Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.

Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past.

For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of being accused of sexism. Or, speak up and maybe ruffle some feathers and have a ~X% chance of being accused of sexism.

You can see the problem on both sides of the equation, but withholding advice based on gender alone does meet the definition of sexism, regardless of the intentions of self-protection rather than hate.

Instead of playing semantics by saying that "it is technically sexism" (and I'm not saying I agree with whether it actually is or not), we could choose to at least stop phrasing the situation like that.

Well, I think that unlike women or bin-binary people, a man wouldn't be able of accusing another man of sexism in his direction.

Regardless, we’re talking about social judgements. In a legal setting the burden of proof would be on the accuser.

But we can't fix it by doing otherwise—asking people to stop being "overly" cautious—either. Another comment put it best: that solution is akin to asking people to self-sacrifice, except that at the very least jumping on a grenade gets you a medal; in this case, it gets you vilification.

But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately unless there’s valid proof.

Without an explanation about which parts people find disagreeable, assuming thats how people are even using the voting system here, I have no idea what the real world consensus is or what they wish for it to be

If the accused also have a powerful position at a company, then that company also faces large liabilities, both reputational and financial. Everyone knows that the costs of litigation in the US are astronomical.

It is less known but equally true that the costs of arbitration (and to a lesser extent, mediation) can be high. Prohibitive for a startup, still painful for a larger company. Which means that all a potential accuser needs to do to get their pound of flesh is threaten litigation, and name an amount less than what would be paid in arbitration.

So our current system, on social media and in the courts, puts a tremendous amount of power in the hands of those who might accuse. And yes, the gender _alone_, or protected minority status _alone_, is enough to set off alarm bells in an executive who has already been burned.

Not necessarily. In a social situation, you may be more afraid of what other people will think than of what that one person will think.

If that one person misreads you and hates you, it's not some big career-ending problem. It only becomes a big career-ending problem when a whole lot of other people agree that you doing X is some major issue that "obviously" was rooted in some kind of nefarious intent, such as sexism.

And those rumors kill careers, as TFA mentions.

> The risk is still there from the first contact to the last.

This is correct, and that's why this problem is very likely only going to get worse... And the people being cautious still won't be the ones to blame.

> But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately

Outrage mobs don't need a legal setting to ruin someone's life (or livelihood).

I feel like we're probably not talking about the same thing.

The only way rumors kill careers is if we fear the rumors.

If everyone is giving honest, straightforward feedback, then everyone has a rumor about them and it becomes powerless.

But if most people are afraid and one person gives honest feedback and is subjected to a rumor, the one rumor seems significant.

I guess I brought up the legal stuff because I think believing rumors is silly in general. If you’re actually the subject of discrimination, you should prove it in court for the benefit of yourself and society.

I’m not sure that we’re disagreeing entirely. I do agree with what you’re saying as well. Just hoping we can chart a new path.

The problem is that the story will usually be told by the person who misunderstood the argument, and the other side's defense wouldn't have as much reach. "X is a sexist jerk" will gain way more clicks, attention and support than "I thought X was a sexist jerk but actually I misunderstood and we're all good - nothing to see here".

Furthermore nowadays there are plenty of people out there who love the drama and will be more than happy to keep pouring fuel into the fire, either for entertainment or in an attempt to virtue-signal how "better" they are by (appearing to) care about the issue. Worse, entire industries (social media) happily profit off this and encourage it by promoting the divisive content.

But this leads me back to my previous comment: this isn't a feasible solution because it means basically asking people to self-sacrifice until the "rumors" lose power.

Self-preservation and self-interest is how every single resistance has failed and capitulated.

And if you’re actually kind, fair and decent to women you will have people who rebut the rumors. A tweet against you isn’t an inevitable destruction of your career.

I think we're never going to reach an agreement so I'm cutting out.

The last thing I'll say is that there's a difference between this particular situation and historical resistances to oppression: If you were to even call this situation "oppression", it would only lead to further ridicule and ostracism, perhaps would even get most of the few people who might have sided with you to turn on you as well.

Like I said earlier; jumping on a grenade gets you a medal, the people who protested during rights movements are heroes. The ones you're calling now to self-sacrifice would very likely be considered "some more toxic males who finally got their just desserts".

Of course, I hope I'm wrong. In fact, I hope a better solution is found.

Even if the gender of the accuser has no effect on the probability of the person accusing someone of sexism, it has a massive effect on the probability that such accusations are believed and weaponised by the public / mainstream media.

Are they, necessarily? This could be entirely up to expected value and cost/benefit. Right now, current day, on average, the amount of power and attention wielded by a woman making an accusation of sexism is far larger than that which would be wielded by a man. This gender skew in outcome causes the cost/benefit calculations made by advice givers to also be gender-skewed. As a result, women get one cost/benefit calc, and men get another.

