "racist" who has "too much entitled privilege."

Be quiet and accept the prevailing, correct opinions and beliefs, or be labeled and canceled. There is no debate and there is no discussion because the ideological mafia has already decided what beliefs are proper today. Oh and anyone who doesn't renounce yesterday's micro aggressions should be forced to resign if they don't apologize hard enough four times.

The left is a circular firing squad that doesn't have any loyalty.

I do believe that in the US sexism is generally one directional due to the intrinsic imbalance in power. There are stereotypes about males, and they are harmful in some cases, but generally because more men have power the harm to women is more pervasive and severe.

Same thing with respect to race and white people, actually.

What you want the world to be isn't what the world is, and in this case it's true, as by law in the Netherlands, various promotional and termination choices are required to be justified by numbers, which is not the case in Anglo-Saxon countries, where employers are more so at liberty to subjectively assess whom they wish to promote, and whom not.

I don't understand what you're trying to say about sexism or racism because your sentences don't make grammatical sense.

I simply said that in Dutch decisions of whom to promote, numbers play a greater sway than in Anglo-Saxon promotions; the claim you are attacking is another altogether.

One can't possibly guarantee that every founder (female or not) knows that, and in fact, TFA implies that many don't. So the possibility that at least one of them will think the investor sexist for giving feedback is unfortunately not zero. And, of course, this option doesn't seem to consider the possibility that even if the founder takes the criticism at face value, someone else might not.

In light of that, the third choice you present seems to be GP's second choice after all.

Sexism exists and affects both genders. Imbalances in power mean the effects of sexism are generally felt more by women than by men. The narrative that men cannot understand or recognize sexism, or have an inferior ability to do so, is not supported by the facts. It is also harmful to overcoming the problems of sexism by men toward women.

I hold a similar view with respect to the relationship between racism and white people.

There is a nonzero risk in any social interaction that involves giving critical feedback. The way you manage that risk is by investing in healthy relationships, not by perceiving literally half of humanity as being too risky to be worthy of critical feedback.

I’m not quite sure what to say to you. Living life involves risks. It sure seems like one of those risks is being deliberately amplified to be used as an excuse to “not even bother” with female founders.

Which leads me back to GP's point: there are only two choices. I take it that you're saying that the risk of the second choice can be ignored if taking some steps, but the consequences remain the same, and GP didn't speak about the thresholds or ways to improve the odds. He only mentioned that the risk exists and isn't worth it for him, and you disagree, but that's not much to go on.

> I’m not quite sure what to say to you. Living life involves risks. It sure seems like one of those risks is being deliberately amplified to be used as an excuse to “not even bother” with female founders.

Conversely, I'm not sure what's being implied here so I don't know how to reply.

For what it's worth, TFA isn't saying that investors aren't bothering with female founders. They are, but are being careful with the feedback they give.

ETA: Forgot to mention, the way you're suggesting investors to "manage" the risk not only doesn't remove the risk for investors, but it also leaves female founders at a disadvantage anyway: male founders can get critical feedback right away, female founders have to wait until a rapport is built.

White men can and do blame sexism and racism for their failure to advance all the time, and have been doing so since the day when overt discrimination in their favor stopped being a near-universal norm.

EDIT: of course, the audience that is favorably predisposed to such complaints is very different to the ones predisposed the same way toward claims from other groups, but it is very large and socially influential.

What I'm trying to demonstrate is that the framing of the choices involved as just the two is misleading and not at very useful. Not sure what you're trying to imply by going through the pedantry of demonstrating that what I said is "actually covered by the second choice". If that makes you happy, let it be so, its a false dichotomy.

> Conversely, I'm not sure what to reply to this. It seems to me like you're implying that the people who are discussing this are "sexists looking for an excuse", but that sounds like an uncharitable interpretation, so I might as well ask if you could clarify what you meant by this.

I stated a possibility for why the people are behaving in the way it has been described. The reasoning given seems to be "some women founders may interpret it as sexism", which to me seems like an uncharitable interpretation.

I am trying to point out that this only makes sense to an audience of males. The reason could be equally viewed as "some men investors do not want to deal with women founders", which is another uncharitable interpretation.

> For what it's worth, TFA isn't saying that investors aren't bothering with female founders. They are, but are being careful with the feedback they give.

The article is very clearly stating that investors are withholding from giving the kind of advice that could decide between whether the company succeeds or fails. I would actually say that's worse than outright rejection to work with female founders, as investors play an important role in filtering out bad ideas and convincing founders of good ideas.

Depends on the quantum of risk.

