[HN Gopher] Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up
Author : femfosec
Score : 421 points
Date : 2021-03-28 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (femfosec.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (femfosec.com)
| tryonenow wrote:
| Exactly as intended. Beneath the surface, this "social justice"
| movement is nothing but a power grab, primarily from those who
| could not attain such power by merit. All of society suffers when
| decisions are made according to gender or race rather than
| ability.
|
| This is an organized, quasi-religious campaign of oppression,
| self-justified by _perceived_ oppression. The key word here is
| perceived - it is trivial to "find" oppression (or racism, or
| sexism, or ableism, etc) any time two people from different
| groups interact, especially in a professional environment where
| criticism is critical to success.
|
| Tyranny by the minority.
| mjevans wrote:
| A person or group whom is wronged seems to instinctively react
| by desiring that particular wrong to be corrected.
|
| It is sadly rare for any to take a full step back and view the
| wrong within the broader context and redress the true wrong(s)
| which lead to the individual persecution and often a myopically
| inverse racist or sexist or group-ist patch that still fails to
| address the root cause of the issue(s).
| path411 wrote:
| I think the key is that wronged parties really do not care
| that much about the wrong being corrected as much as they
| desire retaliation
| dang wrote:
| It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for
| ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of
| what they're battling for or against, because it's destructive
| of the curious conversation this site is supposed to be for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking
| to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
| docflabby wrote:
| I think fear is making people in general just clam up.
|
| Anything you say can be taken as offensive and the crowds bay for
| blood.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| This is what I was thinking. I find myself just staying way
| quieter around everyone these days. Men and women.
|
| It's too easy to say the wrong thing and take some serious
| heat.
| snicksnak wrote:
| I think it's now essentially a risk-reward decision, like the
| author said. And the potential risk of being ousted after being
| accused of something weighs very high.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| If only there could be some legal way protections like this
| would prevent companies from firing people from pure
| speculation and accusation alone...
|
| The ironic thing is that this social behavior is what drives
| corporate culture to stronger conservativism.
| joschmo wrote:
| As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days looking at
| the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns and cost benefit
| analyses, so why would I take a human capital risk? My entire
| business is based on my reputation and I've seen what happens to
| the men who get comments like "not the best with women at
| conferences" or "don't get him too close to your wife." It's
| limiting beyond your career.
|
| I can count on two hands the number of women I would feel
| comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I would a man.
| Women I can be candid with are women that I have 5+ year
| relationships with, have backed in some way, and who know I am
| truly looking out for them.
|
| And the solution is blatantly obvious, but completely
| unpalatable. Let men grow the same way we believe women and
| minorities should be allowed to. A male engineering manager being
| too harsh with a female junior dev is a learning moment for the
| director of engineering to help the manager, not fire them.
|
| And crucially the line is shifting more and more about what's
| "obviously fireable." Turns out harsh criticism of the quality of
| someone's work and the lack of improvement are rational, not an
| ad hominem. Those things are fixable. But criticism from powerful
| parties is now scrutinized as dangerous based on identity rather
| than for the content of the criticism.
| ling3 wrote:
| There is another side effect to this that I would add as a
| casual investor. My bar for getting involved in a US startup is
| much higher than it used to be, because it's hard to make
| uncomfortable changes that might be construed in the wrong way.
| I find myself investing more freely in other countries where
| there is more upside and less risk of a career-destroying media
| storm. China for example has all kinds of unique risks
| associated with its government, but these are more predictable.
| I think this may be the biggest long-term side effect to all of
| this stuff - the US loses its position as the place to do
| disruptive business.
| hooande wrote:
| If you walk away from the next Google/Facebook/Microsoft
| because of worries about US culture, that's on you. There are
| a lot of hot opportunities in China and around the world, but
| the US is still pumping out IPO unicorns. I'd be more worried
| about missing out on the next Tesla or AirBnb as the greater
| risk
| joschmo wrote:
| I disagree pretty strongly, but obviously your experience is
| your own. If you are going into a hotly contested investment
| process, are you going to get away with asking for big
| uncomfortable changes? Probably not as you'll lose the round.
|
| If you are already invested? I find it's pretty easy as I
| really am only looking to back people who are open-minded,
| receptive and coachable in the first place as I hope I am.
| One of the most common criticisms I make is that someone
| backed the wrong head of sales, head of growth, etc. and
| folks almost always hear me out because I can be quantifiable
| (sales metrics) and bring a solution (someone better).
| 1penny42cents wrote:
| Sexism is not a fixed category. Every comment falls on a spectrum
| between absolutely sexist and absolutely not sexist.
|
| But when we evaluate how sexist a comment was, it's much simpler
| to label it as "sexist" or "not sexist". This label loses all
| context, especially when we share it with someone who wasn't
| there or otherwise doesn't have that context.
|
| So outside of the fact that sexism exists, this problem isn't
| specific to culture or Twitter. It's a result of how we
| interpret, compress, and share reality with each other.
| KODeKarnage wrote:
| Comments do not fall on a spectrum between "absolutely sexist"
| and "absolutely not sexist". Comments exist as fixed points in
| space, and the observers fall on a spectrum of "absolutely
| going to call the comment sexist" and "absolutely going to call
| the comment not sexist". The men who are "clamming up" are
| judging the audience of their comments and deciding that the
| potential costs of honesty are just too high compared to the
| benefits. They know that they will no longer get the benefit of
| the doubt and that they will be convicted without trial. If the
| punishment for traffic infringements was death and you were
| immediately judged, convicted and executed by the police
| officer on the scene, there will be a large number of people
| who would simply stop driving.
| arnath wrote:
| I can't be the only one who thinks this is bullshit, right? The
| scenario described in the article isn't a dilemma unless the
| gender of the CEO is part of your reason. If it's not, you will
| have some rational explanation and should be able to point to
| your history of not being a sexist asshole.
| blast wrote:
| The article explains why having a rational explanation is not
| enough. You may not agree but it's not as if the point is
| unaddressed.
| tdeck wrote:
| I'm really curious if the purported consequences of an
| accusation of sexism are so harmful for these wealthy
| investors. For example, Ellen Pao filed a lawsuit against
| Kleiner Perkins and wrote a whole book about sexist behavior
| she experienced while working there. That got a ton of
| publicity - what has the long-term impact been? Kleiner Perkins
| seems to be doing fine. I'm not saying investors don't perceive
| a risk here - many people are concerned about their reputation,
| but this idea that someone's career would be ruined doesn't
| appear to square with reality.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| >If it's not, you will have some rational explanation and
| should be able to point to your history of not being a sexist
| asshole.
|
| Ah yes, this always works for calming woke mobs
| UShouldBWorking wrote:
| Welcome to the wonderful world of women
| Causality1 wrote:
| It's gotten to the point that my first and ongoing assessment of
| someone is how "cool" they are. Sort of the identity politics
| version of whether you're the type of person who yells at a
| waiter. In my experience about 75% of people are cool.
|
| If you're cool, I'm candid around you. If you're not cool, I'm
| treating you like you're radioactive. Everything I say is
| carefully considered. Controversy of any kind is studiously
| avoided. Most likely I avoid dealing with you at all when I can,
| and certainly avoid being alone with you with no witnesses. If
| that's sexist or racist I really don't give a damn.
| cbdumas wrote:
| I don't think the author needed to bring "false accusation" into
| the picture here, and in fact it weakens the point. I think male
| investor saying to a female CEO that her male colleague is better
| suited to the CEO role would be taken, ipso facto, as sexism. No
| falsehoods need enter the picture.
| phkahler wrote:
| But in this case it would be a false accusation. That's kind of
| the entire point - he's afraid to give honest feedback out of
| fear of a false accusation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If the recommendation was based on data other the genders
| involved, it's not sexism, but could be accused as such
| (falsely).
|
| There are any number of ways person B could be more qualified
| than person A to be the CEO.
|
| If an investor is going to give good-on-average advice in one
| case but not the other almost identical situation, the author
| is right to be concerned.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Remember how Mike Pence basically avoids being alone with a woman
| unless his wife is present? As ridiculous as it sounds, that
| self-preservation strategy got him to VP.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| I don't think that policy is ridiculous at all. It's mine as
| well, and IIRC it was Billy Graham's.
|
| It minimizes the chances of (a) false accusations of
| inappropriate behavior, and (b) adultery.
|
| It makes me a little sad for the limits it imposes on my
| friendships with women, but I consider the tradeoff very
| worthwhile.
|
| EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that _everyone_
| should adopt my policy. I 'm just saying that in my particular
| life circumstances, and with my particular ranking of
| concerns/values, it's a tradeoff that I find worthwhile.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar,
| and especially not with partisan lemon twists.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613795
| why_Mr_Anderson wrote:
| Isn't it a standard practice for any interaction between male
| teacher and female student? Never in private, always more than
| 1 witness not related/close to either of participants, etc.
| igorkraw wrote:
| I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea
| that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist.
| I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a
| cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If
| your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any
| ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the
| last N times you froze up and you seem nervous again" makes your
| reasoning clear without beating around the bush. How can you
| twist this into something sexist?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| American media culture is probably more relevant than general
| American culture.
|
| A lot of politicians or executives will only say carefully
| scripted sound bites to the press because they can't count on a
| reasonable portrayal. They give them a sentence or two that's
| difficult to twist into something offensive.
|
| Here it's similar. They're afraid reasonable behavior will be
| portrayed as outrageous in some blog post.
| jancsika wrote:
| If I'm sexist then I could choose to make such a remark _only_
| if it happens to be a female colleague. If male then sleep().
| Sexism achieved.
|
| If you're not from the U.S. you have to understand the
| background of mendacity that flows through nearly the entire
| culture. That's a big part of the backdrop for fairly deep
| levels of distrust, whether it's of a company, one's colleague,
| the gov't, etc.
|
| For example-- I was watching a political show where the
| question was something about global warming. One of the guests
| gave a reply that sounded vaguely reasonable but wasn't clear.
| The host tried to rephrase the question, and the same
| respondent again gave a suspiciously confusing reply. This
| caused the host to drill down on a simpler question-- did the
| guest believe that global warming _was real_ and that human
| activity has contributed to this global warming? This time the
| guest answered a different question, addressing the reality of
| global warming but ducking the issue of causes. This went on
| for about 45 seconds before the host _finally_ forced the guest
| to give a response that revealed the guest was in fact a
| climate denier. Honestly, it was like watching that scene in
| Blade Runner with the Voight-Kampff test, except on humans.
|
| Being an American myself, I could immediately tell what the
| guest's purpose was: to sound like they agreed with the other
| (sensible) panelists, in order to give more credibility to a
| climate denial talking point that their job depends on. It's a
| planned strategy essentially of "denial-in-depth"-- try to
| sneak FUD into an otherwise good faith discussion, and if that
| doesn't then reveal your crude talking points for what they
| are.
|
| In a weird way, the process of figuring out someone's level of
| earnestness makes me think of the "Sie" to "du" journey in
| German. Except here in the U.S., it's a slow slog of figuring
| out _exactly_ how a friend spouts bullshit and under what
| circumstances, and then figuring out if there 's enough
| earnestness left to become close friends.
| throwaway194726 wrote:
| Wow, that's a pretty deep, insightful and harsh analysis of
| your own culture. You've found exactly the words to express
| something that I noticed in the states as well, but couldn't
| quite put my finger on.
|
| Did you figure this from the outside, so to speak, spending
| time abroad and immersing in a different culture? I've found
| that most people sort of start noticing cultural blind spots
| only then.
| igorkraw wrote:
| > If I'm sexist then I could choose to make such a remark
| only if it happens to be a female colleague. If male then
| sleep(). Sexism achieved.
|
| Well, sure, but then you are displaying a clear and
| verifyable pattern, and my original point of candor that
| can't be twisted into sexism remains no? You had to add a
| separate sexist pattern ("treats men and women differently").
|
| Your point of high level of distrust is appreciated and one
| of the reasons why I'd never move there (no offense intended,
| most individual americans I know and read about are lovely
| people, but this culture of hidden BS is too much for me).
| But then, this is an issue _in general_ no? Why are people
| only concerned about _women_ /feminists twisting words
| against them? Why not christians, or veterans as well? Or men
| for that point, last I checked the protected group list
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group does not
| specify women, and there _are_ conservative mobs on social
| media just as much as "woke" ones. So I'm just a bit
| confused
| hhjinks wrote:
| People can make up whatever motivation they want if they feel
| slighted. All it takes is for the female founder to ascribe
| sexism to the VC when he suggests swapping CEOs, and you've got
| the entire media circus on your neck. And then people stop
| being rational actors when mob mentality kicks in.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Well if that was the case _where are all the horror stories_?
| With the acceptance rates of startups at VC pitches etc.,
| shouldn 't we be expecting a lot of VCs being hounded with
| allegations of sexism and the media circus going amok? How is
| YC still in business given their acceptance rates?
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| > Well if that was the case where are all the horror
| stories?
|
| Pre-empted by the abundance of caution described in the
| article? It's not a very deep game, so I assume the
| strategy in question is readily apparent to almost any man
| in such a position.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Isn't that circular logic? Everyone is afraid of
| something bad happens, so everyone censors themselves way
| too much...but it's somehow still so well known that it
| would happen?
| toyg wrote:
| "Yet another man who thinks all women are hysteric. What next,
| are you going to ask me if it's my 'period'?"
|
| Once one moves from a position of effective prejudice ("he will
| criticise me because I'm a woman"), any critical statement can
| be read from that perspective. It's a bit like with conspiracy
| theories, where every debunking attempt can be turned into "
| _of course_ THEY would say that!".
| igorkraw wrote:
| You are inventing a hypothetical straw-man. Until you can
| point to conversation where someone said something fact based
| like I gave as an example and people _accept_ your twisting
| and start a twitter mob of any impact, this remains a
| hypothetical victimization.
| ufmace wrote:
| There's nothing hypothetical or straw-man about his
| comment. If you surf around english-language forums where
| the new breed of feminist hangs out, you'll see dozens of
| posts pretty much exactly like that, all highly
| liked/upvoted and with huge numbers of responses agreeing
| and amplifying. Any posts with the message of "hold on,
| maybe it's not just sexism and he actually has a point"
| will be downvoted and attract hateful responses: "you sound
| like just another one of those sexists!".
| igorkraw wrote:
| I mean, can you provide me a link? Because neither Reddit
| not Hackernews has supplied me with examples so far
| toyg wrote:
| I could transcribe entire conversations here and you would
| still accuse me of making them up. What I wrote I heard
| almost precisely word for word; but in the end, exchanging
| anecdata until the end of time will do precisely nothing to
| persuade anyone that such mindset really exists (and indeed
| prospers), apart from making me a candidate for
| cancellation.
|
| The main point is that, unless you're talking physics
| (maybe), _nothing_ is so "fact-based" that it cannot be
| perceived in the "wrong" way by someone sufficiently
| determined to do that.
| igorkraw wrote:
| 3 points:
|
| 1. An observation that you are arguing from a position of
| assuming malice from the other side. "They" are trying to
| twist everything, therefore evidence is not required
| since "they" won't listen anyway
|
| 2. You can point at any public twitter mob where the real
| conversation was made public afterwards or where you know
| the inside scoop and with the caveat of anecdata it could
| strengthen your point
|
| 3. You seem to be dangerously close to resting on a "what
| even is 'fact based'?" argument repeating that "they" are
| determined to misunderstand statements in malicious ways
| toyg wrote:
| You said "if I say something like this, there is no room
| for attack/misinterpretation". I showed you how such a
| statement can be _easily_ attacked /misinterpreted - and
| I can do that because I've been in enough conversations
| like those to know that this mindset is relatively
| popular.
|
| You are free to not believe me and continue to live your
| life as you were, I honestly don't care. Take my
| statements as anecdata and move on. Just don't come
| crying to me when you're cancelled because of some "fact-
| based" statement.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy,
| American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in
| your case German) discussions and experiences from American
| ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc.
|
| It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context
| switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow
| non-Americans), they talk about American topics as if they were
| happening locally - and is if they were directly impacted with
| a major stake in the issue.
|
| Remember where you are, who you're talking to, and the context.
| Since non-Americans seem so eager to copy Americans however, it
| can be prudent to be aware of what's going on across the pond
| without being heavily invested. The USA is now acting like a
| looking glass into the future of what successes and mistakes
| are going to be imported wholesale by other countries and their
| citizens.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Good points, thank you. It just seems like in this case,
| whenever the topic is discussed everyone points to "it is
| known" style twitter mobs, and the actual examples of twitter
| mobs that do show up tend to not be as unreasonable in
| general.
|
| E.g. the cancelling and uncancelling of RMS seemed to me
| mainly...reasonable? Like, he says some weird stuff and
| defended ~~Eppstein~~ Minsky (sorry, memory got messed up,
| thanks skissane) in a tone-deaf manner (I have had the joy of
| exchanging emails with RMS and interacting with him at talks
| he gave at my alma mater, and he always seemed like a
| thoughtful and kind person whom I respect and admire, but I
| feel like "tone-deaf" is a fair description), maybe that's
| not a good thing to do if your job is to be a public figure?
| And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of
| what really is rape reasonable? So if this is an example of
| what people are afraid of, it seems a very...specific fear
| skissane wrote:
| > he says some weird stuff and defended Eppstein in a tone-
| deaf manner
|
| He was defending Marvin Minsky, not Jeffrey Epstein. The
| former was twisted into the later.
| igorkraw wrote:
| thank you, corrected
| madsbuch wrote:
| Sometimes an outsiders perspective asks the right question.
| The parent simply asked _why_ candor and sexism appear to be
| conflated. Curious conversation is good
|
| BTW, the roots of the US is from a cultural melting pot.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| > "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist.
|
| But this isn't the idea at all, right? Rather, everyone seems
| to agree it's relatively rare, but that it's such a massively
| negative experience when it does happen that it tanks the
| expected value anyway.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out, good point. I'll actually need
| to think about this aspect a bit more. It still seems like
| the _fear_ is more clamming than the thing being feared
| bandyaboot wrote:
| This article demonstrates exactly why I've tended not to get as
| up-in-arms as some of my fellow male colleagues when it comes to
| gender/workplace issues. Sure, sometimes it seems like the
| pushback against the male dominated culture of some industries
| can push a little too far leading to unintended consequences like
| the author illustrates. But, sooner or later those get recognized
| and things tend to self-correct. Who ever said that dealing with
| entrenched, thorny issues isn't messy and fraught with
| inefficiencies?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| >I don't think most female founders even realize that they're
| getting different advice than their male counterparts. Silicon
| Valley has always run on candor, but it's being stifled at the
| moment, and no one is noticing that we are the collateral damage.
|
| Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just
| "collateral damage". It's not a problem that men are nervous to
| be candid but it's a problem that women are feeling the secondary
| effects of that?
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Deleted
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into gender flamewar
| hell.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Have you felt the need to fix rape and murder, which other
| men have given to society in a manner far over representative
| relative their demographics?
|
| Maybe if this author was encouraging twitter lynch mobs with
| scant evidence it would be an apt point, but I don't think
| there is any sign of that. She doesn't owe the world anything
| because some other women did something.
| tlogan wrote:
| I know a couple of female founders (including my wife). The
| biggest problem is that female might run into a creep and that
| makes very very stressful experience. For me... it is easy.
| First creeps do not want to meet me (I'm fat, older guy,
| short,..), and if I do meet somebody who is giving me creeps -
| my experience is not stressful at all.
|
| Btw, I still have not met a female VC: after 22 years in SV.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| You've never met a female VC? We just raised our second round
| and we have 4 women VC's or angels on the captable now. Maybe
| it's just based on industry. I'm in sports/media tech.
| mangix wrote:
| This is amazing. I'm glad a woman pointed this out.
| dang wrote:
| All: if you're going to comment, please make sure you're up on
| the site guidelines at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and that you're
| posting in the intended spirit. Here's a brief refresher: Curious
| conversation is good. Substantive comments are good. Thoughtfully
| sharing personal experience is good. Flamebait is bad. Personal
| swipes are bad. Ideological boilerplate is bad.
|
| I don't mean 'good' and 'bad' absolutely--that's above my pay
| grade. I just mean good or bad for HN, relative to what we're
| trying to optimize for:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| If you want to smite enemies or fulminate snarkily, that's your
| business--just please don't do it on HN. It's not hard to find
| platforms that welcome that sort of engagement; we're trying for
| something different on this one.
| joadha wrote:
| Maybe the investors shouldn't be such fucking cowards? Unless you
| have a long, storied history of being a sexist piece of shit, you
| should have no fear of being "me too"'d over the scenario
| presented in the article's intro.
|
| And seriously, why should I believe any of this? Sorry, but the
| article reads as feminist-boogeyman porn for insecure male
| investors.
| joadha wrote:
| Looks like I'm being downvoted into oblivion by insecure male
| investors.
|
| Perhaps they are bitter about lacking the gumption to handle
| such situations professionally and ethically? Perhaps they
| avoid any and all critical conversations with the people they
| work with? Enjoy watching all of your ventures fail!
|
| Or maybe it's: conducting themselves like professionals while
| concealing their sexism just breaks their poor rich brains.
| gpt3fake wrote:
| Why would you talk to women at all professionally, unless there
| are _reliable_ witnesses or video recordings?
|
| As we increasingly see, witch hunts are already possible by
| deliberately misinterpreting _written_ statements like mails or
| bug tracker messages.
|
| I would not want to get into a _he-said-she-said_ real life
| situation. Mike Pence understood this early.
| [deleted]
| karpierz wrote:
| Because I'm a professional, and strive to avoid treating people
| differently based on their gender/sex?
| zepto wrote:
| What about race?
|
| I ask because if you took that same attitude towards race,
| you could easily be accused of colorblind racism.
| karpierz wrote:
| Same principle.
|
| To be clear, I'm not saying that I do treat all people
| equally, regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, etc.
| I grew up in an environment filled with stereotypes, and
| they do seep through. I can only strive to avoid having
| that bias affect how I treat people. If it does leak
| through, I try to recognize it and do better in the future.
| MaximumYComb wrote:
| There's being a professional but there's also not seeing the
| situation you are in. I would be hesitant to be in a one on
| one situation in a private area with a female colleague,
| especially one below me in the organisational structure. Even
| an unfounded accusation could completely derail my life and
| career.
|
| When I was young I had something similar happen. A woman went
| around telling people she had slept with me. We hadn't.
| Nobody believed my side of the story since "why would she
| lie?". This caused a rift with my best friend, who had a
| crush on her. I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't
| disprove.
| karpierz wrote:
| > Even an unfounded accusation could completely derail my
| life and career.
|
| I don't think that treating people poorly because you're
| worried that not doing so could hurt your career is the
| right thing to do. It might be pragmatic in your case, but
| so is taking money out of a wallet you find on the ground.
|
| > I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't disprove.
|
| You lost your best friend because your best friend didn't
| trust you and because someone lied. None of that is your
| fault. Sometimes the world is a shitty place with shitty
| people. That isn't a reason to add to that shittiness by
| refusing to treat women in the workplace as you would men.
| baby wrote:
| Why would woman step out of the kitchen amirite?
| dang wrote:
| > _Why would you talk to women at all professionally, unless
| there are reliable witnesses or video recordings?_
|
| That's beyond the pale. I've banned this account for reasons
| explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613795
| above, and everywhere else you'll find moderation comments on
| this site.
|
| Creating accounts to break HN's rules with will eventually get
| your main account banned as well, so please don't.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| This is real, and it's also a type of sexism. Not all forms of
| sexism or discrimination are acts of malice. The sexual
| harassment training required for my job speaks explicitly about
| disparate treatment.
|
| I do question one of the examples a bit. The idea of giving
| advice to female founder to step down as CEO in favor of a male
| cofounder sounds like bad advice. It's pointing out one rather
| drastic solution, rather than the actual problem. Better advice
| would be to lay out the observed issues and help think through a
| range of possible solutions, if everyone can get on the same page
| about the problems. Maybe the solution would still be a change in
| roles, but there's a lot less chance it would seem sexist the
| advice were predicated on a lot more information.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| > it's also a type of sexism
|
| I guess it depends on your definition of sexism. Reading these
| comments, and just general life experience, I believe different
| people have different definitions of what sexism is. Regardless
| of company policy or the law of your country.
|
| Taking your definition of sexism I would say every interaction
| with a woman is a form of sexism. Everyone, at all times, tries
| to speak to another human being in a way that conveys a
| message. That manner of communication changes based on social
| norms. Which, as this article points out, currently seems to be
| differnt between the sexes.
|
| Generally I believe people do try to "talk to their audience".
|
| One example from my life: if I notice my colleagues have nice
| shoes, I point it out. If it was a female colleague, I probably
| wouldn't because of the risk of that social interaction "going
| wrong".
|
| Someone could point out that complimenting someone on their
| footware is weird/wrong/shouldn't be done during working hours.
| If this is the case then I'm not talking sport or politics or
| local news or how you're kids are doing...
|
| I think the article does a good job highlighting the downside
| of being hyper-aware of the social situation around a person
| trying to convey a message to another person, and how that
| could be labeled as inappropriate.
| dalbasal wrote:
| In a sense, what she's describing sounds almost old-timey. A
| return to stiff propriety between men and women in order to avoid
| the possibility of scandal.
|
| The entirety of everything leading to this point is complex. That
| said, half the reason for twitterized scandal politics is
| hyperbole. It's too easy to think in dichotomies and extremes.
| This stuff can be true without doom being upon us.
|
| I think twitter mob problems will improve in a few years, or move
| on to other areas.
|
| On a lower profile scale, bullying-related HR processes and
| associated cultural dynamics can and do "flare up." Many bullying
| claims. Fear of bullying accusations. Threats. First strikes.
| etc. It often happens in environments with a lot of bullying.
| Unpleasant, but it usually passes eventually... I think.
| throwaway20222 wrote:
| I also work in a very "woke culture." In fact, as a straight,
| white, cis man I am in the extreme minority.
|
| I have been told that I can't do my job which includes
| negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an "old, white,
| cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there" just
| because of my identity. It is discrimination plain and simple,
| but I literally stand to have my career derailed if I fight back.
| One accusation and I don't get hired again.
|
| I joined the company because I believed, and still believe in
| company mission which is LGBTQ+ focused.
|
| There is no room for allies at some companies and they silence
| opinions they don't like. It hurts everyone.
| [deleted]
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I have been told that I can't do my job which includes
| negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an "old, white,
| cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there" just
| because of my identity._
|
| IANAL, and I don't know what "LGBTQ+ company" means, but if you
| believe that you're not being allowed to negotiate with other
| companies because of your age, race, and gender, you can (and
| should) sue for discrimination.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| This reminds my of this meme:
|
| "It Hurt Itself in Its Confusion!"