The problem is precisely systemic societal inequality and sexism. It's sexist to automatically value the word of one gender over that of another. However that is essentially what our society does in this context, made worse through social media's amplification of the mob mentality. It's this amplified societal gender skew which is the problem.

The way out of this is to value and respect evidence. The way out of this is due process and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. The way out is through principles which we know can counteract the evils and dysfunction of the mob, which we have known and codified, and whose value has been borne out by history, since nearly a millennium ago. Only this time, let's apply these gender neutrally.

I feel like "giving into the fear of being labeled" doesn't fully capture the risk involved. For many people that labeling means the end of their career, or at the very least a lot of personal and professional embarrassment, plus a big negative mark on their record. I have a hard time looking down on anyone too hard for giving in to that fear.

It is irrelevant that the majority does not actually think this way.

What is relevant is if there is a vocal minority who has power over you and your career that does. And any of the majority who steps out of line in opposition to this power structure individually gets destroyed.

You seem to be mistaking your desire for fair and righteous social dynamics for what actually is today: a Kafkaesque environment perpetuated by fear of anyone speaking up and then becoming a target for the mob and ruination.

Maybe you don't believe this, or maybe this isn't your experience, but take it from many of hundreds of commenters here, this article, or countless stories just like it that this is very real and justified fear.

I think the difference for this particular case is that the people who have to stick their necks out are the people who generally don't have much to lose if the resistance fails. (Obviously this isn't the case for the larger discussion around combating sexism, where individual women bear the brunt of the risk, but for this particular advice-giving bit, it is.)

Question: Would we, on average, expect an outrage mob response of the same size and magnitude when a man makes such an accusation? Whether or not this is justified by historical injustice is irrelevant here. What's salient is whether or not there is a gender skew.

If there is such a systematic and large societal gender skew, then we should expect people's cost/benefit calculations regarding the exposure to the risk of such accusations to also be skewed in a way that is large, systemic, and gender unequal. In a word, the way our society works around accusations, current day in 2021, is itself highly sexist.

Therefore, if we don't want systematized sexism, then we have to eliminate gendered skew in these cost/benefit calculations. We already know the mechanisms for the way out of this. It's codified in various legal systems, and in the values of historical liberal societies and philosophies. They are called respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. When society applies these principles gender neutrally, the gendered skew in individual cost/benefit calculations will even out, on average. Society will have eliminated another form of sexism, and the world will be a better place.

When one says "believe women" somehow in preference to believing men, this is a contributing factor. To avoid the gendered skew, it would be obviously impractical to say, "believe everyone." Hence: respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. Applied gender-neutrally, this is our way out.

In short, the tremendous power we've given mobs based on accusations not-requiring evidence is itself highly sexist, and this distorts our society to also be more sexist.

And like many legal outcomes, just being accused is its own stigma. Someone accused of murder but then later (let's say objectively, truthfully, correctly) found not guilty will expect to face social discrimination and alienation. It's not right, but it's unfortunately how people operate.

This is very naïve. For this to work, either people would have to be omniscient, or some karmic mechanism is ensuring that "justice always prevails." Let me assure you that neither is the case. I know this, because being different and being a minority, in various times and places, was enough pretext to let people attach falsehoods to you, and have it widely believed. We know this from false accusations in the Jim Crow US south. I know such things from my personal experience.

However, those mechanisms aren't the only ones. No-one is completely immune from such accusations, except for fleeting periods of extreme popularity and societal goodwill. A lie will get seven times around the world, before the truth laces its boots. This, too, I know from personal experience.

The question is this: Do we want mob mentality to be the arbiter of justice? Nearly a millennium of jurisprudence would firmly tell us: NO!

What's more, the mob mentality is clearly sexist! And it's the mob's sexism which is the root of the problem. On average, isn't there a much stronger mob reaction from a woman's accusation of sexism over a man's? It's this difference that gender-skews the cost/benefit calculation. This difference is itself sexist.

Justice doesn't come reliably from the mob. Instead, what we get is bias that results in more sexism. Funny that.

Would you describe this person as "racist" against Russians? I don't think a reasonable person would apply that label. I think they'd say they're responding rationally to the specific circumstances of their immediate situation. That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.

(And before anyone cries foul, I'm not in anyway saying sexism accusations in 2021 corporate America is anywhere near the same as the KGB. I think that should be patently obvious. The reason I picked this specific example was to stretch the underlying logic to a situation that's clear enough to be cut and dry situation.)

With female its the potential unknown predictability that causes the fear.

