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.)

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.

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

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!