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/it-hurt-itself-in-its-confusi...
| stonogo wrote:
| Interesting pivot from identity politics to "opinions they
| don't like." One is discrimination, the other is business as
| usual. I wouldn't conflate the two.
| baby wrote:
| had to google what cis is:
|
| > A cisgender person (sometimes cissexual, informally
| abbreviated cis) is one whose gender identity matches their sex
| assigned at birth. For example, someone who identifies as a
| woman and was identified as female at birth is a cisgender
| woman. The word cisgender is the antonym of transgender.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| I thought it meant "Commonwealth of Independent States", the
| CIS region
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I never really saw the point of this term, to be honest. To
| me it just feels like a sly way to normalize being abnormal.
|
| Imagine if we had specific terms for someone who doesn't
| shoplift, or who doesn't eat other people's pets.
| throwitaway12 wrote:
| Thanks, would have never known something so bizarre.
| CharlesW wrote:
| That comment might make sense a decade ago (when it was
| mostly relegated to academic journals)[1], but it's been in
| common use (at least in the U.S.) for years.[2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender [2] https://tre
| nds.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=cisgende...
| dnissley wrote:
| Lest we forget, there are a lot of people out there who
| don't belong to the so-called chattering classes. And
| that's ok.
| baby wrote:
| People learn new things every day
| [deleted]
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| If the company is discriminating against you and like others,
| why would you still believe in their mission, or at least their
| ability to carry it out? Why not move to a more sane company
| that doesn't have as many mines you might inadvertently step
| on?
| iamleppert wrote:
| As a gay man myself, I urge you to consider leaving such a
| toxic environment. I've experienced similar (even though I'm
| gay myself). A more extreme version of what you described
| actually exists within the LGBT community itself; being gay is
| sometimes not enough anymore.
|
| A common theme I've noticed in these groups is their penchant
| for using the term "cis male". Doesn't matter if you're
| straight or gay, the hate is still the same.
|
| It's better to just walk away from these situations and groups.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| Seems like online twitter mobs and callouts are actually
| counterproductive to the "-isms" that employ them. Too bad but
| expect more of the same as we've basicslly given a global
| megaphone to any hyper-purist or power-tripper with a social
| media account. This stops when people have to pay a price for
| engaging in a cancel action.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| They don't care cause they are not the same people. It's like
| how 100% of women complaining about there not being enough
| girls in STEM, are themselves women who have chosen a non-STEM
| career.
| [deleted]
| jjj123 wrote:
| What are you talking about? Lots of people in stem complain
| about women being unrepresented in top tech organizations.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| > I'm not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men
| clamming up.
|
| I find this a little frustrating, they've noticed a pattern of
| behaviour that concerns them in an area they are clearly invested
| in - yet they have no thoughts or suggestions on how to address
| this? Is it possible they are not offering such thoughts because
| of the same issue they have highlighted in the article?
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| Kim Elsesser's book _Sex and the Office: Women, Men, and the
| Sex Partition That 's Dividing the Workplace_ has some concrete
| advice on this topic.
| rhizome wrote:
| By my read, the essay's audience is men who don't know as much
| about running a business as they think they do. Why wouldn't
| the successful conversation about switching CEOs in the first
| case work in the second? Idealistically, _shouldn 't it_? Women
| aren't actually from Venus.
|
| Furthermore, isn't this an issue of long-standing that for some
| reason is still a big enough problem to raise complaints? How
| many decades have there been women in upper-management, let
| alone the C-suite? Why aren't VCs, people who are rumored to be
| good at analyzing businesses across their field of expertise,
| already aware of this weakness? Is rooting out inefficiencies
| only for the businesses in which they invest?
|
| This is to say, why is this essay still necessary? I'd say it's
| because many men are trying to keep the old world going. Status
| quo.
|
| I suggest that a VC who can't have the conversation about
| swapping for CEO in both "directions," who is aggrieved about
| the present state of business demographics enough to clam up in
| fear of raising controversy, _is not a competent investor_.
|
| This is a Continuing Education topic for those who need it,
| just like RNs have to take a certain number of class-hours each
| year to stay up on current techniques and technologies. This
| essay is about and aimed at guys who don't think that their
| attitudes toward women need changing.
| zepto wrote:
| Why does someone need to have a solution in order for their
| observation of a problem to be considered valid?
|
| Maybe the problem is real but they just don't have as solution?
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| I also never said their observation is invalidated by not
| offering a solution - I said it was frustrating that they
| didn't have any suggestions.
| flir wrote:
| I noticed it happened a lot on MeFi when I was active there.
| Vast reams of text about how terrible X is, but ask what we
| should do about it and... crickets.
|
| Yes, the observation's valid, but... I don't know. When the
| conversation keeps happening the same way, over may topics,
| you have to figure there's something deeper going on.
| zepto wrote:
| There's obviously something deeper going on.
|
| Can you say what you think it is?
| flir wrote:
| Ironically, no. I only noticed the pattern ;)
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| But they have no thoughts on a solution at all? Nothing? Not
| even an inkling of a suggestion to continue the discussion?
| 8note wrote:
| It's often useful to split up a solution between defining
| the requirements in one doc, and the design in a separate
| one. If you bleed design ideas into the requirements, you
| can get tunnel vision
| protomyth wrote:
| Because the author doesn't know of an actual solution.
| Sometimes that happens. Most catch-22 situations really don't
| have a good solution without some external force (in this case
| the mob) being removed / mitigated.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| >I'm not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men
| clamming up.
|
| Well gee how about people stop blaming white males for every
| problem in the world, cancelling them for the slightest
| "microaggression", etc. Maybe that would make society a bit more
| equal?
|
| It should would be nice to talk openly with coworkers and peers
| without worrying about offending someone over the slightest
| thing.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological
| flamewar hell. It's against the site guidelines because we're
| trying for something different here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Please note these guidelines also:
|
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
| asjldkfin wrote:
| I feel like history is going to look at this phenomenon as a
| strange curiosity, the same way we look at the Inquisition or the
| Salem Witch Trials today or even some of the communist
| revolutions.
|
| People will say "It's pretty unbelievable that happened, because
| no sane individual would ever condone something so extreme."
| blippage wrote:
| My own pet theory is that each age has a Great Insanity, almost
| like it's some kind of cosmic human constant. The particular
| insanity varies from generation to generation, but it still
| exists.
|
| It might be witches in one generation, flying saucers,
| communists in another, Jews in another, or blacks; the
| possibilities are inexhaustible. We don't know what the next
| Insanity will be, only that there will be one.
|
| I have a hunch that, roll on a hundred years, everything will
| turn full circle and we'll be back to segregation of the sexes.
| "Of course the whole thing was a folly," future generation will
| claim, "what absurd notion led them to the idea that men and
| women were the same anyway?"
|
| Each generation has the conceit that it is more enlightened
| than the last, little realising that they are no smarter than
| the one before.
| hackflip wrote:
| I suspect (most) individuals are behaving rationally (in the
| own best interest), but in aggregate it leads to the group
| collectively behaving incredibly irrationally.
| dijit wrote:
| It is absolutely unforgivable that we allow terms such as
| "mansplaining" to exist and be used unfettered and then on the
| other had deride their position because _! men not explaining
| things candidly !_
|
| Something has to give.
|
| Obviously obnoxious behaviour should be curbed but the usage of
| mansplaing (and I would argue: the minting of the term when we
| have an equivalent in "condescending")
|
| I don't even know what to say. I know I am rather shy to give
| advice to women because I've been bullied on Twitter for
| explaining things even when SOMEONE ASKED FOR CLARITY!
| blast wrote:
| Did you think the article was deriding men for not being
| candid? It didn't seem that way to me. In fact it seemed like
| she had the opposite intention.
| dijit wrote:
| I think she is lamenting the situation. When in a similar
| situation I would do the same thing, I'm certain. I'm
| explaining why.
|
| Before the Twitter mobs attacked me I would have been more
| open mouthed, now I'm aware of how sensitive people are and I
| try to avoid them feeling uncomfortable so I will choose my
| words much more carefully.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I think of "mansplaining" as men giving unsolicited advice
| rooted in assuming women are just stupid and failing to
| recognize that things work differently for women, so women can
| do the same things men do and get different results, which
| means women do things differently from men and sometimes there
| seems to be no good means for a woman to do anything.
|
| Kind of like male construction workers can take their shirts
| off if they get too hot and female construction workers can't.
| (Real case I read about: Two female construction workers
| decided to wear bikini tops so they could take their shirts off
| in the heat and the busty, attractive lady was fired because
| this was a distraction potentially causing more accidents by
| the male construction workers. The skinny, flat chested girl
| wasn't fired because it wasn't literally turning heads when she
| pulled her shirt off and worked in a bikini top.)
| starkd wrote:
| Well, to be fair, a large busted female taking her top off at
| a construction site would be a distraction in a way that a
| flat-chested girl would not. In a way that safety could be
| affected. It would be an anomaly that would instigate a
| reflexive reaction.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| So you're saying you agree with me: The world works
| different for women than men, so telling a woman "If you're
| sweating while working hard in the heat, take your top
| off." would be actively bad advice that assumes she's
| merely stupid for not doing so?
| [deleted]
| starkd wrote:
| Yes. Thanks for the clarification.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Oh, no problem. Have a great day.
| spockz wrote:
| It is ~~idiotic~~ alien to my world view to fire someone for
| having to take care of them selves not to overheat. Perhaps a
| better solution could have been providing more shade, rest,
| or cooling vests to everyone. And/or to re educate the male
| workforce not to be distracted so much that it would cause
| safety incidents. (I struggle to see how this would lead to
| serious issues. Is somebody going to be distracted so badly
| they are going to pour concrete over their colleague instead
| of in the hole?)
|
| I'd say these situations show that we must have more
| diversity, not less, in all our interactions so that we learn
| to become more used to differences (insert
| race/gender/whatever else some people trip over.)
|
| However idiotic it may seem, in a non-safe, litigating
| environment one can, sadly, expect these knee jerk reactions.
| The only way forward is to make our society a safer place.
| This probably relies on all parties becoming more aware of
| the effects of their actions as well on the receiving side
| having a buffer and being tolerant such that we don't get a
| cascade effect.
|
| Edit: I mean the above paragraph in the sense that just like
| aircraft investigations are about finding a root cause
| instead of blaming, discussions should be more about
| achieving harmony together or to agree to disagree.
| rjsw wrote:
| Men explain things to each other and there is a whole
| etiquette around doing it. Doesn't matter if the listener has
| a better, more original version of the story they will still
| listen. How else would oral histories get rehearsed and
| memorised.
| [deleted]
| TameAntelope wrote:
| What do people think of the idea that this is a cost worth
| paying? The transaction is, "sometimes less candor" for,
| "oftentimes less discrimination".
|
| I think it's true and fair to say that caring more about how
| people are perceiving you results in drawbacks, and the world we
| live in where people do watch how their actions effect others
| isn't a perfect, problem-free world.
|
| It makes intuitive sense to me that sometimes, when we work to
| raise people up, we do so at some cost to the people who are
| already at the top. This could be an example of that, I think.
| ambicapter wrote:
| The way I read the article, the majority of the cost is not on
| those "already at the top". Its on the women founders who are
| trying to make it.
| errantspark wrote:
| I'm glad to see this here. I think people in general do not pay
| much attention to externalities. I wish to see people take a more
| holistic/deontological view of the fight for equality across all
| mankind (shit, is that a microaggression? personkind?). I'm not
| convinced that this over-correction _ISN 'T_ net positive either,
| but there is an ingrained assumption in the zeitgeist that it is
| a pure fight for a better world for those trodden upon. I don't
| think the case is so clear cut and I worry about the deafening
| silence when I look for introspection among those riding this
| wave of power. People who do not question the righteousness of
| their cause are frightening, whatever the cause may be. Nothing
| is righteous, everything is complex, I wish this was something
| that we could hold tightly in our collective consciousness.
| Subtlety and nuance is never as easy or attractive as brashness.
| I guess that's the nature of the beast, who would willingly
| attack themselves to prevent their own abuse of the power they've
| newly gained? Only a rare few, I doubt that will change.
|
| "You must beware of shadows."
|
| page 109 of The Little Schemer
| theptip wrote:
| It's worth noting this issue/disutility. But I don't give it a
| lot of weight vs. the historical default.
|
| Presumably this doesn't occur if a female VC is giving that
| advice to females founders; maybe this will be an additional
| incentive to actually promote some women to be partners. VC is
| one of the most male-dominated professions around.
|
| More generally, it's easy to look at just the costs of a social
| change, without remembering to weight against the benefits. If
| this issue is one of the costs, and reduced sexual harassment of
| female founders is the benefit, then I would ask women who have
| been in this position how they weigh the two (having not
| experienced either I wouldn't presume to know how much the
| benefit is actually worth to female founders, and since the costs
| and benefits are both incident on them, it's not really my place
| to choose).
|
| But I'd hazard a guess that most women would prefer not to get
| hit on / harassed as they fundraise, at the expense of sometimes
| not getting fully candid feedback.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I agree, but I don't think that means you can only ever speak
| about the gains. _Ignoring_ costs leads down disingenuous
| roads, and not necessarily the best path to change.
|
| If the resulting cultural is _permanently_ clammier
| professional relationships between men and women.. I have a
| hard time believing it 's things going right. OTOH, I don't
| really think there is a permanent "clamming up." Hopefully it
| passes. It's not like everyone was gender blind in 2015 either.
|
| Regardless of what we think of wider issues, I think Femfo is
| probably observing something real.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Presumably this doesn't occur if a female VC is giving that
| advice to females founders
|
| "She has internalized misogyny". Being a woman doesn't exempt
| you from being targeted by the woke mob.
| neurotech1 wrote:
| Two points, although not specific to female founders:
|
| Elon Musk's advice: Solicit Negative (constructive) feedback.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/08/elon-musks-advice-to-ceos.ht...
|
| Also, Eespecially for young founders and CEOs, they should study
| and obtain coaching on how to develop and improve their
| leadership skills.
| throwaway861229 wrote:
| I have been extremely fortuante that women have always found me
| very attractive and there is not a single job I've had where
| female co-workers didn't make comments at work which would not
| have been seen as extremely inappropriate the other way around.
| Even when I was 19 and I got my first job some 30+/40+ year old
| female co-workers heavily flirted with me in the most
| inappropriate way. I'm not gonna lie, I enjoyed it for many years
| and definitely have had many fond memories because of it, but
| equally it has shaped me of how I think of some of the outrage
| which is happening nowadays the other way around.
|
| I even had married women behave extremely inapproriate, with some
| groping me in various places, getting me drunk at work parties
| and trying to get me make a first move if they felt bad about
| doing it themselves.
|
| It's not like all women at work acted unprofessionally with me,
| but there was enough inappropriate behaviour that everyone knew
| about it and guess what, not a single women told another women
| that this behaviour was not ok.
|
| Interestingly, after I got into a serious relationship and
| stopped to accept such behaviour I have had many women above me
| to turn on me and treat me as if I offended them by not flirting
| back.
|
| All I know is that all humans are the same. Let's pay women an
| equal wage but please let's not pretend that women in power are
| any better than men.
| hiofewuhfribfjj wrote:
| Our culture and our behaviors are a really vast field. It's
| easy to skew the perception of things when you select and
| repeat only the part you want.
|
| For example you mention wage, and that's because it's repeated
| over and over again. But how about life expectancy? Is is
| considered a major sexism problem? Can we fix that gap?
|
| I agree with your post 100%, we are not judged equally.
| rhizome wrote:
| Nice humblebrag, but at the end of it all, "all humans are the
| same" is a thought-terminating cliche.
| sedatk wrote:
| > Nice humblebrag
|
| Yeah, a great brand-building exercise for throwaway861229.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Yeah, attractive males can say bunch of "nasty" stuff to
| females and it is considered flirting rather then mobbing
|
| As always, context is everything.
|
| > after I got married and stopped to accept such behaviour
|
| Man should never stop accepting such behavior ...
| stcredzero wrote:
| Another word for "Clamming Up" is "The Thermocline of Truth."
|
| https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-...
|
| "Clamming Up" because of power dynamics is _inherent_ to
| hierarchy. This is why relationships with co-founders and
| employees need to be nurtured carefully. It 's the same set of
| dynamics that happen inside a band.
|
| If you always want candid advice, honest feedback, and critical
| though unpleasant information to flow freely and undistorted,
| then you must remember that _actions speak louder than words_. If
| someone tried to tell you something you really need to hear,
| though you may not have wanted to hear it, what did you do? How
| did you react? It 's not enough to just _say_ that you 're for
| honesty and openness. It's not enough to _say_ you value someone
| 's opinion. You have to actually _do_ that!
|
| Did you counter-attack? Did you order your underling to never
| speak of "it" again? Did you use the differential in power to
| just shut-up and shut-off? If you were asked to give a detailed
| account of what the other person had to say, would _they_ be
| satisfied that you gave a full and fair account of what they were
| trying to convey? Would you even be able to recall such details,
| or would your account be sketchy and vague?
|
| Paying your employees well and having a great environment is
| actually a double-edged sword, here. What happens, if one day,
| your early employee comes to you with something they know you
| don't want to hear, and you react badly? What if you raise your
| voice and manage to make them feel threatened. That employee will
| get the message that, despite your lip-service, you don't want to
| hear it. What's that employee going to do? It's not too unlikely
| they will "get the message" and clam up, go with the flow, and
| play it safe to keep their cushy 6-figure job. The flow of candid
| information from that employee will drop by a lot!
|
| Now, to bring things back to the semi-political: If just having
| hierarchy/authority, period, can raise such sticky problems in
| communication and corporate epistemology, then let me ask this:
| What effect would granting power to accusations without evidence
| have? This is not an argument for the blanket elimination of
| accusations. Rather, it's an argument for the importance of
| *evidence."
| haltingproblem wrote:
| [deleted]
| eli wrote:
| How come other professions like Law and Medicine were able to
| make huge progress overcoming similar problems while tech
| continues to lag behind?
|
| This is not an intractable problem.
| xenihn wrote:
| I think top-tier law is still overwhelmingly male. Read up on
| the double bell-curve for the legal industry, which is
| quickly becoming a problem for tech as well. Though for the
| legal industry, there's gatekeeping in the form of school
| pedigree.
|
| For medicine, it's easier to balance the ratios when you can
| fully control the pipeline, and also control the total number
| of new practitioners entering the workforce regardless of
| demand.
|
| If you only have 28,000 residency slots a year, institutions
| can pick whoever they want, and get the diversity numbers
| that they want. They decide who eventually gets to work in
| the field. Employers and customers don't have any real
| choice. They're going to get whatever the schools provide,
| and if they don't like it, they can go without doctors.
|
| Modern tech is nothing like that, but it could be someday.
| Imagine if schools decided who could be professionally
| employed as a software engineer.
| raarts wrote:
| One thing I read is that the biggest difference between men
| and women has been found to be interest in things vs interest
| in people.
|
| If true this could explain the differences in attraction of
| various fields.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Yes, every evolutionary psychologist talks about it. And
| you can see it in the outcomes - one of them being men
| commit most violent crime (>80%) and usually on one
| another.
| eli wrote:
| I don't buy it.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| [deleted]
| eli wrote:
| I would speculate law and medicine made conscious and
| considered effort to increase diversity, and tech did not.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| I would speculate law and medicine appeal to people
| differently than tech.
|
| ON AVERAGE, men and women differ in biological traits and
| desires. We see this in massively egalitarian societies
| like in Norway who have huge sex based gaps in
| employments yet the most effort to be egalitarian.
| Interesting.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Your speculation is not speculation but actually
| supported by data from Norway, Sweden, etc.
|
| I made that point earlier but it does not go over well
| with the gender is social constructionism folks.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.)
| cistercianic wrote:
| >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?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.
| cistercianic wrote:
| edit: removing my comment as this probably isn't a fruitful
| avenue of conversation.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.)
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Did you write about it in detail somewhere? I would like
| to read it if you had.
|
| Also in my life professional and personal connections are
| not totally separated, as I view a person as a person. As
| an example helped my ex partners very significantly in
| their professional life (while they helped me in other
| ways).