The real problem is the cancel culture. That's what needs to be fixed. A twitter mob shouldn't be able to cause as much damage as they do. There should be laws preventing people from being fired because of social media. Maybe everyone who's ever been fired or had negative career consequences due to a twitter mob should get together and bring on a massive class-action lawsuit. Force twitter to fix their toxic lynch mob problem, and let that be an example for any other social media company that wants to capitalize on harmful gossip and mob behavior.

The fact that the wolves would be out regardless of the veracity of the claims, and that there is no viable avenue for recourse here aggravates this.

Wrapping this up as "sexism" is the same kind of logic that gets you the removal of women-only sports as "sexism".

Even the law, which is usually the last to evolve, clearly understands the difference between a death caused by self defense and murder.

This is quite literally exactly what has been happening, and it seem like it will continue happening because the loud minority has everyone else by the balls.

You would need someone like Google CEO (with the support of the board) to say: jumping to accusations will get you in trouble. Just because it's criticism doesn't make it sexist. We don't care about your social power pseudo scientific theory and we will not settle in court. Stop making the work place toxic. Then you need to have this sentiment repeated by other powerful people.

Chances of that happening in US in coming years? In my opinion about zero.

Yeah, they're making decisions and treating someone differently based on the person's (anticipated) race. Something being rational doesn't make it not racism.

> That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.

Racism has nothing to do with animosity. Consider that men have the opposite of animosity towards women and yet sexism is something between humans.

That's the really tricky part with racism, not the mindless extremism. What is the acceptable limit between rationalism and racism? Is there one? If we take the example of the GP with Russian secret services, if 99% of the Russian speaking people you encounter are from the secret services, does it make it acceptable to discriminate against the 1% to save your life? If yes, then what is the limit? 50%, 10%, just one person, ...?

No, the real real problem is that in while there is some behavior that is obviously $BAD and others that are obviously not $BAD, there's a large range of behavior for which it's difficult to tell whether it's $BAD or not.

Consider the criminal justice system. Some people are obviously guilty and others are obviously innocent. But in between, there are lots of situations where it's difficult to tell whether the person is guilty or not. Vow to be more "tough on crime", and innocent people spend years in jail (or worse, end up executed). Vow to protect the innocent, and lots of guilty people get away scot-free. And there are criminals who are very good at exploiting this uncertainty.

There was a very insightful essay I saw many years ago which I can't find now unfortunately; but the main point was this: In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.

So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies. (For instance, where people are asked to rate the qualifications of a range of CVs, where the gender of the name on the resume is randomized.) Does the investor think A is better than B because of implicit (or not-so-implicit) bias? Or is A genuinely a better fit than B? It's basically impossible to know; even the investor themself may not know.

In the past, things swung very heavily toward "let the guilty go free", which meant implicit bias was allowed to stand unchallenged (leading to more men in leadership, leading to more implicit bias). "Cancel culture" is an attempt to swing things the other way. But it falls victim to the "certainty superpower" delusion: they think they know who the actual bad guys are, and end up taking down innocent people in the process.

What's the solution? In some sense there is no solution: until we have an Oracle of All Truth which we can consult, we will always have uncertainty; which means either punishing the innocent, letting the guilty go free, or some mixture of both. The best thing we can do is honestly acknowledge the situation and try to balance things as best we can.

What the actual fuck? Did you read the context? Hungary in 1956: they would fear those Russians!

No court. No sensible attempts to truly examine the truth. Just a firing squad.

In this context, even "Good" Russians, fear the "Bad" Russians, for they may be labelled 'collaborators', and face the firing squad too.

Incredible.

In TFA, this precise same individual did the reverse first. It is hard to argue bias, when someone worked to get a better founder, female, to be CEO...

Yet this is dropped, ignored, in your comment.

So here we see, that even those actively showing non-bias, are labelled as likely biased still?!

If people's prior actions are no longer any remote indication of bias or not, all is lost.

You made this comment hours and hours ago. Yet in that time, 'what is grey' has changed. Things have been voted up and down. And who's to say that 5 years from now, 10 years, the 'web theme' of this site won't change.

And then grey means something else.

Now what you've said has changed, due to how the 'culture' on this site has changed.

Meanwhile, there have been people examining comments, and actions, people made even decades ago. Comments and actions taken out of context, single sentences quoted out of paragraphs from emails/etc, and then social media destroys them without care.

Not only must people now 'clam up' against current threat, but all potential future threat. A comment well received by a friend, can 20 years later be taken out of context, that context being historical, cultural, and personal.

And on top of all of that, a friend can become an enemy 20 years later, for entirely non-sexist, just normal person-to-person reasons. People can and do change over time, sometimes not for the better.

So:

* fear what you say now

* fear the future, for people will misquote 20 years later

* fear even female friends, for some may change over decades, and destroy you later

I don't think this is here now. But if the perception of what is happening continues much longer, it may.