I'll make someone unhappy at most but the truth will help them? Sure.

I can be labelled as sexist and it might end my career? Hard nope.

The Dutch cultural tendency to be very blunt is probably not helping your case.

I'm leaving this comment in hopes of being personally helpful to you as an individual and it's probably foolish for me to do so. It would probably be better for me to say nothing, but it's just kind of a pet peeve of mine so to speak, so I am doing it anyway.

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?

This is a really thorny issue -- that there are people who have been so hurt that they see no path forward. Trying to reach them is really difficult and complicated and puts you at risk of being burned, which tends to leave them painted into a corner that they can't find their way out of.

I'm glad you know other women that are more reasonable and do not feel like giving up over this one incident.

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.

To be fair to her, it gets really hard to not attribute certain patterns to your gender. It gets really hard to try to make that nuanced distinction that "Not everything is about sexism." and this also ends up being a thorny issue because trying to tell someone who is in that head space that they are wrong gets experienced by them as just another means to undermine them and gaslight them.

I think the best strategy is to try to avoid talking to women about their "personal" stuff. Try to not make it into a "personal" relationship when it really isn't.

I lived a really private life for a lot of years because I was a homemaker for roughly two decades and what I eventually came up with was this idea that women generally get treated like "private" individuals and men generally get treated like "public" people and the way men and women get socialized reinforces that pattern.

So men frequently have "personal" conversations with women in public settings that they wouldn't have with a man or in a way that they wouldn't have with a man and it happens so often that women don't realize "This is not normal and it is not good for your work life."

It's normal for them in their lives and they don't see that this is a problem.

Men focus on the importance of networking and women tend to be better at the social thing and at making personal connections and that tends to be one of their strengths. It is one of mine and I have been baffled and frustrated that it doesn't turn into professional connections.

People talk to me and they want to see me as their new best friend for life or their one true love or something like that and it ends up being enormously frustrating for me because they generally don't have as much to give back to me as I have to give to them in that regard and what I most need is more income and that's never something they want to help with.

People don't want to pay money to their friends for their friendship. Men don't want to pay money to their girlfriend for being their girlfriend.

And people also don't want to open doors for me professionally once it veers into that "personal relationship" space. And it's not simply because they are being selfish jerks or something.

If a man is sleeping with a woman or hopes to, it can be hard to vouch for her. It can be hard to overcome the public perception that "You're just saying that because you are sleeping with her and I can't actually trust what you say about this woman."

I spent a lot of years being a walking, talking train wreck waiting to happen. I tend to "turn heads" so to speak. I tend to be attention grabbing, but all that attention was directed at me as an individual and I didn't know how to get it onto my work and translate that into traffic for my websites and income.

So what I will say is if you are male, try to focus on her work and try to avoid getting into her personal shit. Women being overly personal in work settings is part of what holds women back.

Not everyone is your Fwend at work and women can be slow to get that memo. That was one of my biggest stumbling blocks because I was a homemaker for a lot of years and the people I had relationships with were basically all friends and family. For years and years, I didn't have a boss or any coworkers, etc.

And it's really hard to do this because it seems like just telling her "You need to stop doing X" would help her but it won't because that is just you getting into her personal business and that de facto reinforces this pattern where women relate to other people in an overly personal fashion and people relate to women in an overly personal fashion.

If it isn't your sister, mother, wife, etc, don't get into that with them and don't talk about it as her problem. Talk about it as "not my problem."

"Oh, well, sorry, I barely know you. This is outside the scope of our relationship. I'm going to go have a coffee now. Catch you later."

With enough repetition women can get the memo.

If you want to help her career, give her work some positive attention. Tell other people she does good work. Tell her she does good work. Tell her you would like to help her connect with people who would appreciate her work.

Make sure the focus is her work and not her as an individual. Keep saying it until it slowly sinks in. Rinse and repeat on the "I'm going to go have a coffee now. This is not my problem." when she tries to turn you into a shoulder to cry on because she has big feels about you giving her work positive attention because no one has done that before and blah blah blah.

Men learn that it's not about them. It's about their work.

Women frequently seem to not learn that. I was very slow to learn that and my gender and the life I lived for a lot of years as a homemaker and the way other people reacted to me because of all that made it super hard to sort this out because I would talk to people like they were my friend and people who were emotionally starved would eat that up and then not know how to say "Look, that's the problem." and no one knew how to say "So, show me your work. Do you have samples I could see and maybe share with some of my contacts?"