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| There is no nice little write up somewhere.
|
| I have written about it -- quite a lot over the years, in
| fact. I did so to manage the situation as best I could
| under difficult circumstances and those many posts have
| been pretty consistently redacted over the years.
|
| I'm frankly really freaking tired of writing about it and
| don't really feel a strong desire to try to find some
| means to write about it as some kind of edutainment for
| random internet strangers, so don't hold your breath
| waiting for me to do a write up. That's probably not
| really in my best interest and I'm just amazingly
| exhausted with the whole thing at this point.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Sure, no problem, I understand. I often feel that both
| sexes have lots of their own problems and we won't ever
| be able to empatize with eachother however strongly we
| want to.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Online relationships have a shred of value of what a
| personal one does. I don't know you but to me it sounds
| more like you didn't want to work for peanuts at a
| company and instead risked being an entrepreneur or
| something.
| saberdancer wrote:
| "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.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.
| saberdancer wrote:
| I accept that gender could be a factor as well, but
| gender is not something that a comment on HN can change
| (or should for that matter). Your gender will not
| (probably) change and we can't really change the culture
| quickly either.
|
| My point is that if you have low income, it would be
| better to focus on improving skills you are offering
| rather than try to solve "women are paid less" problem.
| For example, just presenting yourself as a website
| builder sounds more profitable than someone who edits
| resumes.
|
| By the way is HN rank really that useful? For example I
| never knew there is a HN leader board or how to access
| it.
|
| Thank you for the explanation, I wish you all the best.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I have focused on building my skills.
|
| I don't present myself on HN as "a website builder"
| because I do little plug and play websites (blogspot,
| wordpress) and I'm not really a programmer. My knowledge
| of how to build a useful website is potentially of value
| to people in the small town I live in where local talent
| is sorely lacking. It's not anything people on HN are
| likely to want to hire me for.
|
| I'm amazingly, desperately tired of discussing this.
| Thank you for acknowledging my point. I don't really want
| to dig into things like the value of HN rank further. It
| doesn't do a helluva lot of good.
|
| I bring it up to make the point that "If I am doing it
| wrong, show me the woman that is supposedly doing it
| right so I can take pointers from her." and that seems to
| not be what anyone ever hears.
|
| I appear to be the highest ranked woman here, ergo I
| appear to be the woman who has most closely "mastered"
| successfully talking to the guys here and I remain
| frustrated as all hell and dirt poor. So there doesn't
| appear to be a good answer here.
| csmpltn wrote:
| > I appear to be the highest ranked woman here
|
| What do you mean?
|
| > show me the woman that is supposedly doing it right so
| I can take pointers from her
|
| There are successfull women everywhere. What are you on
| about?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _> I appear to be the highest ranked woman here
|
| What do you mean?_
|
| I have more than 32k karma under this handle. I had like
| 25k karma under a previous handle. That handle appears to
| be the only openly female handle to have ever spent time
| on the HN leader board.
| c0d4h wrote:
| I don't understand how you ended up with such an
| interpretation of what she said.
|
| As I understand it, she's saying that the current
| "politically correct" environment is hurting women more than
| it helps.
| cistercianic wrote:
| edit: removing my comment as this seems to be an
| uncharitable reading.
| dang wrote:
| You're breaking the site guidelines badly in this thread.
| Note this one, from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"
| yaml-ops-guy wrote:
| You should re-read the second sentence of what was
| _actually_ typed. Maybe a few times. Your
| characterization is _flagrantly_ opposite of what this
| person shared.
| ridethebike wrote:
| Wasn't Theranos debacle because the tech was never going to
| work due to it being borderline snake oil and whishful thinking
| hyped by con(wom)man?
| entee wrote:
| It should be noted that past the early stages virtually none
| of that investment and valuation came from institutional VCs
| and people who had a clue. The valuation was driven by rich
| people who didn't know any better and they sadly got
| defrauded.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Yes, but it was called a "decacorn" because it was valued at
| $10 billion dollars and its valuation dropped overnight to
| zero when it was outed as a fraud.
|
| I posit that it wouldn't have gotten so crazy overvalued if
| it hadn't been headed by a pretty young woman. But trying to
| explain that is probably "off topic" and just thinking about
| trying to explain it makes me tired. I'd rather not.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > crazy overvalued
|
| I didn't pay too close attention to the story. If they had
| managed to produce the tech they claimed for the price they
| claimed, would $10 billion be crazy overvalued?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I have no idea. Possibly not.
|
| The issue is this: Would a man have gotten a $10 billion
| valuation based on hot air and zero results for years and
| years? Or would someone have called him on his shit a lot
| earlier?
|
| She was literally sleeping with and living with a much
| older male investor* while publicly claiming to be
| celibate in her twenties due to her extreme devotion to
| her career and business. I always figured that was
| bullshit and she was probably sleeping with someone and
| "I'm celibate" was probably a cover story.
|
| And no one went looking for that because of fear of being
| called sexist, I guess. I hesitated to give that opinion
| on HN for fear of back lash.
|
| But as a woman with six year of college and yadda, when I
| meet accomplished men in positions to open doors for me,
| a lot of them find me attractive and this actively closes
| doors in my face. I'm not willing to sleep with a man to
| open doors, not because I have some kind of moral
| objection to that but because I don't believe it actually
| works.
|
| It didn't actually work for Elizabeth Holmes. Sleeping
| with an investor did not, in fact, help her succeed in
| the world of business. It merely helped her cover up
| fraud while her problems grew larger until it resulted in
| both criminal and civil suits and her name is mud. She
| will never really recover from this debacle.
|
| So I don't think sleeping with men to open doors works. I
| think sleeping with rich and powerful men would get me
| sex and maybe would let me be a "kept woman" but it
| wouldn't get me taken seriously as a business woman and
| it wouldn't teach me how business is done and it wouldn't
| have some men giving me meaty, constructive feedback.
|
| * Edit: To be crystal clear here, I mean someone who
| invested in Theranos, I don't mean "Someone whose job
| title was _investor_. " This was a clear conflict of
| interest.
| legostormtroopr wrote:
| > If they had managed to produce the tech they claimed
| for the price they claimed, would $10 billion be crazy
| overvalued?
|
| Yes, but in the same way that a company that promises
| faster-than-light travel would be worth $10 billion
| dollars.
|
| Theranos' tech was so far beyond the realms of any
| reasonable science, yet people still invested.
| Thorentis wrote:
| What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear
| of being labeled as a sexist.
| rocqua wrote:
| Its treating people different based on gender. It depends
| very much on semantics whether you call that sexism. It is
| certainly not the form of sexism that people these days are
| most worried about.
| tolbish wrote:
| That would be discrimination based on sex, but no it would
| not be sexist in this case. Now if, for example, he treated
| people based on gender because he felt women belong in the
| kitchen, then that would be both sexist and discriminatory.
|
| The words sexism/racism often get confused with
| discrimination.
| awb wrote:
| > The words sexism/racism often get confused with
| discrimination.
|
| Oxford definition of "sexism" via Google:
|
| > prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically
| against women, on the basis of sex
|
| The definition of sexism seems to include discrimination.
| What definition are you using?
| dageshi wrote:
| Genuine question, if you were a man in that situation, what
| would you do?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| In what situation?
| dageshi wrote:
| Well the situation in the article seems like a good
| example, you think the female ceo should swap with the male
| co founder. You're invested but not massively and you've
| not really known either for years.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I am male, and I would say so.
|
| 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.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The odds are good I would err on the side of not risking
| it
|
| Which is why this needs to be discussed: So a path
| forward can be found. Our current default patterns aren't
| working well.
| worker767424 wrote:
| The only path forward is for enough high-profile, hyper-
| woke behavior examples to get negative public exposure.
| As long as men are afraid of accidentally becoming the
| target of the next donglegate, it's safer to just not
| engage.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I agree with what I think you are going for: That this
| super blamey "hyper woke" bullshit needs to stop if we
| are going to make any real forward progress on issues
| like this one.
|
| 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.
| dkersten wrote:
| Completely agree. Scapegoating can't have positive
| effects. At best, it causes what we see here: people
| staying silent in fear. At worst, it just alienates
| people and causes them to dig their heels in, doubling
| down on whatever bad behavior they're scapegoated for
| because they've got nothing left to lose. It rarely, if
| ever, actually improves behavior.
|
| 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.
| cwhiz wrote:
| It's easy. Investment is a math game. What is the upside
| and downside of either action?
|
| 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.
| go13 wrote:
| As usually, in western gynocentric social order, men are evil
| and the problem and women are like kids: should have all
| privileges and carry no responsibility.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into gender flamewar hell. This
| sort of generic tangent is exactly what the site guidelines
| ask you not to post here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking
| to the rules, we'd be grateful.
|
| Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for
| ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless
| of what ideology they're battling for or against, because
| it's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for.
| Curious conversation and ideological battle can't coexist any
| more than frisbee in a park can coexist with tank warfare.
| We're trying to optimize for curiosity here. Please use HN in
| the intended spirit from now on.
| go13 wrote:
| okay, noted
| dang wrote:
| Appreciated!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dijit wrote:
| This is not a constructive or helpful comment.
| [deleted]
| nullsense wrote:
| It's more like reverse sexism here. I totally get the behaviour
| here. You simply don't want to be on the receiving end of
| potential backlash when you're just trying to help someone. The
| calculus being you feel as if you might make a genuine remark
| only to receive a response interpreting said remark as the
| product of sexism e.g "out of persons A and B, I think B should
| run the company" where A is a woman and B is a man is simply
| far too likely to be met with "well of course a man would pick
| another man" than "it seems they carefully evaluated the
| attributes and qualities of A and B and B is likely better
| suited". The former response is itself sexist as it's basing
| assumptions about the decision on attributes of gender first
| and foremost, hence it's a sort of reverse sexism if you will.
| And the man's move here is sexist also in the regard that his
| calculus of the reverse sexism response is also based on the
| assumption that this dynamic exists and presents a real danger
| and it's all based primarily on gender too.
|
| Sexism all the way down on both sides.
|
| I've come to understand in life through experience there are a
| very thorny class of problems that I don't know of a proper
| name for, but have formulated my own concept of the "non-native
| speakers dilemma". It goes as follows:
|
| You're on a bus and while listening to two strangers conversing
| you realise you can't quite understand what they're talking
| about. As a native speaker you feel perfectly confident that
| you know the language and you are simply missing context shared
| only by the individuals talking and hence it isn't possible for
| you to understand the conversation, and not because you don't
| know the language. If you are a non-native speaker, and
| depending on your level, you often start to doubt your
| abilities, and can never be fully sure if you simply don't
| understand because you're missing context that's not possible
| for you to obtain or there are gaps in your language skills
| that still need to be filled.
|
| I had this realisation on the bus about a decade ago when
| learning Japanese. But I've often thought back to it in certain
| situations and these kind in particular seem to crop up a lot.
|
| One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to
| another female non-engineer outside their workplace just about
| their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female engineer
| remark something along the lines of "the Architect often shoots
| down my ideas because I'm female".
|
| I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the
| architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I
| don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm
| female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm
| an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has
| some flaws in it that he can see that I can't.
|
| In this case I'm a "native speaker" so to speak, so I can be
| perfectly confident my thinking is accurate with respect to the
| reason why it's getting rejected. The female engineer is the so
| called "non-native speaker" where this pernicious dynamic
| exists making it nigh on impossible to confident that your
| assessment is accurate.
|
| Curious if that metaphor makes sense to others, or if others
| ever noticed the same thing?
| [deleted]
| nonplussed wrote:
| One of the toughest things about discrimination is being able
| to prove it. I'm a white man, but I spent time living in
| Japan where I was an obvious minority.
|
| Some situations were clear to me that I was being treated a
| particular way because of my race. But then others were not
| so clear cut.
|
| For example, one time I was talking in Japanese with a group
| and someone kept repeating what I said like "He said...". I
| was getting angry at that as I took it to mean that they were
| basically "translating" my Japanese for others. But then
| later, I was watching a Japanese TV drama and the same thing
| happened on there (with only Japanese speaking). That made me
| think that maybe this was just a cultural thing that people
| do and didn't have any reflection on me personally.
|
| Having mentored a female engineer, I've seen that if you are
| constantly on the lookout for signs of discrimination against
| you, you will find so much of it. You'll go crazy thinking
| the whole world is out to get you because of your sex, race,
| etc. It's tough because there are no doubt situations where
| that does happen. But there are also situations where a white
| man would have been given the same feedback or treated in the
| same way. As a minority though, you only have your own
| experience to go on. It becomes tough to recognize what is
| legitimate discrimination vs what is just ordinarily
| communication.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I have this issue with my SO where I'll sigh heavily and
| she'll interpret it as me disapproving of whatever she just
| did or did not do, inventing scenarios in case there's no
| immediately obvious cause.
|
| Instead my head is somewhere else entirely, and I might
| have been annoyed at myself for forgetting to pick
| something up at the store or whatever.
|
| We've gotten better at handling it, I try to remind myself
| to immediately tell her it wasn't her, and she asking me
| what it was if I forget. But there has been a lot of
| unnecessary bad times that originated from such episodes...
| etempleton wrote:
| This. It can be a challenge for anyone in the workplace,
| but I imagine it is harder for minorities.
|
| One of the best pieces of career advice I have ever taken
| was from this TED talk: https://youtu.be/KzSAFJBLyn4
|
| The section on Abraham Lincoln. Perceive no slights. It
| changed the way I approach people at work.
| [deleted]
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to
| another female non-engineer outside their workplace just
| about their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female
| engineer remark something along the lines of "the Architect
| often shoots down my ideas because I'm female".
|
| I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the
| architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I
| don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because
| I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because
| I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea
| has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't._
|
| One of the really good things for me about hanging on HN is
| hearing "X happens to me too as a man because (reasons) and
| has nothing to do with gender." That's been enormously
| helpful to me in trying to find a path forward in my own
| life.
|
| I hope you get constructive engagement of your points. I
| don't like the characterization that it's sexism on both
| sides but that's not intended to be a big attack or
| something. I think we don't have good language for talking
| about these issues that acknowledge in a non-blamey fashion
| that "Gender is, in fact, a factor in outcomes and it's
| complicated."
|
| So far, we mostly do a sucky job of trying to discuss this at
| all. It ends up being people on both sides pointing fingers
| and even if you are bending over backwards to not point
| fingers, it will get interpreted as such by a lot of people
| and that tends to go bad places, not good.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| Mmmmmm the problem I have found with feminist literature is
| that it often talks about the advantages of men and the
| disadvantages of women (which is all fair enough) but it
| doesn't really talk about the advantages of women and the
| disadvantages of men. To generalise, it doesn't attempt to
| critique its own model. I'm all for encouraging equality
| etc. and do my best to avoid identity politics discussions
| but at the back of my mind this is what I'm thinking when I
| over hear a woman/man complain about sexism. e.g. Are you
| really sure that this is true?
|
| Yes things can be improved. But at some point will critical
| thinking and the benefit of the doubt be encouraged in
| society?
|
| Or are we doomed to the media/twitter blowing up things out
| of proportion and people looking through prisms of
| victimhood.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Mmmmmm the problem I have found with feminist literature
| is that it often talks about the advantages of men and
| the disadvantages of women (which is all fair enough) but
| it doesn 't really talk about the advantages of women and
| the disadvantages of men._
|
| I don't self identify as a _feminist_. I never have. I
| generally agree with this criticism.
| etempleton wrote:
| A difficulty of being a minority of any stripe must be the
| not knowing.
|
| Was the architect dismissive of my ideas because I am a
| woman? Because he shoots down everyone's ideas? Because he
| has a specific problem with me? Because my ideas are bad?
|
| One of the greatest challenges I had to overcome in my
| career was not reading too much into the actions of others.
| When you do you can easily be offended by everything.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _A difficulty of being a minority of any stripe must be
| the not knowing._
|
| It's incredibly hard to keep having an open mind, keep
| trying to figure out "Is this actually constructive
| criticism or toxic bullshit?" and keep trying to engage
| in good faith in the face of certain patterns. It's just
| exhausting. It takes all your time and mental and
| emotional energy to try to sort it out, which detracts
| from putting energy into things that will actually
| advance your career.
|
| You can spend hours and hours wondering "What did he mean
| by that?" in an exchange that lasted under a minute. And
| you may never figure it out.
|
| It's vastly easier to just start erring on the side of
| "You're all just sexist pigs!" Though, unfortunately,
| that seems to make the problem more intractable and
| unresolvable, but it makes is a little easier on a day-
| to-day basis to cope in the face of a situation that is
| inherently excessively hard to parse and navigate.
| internetslave wrote:
| Basically the me too movement and the way in which men cannot
| defend themselves from sexual accusations back fired. Very
| predictable that this happened, there's no easy solution.
| haecceity wrote:
| Founders swapping titles is enough to decide success of a
| company? Interesting relationship dynamic.
| prewett wrote:
| Probably more like doing what you're better at. Maybe one had
| the idea and the original vision, so they became CEO by
| default, whereas they might actually better at developing the
| product and should do the CTO role instead. But since it's
| their idea, they are relatively good at evangelising it and
| relating to the public, investors, and customers. However, the
| other might be much better at that than at CTO, so the company
| would benefit by swapping roles.
| csours wrote:
| This reminds me of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I have to
| wonder how she may have received criticism of her ideas if there
| was a baseline of equality of ideas from men and women.
|
| Basically, to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism
| as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was
| part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective. It would be a
| bridge too far to link it to the cheating.
| snicksnak wrote:
| This trend isn't going away anytime soon, In fact I think it's
| just ramping up and is accelerating, especially with the racism
| narrative the main stream media outlets started to heavily push
| ~2 years ago and the big identity movement. It will continue
| until there is consensus, that this climate is bad, for everyone
| involved. I don't see that happen anytime soon, the cancelations
| will continue until moral improves.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I saw some improvement in the Netflix movies getting less
| extreme over time. Emily in Paris was the first movie where the
| woke Netflix made fun of itself using French people / culture
| as props. Disney and Netflix had to lose billions of dollars to
| understand that the loudest voices may not represent the
| majority of the people.
| asjldkfin wrote:
| It doesn't help that the benchmark for oppression gets lower
| every day. It used to be a concerted, systematic action that's
| targeted at a small group. Today, it's pretty much anything which
| hurts one's feelings.
|
| Here's a hot take: This is what happens when kids don't get
| bullied at school. They don't learn to build the necessary
| emotional circuitry and calluses to deal with emotional damage.
| TLightful wrote:
| Hot == dumb@ss
| asjldkfin wrote:
| That's what they called Galileo too. Alas, I will suffer for
| truth.
|
| https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/melodrama.png
| renewiltord wrote:
| I don't know where all this "only massive suffering builds
| strength" stuff comes from.
|
| I'm pretty sure this is analogous to the way you build up
| muscle: you don't try to squat 300 lbs, tear your hip flexors,
| and destroy your knees on day one. In fact, repeated injury
| makes you weaker.
|
| Most social groups do have a mechanism to softly introduce low
| intensity conflict as play (which may help with emotional
| strength). Practically any group has escalating banter with
| escalating intimacy, for instance, permitting growth of
| emotional resilience in a progressive manner.
|
| I was never bullied in school and I'm generally quite socially
| comfortable in many situations.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post flamebait to HN. This can't lead to anything
| good.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613220.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| This happens if you are the one person of race A in a group of
| race B too.
| alea_iacta_est wrote:
| Tribalism is the new diversity. Embrace it.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments here.
| fhifjfhjjjk wrote:
| This is the grave that has been dug. Why would I give advice for
| no benefit to myself, AND open myself up to downside risk?
| soneca wrote:
| My first take on the article is that the author overestimates the
| impact and even the causality of an investor giving founders
| advice to swipe roles. It makes it sound simple and so reduced
| that to turn a company around is just having founders swiping
| roles.
|
| But that's beside the point of the article. Ultimately I think
| it's on men to learn how to handle giving candid advice in a non-
| sexist manner. This investor just considered his investment not
| enough to be worthy bothering to try to find a way to give the
| same advice in a non-sexist way.
|
| My final take of the article is: founders, don't listen to advice
| made by investors who invested a small enough portion of their
| portfolio to even care if your chances as a company to be
| successful improve or not.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Ultimately I think it's on men to learn how to handle giving
| candid advice in a non-sexist manner.
|
| And how would that be in this case?
| igorkraw wrote:
| "Hey XXX,and YYY, do you have time for a discussion tomorrow
| at lunch? I noticed some things that make me think the
| company could benefit from you two swapping some
| responsibilities. I've noticed XXX struggles to aaa,for
| example aaa1, aaa2 and at aaa3, and at aaa4 YYY seemed to
| feel very comfortable doing aaa despite having less
| experienced, and conversely I think XXX's experience might be
| better suited for bbb, because of my experience at CCCC.
| Happy to share more of my thoughts and get your own opionion
| on this at lunch"
|
| I actually fail to see how you can respectfully tell someone
| you think they should swap roles and _be_ sexist. Sure, if
| your whole argument is that "XXX isn't coming of agressive
| enough to survive in this boys game" then you might be
| accused of sexism...for _some_ reason
| phkahler wrote:
| That's a nice thought, and might work if the person can
| articulate the differences well enough. But the entire
| point of the article is that no matter the argument or
| ability to make it, there is a fear that the woman might
| claim sexism simply because he suggested she step out of
| the CEO role and let the other person (a man) have it
| (reasons be damned). Even if everything was fine among
| those 3 people, someone else might take to twitter and
| frame it as sexist - especially if the advice was taken.
| igorkraw wrote:
| And I am calling that fear bullshit. If you cannot
| articulate the differences, then why are you making the
| suggestion? A "gut feeling"? Well, then that might be
| sexist and deserve being called out as BS. And if
| everything was fine between those 3 people...just clarify
| things on twitter?
|
| The fear of a hypothetical "someone" taking something
| "totally reasonable" out of context is, in my experience,
| held mainly by people who have a private definition of
| "totally reasonable" not held by the majority and who'd
| like to continue holding it without consequences.
| KODeKarnage wrote:
| You might want a little self-reflection about that last
| sentence and how it paints you as precisely the sort of
| person that others are rightfully worried about.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| You can't control how a recipient will receive advice and how
| they may choose to twist/change it.
| majkinetor wrote:
| When you cancel man for saying stuff and then you later complain
| no man wants to hang out with you...
| darkerside wrote:
| It's not just about giving feedback, it's also about how you give
| it. "You should switch roles" is a terrible piece of feedback.
| "You are failing to do X, Y, and Z; and Fred is doing those
| things very well" is much better. It allows for autonomy in
| determining how the team wants to handle said feedback, whether
| it's swapping roles, improving at current roles, or going out and
| finding more aligned investors.
|
| Maybe doing it the first way works, too, but I think it is poor,
| lazy communication that used the zeitgeist as a crutch to make a
| difficult point. That doesn't mean it can't be done well and
| respectfully, which the given example perhaps did not.
| wrnr wrote:
| Good looking women (and men) have an easier time making progress
| in their carrier at least up to the point when everybody starts
| assuming they just got where they are because of their looks.
|
| Companies with an explicit diversity and inclusion statement on
| their job applications get more minority applicants but hire
| proportionally less minority candidates, speculation range from
| smug interviewers to interviewees being too concerned with being
| themselves.
|
| Everyone playing the suppression olympics loses in the end.
| benhoyt wrote:
| > Companies with an explicit diversity and inclusion statement
| on their job applications get more minority applicants but hire
| proportionally less minority candidates
|
| I'm curious: do you have a source for that?
| wrnr wrote:
| google HBR yourself
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > 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 appreciate the effort to think of a better word than sexism. My
| question is, is this even sexism at all? How many men can get
| publicly denounced as "sexists" and have their life ruined
| because they didn't speak carefully enough, before it is simply
| just "smart" rather than "sexist" to be extra careful with how
| you speak to women.
