Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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.)

Let's draw a parallel. Most people would consider crossing the street because there is a black man walking towards you as a racist action. Sure, not burning a cross in their lawn racist, but racist nonetheless (it's a spectrum). I would argue that people that do this do so because they are afraid of said black person. Yes, their action is caused by fear, but their fear is caused by racism (i.e. they view a black person as being more likely to be dangerous than a person of another race).

Looping back, I believe you are right that these decisions are fear based, but it is fear that women are out to get you, which is the sexist part. In reality it does not appear that women are more out to get you than men are. Though we likely have a perception bias that they are because of social media. There's the double edged sword of awareness. It can help you solve a problem but it can also increase the problem because it can make you blind to the root issues.

I think this brings us to problems with social media or more precisely sensationalism (which is amplified in social media but far from the only platform that encourages this). These cases are more visible and gives us a selection bias. But I guess we have to encourage good faith discussions (which is a rule on HN btw) through media, which is rather difficult to do at a cultural level. And we don't want to entirely kill sensationalism either because topics going viral has a lot of utility (such as that more women are being open about the abuse that they've received. Yes, this does lead to a higher number of false accusations, but they still are a very small percentage of accusations). It's a really difficult problem but I think encouraging good faith arguments, being kind to one another, patience, and allowing for mistakes are a necessary step to be able to solve this entire issue (which I'm not going to pretend to have real answers). Particularly I think the last component is essential because we need to recognize that not everyone learns the same lessons. If we're going to say things like "everyone is racist" or "everyone is sexist" we have to also allow people to safely make mistakes and importantly be given the opportunity change/fix their behavior. I personally believe if people are not given this opportunity they double down on their ways. It is a coping mechanism because no one wants to be the bad guy.

So no, you aren't damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I interpret it like this: On the one hand, there are people (many of whom with good intentions) instantly assuming that any criticism a man might give to a woman is rooted in sexism, to wit, what TFA mentions that investors are cautious about. On the other hand, there are people, also with good intentions, saying that "men being cautious in what they say to women" is also sexism.

Now, I don't know the solution either, but I do believe that a good first step would be not saying that people who are merely cautious (precisely not to come across as sexist) are sexist anyway.

I'm a bit confused, did I not respond in a way that recognized this? It appeared to me as a low quality response that did not actually have anything to do with my comment. I believe the comment vastly oversimplified the problem, which is part of what I'm trying to address, that the problem is complicated and we need to recognize the nuances involved and respond in good faith. To clarify, I do not think a good faith response results in

> instantly assuming that any criticism a man might give to a woman is rooted in sexism

As such a belief is itself rooted in the belief that the only criticism a man can have of a woman is that she is a woman, which I'd argue itself is sexist (and not responding in good faith). As an example we saw this during the 2016 election where people often said that anyone who criticized Clinton was doing so because she was a woman, which honestly is an extremely dehumanizing platform. While there were people criticizing her on this basis (openly and through more careful language) the claim itself positions Clinton as being infallible and thus not human, which is absurd. This is far from a good faith response because Clinton, as any human (and especially politicians/leaders), are deserving of criticism (not that you should be mean about it). So by a good faith response I would expect someone to respond to that criticism instead of accusing the other person of being sexist. But I honestly believe people making such claims are a minority, albeit with high visibility because of the sensational nature of their bad faith responses.

I didn't think it was; it seemed to me a succinct summation of what calling the behavior in TFA "sexism" leads to: Ultimately, regardless of what he does, a man will be considered sexist by someone.

Or, to put it another way, calling the cautiousness we're discussing here "sexist" can itself be considered a bad faith position.

> But I honestly believe people making such claims are a minority, albeit with high visibility because of the sensational nature of their bad faith responses.

I'm not sure what to say to this: I agree, of course, but I don't think that's the point. That minority can and has killed people's careers and thus, we have the cautious behavior mentioned in TFA.

I mean this is how I read it, but again, I thought it lacked nuance. Someone is key here and ties into how we respond to sensationalized perspectives. I'm advocating for more nuance and being more careful in interpretation. Such as not treating the term "sexist" as being a binary position. I would, and am, argue(ing) that interpreting the word as a binary classification is only detrimental. It in itself is a bad faith response. But we have a problem that "sexist" means different things to different people. While one may interpret my usage as such, I believe that there is sufficient information in my several comments that I am not using the word as such a classification (even explicitly stating so) and this is where I draw contention with the responses I'm getting.

It should be apparent that responding to me as if I am using such a binary classification will give me the impression that one simply skimmed and responded thinking "oh you're one of those people." I'm actively advocating for reducing this type of response, because I think we'd argue that binning people is far too common and leads to many of the problems (in fact, binning is the root of this entire post, thread, and conversation). This is why I'm saying that the damned if you do, damned if you don't is a false dichotomy as (as I stated in the original response) the actions are not equally as bad. It matters "how damned" someone is. My entire thesis lies in a continuum.

> That minority can and has killed people's careers and thus, we have the cautious behavior mentioned in TFA.

Maybe I can be more clear in my response to this. I am saying that how we are responding to sensationalized content is feeding into this behavior. We need tempered and thoughtful responses, not knee jerking emotional reactions (we don't have to be void from emotion). I don't think it is enough to just complain about these people, but that we are perpetuating this system by clicking, retweeting, liking, and pushing these comments into the forefront of our conversations. That minority has killed many peoples' careers (some justified some not, but we're presumably discussing the unjustified cases), but the reason these (unjustified cases) careers have been destroyed is because of public response and selection bias of what majority opinion is. As an example of this Speedy Gonzales was canceled because complaints/fear of ethnic sterotyping. But it was later brought back due to League of United Latin American Citizens noting that he was a cultural icon that was seen positively by Latin American viewers. It is a clear case of letting the minority's opinion overrule that of the majority. I believe that if we let people that are looking for problems dictate what a problem is then we'll only have a race to the bottom. I do not believe the people responding to me and downvoting would disagree, and that is where my confusion lies.

So I go back to my first reply: to stop casting people into a binary like I think we both want, better not to throw such loaded words at people and instead analyze their behavior on a case by case basis. Fighting the word itself is prescriptive at best, and language tends to be descriptive, AFAIK.