People still tend to err on the side of replying to me on HN as if comments I make about gendered issues are just me whining about my personal problems and me being in need of advice and it continues to be a pattern I have to actively work at shutting down.

Everyone wants to make that personal connection to me and that always ends up in a pattern of meeting their emotional needs at my expense and continuing to fail to open doors for me professionally.

So if you really want women to reach some kind of professional parity with men, stop being so personal with them. Get your own emotional needs met some other way and stop investing in having these personal conversation with women and let them know this is not your thing and you want none of it but don't alienate or shun them.

Instead, talk about their work. Help them with their work. Promote their work.

I think women relate less to their work than men do and I think this is the crux of why men's careers tend to stronger than women's careers.

I worked at Aflac for a few years. The CEO at the time that I was there was, I think, the son of one of the three founders (they were brothers) and he made the risky decision to go with the Aflac duck commercials and it made the company a household name.

Aflac had something of value that was underrecognized. If you have something of value that is underrecognized and you add some promotion to it, you can really rake in the dough.

But if you don't have much of value, lots of advertising amounts to a con job, basically.

So when women try to network, sometimes they are trying to promote themselves when there isn't much to promote. It ends up being just an empty social activity and not a career maker because they haven't really done the work and they aren't really promoting the work.

So those are my rambling thoughts at 1am my time, for what it's worth.

Yes, everyone is guilty of this. When you mess up, blame someone else. That's how you get stuck regardless of your race or gender. You'll be on a crusade against the wrong thing and never achieve anything.

This entire thread is a sea of doomsday tears of fatalism and how bad it is, and how the culture is on a collision course with death, and mine was the perspective that I'm skeptical that it's truly as bad as they claim.

I'm far less dismissive of their own culture than they are.

But indeed, what they're tired of is not dismissing Anglo-Saxon culture, but that an outsider does so and having to hear that it's not the entire world.

They're own dismissals are far greater than mine.

> The Dutch cultural tendency to be very blunt is probably not helping your case.

My case? is it not further evidence of my thesis that there are cultural differences at play here?

One may assume that is is only to be expected that in a blunter culture, one would be less inclined to use sexism as an excuse when one be criticized.

Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon's famed tendency for politeness might very well be a contributing factor, if again, it truly be the case that it is so common for sexism to be used as an excuse when criticism be leveled.

> I'm leaving this comment in hopes of being personally helpful to you as an individual and it's probably foolish for me to do so. It would probably be better for me to say nothing, but it's just kind of a pet peeve of mine so to speak, so I am doing it anyway.

You are free to do so, and I am free to disagree and point out the opposite.

From my perspective, it comes across as a petulant child who excessively and unreasonably talks about a culture that is failing, but lashes out defensively when an outsider chimes in and says “It might be bad, but I'm not sure it's as bad as you claim.”, for then it is an outsider who does so, and apparently that crosses the line, not the dismissal in and of itself.

That's basically a personal attack.

I'm not someone who downvoted you and my above remark was my first reply to you.

Have a good day.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s unhealthy to base your social life around work colleagues (for many reasons), so while I strive to get on well with and be friendly with people I work with, I’ve never seen work as a place to find my primary friends groups or people to date or whatever. It’s just too messy, not just for the two people involved but for everyone around them too. I think that attitude has helped me in my interactions with women in places I’ve worked because it meant that I already don’t see them as a potential partner but rather as a professional colleague just like the men there. I try to just treat people how I want to be treated, regardless of gender or race or anything else, and from other conversations with women, I’ve been told that the best way to “help” is to do just that and to watch out for when they are being ignored and to help amplify their voices in those cases (eg if men are not giving women a chance to say their bit in a meeting, to say something like hey I’d really like to hear what she has to say, can you please stop interrupting, or whatever). That all seemed super reasonable to me and I’ve taken it on board (but haven’t been in a situation to put it into practice since, due to covid).

But these two more recent interactions did give me pause and made me question whether I would get into trouble for doing what I believe is the right thing... which brings us here.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply, I find these insights enlightening, even if they’re your 1am thoughts :)

PS I find networking pretty hard myself. I guess for very different reasons though...

They call it Dutch superiority because they are superior. I immigrated from the United States, and I would never go back at this point. People are still people here, but society functions, and that is because people are critical. Education is better, family relationships are better, infrastructure is better, treatment of the poor and less fortunate is better. And OP is right in that you clammed up, in precisely the way the article describes, at the slightest criticism of Anglo-Saxon culture, despite the fact that you have been describing just how much you dislike said culture in your voluminous comments.