|
| To take the example to an extreme just to illustrate the point:
| If, in a hypothetical world, men served jail time for making eye
| contact with women, would it be sexist for men to stare at their
| feet when women are around?
|
| I am 100% convinced that sexism does exist and is not all that
| uncommon (I've seen my wife deal with it a bit in the workplace).
| I'm just not convinced this is an example of it. Seems more like
| it's the "safe" choice for a man in 2021. Both men and women
| would benefit if we worked to make it not that way.
| dang wrote:
| > If, in a hypothetical world, men served jail time for making
| eye contact with women
|
| Please don't post flamebait to HN. Nothing good can come of
| this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: please don't use HN for ideological battle. You've been
| doing it repeatedly, and it's not what this site is for.
|
| I've detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613374.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> _My question is, is this even sexism at all?_
|
| There is a danger of getting overly semantic, but also a danger
| of ignoring the importance of semantics to perspective here.
| Sex _ism_ as opposed to sex _ists_. Sexism, using the term as
| the the GP does, is how they behave towards or speak to her.
| That 's what sexism is regardless of why it is. It affects her
| or the workplace the same way whether it is because of
| "exclusionary assholes" or unintended chilling effects.
|
| Gravity in a box is equivalent to acceleration.
|
| That said, you have a point too. From your (me also)
| perspective, there's a snookered conclusion to this story.
| Inasmuch as Twitter mobs are scary, some people are opting out
| of joining the girls for a drink.. sometimes advisably.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Sexism, using the term as the the GP does, is how they
| behave towards or speak to her. That's what sexism is
| regardless of why it is.
|
| This is incredibly flawed. It can never be behaviour observed
| in a vacuum. A behaviour's motivation in context is the only
| thing to observe and - potentially - classify as sexism.
| c5o49t5b4QN4TU5 wrote:
| I'm a white cis male, and I work as a software engineer at a
| Silicon Valley unicorn. My employer is a perennial darling of the
| HN crowd, and is likely to continue its rocket ride in the years
| to come.
|
| I'll be completely candid here: I have some kind of problem with
| women. This isn't to say that I don't like women or don't want
| women to succeed. I just don't want to associate with or be seen
| around women. I'm sure there's some kind of deep reason for this,
| but I haven't exactly been looking for it.
|
| On the other hand, I'm a huge believer in the "live and let live"
| principle. I found a good way of reconciling these two sides of
| my personality. Whenever I'm thrust into a situation in which I
| must interact with women, I gracefully extricate myself from it.
|
| I'm very sneaky about this too. Sometimes my departure can be
| performed swiftly, but other times I must maneuver over a period
| of days or weeks to get myself away from an unpleasant situation.
| I'm never overt about it, I never hurt anyone in the process, and
| I'm pretty confident that no one has any idea that I'm like this.
|
| In the past I've had to abandon projects I was working on, and
| even ditched maintainership of a popular open source project
| because a female coworker started contributing to it. Given that
| I've been doing this for a couple of decades, I'm willing to say
| that I'd do more or less anything to get away from women, as long
| as no one gets hurt. Yes, it might take a while, and I might need
| to make some sacrifices, but I'll eventually get away.
|
| Of course this started way before Twitter mobs and cancel culture
| became a thing, so I can't claim prescience. But I do permit
| myself a little smugness at this point in time. I think I'm
| pretty much cancel-proof.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you for admitting this.
| hobs wrote:
| Your methods and conclusions make no sense - associating with
| women doesn't get you canceled, Kevin Spacey didn't molest any
| women as far as I know.
|
| Smugness makes no sense when what it appears is you have some
| deep rooted psychological issues that need addressing.
| wontendwell wrote:
| I am going to be honest and admit I have a problem with women
| also and would much prefer to work only with other men.
|
| In addition, I lament that it is iillegal for men to have
| their own organizations of any kind. It is not legal for men
| to have their own clubs or organizations in the Western
| world. It is illegal for men, and particularly white men, to
| self select and self organize. This is a factual statement.
|
| I do wonder how this will play out in the end.
| NationalPark wrote:
| I think that statement is a little underfactualized. In the
| U.S., private clubs and religious groups can both legally
| discriminate by gender. The Civil Rights Act protections
| apply to public-facing businesses. And generally speaking,
| legal protections in the U.S. are by class, not with
| specifically enumerated members of a class, so the
| "particularly white men" notion is not really accurate when
| it comes to employment protections, although I imagine you
| were thinking about affirmative action or similar policies
| at universities.
| arp242 wrote:
| > In addition, I lament that it is iillegal for men to have
| their own organizations of any kind. It is not legal for
| men to have their own clubs or organizations in the Western
| world. It is illegal for men, and particularly white men,
| to self select and self organize. This is a factual
| statement.
|
| I don't think it's "illegal"; the problem is that these
| kind of organisations tend to veer towards the toxic and
| hateful.
|
| Incels are an excellent example of this; the entire concept
| was started by a woman struggling with her own involuntary
| celibacy and started a support forum. Good initiative. But
| over time things have become ... well, rather different.
|
| A lot of the so-called "men's rights" groups have some
| legitimate grievances, and I have seen more than a few
| outspoken feminists underscore this. But having legitimate
| grievances doesn't excuse their terrible behaviour and
| attitude.
|
| There are some decent groups for this; /r/MensLib on Reddit
| is pretty good. But the average is not exactly great.
| dang wrote:
| I've banned this account. Laments for the absence of white-
| men clubs? No.
|
| Creating accounts to post like this will eventually get
| your main account banned as well, so please don't.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bylfdsa wrote:
| I find this view interesting, I have a close friend (not in
| tech) that also doesn't want to work with women.
|
| My own view is that I have no problem working with women
| (though there are some women I would refuse to work with or
| be around in a social setting b/c of the risk). I suspect I
| don't mind because I've had a positive experience working
| in a research lab were the PI was a female, as well as one
| of the research assistants that I closely worked with: I
| did one aspect of hardware/software, she did the other.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| We bend in favor of comments that share personal experience,
| but after rereading this one several times, I think it crosses
| into trolling ("I'd do more or less anything to get away from
| women", etc.) and have banned the account.
|
| Edit: also, please stop creating accounts for every few
| comments you post. We ban accounts that do that. This is in the
| site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't
| use your real name, but for HN to be a community, users need
| some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as
| well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a
| different kind of forum.
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613077.
| eevilspock wrote:
| My knee-jerk reaction was _misogyny_.
|
| Then, no, you're describing
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynophobia
|
| > Gynophobia should not be confused with misogyny, the hatred,
| contempt for and prejudice against women
|
| Ok. That's sad. Best wishes.
|
| But then, finally, your admitted smugness bothers me, as it
| reveals a deep lack of empathy for woman and why the culture is
| necessarily going through these fits and throws.
|
| To what degree is your "live and let live" actually "live and
| let live or die, it's not my problem"?
| random5634 wrote:
| Female founder friend (non tech space) was in a female focused
| incubator / competition. She got only one set of somewhat
| critical feedback - ie, lacks experience in X and Y which are key
| in product space Z.
|
| She posted a comment on her social media focusing on this
| feedback as "criticism" that came from a sexist guy "of course".
| It was pretty easy to draw the line to the three panelists, one
| of whom was a guy. Ouch.
|
| In a previous life, I'd worked in a awesome (female led!) product
| company. While I had no experience prior to this, I quickly
| realized that the product itself and its quality etc was almost
| irrelevant to success, the X and Y mentioned by the male panelist
| was unfortunately everything, which you'd only know if you were
| in the space itself. The female led company I worked for was
| bought out by a (male led) competitor, who then using much strong
| x and y skills - cleaned up. Company I worked for got basically
| nothing.
|
| Fast forward - my friends business not doing so great, she asks
| me for feedback. I said nothing other than enthusiasm. Partly
| because I was really enthusiastic - she'd put her heart into this
| project. But her comment on social was in my mind - I had no
| desire to be next sexist guy "shooting down" an idea
|
| She's out of the business I think mostly. Anyways, this parallels
| the take of the article.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The solution to this is simple:
|
| Practice your communication skills. If you can't think of a way
| to phrase advice that might be offensive, you are failing in
| intermediate communication skills.
|
| If you think it might be offensive, ask a close female in your
| life, your sister, your mother, grandma, etc.
|
| It's in everyone's best interest to treat others with love and
| respect.
|
| For extra safety, if you really think there is a risk, actually
| record the audio encounter for back up.
|
| If you actually go through these steps for building towards good
| communication, it's highly unlikely you would ever have to use
| the recording in defense.
| KODeKarnage wrote:
| The problem being highlighted here isn't bad communicators. The
| problem is good communicators being incentivized out of
| communicating. It says something about you that you could not
| comprehend something that obvious.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The other day, I was in a Zoom meeting with another man and a
| woman. The call had too much latency, and the conversation was a
| tad heated, so we were all interrupting each other to some extent
| --but I noticed halfway through that I was interrupting the woman
| the most, and she was speaking the least. Just like in all the
| research. While I certainly didn't go silent for the rest of the
| meeting, I did make a concerted effort to let the woman talk
| more, and I'm glad I did, because she had good things to say.
|
| I'm aware that I have the same biases as the rest of society. I
| do my best to recognize them, and, where applicable, to add a
| _small_ mental counterweight before making decisions. I don 't
| think this _always_ leads to better outcomes, but I do think it
| 's a net positive. If investors act on similar frameworks,
| they've probably doomed some companies and saved others. The
| future is unknowable, and we'll never know what would have
| happened.
|
| I wish _this_ investor hadn 't made his decision out of fear. He
| should have made it out of a desire to be a better person, or a
| more successful VC. I'm not a fan of online mobs. But I _do_
| think it 's worth taking the social science into account when
| making decisions. None of us are immune.
| lightgreen wrote:
| It is not necessarily your bias against women. It is equally
| possible that the woman is not self-confident enough to
| interrupt you more often.
|
| Recently I had a zoom meeting with two women. One of them was a
| bit shy and quiet, and the other one constantly interrupted me
| and the other woman. There was nothing gender-specific in that
| encounter.
|
| Similarly, in other meetings there are often some men who stay
| quiet (but obvs nobody cares about them).
|
| Possibly we should let shy people talk more. Regardless of
| whether they are women, men, black, gay or whatever.
|
| Or maybe not. Maybe you need to be self-confident and a bit
| bold to lead, because if you don't, you won't be a good leader
| anyways even if you were given time to speak regardless of your
| sex. I don't know.
|
| Don't look for sexism in every encounter.
| antiterra wrote:
| Yes, woke culture creates an atmosphere where men and non-
| minorities may be overly cautious about what they do and say,
| possibly to everyone's detriment.
|
| But let's be clear here. That's not the root cause. The root
| cause is the undeniably real treatment of women and minorities
| that created that reactionary mode.
|
| A number of people I talk to (curiously, they tend to be
| production engineers) think we live in a meritocracy where racism
| and sexism have virtually been erased. They usually believe a
| calvinist work ethic and capacity for enduring suffering creates
| an equal opportunity for everyone. But that's just not true. I've
| seen cabs skip Black people hailing them to stop at me. I have
| heard the n-word used disparagingly, liberally and freely at
| informal gatherings in central Pennsylvania or by drivers for car
| dealership service centers.
|
| I am very close to a woman lawyer who is regularly challenged
| about her school and where she passed the bar in a way that
| doesn't match the experience of her male colleagues. I have seen
| video clips of a professor making inappropriate remarks about a
| student's looks during a review of her work. It's anecdotal, but
| not hard to find.
|
| So, when you are upset that everyone is holding statements up to
| the light and wondering if someone's ethnicity or gender is
| behind them, blame the people who actually caused it. It's not
| the fault of 'woke' people or those who 'virtue signal.' It's
| people who are actually, consciously or not, discriminating and
| perpetuating discrimination. They are at fault.
| will4274 wrote:
| > A number of people I talk to (curiously they tend to be
| production engineers) think we live in a meritocracy where
| racism and sexism have virtually been erased.
|
| Do they? I don't think I know anybody like this. Most of the
| people I know think we live in a flawed and complex world.
| That's why so many of them are less forthcoming with casual
| acquaintances, in "mixed company" as they say, as this article
| describes.
|
| Not to doubt too agressively, but are you sure those people you
| know believe what you think they believe?
| antiterra wrote:
| Absolutely. After hours in a break area, people would be much
| more candid when they think everyone agrees with them, and
| then they state this out loud.
|
| I have chat logs with a PE at a FAANG who starts off by
| declaring that diversity is bullshit, not just efforts but
| the goal itself, and that race or gender is no impediment to
| success.
|
| What's even more demonstrative is so many here saying they
| are afraid to comment without making a new account because of
| 'woke' culture, but those are likely the people downvoting me
| to oblivion for suggesting that racists and sexists are the
| root cause of the situation.
| will4274 wrote:
| I don't really understand. How could somebody
| simultaneously believe we live in a meritocracy and be
| afraid of a woke mob attacking them for saying something
| they believe is correct? Surely in a meritocracy, the mob
| would praise their correct thinking, not attack them?
|
| Are you sure those people weren't saying that it was best
| to _act like_ a meritocracy (as opposed to one actually
| existing today)?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| You assume a mob is rational and therefore will not
| attack someone if that person is in the right. A mob can
| not and will never be rational by construction.
| antiterra wrote:
| It's more that they believe woke culture is the core
| impediment to said meritocracy.
| pdx6 wrote:
| For candor, reduce the risk of blow back by giving the advice in
| person or over the phone. California law is very strict in
| recording conversations.
|
| Yes, a guy could screw it up and say something potentially sexist
| or just dumb -- but for success what someone is doing wrong needs
| to be expressed.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Personally I would take it further and make my own
| surreptitious recording of the conversation as a CYA tactic.
| nphardorworse wrote:
| What a BS article. How about we give advice and feedback that
| is... not sexist? Crazy idea, right?! If you say things that are
| not sexist nobody will accuse you of sexism. Simple as that. And
| if you don't know what is and what is not sexist then most likely
| you are sexist. Then go and educate yourself on the topic, and
| don't waste time writing excuses on online forums.
| blast wrote:
| > If you say things that are not sexist nobody will accuse you
| of sexism
|
| The article is all about how that is, unfortunately, false.
| 8note wrote:
| The distinction is that there are things, specifically
| criticism, that can be interpreted as sexism independently of
| whether it is based on the sex of the criticised.
|
| In the listed example, it's sexist to not suggest that the man
| becomes CEO instead of the current woman CEO
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The payout matrix for "give honest advice / don't give honest
| advice" has changed, radically. Then some people noticed that,
| and then their behavior changed to match. It isn't punishing
| anyone, it's adaptation to a new risk. The "Pence Fence" is a
| defensive strategem and it didn't arise in a vacuum. It is a
| _costly_ defense, too, so it being kept up is likely worth the
| cost to mitigate the risk.
|
| Most of what comes after when discussing the issue is "how to
| 'fix' this 'problem.'" by encouraging men to speak _anyway_. But
| that is the wrong approach, because it relies on people changing
| their behavior back like hurling themselves on grenades -- you
| can 't count on it. Still high-risk, low-reward. Perhaps even no-
| reward. Making plans on people (well, men in this instance but it
| could be anyone) being irrationally drawn to self-sacrifice is
| not going to pan out, _especially_ if your reputation is
| destroyed in the mix after. Leaping on grenades typically earns a
| medal, but here it gets you vilification.
| worik wrote:
| Clearly shows the need for diversity at all levels of the economy
| and what a problem the dominance of white men (some of my best
| friends are white men) has been
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| 70% of america is white. Can you please let us know the exact
| percentage of white men that is acceptable for every industry?
| fghfghfghfghfgh wrote:
| I think your comment perfectly shows to which extreme it has
| become acceptable to criticize a group of people simply from
| their skin color
| stonogo wrote:
| And the consequences of being accused of sexism by an
| online mob have now become so extreme that many investors
| don't want to risk it anymore.
|
| Forgive me, but, what exactly are these "consequences"? I can see
| it for e.g. line employees, especially in communications or media
| roles, but for investors? What happens, they lose some Twitter
| followers? Slightly fewer companies beg them for money? I've
| never ever heard of an investor suffering _at all_ because of
| social media outrage and I 'm tempted to speculate it's never
| happened.
| xenihn wrote:
| They're not going to wind up homeless or in prison, but they
| still care about their reputation. If that's harmed, it's going
| to affect their ability to get richer.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| Investors only make money when people accept their money...
| like any other business. It's especially a risk now with VC
| money basically easier to get than a drink at 7-11
| stonogo wrote:
| I'm really looking for examples here. Nobody seems to be able
| to provide me one investor who is left in the lurch over this
| sort of thing.
| KODeKarnage wrote:
| There are more important things than money. Having your name
| dragged through the mud, having people presume you are a
| disgusting sexist before they have even met you, these are
| things that can destroy a person regardless of their wealth.
| trinovantes wrote:
| It's similar to how we get little/no feedback from job interviews
| and applications because of a couple of outliers making giving
| feedback not worth the trouble
|
| Has it always been this way or was there a time long ago where
| it's common to receive feedback? (I've only been working
| professionally for ~5 years)
| sdeframond wrote:
| IME, Not getting feedback from job interviews is mainly because
| 1) recruiters are incentivized for closing candidates, not
| cultivating brand awareness, and 2) giving actual meaningful
| feedback is hard, so it seems worthless to give a canned
| response.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| It's not news. A female entrepreneur observed similar patterns
| and talked about it in a TED talk:
|
| Is Modern Feminism starting to undermine Itself? | Jess Butcher |
| TEDxAstonUniversity
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIgytWyo_A
|
| Unfortunately, I think those kind of videos do no reach their
| required target: new age feminists. It doesn't help either that
| the comments on the video are mostly made by men, who are angry
| at the current social situation in the anglophone countries.
|
| IMO, these social issues are pretty inconsequential compared to
| the bigger problems we face: climate change and wealth+income
| inequality worldwide. I believe that social inequality would
| drastically improve if we concentrated on those major problems
| first.
|
| Education is the linchpin, imo. Were we to work backwards from
| that, our world would radically change. You can't concentrate on
| education if you have to worry about housing, food, transport,
| and access to education. So, those should be as cheap as possible
| for every citizen.
|
| Educators should have amongst the highest paying jobs in the
| country and competition should be fierce to become one at any
| level.
|
| With an educated populace, there's no telling what we could
| achieve. We could think and reason for ourselves instead of
| listening to pundits. We could actually discuss things instead of
| scream at each other all the time.
|
| But eh... y'all would rather fund another war on some poor
| country over oil, support another big corp to underpay people you
| don't care about, huddle into groups and be belligerent against
| those your group deems the enemy, vote for people who wield fear
| as a tool, or just be indifferent to the world around you as long
| as you're doing fine...
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Murderers, AND covid!! Just wear a mask!!!! It *literally* saves
| lives!!!
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
|
| We detached this comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613220.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Why not?
| throwitaway12 wrote:
| I am so thankful to work in an environment where everyone is
| just... normal.
|
| We don't have to walk on egg shells when speaking. Men and women
| can still interact like it was before I started reading about
| such insanity.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| That's going to be true right up until someone crosses a line
| or someone feels like a line was crossed, and then the entire
| structure will collapse on top of you, possibly killing a few
| people's careers in the process.
|
| "Just be cool" is not a strategy.
| centimeter wrote:
| This will hit your company/industry eventually.
| kbelder wrote:
| What state? I'm assuming not California.
| gweinberg wrote:
| Then why post from a throwaway account?
| SilverRed wrote:
| Because their workplace might be normal but the wider web is
| not so a comment like this could hurt future job
| opportunities. Especially on HN where you are not able to
| delete your account or comments.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Agreed. I talk to the women I work with the same way I talk to
| the men. If I didn't, then I'm probably not talking to the men
| appropriately either. I think that is the right thing to do
| morally and that says a lot about a person's integrity, which
| means they trust you when you say something. So, there's no
| reason to think something is anything other than what you say
| it is.
|
| Another important ingredient in that is saying, "I don't know"
| a lot. Then when you tell them something, they know you're not
| bullshitting them. So again, there is no reason for someone to
| think something is anything other than what you say it is.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| This is true, even from (oddly) investors. Met a solo female
| founder at a coffee shop this week (my state is open). She's a
| non-technical founder, building an app which is a marketplace
| that also will compete with Yelp or Google Maps, for a customer
| segment with no money also hit hard by COVID. All she's heard to
| date is positive things from everyone. Her app is buggy trash
| with terrible UX developed offshore at bargain basement rates.
| Since she's nontechnical it took a while to help her ascertain
| that it was done in React Native. We had a very long conversation
| about business principles (lessons I've learned the hard way
| mostly), all of them came as a very painful shock, like
| validating the business model before doing a full build out of
| the app, simple things. Look, I've seem some insane shit succeed
| and I wish her the best, but somebody filled her head with dreamy
| bullshit and she knew nothing of business including her market
| and nobody had yet to ask her a single hard question. All of the
| questions I asked seemed table stakes, just making conversation
| about her business, she couldn't answer. Yet an investor from
| Mexico had given her $10k, to match her personal $7k investment,
| to build an app.
|
| At some point I had to stop the conversation because I realized
| that what I was doing was giving her the first honest
| conversation about her business she'd ever had with anyone and to
| be honest I wasn't really the person to be giving any advice.
| Mostly I just asked questions and shared some lessons from
| similar experiences.
|
| tl;dr: somebody lied to this gal (perhaps through omission) and
| she's going to learn some hard lessons.
|
| Apologies for any typos.
| rapind wrote:
| Eventually the only people left on Twitter will be extremists and
| marketers.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Reminds me of the phenomenon recorded of men avoiding women after
| the original #metoo thing.
|
| Part of this is that I think that men feel they are walking on
| egg shells. The kinds of male assertiveness that my wife found
| attractive when she met me also can leave women who aren't into
| this assertiveness feeling harassed.
|
| I feel that we need to be clear more about what is "desirable"
| masculinity it "desirable assertiveness" vs its toxic
| counterparts. Failure to do this will essentially neuter men over
| the long term - and it will lead to "men clamming up" or worse, a
| significant surge in the number of men who "go their own way" be
| it in the job or at home in their personal life.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/29/men-wom...
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/men-are-afraid-to-mentor-f...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2019/01/09/dear-sir-do...
|
| https://kelainetaylor.medium.com/to-the-men-whose-response-t...
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| One of the most offended I've seen my wife be was when she was
| told the only reason she wanted an assertive man was because
| she was brainwashed and deep down didn't want it and was
| actually oppressed. She was a victim of the white male
| patriarchy and by being part of it she was an implicit
| supporter of racism. Meaning she had her agency to be her own
| person and have her own desires taken away from her, at least
| in this person's eyes. She ended up not talking to this other
| person because she couldn't get over the condescension. The
| feeling that the other person thought they were more
| enlightened or better than her. The only times I have stopped
| friendships have been similar - feeling like the other person
| looked down on me because of my choices or who I was.
|
| I think there is a lot of pain brewing, and whether or not
| people come out the other side of it more entrenched in their
| worldview, or with more humility after having learned from the
| wild ride we are currently on.
|
| Heck maybe I'll come out the other side finally believing that
| there is only one true way to look at people and relationships
| and power differences, and any deviation from that is violence.
| blabitty wrote:
| I'll probably get downvoted for this but I think desirable vs
| toxic masculinity tends to depend on whether the woman in
| question finds the man in question attractive.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Lookism is the final -ism that lacks a social justice
| movement. Incels and disfigured people are the closest thing
| to the "underclass" of physical attractiveness.
|
| Yes, many time the distinction in the margins between toxic
| and desirable masculinity is partially based on the
| attractiveness of the person in question.
|
| For what it's worth - men and women are equally bad in
| regards to lookism. I think we need to simply start
| explicitly saying that we shouldn't discriminate because
| someone is ugly. If RMS were as attractive as Micheal
| foucault, he wouldn't get in trouble for those age of consent
| beliefs (foucault, an attractive leftist, famously defended
| lowering the age of consent)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_.
| ..
|
| No one wants to cancel foucault because him and other french
| post modernists are the intellectual foundation for today's
| "wokeism"
|
| A lot of the double standard is due to RMS being fat and
| ugly. No other explanation.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Or sodomizing a minor like roman polanski...