Heck, I recall reading an article which coached men to "never be alone with a woman", for "she could claim anything later". This thought process makes it highly difficult to even give advice in private!

If you aren't an enemy of feminism you have nothing to fear against female founders and can speak to them openly.

This isn't exceptional or even new, it's been solid advice for anyone in a position of public visibility for at least the past thirty years. The same goes for being alone with teenagers: It doesn't take that much effort to have witnesses and keep the door open, especially considering what a volatile other party will do to your life if you don't.

Individuals will consider their jobs and thus their dependents' welfare more important than risking being publicly slaughtered to fix a mindset that's pretty ingrained now.

2. Advice (which is essentially a gift of knowledge/experience) is not something you are entitled to by virtue of your sex.

3. A man cannot be said to be 'sexist' when he chooses not to give advice that could potentially incriminate him, especially falsely. If a person (whether a man or a woman) chooses to keep silent, and especially where no fraudulent aspect is involved, that is part and parcel of doing business. You are not entitled to call a person 'sexist' just because they do not want to give advice to you.

4. There are virtually no consequences to the woman who accuses. Yet in comparison, the long-lasting consequences of an investor being falsely accused in public far outweigh any advantages to the contrary. This is enough to make any man clam up, and is a legitimate cause to withhold advice.

5. More importantly, in a commercial setting, no one is obliged to give you an advantage just because you're a woman. If you expect such an advantage/benefit because of your gender, then you are being sexist. A woman who wants to do business should not posit that a man is actively being 'sexist' if he chooses not to help her. That makes no sense.

I really don't know how to make this any more clear to you, you almost there. And now think an inch further...

Decision maker still could have bias towards men or women generally, but in those two cases some other factors could outweigh this bias, even if it actually was present. No way to tell.

The article also mentions this topic, by listing some factors that may influence decision in such situation:

> The degree to which men hold back on their advice depends on 1) how much is at stake and 2) how much they trust you. For example, you’ll be much more likely to get candid advice from an investor who has invested a lot of money in your company and you’ve known for years vs. a panelist at a tech conference giving feedback onstage who doesn’t know you and hasn’t invested in your startup.

Precisely. Yet one of these two was being used as an example for unconscious gender bias.

Why were both examples not used, or conversely, one showing a bias benefiting women?

Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.

generally agree but have seen plenty cases on social media where the barrier to that agreement was incredibly low. I've even watched myself at times backing the wrong side -out of solidarity[1]- simply because I followed that person already for years and agreed to most of their other opinions.

[1] and what monster would not "always believe the victim"? As a proud father of a gorgeous and smart daughter I have an almost automatic response to see women's rights as something I need to protect. I'd always be harsher on my won sex when it comes to blame or "whodunit" (I'm aware of it so I'm able to counter it but no doubt that this pattern is always present like some muscle memory)

This doesn't contradict anything I've said. If anything, it reinforces it.

Our hypothetical clam doesn't know that the speaker is in the KGB or equivalent. They're stereotyping based on rumours, ethnicity and background. It doesn't matter that they are behaving prudently, it is pretty clear-cut that they are making decisions based on the racial and ethnic stereotypes they know.

I'm the bearer of bad news here. Sometimes racism is a rational response. Strive to make it not so.

> Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.

So, in a discussion where we're discussing the possibility that women might see anti-woman bias where none exists, we have a situation where a man sees anti-man bias where none exists.

"even the investor themself may not know"

The above fragment is what really 'got to me'. I agree that some people may have an unconscious bias. Yet from a few studies, showing some have this bias?

I hear this now spoken of as gospel. As if the very fiber of the male being, is to have this bias. So to this:

"a man sees anti-man bias where none exists."

I say -- I don't think so. Because this 'unconscious bias' theory is a bias in itself. It's like claiming all women have victim mentality, or all women are 'queen bees'. It just isn't so.

So, women are being segregated before having any occasion to accuse men of sexism, and yet you claim that they would face 'no consequences' if they actually did?

All it takes it is for a girl to even utter ‘that guy is kind of creepy’, and boom, people will extrapolate from something as simple as that.

Risk is the combination of chance of occurence with effect. If the effect is large then a tiny chance is worth making active protections against.

Given what we've seen in the past few years and how such incidents appear to be on the increase, the chance doesn't even seem that tiny.

Men are refusing to giving advice, because there is past history of women falsely accusing them of being sexist when they do give it. Your claim purporting that it never happens - i.e. 'before having any occasion' - skews the time-perspective. And is against the odds that male investors have faced, which is why they now clam up.

This is nothing to do with 'segregation' - that's a silly interpretation on your part. Investors are wising up to hold their tongue, than to let aspersions be (falsely) cast upon them otherwise.