My advice is to start being critical if you want your culture to survive. We really do see how silly you all are, and it is really more sad than anything. Fijne dag!

Bluntly, I am skeptical that the Dutch are any better at belaying their subjective biases than any other culture--anglo, asian, or otherwise. You may believe you are simply bluntly stating a truth as you see it, but the reality is that you are displaying your own blinders (and comically acting superior while doing so).

Your culture produced Pim and Geert: bluntly, it's hilarious that you think you're stating any truth, here.

This is an interesting perspective, and it's something that I found weird when I started working with Americans - they're so cagey about their non-work lives compared to how people are in Ireland. With most of my previous co-workers I'd know their backstories and their partners/spouses/kids names, even if I've never met them, but with my current (mostly American) team unless I actually ask people this stuff they absolutely only ever talk about work, unless they have a story or two that from their real lives that fits with their work persona

So if a Brit/American wants to insult you they'll do it politely/obliquely, the flipside being that politeness can often be misinterpreted as an insult. That won't happen with the Dutch, because if they want to insult you they'll just insult you directly. Is that what you mean? If so - haha, v interesting!

An how would this claim be attacked by this passage:

> Yes, and I'm sure the Dutch robotically compute such numbers, and there is rarely or never any subjectivity in their decision making that is justified ex post facto by clever accounting.

How the numbers are derived is completely unrelated to how large the role they play is.

> The claim can be technically true, in that laws or cultural norms might require an employer to put numbers to paper to justify a promotion or termination (for example), while at the same time being misleading, in that the numbers can easily be used as an ex post facto justification.

So you aren't attacking the claim itself; you're merely saying that the claim is misleading.

> Bluntly, I am skeptical that the Dutch are any better at belaying their subjective biases than any other culture--anglo, asian, or otherwise.

Perhaps you are, but again, I never said anything of the sort, so I'm again pointing to that you are attacking a straw man.

As an side-note. I am sceptical of the existence of such a thing as “Asian culture.”; — I personally find that Chinese culture is further removed from, say, Japanese culture, than Japanese culture is from, say, English culture, especially after the cultural revolution in China. — I have viewed several cultural indicies which attempt to numerically classify various properties of various cultures and they do indeed tend to place Japan closer to England than to China in many respects.

> Your culture produced Pim and Geert: bluntly, it's hilarious that you think you're stating any truth, here.

None of which has anything to do with anything I said.

I find your claim that you aren't attacking straw men to be even more mystifying if you think this is an argument against what I said. This is an argument of the level of “If evolution be true? then how come atheists couldn't stop 9/11?”. — this is an absolutely bizarre connexion you made here of two completely unrelated matters.

You will find many of the benefits of which you speak in other Anglo-Saxon nations such as Canada as well. In fact, Canada ranks far higher than the Netherlands in social mobility indices, and social mobility in the Netherlands is not very high compared to other developed nations, only average, but social mobility is very low in the U.S.A..

The arguments you raised here were not of anything that was spoken of in this discussion, but of how much less capitalist the Netherlands is than the U.S.A., which would similarly apply to any other developed nations.

The topic spoke of gender relationships, which is entirely unrelated, and I remain that I'm sceptical that it's truly as bad as claimed, for I have seen as many anecdotes that point to the opposite from Anglo-Saxons.

But yes, I have seen many an Anglo-Saxon rant on the internet that speaks of a ridiculous, dystopian doom scenario in Anglo-Saxon gender relationships, where the male cannot walk outside with his own children alone, lest he be arrested on the spot for child abduction, and the female cannot buy his own automative vehicle, for the salesman would first ask for permission of a male relative ere he be allowed to do so. — these stories seem very exaggerated, but I have certainly read stories that go to this length.

I have also read counter anecdotes that claim that there is no real problem, and that much of it seems to be outright whining of how bad it is for the home team makes me sceptical that gender relationships are truly as bad as they claim in the Anglo-Saxon world. What I do think is perhaps the big problem is the tribalist nature and tensions, and how quickly people see ghosts, and complain on being mistreated on their tribe. The Anglo-Saxon seems to very often be a team player by nature, an be quick to shout sexism or racism, when other factors might be at play.

It is not, actually; it's fundamentally important. Your claim is in two parts: 1) numbers play a larger role in this context in Dutch society; 2) this is a direct cause of lower/non-existent incidence of, e.g., accusations of sexism.

I'm only suggesting that it's terribly easy for someone to use numbers to justify after the fact a decision based on sexism, and that I'm skeptical this condition is absent in Dutch culture.