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me why
| this comment was downvoted.
|
| It takes a stance based on the parent comment and gives an
| example where they believe looks had considerable
| differences in the behavior of society towards somebody.
| The example is not perhaps the best, but the fact that
| society actually shows favouritism towards attractive
| people should not be controversial.
| oblio wrote:
| I guess there's going to be a calibration period. The pendulum
| was stuck, it's started swinging, and the first few swings are
| completely out of whack. We'll get there, eventually.
| lupire wrote:
| There's no reason to assume that. The system could be
| destabilized because while a pendulum with two sides has a
| stable a world with many many competing interests and
| nonlinear feedback systems might not.
| oblio wrote:
| Thankfully for us, men, apparently we're about 50% of the
| population and you know, traditionally, we've held 99% of
| the power in the world.
|
| I'm not super worried that we'll be crushed under a
| matriarchy. Heck, in some regards a matriarchy might be a
| bit gentler than a patriarchy :-)
|
| Edit: I seem to have touched a nerve, a lot of
| weak/sensitive men around here, it seems.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I'm not worried about a matriarchy either; what I _am_
| worried about is a permanent state of cold war between
| identity groups, which is where it seems we 're headed.
| oblio wrote:
| This is a gross exaggeration. Power struggles have been
| with us since the beginning of time.
|
| Men and women will get along as they always have, with
| ups and downs. There are no "identity groups" because we
| aren't and can't be enemies. There are just a few loonies
| on both sides making a ton of noise, and they're getting
| amplified by the internet. They'll either get boring at
| some point or just be ignored completely from the outside
| of their circles.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Some very real issue have been highlighted in the last few
| years, issues that we really should have dealt with decades
| ago and I think you're right, there's currently an
| overreaction from society. That's will correct it self, even
| if some may still not like where we end up.
|
| Sadly if you're concerned with these overreaction, and voice
| those concerns, you will be labelled as being against the
| chance. You quickly learn to shut up and just wait it out.
| oblio wrote:
| > Sadly if you're concerned with these overreaction, and
| voice those concerns, you will be labelled as being against
| the change. You quickly learn to shut up and just wait it
| out.
|
| This is a smart move for any kind of group/mob
| move/reaction, by the way. In much more extreme cases you'd
| be the smart, polite, but dead guy in the crowd, otherwise.
|
| Crowds as a whole are rash and emotional, you can't reason
| with them. There's a reason Animal Farm had 10 word
| slogans, at most ;-)
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Didn't you see the pew research poll of male virginity at like
| 25%?
|
| Were already there. And it's not gonna get better.
| [deleted]
| snissn wrote:
| should be more female investors
| blast wrote:
| Considering that the topic is "men clamming up" I don't think
| that's a fair criticism. The author has a right to choose what
| her topic is.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| So every article must address both sides? Always? This is like
| complaining that one picture of black harvard law graduates
| didn't include black women (yes, I actually saw this on
| linkedin)
|
| This article is clearly about how all of these false
| accusations and woke mobs ultimately harm minorities.
| calylex wrote:
| Please stop treating social issues like this as if they're
| Physics. There is no clear path to an answer and the more we try
| to reason and argue about these topics _logically_ the more
| futile the attempt, it 's like kicking harder and harder while in
| stuck in quicksand.
|
| The effects of trying to find the truth show themselves as bi-
| products that affect culture and society in unhealthy and
| unforeseen ways. You can never know the intent of someone or why
| they act the way they do, you can only guess and even that takes
| a special type of person who feels comfortable enough doing so
| (reads lawyers) and a framework that encourages such speculation
| (legal system [0] or stock market.) Speculative systems are toxic
| and are festering ground for bias. If we want to live in a world
| ruled by truth and facts ironically the way to do it is not by
| forcing ourselves to understand something that is not Physics as
| if it is and by the same methods.
|
| Ignore everything that pops up on these topics if your goal is to
| create a better society for all.
|
| [0] some legal cases are clear cut, I'm not referring to those.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| I had an experience at work where a coworker (who is black)
| shared his experience of being told to "stay in his lane" early
| on in his career. The insinuation was of course racism, he didn't
| mention it but it was obvious. Then I and someone else (who are
| white) shared our exact same experiences.
|
| He told me he felt cut off, etc, even though we were sharing the
| same experience. If we had something similar happen, how can he
| definitively attribute that experience to racism? Even if it was,
| that was not the point of the conversation. We were all sharing
| our experiences on that topic and no one mentioned race. Why do
| we need to bend ourselves backwards to make sure all minorities
| feel comfortable all the time?
|
| The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about
| anything these days, if you are white.
| random5634 wrote:
| Separately, another area where upside / downside risk of
| providing feedback is no longer good is in feedback to rejected
| candidates for positions.
|
| Folks have said this can still be done, but our office was burnt
| by giving feedback, and the person in general likes to argue with
| it which is already a drain.
|
| So anyways, no more feedback to folks not hired - period! Luckily
| this applies to all hires, you don't know at the early stage if
| someone is in a protected class.
| sendtown_expwy wrote:
| This is a really great piece. While it's unfortunate this
| phenomenon occurs, in a way it's also an opportunity for the many
| talented female VCs in the industry. I hope they capitalize on
| it!
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've seen professional women get negative feedback when they
| favored a qualified man over a slightly less qualified woman. I
| can imagine a female VC would be under the same pressure to
| remain silent lest they be lit up on Twitter for being female
| and yet still sexist.
| blippage wrote:
| "Internalised misogyny", perhaps?
|
| I mean, why not, right? If gays can allegedly have
| "internalised homophobia", then why can't women have
| "internalised misogyny".
|
| And so it goes. When we jettison reason, everyone gets to say
| what they want, and no-one gets to say that one conclusion is
| more soundly-based that another.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| No, this is not a thing.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Lots on green usernames in this thread.
| dang wrote:
| Some are trolls and/or flamewar-stokers while others are
| substantive contributors. That's a problem with any forum with
| a low barrier to entry. Users can help by flagging the trollish
| and flamewar posts. To flag a comment, click on its timestamp
| to go to its page, then click the 'flag' link at the top.
| (There's a small karma threshold before flag links appear.)
|
| We sometimes close threads to new accounts when the situation
| is overwhelming, but I wouldn't want to do that in a case like
| this. Generally on HN, we try to err on the side of privileging
| positive contributions rather than filtering out negative ones,
| and we rely on community moderation and moderator moderation to
| try to dampen the latter. It only works partially, but it's
| better than punishing the positive contributors, and definitely
| better than being a closed community.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| yeah because you can't talk about this stuff openly without
| getting cancelled, unless you aren't white or male.
| seoaeu wrote:
| > unless you aren't white or male.
|
| Kind of says something when this is seen as an exceptional
| case, given that a significant majority of people aren't
| white men...
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| Whites are about 70% of American, and half of those are
| men, so in American, yeah they are. This is an American
| site, and the context of these conversations are America,
| so there's nothing exceptional about this.
| seoaeu wrote:
| That works out to 35%. We seem to be in agreement?
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| Do you not understand what a majority means? Maybe you
| should add up the rest of the numbers
| anchpop wrote:
| > unless you aren't white or male
|
| You mentioned that this was seen as an exceptional case.
| It is exceptional. The vast majority of americans are
| white or male.
| Veen wrote:
| What do you infer from that? I infer that lots of people are
| using throwaways because they want to express an opinion
| without risking the consequences the article alludes to.
| baby wrote:
| It's dangerous, it paints a very different picture of the
| situation. For example, we saw how many fascists were dormant
| until it became OK to be a fascist.
| ta-ffsmcu wrote:
| I can see this happening with myself (male, for the record). I'm
| usually someone who gives feedback quite frankly, am more
| critical of others' (and my own) work than average, etc.
|
| Over recent years I've read so much about women being passed
| over, cut off, terms like "microaggressions", women getting less
| talking time in meetings, etc., that's it's made me extremely
| self conscious.
|
| It's not even that I'm afraid of getting in any actual trouble if
| I say or do something wrong, it's just that I'm generally already
| somewhat anxious about how I behave around others and this has
| made me extremely aware of any time I might be too harsh, not
| really listen to someone, etc., that I've probably gotten overly
| sensitive.
| akudha wrote:
| I feel the same way. A lot of the emphasis is placed on the
| words and not enough on the context, intent behind those words
| (by everyone, not specific to male or female or any other group
| here). People have learned to keep quiet. And when they do
| speak, they use highly polished, politically correct language
| (silly example - first time my manager said he is taking a "bio
| break", I was confused. Took me a second to understand he is
| going to the bathroom).
|
| This happens in the media a lot too (left and right). A single
| sentence (or even part of a sentence) can be plucked out of an
| interview, shown out of context and boom - the person seems
| like a monster. Someone might have best intentions, but not be
| very polished in expressing them. So why risk talking at all,
| unless we are 100% sure it cannot be misconstrued in any way?
| It is just easier to keep quiet. Which results in loss of
| lively, valuable discussions.
|
| Some comedian (forgot who it was) mentioned that they don't
| like performing in colleges anymore as the audience is too
| sensitive. That is the situation we are in.
| nwallin wrote:
| > Some comedian (forgot who it was) mentioned that they don't
| like performing in colleges anymore
|
| Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have stated that they are not
| willing to perform at colleges. There are probably more, but
| with smaller names.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| I find it funny because they love to talk about implicit bias
| and microaggressions, and all these other things that "white
| men" are not aware of, but then cancel them when white men do
| something wrong. Where is the opportunity to learn and grow?
| scythe wrote:
| It's interesting that _Twitter_ doesn 't get more attention here
| as a center of activity. Apparently, taking down Harvey Weinstein
| means you can do no wrong. The problem with Twitter isn't just
| that they get people fired because people say mean things on the
| Internet. The problem is also that they incite and organize
| illegal activities like targeted harassment, threatening phone
| calls and vandalism, as well as the questionably legal tactic of
| disrupting businesses' operations so they will comply with a
| mobs' demands.
|
| When 4chan did this, they were investigated by the FBI. Reddit
| received a lot of flack for its own vigilante brigades after a
| mistargeted attempt to "catch the Boston bomber", and had to take
| action (still incomplete) against raiding.
|
| Facebook and Twitter with their multi-billion market caps have
| just barely begun to wake up to what their platforms are capable
| of producing. The effects observed with these investors are not
| exactly unique to tech finance.
|
| I think something like Wikipedia's protected article policy could
| help. When something becomes problematic, discussion can be
| limited to confirmed users, who in turn have more to lose by
| being banned. This allows Twitter to respond before "censorship"
| is justified.
| luckylion wrote:
| Does that actually happen on Facebook? I've seen it happen on
| Twitter multiple times, and across countries, but I don't
| associate Facebook with raids and targeted harassment.
|
| It feels like Twitter's user base is _much_ more radical, and
| the focus of the product on instant public messaging might add
| fuel, while Facebook 's group system generally limits the
| spread and seems to be more geared towards asynchronous sharing
| (+messenger, but that's more of a chat, not public).
| spoonjim wrote:
| I don't know what it is but something about the vibe here feels
| fake. Like the opening anecdote with the investor definitely
| sounds fabricated -- too "Aesop's Fables" for me.
| nooyurrsdey wrote:
| A quick reminder to read the article before commenting. HN
| usually has a better track record of this, but this is a
| particular issue people are sensitive about so don't draw your
| conclusions from the title alone.
| ourmandave wrote:
| If Amazon ever cracks down on fake 5-star review bots (yeah, I
| know), maybe those clowns can start a new service.
|
| If you're falsely accused of being That Guy, you can just hire
| them to fill your twitter feed with glowing reviews of your
| character from "women".
|
| Or crank up the Ashley Madison fembots to do it.
| christefano wrote:
| "One worrying trend I've observed among my male investor friends
| is that they're much more wary of giving candid advice to women
| founders than they used to be. They are afraid of saying anything
| that a female founder might misinterpret as sexism. So, when
| giving feedback to a woman they don't know well enough to trust,
| they talk with less candor than they would with a male founder.1
| When this happens, women are missing out on potentially valuable
| advice."
|
| Oh. My. God. Just ask the person if they want your advice.
|
| It's the same in the (presumably male-dominated) workplace as it
| is in anywhere, such as giving unsolicited advice to someone at
| the (usually male-dominated) rock gym.
| nathias wrote:
| Society used to have a solution to this problem, it was a very
| rigorous set of manners and customs, protocol for how to address
| people that occupy different positions in the social hierarchy.
| After woman's emancipation and abolition of aristocracy such
| protocols became redundant, because at least ideologically we
| were all equal, and now this ideology is gone and a new one will
| probably require a new set of such social protocols ...
| mmaunder wrote:
| I wrote a long reply to this and then binned it. Perhaps that
| captures the essence of what I was going to say.
| unknownus3r wrote:
| I even made a throwaway account before I binned mine!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There are quite a few throwaways in this thread.
|
| First they came...
| dang wrote:
| Tired ideological tropes are flamebait. Please don't do that
| here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mrweasel wrote:
| Same here, it's not really worth trying. You feel like you're
| being completely reasonable, but you just know that any mistake
| in wording, minor details or missteps, is going to be used to
| attack you. Any relevant comment or question you have will be
| sidesteps, to attack and label you.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Anecdotal but my office is _ultra_ -woke. There are endless
| internal emails about whatever-week, or veterans-this, or
| LBGTQ+-that etc etc. People have been hounded out and either quit
| or been fired for fairly minor "infractions" of the groupthink
| (...and also some people have rightly been fired for actual
| inappropriate behaviour).
|
| And guess what all this talk about "toxic masculinity" and
| generally vilifying _all men_ leads to? If you said "chilling
| effect" then you are bang on. It is a bloody minefield. Keep your
| head down, never talk about non-work stuff, refuse to provide
| feedback or do interviews, refuse to help people out unless it is
| directly your job' responsibility to do so etc and hope you don't
| get fired.
|
| It genuinely feels like I have a target on my back.
| TLightful wrote:
| Care to define what those "fairly minor infractions of the
| groupthink" were?
|
| With respect, and I'm not saying this is you, but often I've
| heard that type of line - and then when you get into the
| detail, the firing was an obvious correct decision.
|
| Edit: lol @ the downvotes, you can k!ss my @ss. Glad to have
| you here as I guess you were rejected from Parler.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| Given the context is the dogmatic approach to office culture,
| this comment is super ironic. Of course the firings were a
| correct decision from your (insane and skewed) perspective.
| zepto wrote:
| Firing is a straw man.
|
| Obviously it's usually justified because there are legal
| consequences otherwise.
|
| The problem is all the other things that can happen that
| aren't _firing_.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guidelines like that. Getting
| downvoted sucks, but it happens to everyone and one condition
| of participating in threads here is not to make them go
| haywire when it happens.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: you've unfortunately been posting flamebait and/or
| unsubstantive comments repeatedly elsewhere as well. Can you
| please not? We're trying for something different here.
| worik wrote:
| Not good.
|
| Some of us have felt like that for thirty years.
|
| Once apon a time there were a group of people who swaggered
| through life saying whatever popped into their brains whom ever
| it offended or belittled. They engaged in metaphorical, but
| brutal, wrestling matches not just with each other but with any
| body who crossed their paths.
|
| Now life is very hard for them.
|
| Should have happened thirty years ago. Has it gone too far?
| Probably. <sound of a very small violin>
| ajnin wrote:
| What is that "group of people" you're talking about, can you
| be more specific ?
|
| Are you attributing certain characteristics to people only
| because they are part of that group ?
|
| Should people that are born into that group without a choice
| be punished for what other members did or are accused of
| having done in the past ?
| zepto wrote:
| Ok - but are you sure the people who are feeling like this
| _now_ have anything to do with what was happening thirty
| years ago?
| worik wrote:
| Mostly they were not born!
| asjldkfin wrote:
| My problem with "woke culture" is that it's constantly
| fighting an imaginary enemy, some abstract concept that's
| been conjured up.
|
| I hazard to say this post is a good example of the problem.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| An enemy is not imaginary if you yourself did not
| experience it.
| asjldkfin wrote:
| That's true, but just because I didn't experience it
| doesn't mean imaginary enemies isn't a well-worn tactic
| used in society.
|
| The Jews were demonized by Christians in the ye-old days
| based on imaginary qualities that simply weren't true.
|
| So were the Land-lords.
|
| So were the "witches" and the "heretics".
| worik wrote:
| So was I
| tryonenow wrote:
| And a the interpretation of an experience, however
| personal, is not some singular, universal truth.
| [deleted]
| xenihn wrote:
| >Now life is very hard for them.
|
| Not them, but people physically similar to them. An important
| distinction. The people you're actually describing are
| generally retired or dead.
| marsrover wrote:
| If I ever get fired for not being woke enough, I am going to
| breathe a sigh of relief.
|
| I'm 100% tired of all of it, to the point that I almost want
| someone to cancel me.
| void_mint wrote:
| Maybe seek therapy? "I want to be publicly labelled as an
| abuser" seems like an unhealthy thought pattern. If this is
| causing you that much grief, you should seriously consider
| talking to someone. It might make you feel a lot better, and
| you won't even have to have your life ruined.
|
| _edit_ Please explain downvotes? Suggesting a person saying
| "I want someone to cancel me" seek help is downvote worthy
| now?
| whydoineedone wrote:
| why continue to work there, buddy? I actually switched careers
| out of my position because that's what it was like in 2016.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The only solution to cancel culture is to cancel those out of
| your life who would cancel you. I would be doing the same thing
| if I was in your shoes.
|
| On the bright side, this is hopefully a healthy opportunity for
| us all to find some friends outside of work.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| I'm usually against cancel culture. Except against those that
| partake in it. I'll admit I feel a lot of schadenfreude when
| those people get canceled themselves and they're held to
| their own standards.
| Darmody wrote:
| That's like fighting for freedom of speech forbidding those
| who are against it to speak.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The important question today is what we would have done if
| Joseph McCarthy had been right. If (in some bizarre
| parallel universe) he was somehow right about Communists
| doing...Communist things and we all definitely agreed on
| this, would we have applauded his tactics?
|
| The cancel culture crowd today seem to think yes. They look
| to him as an idol and see his only flaw as his unjust
| cause.
|
| I don't think I agree. Extrajudiciality should be shunned
| in all its forms _even if_ it leads to bad people meeting
| bad ends.
| kumarm wrote:
| Now you know how the other side felt all along :).
|
| Seriously, we are now asked to treat everyone with respect and
| that is a problem?
|
| Edit: No I don't mean eye for eye. I am merely pointing out,
| this is a male dominant industry where women didn't even have a
| chance for a long time. The moment we face little uneasiness,
| we are complaining and throwing temper tantrums.
| sputr wrote:
| You wrote 2 sentences and still managed to contradict
| yourself.
|
| Either parent and 'other side' have been both victimised (by
| him now knowing how they felt) or parent isn't a victim but
| since you claim he is experiancing what 'the other side' did
| neither were they.
|
| Maybe try listening for a change.
| dang wrote:
| > _Maybe try listening for a change._
|
| Please omit personal swipes from your HN posts, no matter
| how wrong another comment is or you feel it is.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| colechristensen wrote:
| Every sense of morality transformed into abuse has at least
| some basis in what would be called real objective good.
|
| You cannot simplify the problems of "woke culture" as "asking
| everyone to treat others with respect", because that is not
| what is happening on the dark side of "woke" and you can't
| pretend that the dark side doesn't exist.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The problem isn't to treat people with respect. The problem
| is that some few people are absolutely hellbent on
| interpreting any interaction through a lens of sexism or
| racism, and a large silent majority allows them for fear of
| drawing unwanted attention and/or harm.
|
| This is not to say that sexism or racism isn't or hasn't been
| a large problem, but the correction pendulum has really swung
| way too far for some people and that is actually not at all
| helpful since it only builds up resentment among people who
| actually are supporters of the cause of equality.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > The problem is that some few people are absolutely
| hellbent on interpreting any interaction through a lens of
| sexism or racism, and a large silent majority allows them
| for fear of drawing unwanted attention and/or harm.
|
| A lot of people might not just be that good at what they do
| but manage to advance by way of their gender/race and scare
| away any negative feedback. Thus, given that their skills
| themselves won't save them, leveraging mob justice to do so
| is a viable strategy for them.
| mrxd wrote:
| Yes, that's what it's about. Turnabout is fair play. You
| should think through the long term consequences of that.
|
| I wish you weren't getting downvoted because I think your
| comment reveals so much.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Eye for an eye really isn't a great way to run a society.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| What other side? This whole othering of people is just
| regressive tribalism.
| hkt wrote:
| OP is perhaps suggesting that a system where nobody feels
| like they have a target on their back is possible. Such that
| we don't (as you appear to tacitly admit we do) simply
| creature a culture that is still toxic, but for different
| people.
|
| So, no, it isn't a problem to respect everyone.
| celticninja wrote:
| No, that's not the problem. It's that offense is easy to take
| at anything and companies erring on the side of caution will
| prefer to get rid so they appear to be doing something.
| Whether it is right or not doesn't matter by the time the
| truth is out the actions have been taken.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I utterly adore that my workplace has a strict ban on using any
| company resources such as the email system for non-work related
| business. The one time in eight years someone sent a political
| email they were formally reprimanded.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is more common than not in traditional enterprises and
| businesses. It feels like a unique trait of the Silicon
| Valley bubble (and places testing to emulate it).
| randomopining wrote:
| Ew! White man expressing himself!
|
| Please don't express your experiences or opinions on things. If
| you were one of these _____ , we would love to hear your life
| experiences or opinions on things. Because you were not born
| one of these ____, we don't.
|
| Regards, Your Morally Superior GroupThink Social Overlords
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar,
| regardless of how strongly you feel about a topic. Nothing
| good can come of this--just internet hellfire, which leads to
| scorched earth, which is all the same, which is
| uninteresting.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.
| ..
