Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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.)

>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?

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.

edit: removing my comment as this probably isn't a fruitful avenue of conversation.

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.)

"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.

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.