> So you aren't attacking the claim itself; you're merely saying that the claim is misleading.

No, I'm not calling the claim misleading, I noted that the numbers used to justify a decision can be misleading (which is, in fact, a direct attack against your claim).

When I said it was sort of a pet peeve of mine, that perhaps sounds like I meant I was criticizing you and that's really not what I meant. I meant it aggravates me to see someone post in good faith, get downvoted to hell until they seem to be pissed off and no one will reach out to them and say "This doesn't work well on this forum for this reason."

I occasionally do try to make that effort in part because I'm a demographic outlier so I don't readily fit in here and have always had to really work at it and I sometimes get a lot of downvotes for what seems to be simply being a different demographic.

This forum skews culturally American to some degree. There do seem to be a fair number of Dutch members who post, but it is run by an American company and that helps shape the dominant culture here.

I'm American but I'm a former military wife. Like the Dutch, I tend to be pretty blunt.

Some people find me to be refreshingly direct. Others find me to be rude, crude and socially unacceptable. It seems to have little to do with my behavior and more to do with their cultural expectations.

I was only trying to tell you your bluntness will tend to be interpreted by most Americans as rudeness and disrespect, though some people with military experience will be more tolerant.

It's always a risk to say something to a total stranger and that's likely why it's common for someone to get downvoted to hell and no one tries to talk to them about that in some kind of helpful fashion: Because it can get misinterpreted and make the problem worse and make you a target of their ire.

I don't really care. I tend to do what makes sense to me and accept that sometimes it bites me in the ass.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't have to sit around justifying my guilty conscience. I don't have one. I don't stand idly by and say "Not my problem."

I'm sorry this didn't go well. I don't intend to discuss it with you further. If your take away from this is that I attacked you rather than that I was trying to reach out and bridge the cultural barrier you will face on HN, welp, you win some, you lose some.

Have a great day. Sincerely.

To me, talking with people is a really normal activity, but it's gone weird places with people who seem to think we have a super intimate relationship because I talked with them a little. And they reflect that back to me as being far more conversation than they've had with anyone in ages and now want to treat me like their personal possession or some nonsense.

Just being less share-y and drawing certain boundaries seems to be the only effective approach. Being what I think of as personable, polite and diplomatic just goes really weird places at times and then I can't get rid of people who latch onto me like obsessed nutcases.

Reading up on some Irish playwright helped me feel more at peace with some things.

I'm American. Born and raised here and spent most of my life here. But I tend to get misread a lot by Americans and tend to hit it off better with foreigners, third culture kids, people who have traveled a lot, etc.

I would personally never live in Canada either. As someone who can say from experience what this culture is really like, I tend to agree with the dystopian doom scenario and that entails all of North America. Try it for yourself if you like.

You really cannot speak your mind with a female coworker in the United States. My guard is fully up because I have experienced numerous difficulties with "just being myself" that have never caused issues here. Threatening to go to HR to get one's way is something that I have experienced personally and seen multiple times with peers, and the men never win. However, this is in the context of startup/tech culture, and it is a worse problem in this area.

In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.

I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.

Perhaps, but this is a different matter to how the poor are treated, wouldn't you say?

Do you feel that Canada also treats the poor poorly? or that it has merely also inherited Anglo-Saxon gender chivalry? As I'm sceptical of the former, but not the latter.

> In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.

Well, these would indeed be some of the doomsday stories of tribalism and gender relationships I often hear of Anglo-Saxon culture where everyone has decided who is right and who is wrong based on little more than “What team do you play for?”, that I have never experienced in the Netherlands.

But, then again, such stories, as in this case, seem to once again come from a team, and are anecdotal, so perhaps exaggerated. The other team frequently paints a doomsday scenario in the opposite direction, of which I am as sceptical as I am of this one due to it.

> I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.

None that spent their formative years outside of the Netherlands, no.

The one very mild experience I had in life with someone who did seem to on some level believe in “gender relations” was indeed with a friend of mine who had Finnish parents, and was born in the U.K. but lived in the Netherlands since four years old and spoke Dutch accentlessly. Perhaps it's a coincidence that this is the one person who had such perspectives, but perhaps it isn't; it does make one wonder that the one person happened to be a natal foreigner, but his foreign ancestry was seldom something that came up.

There were certainly not gendered excuses or accusations of sexism, but there were sometimes remarks in the vein of “Are you even aware of that I'm female in how you treat me?”, at least initially, after which it mostly went away.

Anyway, your comments have given me lots to think about. Thanks! Hopefully you find ways to improve things for yourself too.