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I could not see myself working for such a company.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Document the hostile work environment in a journal, look for
| new positions, and quit when it becomes too much of a threat to
| your wellbeing. If you decide to quit or get fired, use your
| documentation of the environment as a basis for filing for
| unemployment benefits or if it merits it, higher levels of
| complaint/compensation.
|
| The "progressive" cause is just as capable of doing wrong as
| the "conservative" cause; there is this general perception that
| being "woke" is the moral high ground and if you're against the
| "conservative" people who are jerks then you and your peers do
| no wrong.
|
| In fact it seems like the conservative jerks and the "woke"
| jerks are doing the exact same thing - abusing groups of
| peoples and behaviors in order to show off their moral
| superiority.
|
| A bunch of young people in the past generations left the church
| because they saw church people hating on folks who didn't fit
| their definition of "good people" and saw that definition
| distorted into abusing folks that deserved to be who they were.
| The exact same behaviors are showing up and getting stronger in
| the "woke" community, just with different targets. I'm still
| waiting for the popular backlash against the "woke" agenda -
| probably just the next generation of kids rebelling against
| their parents' ideals.
|
| I have a target on my back too and occasionally am treated like
| a predator, but I also have the privilege that though it isn't
| harmless to me, I usually have the ability to get up and exit
| the situation treating me poorly. This is what everybody should
| try to cultivate - the freedom to quit a bad situation and not
| be a slave to a particular job, group of people, life plan,
| etc. When you can say "I would like to do this but I have other
| options" then it becomes a whole lot harder to be abused
| because when bad things happen you can just say goodbye.
| baby wrote:
| There's an extreme right, and there's an extreme left. Right
| now the whole right is an extreme right, whereas the left is
| divided between more moderate and cancel culture. Apparently
| tucker said that the right would go into full fascist mode
| because of BLM/antifa (lol), I'm wondering if the left is
| going full woke because of the right going fascist. People
| are being triggered by the other side, and becoming
| extremists themselves. There's no moving forward with
| division, this whole thing is probably good for the rest of
| the world.
| hnfong wrote:
| > whereas the left is divided between more moderate and
| cancel culture. Apparently tucker said that the right would
| go into full fascist mode
|
| What you described might just be a self-fulfilling
| prophecy. If the moderate right routinely gets bundled with
| the far right extremists (and often anti-vac, conspiracy
| theory and whatever) for voicing out their right leaning
| (but moderate) opinions, then they might just choose to
| censor themselves instead.
| baby wrote:
| The good thing is that we realized how bad it was back in
| 2016 (and again in 2020 considering the amount of people
| who went out to vote for the orange man).
| colechristensen wrote:
| There is a whole spectrum, and a silent majority in the
| middle that doesn't want to engage with either aggressive
| extreme.
|
| And in both cases, the extreme isn't particularly rare.
| Discussing which side has a worse distribution isn't easy
| to do accurately or particularly helpful
| efficax wrote:
| Funny I work in a similar workplace and don't find that "all
| men" are vilified, or that being conscientious about the impact
| my words and actions have on marginalized people has any
| negative impact on my behavior. Maybe it's a you problem
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| It's his "lived experience", so you should respect that.
|
| I'm only half joking...
| na85 wrote:
| >Funny I work in a similar workplace and don't find that "all
| men" are vilified, or that being conscientious about the
| impact my words and actions have on marginalized people has
| any negative impact on my behavior. Maybe it's a you problem
|
| This is a great example. The Elect tolerate nothing less than
| full throated support of the cause/outrage du jour, and
| anyone taking a moderate position is branded a problem, just
| as you've done here.
| TLightful wrote:
| Advice, be cool, understanding ... and maybe you wouldn't
| be appear to be a d0uche.
| na85 wrote:
| Can you please be specific about what you read in my
| comment that makes you feel I'm a "d0uche"?
| teddyh wrote:
| I am not 'TLightful', but I'm guessing it's because you
| used the term "The Elect", which only certain groups use.
| It's one of the shibboleths of these modern times.
| na85 wrote:
| I've only ever seen the term written in an essay by a
| black author denouncing identity politics. What groups
| are you referring to?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Your experience in an environment doesn't match someone
| else's experience in an environment you think is similar, so
| they are wrong and you are right?
|
| Isn't this a core of the whole "woke" thing? Just because you
| have a nice experience doesn't mean everybody does and you
| shouldn't silence somebody not having a good time because you
| don't understand or have the same experience.
| cynusx wrote:
| If you are a woman you can easily counter this behavior by
| labelling it and saying that you don't have a porcelain skin.
| Bonuspoints if you laugh about a guy giving you super bad
| feedback and how this did not bother you.
|
| Putting people at ease around you (especially customers) is a
| critical entrepreneurial skill.
|
| You can't blame people for being cautious when a lot of people
| are buying into victim-narratives and convinced to act against
| their "oppressors".
| julianmarq wrote:
| The problem with this "solution" is that the risk is still too
| high to bother risking it. Even if the woman is unlikely to
| assume bad faith (and the likelihood is such, outrage mobs are
| a minority, even if one with too much weight for its size),
| nothing guarantees she won't change her mind later and assume
| that the criticism was because of sexism after all.
|
| And even if one were to believe that that is unlikely too,
| nothing guarantees that _someone else_ won 't think it sexist.
| For example, I remember some panel with four scientists (three
| men and one woman) that was discussed in HN a while ago; at
| some point, someone in the audience (I think she was a
| journalist) yelled at the moderator to "let her speak"... Even
| though _the scientist herself didn 't think the moderator was
| doing anything wrong_.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can
| only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on
| the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure
| 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to
| make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation
| changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood
| but now it's deemed too risky because the media makes it seem
| like there are murderers lurking around every corner.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The risk of the unpredictable, catastrophic risks that children
| face when they roam lower than it has ever been.
|
| The risk of an unpredictable, catastrophic event for a man is
| higher than it has ever been.
|
| I don't think that's a good analogy.
| pron wrote:
| Imagine a woman were to say, if we don't put an end to casual
| sexism, the end result we're heading for is that men will take
| any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her in a dungeon.
|
| A much more realistic and likely outcome, and a far less
| hysterical perspective than yours, is that the needle was way
| too far one way, now people are learning to cope with it
| shifting, and if we try to be more empathetic, perhaps getting
| help when we need to, we can shift it to a better place than it
| was before.
|
| How do I know this? Because identical dynamics play over and
| over, change is scary, even if it is for the better, and people
| have opposed it on similar grounds -- it would lead to
| absurdities and worst outcomes for everyone involved -- since
| time immemorial. For example, see some arguments against women
| suffrage from just over a hundred years ago [1]:
|
| > Because the acquirement of the Parliamentary vote would
| logically involve admission to Parliament itself, and to all
| Government offices. It is scarcely possible to imagine a woman
| being Minister for War, and yet the principles of the
| Suffragettes involve that and many similar absurdities.
|
| > Because Woman Suffrage is based on the idea of the equality
| of the sexes, and tends to establish those competitive
| relations which will destroy chivalrous consideration.
|
| And, of course, women do not _want_ the vote [2]
|
| The belief that we can -- and must -- work tirelessly change
| the world by, say, allowing humans to fly and even reach other
| planets, but when it comes to how people should speak to one
| another, well, that's too difficult to change, there's no point
| in trying, and if we try then the outcome will obviously be
| bad, just seems so bizarre.
|
| [1]: https://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm
|
| [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1903/09/why-
| wom...
| dang wrote:
| > men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her
| in a dungeon.
|
| > And, of course, women do not want the vote
|
| Please keep this sort of flamebait out of your HN posts. It's
| guaranteed to make everything worse, and you can make your
| substantive points without it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pron wrote:
| The second was a quote from numerous reasoned arguments
| (which I linked to) posted in similar forums in the ear
| 20th century. Anyway, this thread is so terrifying (and
| brings back bad memories from my time in SV) that the
| natural reaction should be to scream in horror and not make
| any "substantive points." I am even more worried and,
| frankly, hurt that you don't see that. The most I could
| manage is try to hold a mirror up so that some people might
| see what they sound like to others.
| dang wrote:
| Usually when people describe their internet comments with
| phrases like "hold up a mirror" they're coming across as
| far more aggressive than they think they are. Everyone
| always feels like they're just playing defense while the
| others are committing outrages.
|
| As for how shitty this thread is, I've spent the last
| several hours posting dozens of comments, feebly trying
| to do something about that. All I'm asking you (and
| others) is not to make it worse yet. Gratuitous
| provocation takes discussion straight to failure modes.
| We're all worse off if that happens, so we're better off
| if it doesn't happen.
|
| How that's a reason not to make substantive points, or
| what it has to do with SV, I'm not following. The vast
| majority of HN is far away from SV, all over the world,
| and I can assure you with high confidence that there is
| no correlation between posts being shitty and posts being
| from SV. Actually there is probably a mild negative
| correlation, just because people in SV have been through
| so many iterations of this discussion, for so many more
| years than most places, that they're less likely to get
| activated with naive outrage.
| pron wrote:
| I don't think that trying to appear _less_ aggressive is
| the correct ethical response to the putrid horror show
| unfolding here. Aiming for a civil discussion of "the
| woman problem" is _not_ the right goal here. The correct
| answer to how should we best debate the question, But
| What Shall We Do About the Women? is _not_ to have such a
| discussion at all. Just the fact that how to treat women
| is even considered an appropriate topic for discussion is
| enough to deter any human that isn 't on the autistic
| spectrum from approaching this community, and the
| industry sector it represents. If the dehumanising,
| humiliating monstrosity of this "discussion" is hard to
| see, try replacing "women" on this page with "Irish" or
| "Jews."
| dang wrote:
| I'm just asking you not to omit gratuitous flamebait like
| "men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock
| her in a dungeon" and "women do not want the vote" from
| your HN comments. It's obviously against the site
| guidelines, and pouring kerosene on flames is arson even
| if the building was already burning.
|
| People who feel strongly on topics routinely use language
| like "putrid horror show" to justify their own breaking
| of the site guidelines and making a discussion even worse
| than it already is. This sort of "why bother" and/or
| "fuck it" attitude contributes to the situation you claim
| to deplore. The fact that users do this is part of why
| things are so bad in the first place. No one wants to
| look at the "putridity" of their own contributions--the
| problem is always caused by others, never by self.
|
| The only solution I can see to this is to prioritize
| taking care of the commons, regardless of how bad things
| are or you feel they are.
| pron wrote:
| I don't think you understand the seriousness of what's
| unfolding here, and the level of virulent dehumanisation
| expressed. There is no right way to discuss "The Woman
| Question" any more than there is a right way to discuss
| "The Jewish Question." The _tone_ of discussion is
| insignificant in comparison to conducting it in the first
| place.
| dang wrote:
| Where you get these thoughts that you imagine moderators
| think, I don't know, but I don't recognize any of them. I
| don't give a shit about tone. I'm simply trying to
| support an internet forum in not going to hell and asking
| you not to make that job harder.
|
| What I hear you saying is that it's already gone to hell,
| so it doesn't matter what you do. Actually it matters a
| lot what you do. Every user here needs to abide by the
| site guidelines.
|
| Bringing up "Jewish Question" is singularly unhelpful and
| more gratuitous provocation. It seems to me that you're
| the main person framing this thread as "Woman Question"
| to begin with, and then using that as an excuse to
| justify pouring kerosene of your own. That's not cool.
|
| What I've noticed is that users with strong ideological
| passions tend to describe as "putrid" and "cesspool" and
| so on, any discussion in which their own ideology isn't
| imposed as the dominant one. That's understandable, but
| it's not a realistic demand. HN is a large forum which is
| as divided on ideological topics as any other large
| population sample--moreover this population sample is all
| over the world, which unfortunately makes people far more
| prone to interpret others' statements as "putrid" without
| it even dawning on anyone that that's a factor.
|
| Much as I might wish it, we don't have the power to
| change how divided this community is. All we can do is
| look for ways to nudge users into having thoughtful
| discussion despite divisions. Everyone has a different
| sense of what that might look like, and we can talk about
| how to do that, but we don't have the power to make
| people agree.
| pron wrote:
| There is a great moderation tool for such a discussion:
| not to have it. I think my framing is helpful, because
| clearly you're not seeing what I'm seeing. Here are three
| comments I picked from the top five at the moment (so,
| almost at random); there are far worse ones:
|
| > As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days
| looking at the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns
| and cost benefit analyses, so why would I take a human
| capital risk? My entire business is based on my
| reputation and I've seen what happens to the people who
| get comments like "not the best with Jews at conferences"
| ... I can count on two hands the number of Jews I would
| feel comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I
| would a non-Jew.
|
| > I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than
| antisemitism. My question is, is this even antisemitism
| at all? How many people can get publicly denounced as
| "antisemites" and have their life ruined because they
| didn't speak carefully enough, before it is simply just
| "smart" rather than "antisemitic" to be extra careful
| with how you speak to Jews.
|
| > Imagine what it's like being the intended target and
| not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that
| non-Jews are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that
| Jews are feeling the secondary effects of that?
| dang wrote:
| I'm completely overwhelmed by the quantity of comments
| here. I don't have a chance of even seeing them all, let
| alone read them all, let alone patiently and
| painstakingly moderate them all. One reason for that
| (today) is that I've been writing long, careful replies
| to you in the hope of explaining the kind of comments
| we're looking for here and why we need you to eschew
| gratutitous provocation.
|
| In response, you made a bunch of quotes in which you
| replaced the word "women" with "Jews". I just spent
| several minutes trying to track down those comments
| before I realized that you were pulling that trick. I'm
| really shocked that you would stoop to that.
|
| The flamewar trope "I'm going to replace $group1 with
| $group2 just to show how $xist your comment is" is one of
| the most common. Usually it's the people on the opposite
| ideological side who do that, and often garden-variety
| trolls. This is a strong marker of cheap flamewar and a
| good example of how the ideological enemies who
| perpetuate these flamewars actually resemble each other
| more than they do anyone else.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Thank you so much for everything you do dang!
| pron wrote:
| Maybe, but right now I can't think of another way of
| showing how illegitimate it is to have a discussion over
| how best to treat a discriminated group of people,
| especially when when that group is so underrepresented on
| this forum. There is just no right way to have this
| discussion at all. If discussions on a tech forum look
| like they're minutes from a men's rights group meeting,
| then that's a _huge_ problem.
| dang wrote:
| If you can't think of another way of "showing how
| illegitimate it is" than altering quotes for shock value,
| it seems to me that may be because your view of the
| thread and the community is not actually accurate. I've
| looked again, and I don't think your description is fair.
| The OP seems to me legitimate; painful, but not
| gratuitous. As for the thread, many of the comments are
| thoughtful. I don't agree with or like all of them--
| actually I don't agree with or like most of them--but I
| think you're misassessing the amount of bad faith in the
| community. That's a big deal because, as I tried to
| explain above, when people do that it tends to take them
| to a why-bother/fuck-it place, from which they end up
| creating the very thing they were deploring.
|
| It's unfortunately extremely easy and common for people
| to mistake a divided community for a "putrid horror
| show", dominated by demons [1] or, as the internet likes
| to call them, "terrible persons", when in reality most
| people here just have a lot of different backgrounds and
| experiences from one another [2]. I'm not saying that's
| the only factor in all cases--anyone can scan my
| moderation comments in this thread to find examples to
| the contrary (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613942). But I
| still think the HN guidelines are right to say " _Please
| respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what
| someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._" ...and I think that if
| you took that guideline more to heart, you might see the
| bulk of the thread a little differently. (I don't mean
| the long tail of trolls and flames--those are always with
| us.)
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=f
| alse&so...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
| pvg wrote:
| Hang on, do you mean the comment that started this is
| 'painful but not gratuitous'? Because:
|
| _This is kind of the end result we 're heading for,
| where you can only talk candidly with people who are
| equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy._
|
| Seems pretty clearly gratuitous flamebait. Oppression
| hierarchy? We're heading to where nobody can frankly
| speak to anyone? This is 'first they came', in different
| words and is equally cheap and dumb.
| dang wrote:
| No, by OP I meant the original submission.
| pron wrote:
| The people aren't monsters; it's the dynamics of such
| discussions -- an emergent property -- that breeds such
| results. My problem isn't bad faith of the participants;
| I'm sure people are authentic. It is that HN finds it
| appropriate to host and publicise a discussion in an
| overwhelmingly male forum on how to best treat women in
| the workplace (and not from the professional HR
| perspective). The very thing I was deploring in the first
| place is the thought that such a discussion in such a
| forum is ethically legitimate.
|
| BTW, I am not talking about the actual article. It's
| fine. I'm merely talking about the ensuing "debate."
| skjfdoslifjeifj wrote:
| > There is a great moderation tool for such a discussion:
| not to have it
|
| Do you honestly think the situation improves if the
| discussion is censored here? Whether you like it or not
| these industry discussions, and much worse, are happening
| elsewhere and censoring relatively timid discussions like
| this only makes matters worse. There are 490 comments at
| the time of this post and I'd bet the vast majority of
| them are relatively benign.
| pron wrote:
| Absolutely. Respectable media platforms and discussion
| forums have always "censored" some topics (if by that you
| mean that they've chosen to exercise their freedom of
| speech to choose what they deem worthy of publication);
| that's precisely the one thing that separates them from
| unrespectable ones. Right now there are a lot of
| discussions going on about blacks or Jews, but that
| doesn't mean a respectable forum should lend the subject
| legitimacy by hosting it.
| [deleted]
| idyio wrote:
| > _people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression
| hierarchy_
|
| This supposed hierarchy of oppression, based on identity
| characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality, really is
| the biggest scam going.
|
| Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained
| by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet,
| identarians insist on shoehorning everything into their flawed
| worldview.
|
| The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of this -
| police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in society, but
| it doesn't just apply to black people. It's anyone the police
| feel they can get away with abusing. Just look at how they
| treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so on, regardless of
| race.
|
| Another is celebrating people as tokens regardless of their
| actions. First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA -
| okay, but what sort of shitty role model is this? Rather
| reminds me of:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co90umqUsAAdgQI?format=jpg
|
| We would all do well to be critical of how identity politics is
| being used to mask the real root causes of oppression in our
| society. The so-called left wing of politics is the worst for
| this too, and I say this as a life-long leftist. Why make
| everything about identity; where has the traditional focus on
| class gone?
| yarcob wrote:
| > Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be
| explained by wealth disparities
|
| I recently talked to a mom who visited her adult foster
| daughter with a different skin tone. Her daughter reminded
| her to make sure she doesn't forget her ID in the hotel.
|
| The mom was confused. They were just going to take a walk in
| Munich. Why would she need an ID? She never has an ID on her
| when she goes for a walk.
|
| The daughter said, because the police, they stop you and ask
| to see your ID!
|
| Mom couldn't believe it that the police was so different in
| Munich. Then it dawned on her. Foster daughter had brown
| skin, so she was randomly stopped by police and asked for ID
| because she looks like an immigrant.
|
| Mom was white and has never ever been stopped by police
| before.
|
| The police absolutely treat people different because of race.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Foster daughter had brown skin, so she was randomly
| stopped by police and asked for ID because she looks like
| an immigrant.
|
| This conclusion isn't quite there.
|
| In China, foreigners are notionally required to carry their
| passport with them. I have never actually obeyed that,
| because it is a very bad idea. And it's never mattered,
| because although I'm obligated to produce it on demand,
| that demand has never been made.
|
| It's not because I blend in. Any idiot can see that I'm not
| Chinese. "Looking like an immigrant" is not sufficient to
| be stopped by the police.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| ok but the parent comment was discussing policing and
| blackness in America, I don't agree with their conclusions
| but at any rate comparing that situation to policing in
| Munich doesn't really make much sense.
| veridies wrote:
| I think the point is that white people are likely to lack
| this lived experience. If there's a massive difference in
| opinion about racism in the country between white and
| black Americans, that difference of opinion may be due to
| factors that white people can't easily see.
| tdeck wrote:
| > It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing.
|
| And a core premise of the Black Lives Matter movement is that
| Black people are generally an easier target that the police
| can get away with abusing, and police know this. Police can
| also typically identify Black people easily on sight, putting
| them at greater risk. Class is a valuable lens through which
| to view systems of oppression, but we shouldn't neglect these
| other dimensions of race, gender, etc... that are clearly a
| part of our society.
| fao_ wrote:
| > The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of
| this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in
| society, but it doesn't just apply to black people. It's
| anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. Just
| look at how they treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so
| on, regardless of race.
|
| And if you actually stuck around in leftist circles you would
| see how the "indentarians" as you so called them are in
| opposition to _those_ , too.
|
| > First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA - okay,
| but what sort of shitty role model is this?
|
| Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical of
| her too! Indeed!
|
| I think you've essentially misunderstood why there was a push
| against solely class-based analysis, and why identity-
| specific systemic oppression was introduced to this concept
| -- the two are not in opposition. The reason it was brought
| in was because measures to deconstruct and eliminate class-
| based oppression, often kept systemic inequality between
| identity.
|
| For example, the push to eliminate sexism has for the most
| part only advantaged white women (You'll have to trust me on
| the proof for this since I'm writing this while on the go --
| however look up books like Carceral Capitalism and "Why I
| Don't Talk To White People About Race" for examples). The
| introduction of _how your identity impacts how class
| boundaries affect you_ was necessary to better understand the
| dynamics and better shed and cast off systems of oppression
| sidlls wrote:
| I can see your comment in the context of democratic party
| circles, but not leftist circles, at least in the US. I
| have difficulty placing it in the leftist circles I run in,
| which generally view politics in the US as consisting of a
| center/far right party (democrats) and reactionary fascists
| (republicans).
|
| > Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical
| of her too! Indeed!
|
| I'm quite skeptical of this claim. For the most part the
| people pushing race and gender identity narratives in the
| US had at best mild criticism of Ms. Harris, and were
| mainly focused on her multi-racial identity and its
| historical significance. Almost as if her terrible politics
| simply didn't matter because of her identity.
| blt wrote:
| But the Black Lives Matter movement never proclaimed that
| police brutality only applies to Black people.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Yes they did. And they actively targeted people who stood
| up for Asian lives or "All Lives Matter"
| mcguire wrote:
| All of the "All Lives Matter" people I've interacted with
| have been trying to minimize the problems.
| sidlls wrote:
| Consider that it's common for anyone who suggests the
| impoverished of any race are more susceptible to police
| violence to be quickly and roundly piled on for trying to
| erase race or for supposedly engaging in "pity poor whites"
| rhetoric. It doesn't even matter if "and impoverished black
| people even more so" is included. The fact that one isn't
| solely focused on the racial minority in this context is
| grounds enough for social scorn and ridicule.
|
| There is a very real problem with "oppression olympics"
| centered on racial identity, in this country.
| Thorentis wrote:
| The title kinda implies it.
| indeedmug wrote:
| I don't know why people keep adding "Only" in front of
| "Black Lives Matter".
| protomyth wrote:
| Because when you point out the group that is MOST likely
| to be killed in a police encounter is Native Americans,
| you are branded a racist. https://lakota-prod.s3-us-
| west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/Nativ...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I have heard conservatives get on board if the word 'all'
| is added before.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Because proclaiming that all lives matter was interpreted
| often and publicly as racist against black people.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Well you instantly become a white supremacism if you say
| "All Lives Matter" so you can't blame people for feeling
| like they're getting mixed signals.
| undefined1 wrote:
| > Why make everything about identity; where has the
| traditional focus on class gone?
|
| that's the point of identity politics, to take away that
| focus by distracting and dividing the working class
|
| https://i.imgur.com/wusW5Rn.jpg
| Veen wrote:
| > Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be
| explained by wealth disparities
|
| Yes, and almost none of the people founding startups in
| Silicon Valley are oppressed by any reasonable understanding
| that concept.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _none of the people founding startups in Silicon Valley are
| oppressed by any reasonable understanding that concept_
|
| I've never understood why they are so desperate to be
| oppressed that they have to invent new categories to be
| part of then claim to be oppressed when literally no one
| even knows what they are.
| cozuya wrote:
| Ah yes, the life long leftist who made a throwaway account on
| Hacker News to parrot right wing talking points and post an
| image of a right wing meme.
| Thorentis wrote:
| The fact that so many large corporations are eager to throw
| money at BLM, change their corporate logos to black, etc.
| while doing nothing tangible to address the real issues,
| proves to me that the current identity politics narrative is
| serving the elite very well.
| afarrell wrote:
| > while doing nothing tangible to address the real issues
|
| Doing things to solve the real issues would run into
| difficult real-world problems both symbolic _and_
| logistical /physical. Overcoming them require having
| conversations where people
|
| 1. Do creative problem-solving
|
| 2. Say "well, actually..." about practical implementation
| details.
|
| 3. Speak honestly about the real difficulties and risks of
| unintended consequences.
|
| 4. Admit to failure and error and even inattention.
|
| All of which is blocked by similar social dynamics to the
| ones discussed in the article.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be
| explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of
| power. ... The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling
| example of this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing
| problem in society, but it doesn 't just apply to black
| people. It's anyone the police feel they can get away with
| abusing. Just look at how they treat homeless people, drug
| addicts, and so on, regardless of race._"
|
| You're not wrong about that. But many people face further
| oppression based on their race, gender, and sexuality, in
| addition to wealth and class.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Who are "we"? Anglo-Saxons? Unite States Citizens? or even only
| a subset of the later? particularly those active in finance and
| other fields where a man's social conformance weighs more than
| his skills.
|
| I can't say that I have ever in my life noticed much of the
| Anglo-Saxon gender, race, and other such politics in real life
| and I remain sceptical as to what extent it is actually true
| within Anglo-Saxon offices, for I find that all "sides" of the
| issue seem to offer very different, contradictory experiences,
| and mostly reads as a rather exagerated an implausible story of
| how bad it is for one's own side.
|
| Though there might be a kernel of truth behind some of it, most
| of it reads as though the writers see boogymen, and
| unreasonable fear, and I will say that when actual hard
| statistics be available, they almost always paint a very
| difficult picture than what is complained about in all these
| "culture war" discussions, and that certainly goes for all
| sides.
| cronix wrote:
| > where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or
| lower than you on the oppression hierarchy
|
| Wouldn't someone talking to someone "lower" on the "oppression
| hierarchy" just be what we basically have today? That sounds
| like "privilege," or an "imbalanced power dynamic." I think
| you'll only be able to talk to equals, whatever that is, and by
| whatever metric is en vogue for that day.
| [deleted]
| ZitchDog wrote:
| I believe when OP says "lower on the oppression hierarchy"
| they mean we only talk candidly with those who are as
| oppressed as us or less. i.e. someone higher on the
| oppression hierarchy would be more oppressed.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| yes, i have been perceiving same as he sayed. my thinking
| is that this is a bad thing for persons who are having less
| advantages: if white manager can give forthright feedback
| to only white persons this is actual bad for black one and
| maybe will harm the black one more than it help. this is
| likewise if most in office are feeling less cameraderie
| with a black for that they are not able speaking so openly
| and believe they are having to guard tongues. i wonder
| about these un-intended consecuences.
| ambicapter wrote:
| That is the gist of the article linked up top, yes.
| lazide wrote:
| People don't talk candidly most of the time now to those
| lower on the hierarchy. In many Corp environments, almost no
| one talks candidly to anyone - too many minefields.
|
| You'd generally only talk candidly to those who were not just
| peers, but you already had a deep seated existing rapport
| with and trust. Friends?
|
| Everyone else gets the politically safe story that is
| supposed to be told. I've seen it in action, and it makes me
| sad because it becomes fundamentally corrosive.
|
| And if you think for some people that doesn't include the
| right kind of outrage discussion or telling the right stories
| to the visible oppressed minority they're mentoring so they
| can get the right checkbox when they hopefully get considered
| for SVP (or as plan B, their mentee does) - I've also got a
| bridge to sell you.
| retrac wrote:
| I do some work with HIV prevention. Sometimes I give talks
| where I'm very blunt about the realities of HIV among men who
| have sex with men. I've watched people immediately shift from
| mild hostility and discomfort to wholehearted acceptance of
| what I am saying, when I tell them I'm gay myself.
|
| In that circumstance, I think it is clear that my sexual
| orientation is the basis by which they are judging the
| authoritativeness I have to speak on the topic. Never mind
| the formal qualifications, or the logic or veracity of what I
| am actually saying. Like, I know we all have little
| unconscious checklists like that for judging whether someone
| is credible, but it is uncomfortable to see the effect live.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| This suggests that a possible answer to TFA could be to
| find a trusted female peer to carry the message.
| foobiekr wrote:
| You'd think so, but I have seen this specific idea play
| out and in one case the "trusted female peer" accused the
| person doing the asking of expecting her to do his
| emotional labor.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Interesting, can you give an example of a fact that is
| initially resisted but is then accepted when you provide
| additional personal experience.
| retrac wrote:
| It's the most obvious one. According to Public Health
| Canada, men who have sex with men are 71x more likely to
| become HIV+ during their lives than men who have sex with
| women. Based on the infection rate modelling of the early
| 2010s for which we have data, a young gay man in Toronto
| has about 30% odds of becoming HIV+ in his lifetime.
|
| Wide eyes. Disbelief. That can't possibly be right. With
| all the people I have watched become HIV+ over the years,
| it is of course very believable to me. But the data from
| PHAC is reliable enough, and it speaks for itself. I
| shouldn't need to make it believable. But of course
| people are not emotionless abstract rational machines,
| and that's why I'm doing these sort of talks rather than
| emailing out memos with charts.
|
| (The good news at least is those numbers are almost
| certainly coming down with new medical interventions like
| PrEP, earlier treatment and routine testing, which are my
| main points these days. I might actually get to be happy
| with the numbers in the national HIV tracking data when
| it's compiled for 2021.)
| mcguire wrote:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/the-
| messe...
|
| The Messenger Is the Message: Science Talk podcast, June
| 2020.
| duckfang wrote:
| As a bisexual male, I think a good part of disdain about
| connecting HIV and gay goes to the older naming of the
| disease: GRID. gay-related immune deficiency
|
| It also dates me, but I had a blood transfusion in 1982. At
| that time, it was a Russian Roulette if I ended up with HIV
| blood or not. I didn't. Had I been innfected, I would have
| ended up like Ryan White.
| randallsquared wrote:
| Even knowing the term GRID dates you. :) Per https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS#1981%E2%80... , the
| "GRID" moniker was only used for under two years, _forty
| years ago_. I think it 's unlikely that the name is to
| blame.
| [deleted]
| DenisM wrote:
| Quite illustrative. People have referential groups, that's
| human nature. One could work with the framework to achieve
| desired result and hopefully minimize externalities, or one
| can lament biases and lambast the biased people for extra
| whatever points.
|
| This is not a dig at you, btw, it seems clear that you're
| making the best of the situation.
| fastball wrote:
| You see this on Reddit all the time, every day.
|
| Someone wants to disagree with whatever nonsense the
| hivemind is raving about in the moment, but in order to do
| so they have to prostrate themselves and make it clear
| _whose side they 're on_ before they make their (often very
| valid) point.
|
| e.g. "I hate Trump just has much as the rest of you but..."
| or "Look we need to be super supportive of X group and my
| dad is actually X but..."
| kodah wrote:
| That happens all the time here too, which is an
| interesting note.
| Shugarl wrote:
| Doesn't this happen in pretty much any group ? The more
| what you say goes against the consensus, the more the
| group will reject it.
| retsibsi wrote:
| That definitely happens, but sometimes the motivation is
| a bit more nuanced than just crawling to the mob. With
| everything so tribalised, and most people unwilling to
| stick their neck out and call their ingroup on its
| bullshit, we end up in situations where anyone expressing
| a dissenting opinion _is_ quite likely to be an extremist
| of some kind -- or at least solidly on the 'other side'
| -- because they are the ones most likely to be motivated
| to speak up.
|
| So if I preface an opinion with 'X, but', it may not be
| all about begging for the right to dissent; I may have
| good reason to think that, without the preface, what I
| say will signal some beliefs or values that I don't hold.
| If those things are genuinely hurtful to a vulnerable
| group, or simply reprehensible to me, then I have good
| reason to disavow them, regardless of whether I need to
| do so in order to be heard.
| Fordec wrote:
| Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, good
| people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. But the
| social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear of first
| dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how women have to
| treat men on their day to day. I've yet to encounter a woman
| who has gone from internalizing this aspect of society to
| dropping their priors and living care free without fear of men
| they don't know / met for the first time.
|
| They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how things
| are. And things have not found a way to change to a more easy
| going society. If anything things have just hardened up as
| information and media have become more prevalent. In
| comparison, powerful people fearing being potentially
| (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to their entire
| career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager that the OP of
| this article doesn't have a solution to the problem of trust by
| investors, because women have yet to discover the solution to
| their own generalized mistrust of men outside their direct
| social circle despite how long that situation has gone on for.
|
| Until the risk / reward dynamic changes (and I do not see how
| it could without making people less accountable), I fully
| anticipate that this self censorship in society will not only
| just continue, but will yet increase further in an information
| society where powerful people can be made accountable by the
| public as stories of people being held to account to their
| actions, regardless of whether those actions were deliberate,
| accidental or misunderstandings.
| neonological wrote:
| >Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men,
| good people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are.
| But the social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear
| of first dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how
| women have to treat men on their day to day. I've yet to
| encounter a woman who has gone from internalizing this aspect
| of society to dropping their priors and living care free
| without fear of men they don't know / met for the first time.
|
| Before you get outraged I just want to caveat this by saying
| that what I'm about to say is just controversial and
| anecdotal. If you share a different opinion than fine, this
| is just my opinion.
|
| The general fear women have of men that permeates all of
| their behavior is more of a biologically programmed fear than
| it is a an environmentally programmed one. What makes me say
| this? Because, anecdotally, women have this fear even when
| there is ZERO prior trauma. Although they can train this fear
| away, practically all women are naturally more guarded when
| among unfamiliar men, even with No prior Trauma.
|
| I've been been in tons of fists fights when I was a kid.
| There are many times where I've lost and was beaten until my
| face was a bloody mess by other dudes. This is 100x more
| trauma than an average woman will ever go through and even I
| don't live in fear of "men."
|
| Now this is not scientific evidence but anecdotal evidence is
| not invalid. It's the only way to talk about such subjects
| short of doing a 10 year scientific study. So you may have a
| different experience and I respect that but I also
| respectfully ask anyone who replies not to start a gender
| flame war and get outraged at my viewpoint.
|
| >They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how
| things are. And things have not found a way to change to a
| more easy going society. If anything things have just
| hardened up as information and media have become more
| prevalent. In comparison, powerful people fearing being
| potentially (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to
| their entire career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager
| that the OP of this article doesn't have a solution to the
| problem of trust by investors, because women have yet to
| discover the solution to their own generalized mistrust of
| men outside their direct social circle despite how long that
| situation has gone on for.
|
| You used the word "decades," and this is what the wrong part
| of your statement. It is actually factually wrong and there
| is tons of anthropological research to back this up. The word
| you should have used was "centuries." Practically all of
| human civilization has been patriarchal. They have never
| identified in the history of archaeology and anthropology any
| human civilization where the dominant sex was not Men. This
| fact flies across time and across geographic boundaries of
| countless cultures. There is not a single exception. There
| are civilizations where women took on roles that are
| traditionally "male" but there has never been a civilization
| that has been consistently matriarchal. Thus from this
| perspective it is arguable that patriarchy could be
| biologically ingrained and that modern civilization is
| currently trending beyond out biological imperative.
|
| The additional rights afforded by women today is largely a
| modern and very unique phenomenon. According to the current
| school of thought in academia much of it is attributed to
| changes in technology. Sewage, tampons, etc.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| There is another possible source of fear - in addition to
| biology and trauma, there is also observation together with
| reason. Even if one has zero prior trauma, it's not hard
| for one to realize that men are on average an order of
| magnitude more violent than women are.
|
| My own experiences with fighting have not given me a fear
| of men in general, but they have certainly contributed to a
| caution that I have around certain types of men - in
| particular, around men who have either an animalistic
| concern with territoriality and status, a socioeconomic
| desperation that makes them willing to rob outsiders, or
| both. I try to steer clear not only of men of this type but
| also of entire demographics and parts of the world in which
| they are common.
| Fordec wrote:
| I caveated decades with "at least", not because I think
| that things were going swimmingly in the 1800s or earlier
| but more around when women attained more freedom in society
| to associate with who they wish by their _choice_ than in
| the authoritarian sense of the older patriarchal societies.
| I 'm referring to the choice aspect of ones own actions,
| not just the historical context.
|
| I do not subscribe to the belief that patriarchy is
| biological because there is numerous empirical examples of
| historical matriarchal societies in places such as South
| America, Asia, Native American Hopi tribe, Celtic society,
| Germany and Estonia including in the recorded history of my
| own non-American society.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Why are you being downvoted? You're right!
| Natsu wrote:
| It's a sort of similar to the prisoner's dilemma. It's hard to
| keep a community cooperative when there are defectors about and
| our impression of how likely others are to defect on us
| influences how willing we are to cooperate.
|
| That's why you see people looking for smaller, more trust-bound
| online communities to associate with.
| neonological wrote:
| I don't blame the media for this. The media just magnifies a
| very real and sizable aspect of our culture that already
| exists.
|
| Just like how these people are seeking someone to blame, you
| are seeking the same when you blame the media. It's not just
| the media, what's going on here is something we're all
| responsible for.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The magnification distorts reality and alters peoples
| behavior such that everyone is a little bit more irrational.
| rapind wrote:
| "Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but
| now it's deemed too risky because the media makes it seem like
| there are murderers lurking around every corner."
|
| They're called cars. Houses are packed tighter and there's more
| cars per household than when I was growing up (maybe due to
| everyone being double income now). Streets are also narrower
| and most have street parking, creating visibility issues. Go
| check out a development than went up 40-50 years ago compared
| to one that went up in the last 5 years. The difference is
| pretty stark and pretty hostile to kids running around doing
| kid stuff.
|
| I don't think media's focus on _bad guys_ has nearly the impact
| that the enormous increase in cars has had.
| fastball wrote:
| Honestly, this is pretty trivially avoided. My parents
| drilled it into my head to look both ways before going into a
| street. I always look ways before going into the street. It's
| really not difficult.
| jefftk wrote:
| It is trivially avoided once the kids are old enough, but
| there's a long period during which kids would be safe
| enough to roam around in the absence of cars, but aren't in
| the current environment.
|
| We live a block from the playground, close enough that I
| can almost see it from our window, but you can't get there
| without crossing the street. So our kids (7y, 5y) can only
| go there with a grown up. I've worked on teaching them how
| to cross the street safely, but they're just not good
| enough at checking for cars yet.
| rocqua wrote:
| One explanation here is certainly the media being
| sensationalist for sensation's sake. An alternative is that
| some in media might think the crackdown on sexism is bad. Hence
| they focus on the bad effects. Whether this is explicit
| propaganda or honest reporting on what they consider the more
| important issue almost seems like a semantic question.
|
| I suspect both elements play a role. How big a role I have
| little idea.
| sneak wrote:
| > _One explanation here is certainly the media being
| sensationalist for sensation 's sake._
|
| Sadly I think it may be for profits, for survival's sake. The
| media business is very different now than it was pre-
| Zuckerberg.
| anonporridge wrote:
| It's a matter of risk mitigation.
|
| Either a person accepts extreme, but very unlikely, risk by
| exercising perfect candor with everyone or they decide to clam
| up around people lower on the 'oppression hierarchy' which
| costs them almost nothing to do.
|
| Why would any rational actor not choose option B unless they're
| getting some reward great enough to offset the risk of option
| A?
| stcredzero wrote:
| https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-
| the-...
| mojo982 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. This issue is constant but I've
| never had it explained so well.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an
| underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes
| always lead to overshoot.
|
| I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the
| amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years
| ago. I believe Northern Europe has been trending slowly towards
| gender equality since the 90s, and thus the amount of overshoot
| here is much less from the recent rapid changes like #meetoo.
|
| Also our kids roam around the neighbourhood freely. We're
| thinking of giving our 9-year-old a cellphone soon, for now she
| just has an analog watch and we agree on what time she has to
| be home by.
|
| If you look at statistics, the rate of women murdered per
| capita, and the rate of women who experience sexualized
| violence per capita, are around 5x higher in the US than in
| Northern Europe. The murder rate here for children (excluding
| by their own parents) is below 1 per million children per year.
|
| We're definitely not perfect, we have a long way to go still,
| but we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the
| status pre-2017.
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| >I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an
| underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes
| always lead to overshoot.
|
| this is the way
|
| >Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner,
| was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybaus[27] as comprising
| three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving
| rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or
| negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being
| resolved by means of a synthesis.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic
| neonological wrote:
| > I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an
| underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes
| always lead to overshoot.
|
| No I don't think it's this. I think it's the advent of the
| internet. The internet changed everything. What you will find
| is that the internet is responsible for making everything
| look like an "overshoot."
| belorn wrote:
| 30 years ago the feminist and equality movement was very
| different from today's view, and not all for the worse. A lot
| of focus was then to eliminate gender in the ways people were
| treated, with the more extreme parts of the movement wanting
| to eliminate gender roles all together. Gender segregation in
| Northern Europe held the best numbers 30-40 years ago, and
| has only gotten worse since with pretty large strides. Gender
| segregation today is more like the 1920 than the 1990's.
|
| women murdered per capita has indeed gone down, but so have
| the general murder rate. Men are still murdered far more
| often than women, and reached the highest ratio ever measured
| in the last summery by the government agency BRA, with around
| 77% to 23%. I would be careful to attribute such numbers to
| gender equality, especially since the trend seems to continue
| upwards.
|
| The statistics for assault and sexual assault has similar
| complexity. The combined risk of being assaulted or sexual
| assaulted has been historically similar for both women and
| men, with assault being more common for men and sexual
| assault for women. Between 2012 and 2018 there were a major
| increase in sexual assault, and especially rape after 2015.
| The reason for this can't really be discussed since it
| involve an other political hot topic.
|
| It still might be a rapid change that is causing people to
| overshoot, but it is likely a much harder token to measure.
| Changes in political power.
| hhjinks wrote:
| There's no such thing as overcorrection when _any_ correction
| in the direction we're seeing on display in this article is a
| net negative for literally everyone involved. Women get worse
| advice, men tip-toe around women, and society loses out on
| potentially valuable investments.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the
| amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years
| ago.
|
| What is the mechanism for this? The majority of the "woke"
| twitter mob is 30 or younger.
| stcredzero wrote:
| Knowledge of history has gone down, year over year.
| Students are more likely to get a propagandized and highly
| skewed caricature of history that leaves out certain
| "inconvenient truths." This is also an overcorrection.
| oneplane wrote:
| Which students, and where? I don't see that happening
| locally, but perhaps it's different where you are?
| monocasa wrote:
| Yeah, I see the opposite around me too. I literally had
| textbooks that referred to the Civil War as "The War of
| Northern Aggression" at the turn of the millennium.
| stcredzero wrote:
| That's not the opposite of what I wrote above. That's
| merely _another_ kind of _overcorrection!_
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm seeing a much more nuanced and complete understanding
| of history out of children these days than what was
| taught to me is my point, in contrast to what you're
| saying.
|
| Can you give some specific examples?
| parineum wrote:
| Not the parent but I can see where you're both coming
| from. I think there's a lot more in depth look at US
| history, specifically the warts, than when I was a kid
| but I also think there's a lot less pre-US American
| history where the focus would be on _why_ the founding
| fathers were (partially) great men.
|
| That seems like an over correction to me and I think that
| it shows in the push to tear down monuments of great
| people in American history who were largely products of
| their time.
|
| For example, it's hard to overstate how important it was
| that George Washington gave up the presidency. He set the
| stage for the peaceful transition of power in the US and
| even the world. But he also was a rich guy who owned
| slaves.
|
| It's not nuance that's missing, it's the concept of
| duality.
| monocasa wrote:
| What makes you think they're not being taught that still?
| oneplane wrote:
| Isn't there some sort of vetting and accreditation system
| that would prevent that type of 'creative' stuff from
| getting in to an educational system?
| monocasa wrote:
| The United Daughters of the Confederacy had embedded
| themselves in the vetting and accreditation system
| specifically to get this outcome.
|
| https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-
| conf...
| stcredzero wrote:
| Well over 90% of people those ages I interacted with
| online are _for_ throwing out principles like Free Speech
| and innocent until proven guilty -- it just depends on
| the context for them. To understand those principles, it
| 's necessary to understand their historical origins.
| Virtually _none_ of the young people in such
| conversations understood those things and none of them
| cared. All basically responded to such information as if
| it was trash. Stuff like, the Magna Carta and The Bill of
| Rights.
| kenjackson wrote:
| You need to find new online circles. I know if no young
| kids who are against free speech and innocent until
| proven guilty. But they also feel like they don't
| "personally" need to give everyone the benefit of the
| doubt.
| oneplane wrote:
| Odd, you'd think that if they are students (and
| therefore, study), they would be familiar with the
| concept of creating an informed opinion. Pretty much
| everyone I've talked to locally has enough knowledge on
| the UNHCR, Geneva Convention and Fundamental Principles
| (comparable to a 'constitution' - the base of all other
| law) and even simpler things like the Trias Politica.
|
| Perhaps there is a difference in that is classified as a
| genre of 'student' or it's a difference in age group (be
| it older or younger). It's hard to make comparisons
| across the world :-)
|
| On the other hand, any case where the people that are
| forming the 'next' generation don't know how the basic
| principles of their society work is a sad/bad case.
| refenestrator wrote:
| There are significant depts in the university that are
| now more focused on teaching a particular angle/ideology
| than they are in teaching critical thinking or a survey
| of beliefs.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Small sample, since I come from a country of only 2M
| people, but there's a growing number of people, including
| historians and history teachers, that are trying to
| rewrite WW2 history by framing the Nazi-collaborating
| groups as the good guys, fighting for our country to rid
| us of the communist evil that was the liberation front -
| and everyone is just eating it up. The ordinary people
| risking their lives to fight literal Nazis are now
| depicted as the "aggressors" and the people that marched
| on our own cities under Hitler's flag are the good guys??
| Why, because the mere idea of communists doing something
| good is so dangerous to neoliberalist society that we'd
| rather call literal Nazis the good guys??? But if you say
| "communism bad, they fought communists => they were the
| good guys" and conveniently fail to mention the whole
| Nazi-collaborating thing, no student will question it
| because they really don't care anyways.
|
| // Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant, but yes,
| there's definitely a lack of understanding of history in
| schools these days and certainly some pretty powerful
| propaganda
| ajmadesc wrote:
| Thisis a baseless claim. Personal experience doesn't
| count.
|
| The overwhelming majority of history education leaves out
| inconvenient truth of vile and anti democratic acts
| committed in the name of American Capital interests.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an
| underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes
| always lead to overshoot._
|
| "Underdamped system" is very apt here. There are some
| positive feedback factors which exacerbate the situation in
| the "underdamped system." If you give over power to a mob,
| then the very principles which act as damping can be
| completely abandoned. Things like "innocent until proven
| guilty," and the valuing of evidence.
|
| The answer to unchecked, abused, one-sided power _is not_
| more unchecked, one-sided power with the vector rotated 180
| degrees. That 's just welcoming more dysfunction and abuse.
|
| _we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the
| status pre-2017_
|
| We are starting from a place where typical middle-school,
| high school, and college kids are likely to answer with
| expletives towards the principles mentioned above --
| depending on the context in which you ask their opinion.
|
| EDIT: Way back when, when I was watching that Vice report
| about the Evergreen State College activists, and one of them
| said, "...then f#ck your Free Speech!" I became very afraid
| that our society was in for a world of hurt. I'm pretty sure
| Gandhi and MLK were for Free Speech and the other principles
| mentioned above.
| skjfdoslifjeifj wrote:
| One of my main concerns is that almost all legitimate
| discussion is now happening in private invite only communities
| because people are too risk averse to continue to chat on
| public sites that will be indexed forever in a culture where
| they can be cancelled for even a slightly uncouth opinion.
| Almost all of my consumption and contribution on the Internet
| is now in private communities that are quite strict about
| invites and the trend among my colleagues is similar.
|
| When I was younger I learned so much and established many
| valuable relationships by having discussions on public
| services/websites. Many legends in the field were quite
| accessible on public sites and mailing lists. My life would be
| much worse if I hadn't had those experiences and it feels like
| a lot of younger people that don't have connections to the SV
| bubble are now going to miss out on similar experiences.
|
| This isn't to say that we should be tolerant of everything but
| it definitely feels like we've swung too far in the opposite
| direction.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Not saying I do this, necessarily, but friends of mine who
| are active in policy circles write for various publications
| under pseudonyms now for this reason. The development of the
| idea happens in private group chats, where everyone is using
| their IRL name, but the publication happens under a pen name.
|
| I really don't know if this is a positive change for how
| policy gets made, but it is happening actively right now.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Can you link to some examples of policy papers written
| under pseudonyms?
| remarkEon wrote:
| Obviously no? That would defeat the purpose.
|
| I understand what you're getting at though. I just made a
| claim that people in policy circles are writing things
| under pseudonyms. You want evidence for this
| (justifiably), but this would require me to essentially
| out the pen names. Sorry, not going to happen.
| birken wrote:
| Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in
| private already? This article is pointing out situations
| where even in private people might not want to give out
| candid feedback, which seems like a different concern that
| what you are saying.
|
| I'm a pretty active person online and I genuinely do not
| understand your concern. If you want to say something
| controversial online, just do so anonymously like you are
| doing now. If you want to give somebody candid advice I'm not
| sure why you'd do that in public anyways.
| skjfdoslifjeifj wrote:
| My apologies, I should have made clear that my post wasn't
| directed at the article.
|
| > Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in
| private already?
|
| Probably, but I think there was still much more interesting
| discussion going on publicly in years past. It's anecdotal
| but I've definitely seen a huge spike in how many of my
| colleagues are retreating entirely to private communities
| and most of them never make public comments anymore. That's
| disappointing to me because I think there's a lot of value
| in having these discussions in the open with respected and
| accomplished names attached. It also gives a level of
| perceived accessibility that I think is important.
| kenjackson wrote:
| "but I think there was still much more interesting
| discussion going on publicly in years past."
|
| Really? Prior to anonymous Internet comments there were
| even fewer discussions. I think recent years is when
| we've finally began to understand how people really feel.
| skjfdoslifjeifj wrote:
| You are correct. I should have limited my statement to
| discussions between people using their real identities. I
| also think this is subjective depending on how much value
| you place on being able to identify the participants. For
| example, in language related discussions I think it's
| extremely valuable to have people like SPJ, Anders
| Hejlsberg, Andrei Alexandrescu etc. as active AND
| identifiable participants. When I was in high school,
| during the very early days of Slashdot, quite a few
| highly respected developers, professors and authors would
| comment regularly under their own names. Reading their
| comments and having discussions with them definitely
| changed my life and I think it would be sad to see all
| these discussions move into private spaces or under
| anonymity due to fear of the mob.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Can you give an example of what you mean by 'private
| communities'? Are they online? Can you give an example?
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I respectfully disagree.
|
| Feedback is best received when you relate to the person who is
| giving it and you trust the giver has your best interest at
| heart.
|
| While the "current environment" may make it so women are more
| weary of men (and thus less likely to receive feedback) - I
| think there is a stronger current.
|
| White male investors see people outside of their social group
| and realize that their advice might not be well received- not
| because of a flame war, but simply because they don't look like
| them. I'm fully convinced this effect is visible with all mixes
| of social groups (race, gender, religion, national origin, job
| family).
|
| This effect sucks, and we should be looking for ways to unite
| ourselves to other people so that we can receive hard advice
| and also give hard advice.
| johnrichardson wrote:
| Hogwash! Cultural enrichment has no downsides, ever! We just
| aren't diversifying hard enough, comrade.
| throwaway_-_-_- wrote:
| Creating a throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm not an investor but
| someone who is in a position to make key decisions about peoples'
| careers and give advice, and I do have a bit of a trick I use for
| this.
|
| There was one black female mentee who I noticed was timid in
| taking credit for her work. I had recently attended a diversity
| panel where someone in a similar role as me said that in a
| similar situation, and her advice to her mentee was "Think about
| what a white man would do" and everyone applaud such an
| insightful advice. So identifying such an opportunity, I said the
| exact same thing word for word, basically "I see you're
| hesitating to take credit for your work. Think about what a white
| man would do."
|
| Immediately after saying that, I could tell it wasn't taken well,
| and she asked "what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an
| answer for that which wouldn't be taken in a really bad way, so I
| backpedaled. She later reported me to an administrative person
| who luckily felt it was too vague to file a serious report about,
| but told me to watch what I say.
|
| But I do have a solution (my trick). From that point on, I
| definitely give more subtle advice unless they have passed my
| test, which is I see how they react to situations where they
| could give the benefit of the doubt to others in vague
| situations. Sometimes, I'll bring up a past story about another
| anonymous person and see if they are outraged and want to get
| them in trouble. Only the ones who remark that they probably had
| good intentions, and don't react too strongly, I'll give more
| candid advice to.
| stonogo wrote:
| I'm not sure what you want readers to take away from this, but
| it sounds to me like you could use some help learning to
| communicate. Regardless of whether it contains the words "white
| man" or not, you should probably be able to explain any
| sentence you utter to another person. If you can't, I
| respectfully suggest that specific utterance would be better
| off unspoken.
|
| In this case a simple followup of "you deserve more credit and
| I want you to feel able to advocate for yourself" would have
| cleared up the confusion and avoided a lot of trouble, and you
| wouldn't have had to invent a story-telling system in order to
| filter out people who believe in accountability.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This situation is extremely sad because the whole "have the
| confidence of a medicine white man" thing is a common slogan
| used by feminists to try to combat the general lower levels of
| self-confidence among women.
|
| I guess you yourself repeating the same woke quite took away
| the uniqueness of the idea as it would be articulated by a non
| privledged individual.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-15/carry-yourself-with-t...
| insensible wrote:
| I made a successful complaint to my HR department when
| someone used that very phrase. I very much agreed with the
| part of the person's intent to support and embolden the
| woman. But it's not OK to attack other people in the effort
| to support someone. Why not say something positive like
| "other people can do it, so can you"?
| BonoboIO wrote:
| What was the outcome of your complaint to the HR
| department?
| edoceo wrote:
| When I see that I tell folk: "Talk about how awesome you are
| loudly and frequently! Every other idiot does it. Difference is
| you're awesome. Make sure the world know"
| lupire wrote:
| I think you learned the wrong trick. The "trick" is to not have
| a trick. Use mature, respectful language and not echo the
| divisive political language wielded by activists.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| I think he tried to use mature, respectful language. But he
| apparently anyway put his foot in his mouth.
|
| Of course everyone should do their best in being sensitive in
| their ways of expressing themselves. But many people could
| definitely show a little bit more generosity in their
| interpretations and not jump on every chance to interpret
| something like racism or sexism.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think he tried to use mature, respectful language.
|
| Resorting to advice that consists _entirely_ of race
| /gender stereotyping isn't "mature, respectful language".
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| Exactly. There is no need to inject identity politics when
| you just need to tell someone that they need to make sure to
| take credit for their work. If you inject identity politics
| into a situation, you are taking a risk. Going into identity
| politics when there is no need to just comes across as
| someone being a vain moralist.
| Hitton wrote:
| She was kinda right to report you. Your advice was stupid
| sexist and racist empty phrase and she, in contrast to you, was
| smart enough to notice it and actually question it. Your back-
| pedalling just reinforced her already bad opinion of you. Next
| time try to think before parroting some "guru"'s advice.
| Jabbles wrote:
| _" what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an answer for
| that_
|
| This seems to fit the definition of cargo cult.
|
| You clearly had good intentions, but you can't go around saying
| phrases without being able to back them up. This should be
| familiar to you from technical situations - consider: _" prefer
| composition over inheritance"_ - reasonable advice, but be
| prepared to explain yourself, not just parrot it.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| It's contextually a lot different though. In this case, it's
| not that he didn't have an answer or a means to clarify, it's
| that, based on her initial reaction, he didn't have one he
| wasn't sure would dig a deeper hole.
|
| I doubt anyone out there will have a similar visceral
| reaction to discussing code architecture.
| Jabbles wrote:
| I suspect anyone who could clarify that remark would have
| known not to open with it.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I disagree. I can think of many ways to clarify the
| remark in a manner that I personally wouldn't see
| anything wrong with. At the same time, I can imagine a
| person intent on outrage finding a reason to be mad about
| any one of them. I generally assume that people I'm
| engaged with professionally aren't looking for
| opportunities to be mad.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Why do you not assume that the person in this story is
| not then?
|
| In what way can someone disagree with you about the
| offensiveness of something you say, without you labelling
| them as "intent on outrage"?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Its subjective. Personally, I don't think it's reasonable
| to become upset by a single comment, made with good
| intentions, as happened in the story, certainly not upset
| enough to want professional consequences for the other
| party.
|
| Even a single comment made with ill intent I don't think
| would push me all the way to pursuing professional
| recourse, not without me trying to 'fix' things on my own
| first.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| So what would a white man do?
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| You tried to be clever and it backfired :-)
|
| What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more assertive"/"don't be
| afraid of taking credit for your work"?
| marcinzm wrote:
| > What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more
| assertive"/"don't be afraid of taking credit for your work"?
|
| I don't see those as useful since it doesn't provide the
| person any actual guidance or reference point. What does
| assertive mean? What should I exactly do? How do I do it?
| "Act like X" provides a well known reference point that they
| can use to adjust their behavior based on. They can remember
| all the times they've seen X do something in a similar
| situation and then just act like that.
| oblio wrote:
| That's hilarious.
|
| If you want to make it super explicit, come up with
| examples. "Be bolder, for example for this project I saw
| you doing 80% of the work, you should get to headline the
| presentation and have top billing on the authors page".
|
| "Act like X" is also potentially useful, if you make it
| explicit. Explicit is not "Act like a white man" (whaaaa?).
| Explicit: is "Act like Bob, for example do you remember
| when HR said he couldn't have a new screen and he
| insisted"?
| marcinzm wrote:
| But all that does in practice is that only those who can
| come up with perfectly worded advice on the spot that
| will not offend anyone will be giving advice to people
| who might become offended. Which actually hurts the
| underprivileged since they will now receive a
| significantly reduced amount of advice.
| oblio wrote:
| Why perfectly worded? I guess it depends on the person,
| but coming up with examples should be easy, in my
| experience.
|
| It's just an extension of the classic "show, don't tell".
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| Most advice to give has already been thought about. And
| if not, you can simply say "Let me get back to you with
| feedback on ___"
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| "Act like X" in this situation is not a well known
| reference point and not a good way to express the idea.
| Know how we know that? Because the person who said it
| offended someone and then got reported. Please, quit trying
| to justify using racially-charged language in this
| situation
| marcinzm wrote:
| By that definition of something being problematic
| "someone you said it to got offended" the OP has resolved
| the issue. Now people he talks to no longer are offended
| by what he says. I suspect however that you don't like
| his solution to the problem even though it resolves the
| very definition of it being an issue you bring up.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| It doesn't actually resolve anything. Just because
| someone passed a test to see if X was offensive, it
| doesn't mean they won't find Y offensive. So no, I don't
| like this 'solution', because it's not a good one. It
| takes risk where none is needed.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There is a lot of value in the "imagine what someone else
| would think or do" mechanic of giving people advice. There
| certainly are dragons in asking somebody to act like a white
| dude, so don't do that.
|
| "Be bolder" is different than "what do you think a bold
| person would do?"
|
| I have had many conversations with people going through a
| tough time and unsure of what to do or how to feel in a
| situation and there is this trick to getting people to think
| differently that almost always works... ask the question
|
| "What would a reasonable person do in your situation?"
|
| Suddenly the person having trouble coming up with the answer
| "What should I do?" has a perfect answer to "What would a
| reasonable person do?"
|
| It's a psychological trick that goes after how one thinks
| about one's self and how one thinks about someone else being
| quite different. If you refocus your attention to view
| yourself from an external objective, you often end up with
| much better judgement.
| steve_g wrote:
| "Think about what a white man would do" seems completely
| ambiguous to me. It's not a clear way to communicate. It would
| be better to follow up "I see you're hesitating to take credit
| for your work" with specific examples of what she might be able
| to say. Or you could give examples of behavior that people she
| knows have exhibited.
|
| Even if "what a white man would do" wasn't emotionally charged
| (and it is), it's not a good way to make the point.
| Darmody wrote:
| I can't imagine how someone would think that is a good
| suggestion.
|
| Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always
| take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing,
| they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman,
| is not as smart as a white man.
|
| I'm a white man surrounded by mostly white people working on
| a field with mostly white men and I can't say what a white
| man would do in certain situations because we're all
| different and we all think differently.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| A generous interpretation would be that a white man
| typically mentions their accomplishments without
| reservation. I.e. they are comfortable speaking up in
| almost any circumstance. (They most often are in secure in
| their employment and role.)
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't think that's generous at all. It's characterizing
| all white men. If I told a bad math student to think what
| an Asian person would do would you take the "generous
| interpretation" of "study more"?
|
| Why not just say what you mean without the racial
| stereotypes?
| dahfizz wrote:
| > her advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white
| man would do" and everyone applaud such an insightful
| advice.
|
| > Why not just say what you mean without the racial
| stereotypes?
|
| Nothing is going to win cheap applause at a diversity
| panel than saying "white man bad".
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Generous as in assuming the most graceful interpretation.
| Not intending to bucket people.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Claiming that "What would a white man do?" Is not
| intending to bucket people has moved beyond
| "interpretation" and into gaslighting. The entirety of
| the advice is bucketing people.
|
| "Graceful interpretation" does not mean that you ignore
| the advice and substitute for it what would have been
| good advice.
| sackofmugs wrote:
| I think it's not a useful exercise to come up with a better
| phrasing of the advice, as that's not really the point here.
| When you're in the moment reacting to peoples' questions and
| giving advice on the spot, you don't have time to wordcraft
| your speech like this. You'd still mess up once in a while.
|
| Look at how often people tweak, clarify, and edit their
| comments even here on hacker news. So you'll probably just
| end up with "stifled" advice (using the terminology from the
| article), as you can see with all these suggestions in this
| thread.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| There's a difference between wordcrafting and giving
| obviously preposterous advice like "What would a white man
| do?"
|
| If I was giving advice to someone who was too assertive and
| taking too much credit, I would never say "Think about what
| a black woman would do." Things like this are so
| transparently racist it shouldn't even need to be
| explained. You are simultaneously characterizing a race and
| gender of people and also telling someone else to act like
| a different race and gender.
|
| The reason the advice was poorly received is because it is
| nonsense. The recipient of the advice asked the perfect
| question - "what does it mean to act like a white man?" The
| OP, when asked, also doesn't seem to know what it means.
| I'd say there is a lesson there - don't repeat something
| just because it was will received when you originally heard
| it. You may not understand it. It may be something of an
| emperor's new clothes situation where nobody can question
| the person who gave the original advice, but that doesn't
| make it good.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous? How
| could you possibly interpret it in any other way than 'be
| more confident/less hesitant in taking credit'?
| ativzzz wrote:
| Clearly, the black female employee didn't interpret it that
| way, so your ability to empathize may be lacking.
| karpierz wrote:
| There are some pretty clear alternate interpretations:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613528
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous?
|
| That it is unclear is obvious in that the person using the
| stereotype couldn't identify the concrete, actionable
| behavior they intended to encourage when directly
| questioned.
| nonplussed wrote:
| It's ambiguous because white men don't all act the same
| way. There are plenty of non confident, hesitant white men.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Thought experiment:
|
| I do wonder if some boss in the future will only employ
| straight white males simply to avoid people "offending" others
| (it's hard to offend a straight white male in this new woke
| ideology). Of course this has the opposite effect to what the
| woke seem to want, but this is the world we have built
| ourselves.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I do.
|
| I used to work in a diversity company where white males were
| usually not promoted nor valued, or those who were promoted
| were absolutely excellent. I specifically remember having
| trouble explaining a bug to a boss, then I noticed she didn't
| know what an HTTP header was. It happens, when you're
| promoted so fast that you don't spend time as a dev.
|
| Anyway, exited, created my company, but seriously, I'm
| extremely bitter about diversity, it's just a way to enslave
| us and let us run the rat's race while collecting taxes and
| job creation on us. They ain't gonna win anything if they
| push white males so much out that they are bitter by the time
| they create their company. Racism is just a reaction to being
| treated badly.
| worik wrote:
| Diversity is a competitive advantage.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| This is cargo-cult thinking.
|
| Let's say you never employ any women in your org: this
| means you never have to deal with pregnancies and lengthy
| maternity leave, hospital visits, etc. Straight away you
| have an advantage over your competition simply due to the
| extra man-hours (heh!). In software dev I've never
| encountered a situation where having women devs would make
| a blind bit of difference to the outcome.
|
| Of course this is deeply unfair on women, and we all want
| to live in a fairer society, I just don't think the woke
| ideology is the solution.
| worik wrote:
| And imagine, that for some reason, women are not
| attracted to your products? That is half the market.
|
| I remember car companies working this out back in the
| eighties. The companies that understood that women have
| their own needs in a car that men did not share, yet
| women are a important part of family purchase decisions,
| did better.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| In some software markets their is no advantage to employ
| a woman as the poster said. Backend developing and so on.
|
| BUT you have a point, the market is 50% plus women and
| you are missing a lot of valuable influence and
| competence.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Of course employing someone to help you target your
| product to as many people as possible makes sense. But
| employing someone just because they tick an (arbitrary)
| box makes no sense in a competitive field.
|
| Just think about sports teams.
| laurent92 wrote:
| And no HR department. No complaints, fewer sick leave,
| everyone focussed on meritocracy = no competition on
| victimisation = little need for paperwork / risk
| mitigation = no HR, and no meetings about this. It's a
| huge business expenditure, worth a good 15% of the total
| mass.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| The competitive advantage is hard to quantify though,
| whereas the disadvantage can be felt directly and
| immediately if you aren't careful. If someone gets burned,
| it's hard to see how a vague notion of some intangible
| advantage would push them to risk a repeat.
|
| As a white male from a poor southern family (not very
| tolerant) I've had to learn a few hard lessons on similar
| fronts. I know I don't have a good gauge for what is and
| isn't ok, even now. Given that in many occasions even
| mirroring words or behaviors can be a no-no, the only way
| I've learned that is 100% effective at not causing problems
| is shutting up, which I'm generally pretty bad at. Luckily
| I've had mostly understanding and light hearted coworkers,
| so I haven't been outright ruined yet, but I can think of
| more than one occasion that likely would have turned my
| life upside down if the audience was less sensitive to my
| intent.
| gbear0 wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| Diversity CAN BE a competitive advantage if everyone else
| is carving out a strict path. But if everyone is extremely
| diverse then heterogeneity could actually be the
| competitive advantage, allowing a business to specialize
| more or take advantage of certain economies of scale etc.
| etc.
|
| Also, I find that more often than not, too much diversity
| leads to internal conflict because ideas differ too much,
| which can turn into a competitive disadvantage.
| fegu wrote:
| Apparently the research on that is sketchy. It is only an
| advantage if specifically sought out and used. It requires
| work. Otherwise it can just lead to bad communication and
| less team spirit. (I am paraphrasing a recent article from
| somewhere)
| mattlondon wrote:
| Perhaps phrase it as an open-question, rather than something
| that can be open to interpretation.
|
| "How do you feel it went when people were talking about the
| work done on the project?" Allow them to chat ..."Do you think
| the credit was equally shared out?"
| worik wrote:
| I am very glad you rethought that racist sexist approach. It
| was a learning experience for you. I am glad it did you no
| harm, even better.
|
| People need to be tolerant of casual racism and sexism, up to a
| point. People have been raised like this, advised to to act
| like this, they need a chance to learn. It is tough on those on
| the receiving end, and unjust. But the world will not change
| over night and the prejudice is so ingrained at every level of
| our society.
|
| This poster here shows that prejudice can be easily overcome if
| not combined with bigotry
| BonoboIO wrote:
| "racist sexist approach"
|
| well ... interpreting everything in the worst way possible
| will lead to the outcome that the poster will never say
| anything again. And that will help no one!
| le-mark wrote:
| It's remarkable the level you go to to bridge this gap even
| after being burned, literally no one else would, I wouldn't. Is
| it worth my job, career, families future? That's the calculus
| and risk imo.
| ddingus wrote:
| "Think about what a white man would do"
|
| This does contain the essence of your advice; namely, to take
| credit for work more often, and or more clearly.
|
| My approach is very different.
|
| And I have had the pleasure of mentoring women into male
| dominated roles a time or two. Fortunately, we were able to
| establish trust and another male coworker involved in mentoring
| worked in a similar way. There were challenges, but we made
| them team ones, not just hers. That made a big difference,
| IMHO.
|
| What we did was take gender out of it early on, unless it made
| sense.
|
| In this case, the advice would be, "you should take credit
| more." And the follow on would be ways to do that and to
| support the person who will benefit from doing it. That can be
| as simple as some recognition and sharing later:
|
| "I saw you go for it. Nice! So, how do you feel about it? What
| happened? Will you do it again?" Etc...
|
| Where gender does come up, that discussion almost always
| involved a telling of things. And the reason, explained if need
| be, is just simple understanding.
|
| "How is it for you?"
|
| And that helps with, "what if it were me?"
|
| And then advice makes sense, because there is context, a shared
| basis.
|
| That is not always needed. Hard to say when it is. But when it
| is, having it really helps get past or through whatever the
| challenge is.
|
| I have been fortunate to have women in my life who will share,
| who I have worked with, who I have helped, and who have helped
| me. And the things they share have highlighted the fact that
| their experience is different. Same goes for many attributes,
| race, beauty, etc...
|
| Often, the barrier to sharing and understanding boils down to
| some shame, or blame, or admission of weakness, or the
| perception of making excuses. And while those things can be
| part of the discussion, it is unhealthy to presume they are,
| and my experience shows me that presumption happens more than
| it should.
|
| And that all contributes to how hard this matter is, or can be.
|
| I am a guy, and have found myself discriminated against for
| seriously considering, "what if it were me?" Or for asking,
| "How is it for her, or them?"
|
| It is almost like a betrayal, or threat... something I am
| expressing poorly. Sorry for that, I just do not have precise
| words.
|
| Often we are asking people different from us to see things from
| a more familiar point of view. More familiar to us, but what
| good is that when it simply is foreign to them?
|
| I resolved it this way: we should be seeking a better
| perception of what it is like for people very different from
| us. Mutual understanding and respect, consideration.
|
| In my view, there should be no shame in any of that. But there
| is! And all this is harder.
|
| Since that time, I have paid a lot more attention to these
| dynamics. Barriers to understanding one another better present
| real costs and risks that can be avoided, again in my view.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| Your "trick" shows whether or not the other person will
| consider the whole range of things you could have meant instead
| of assuming the most likely thing in their judgement. So it's
| useful. It reminds me of shit tests in dating where you trigger
| situations just to see their reactions to certain situations.
|
| Regarding why you can't just say the same thing word for word,
| that's because shared context matters.
|
| This is basic social skills. If you don't have the same shared
| background and context, then it's unclear if you mean one thing
| or the other.
|
| So when one woman says "Think about what a white man would do",
| to another woman, there's the implication that they're talking
| about their shared experiences regarding society's expectations
| around women.
|
| When a man says that to a woman, especially it's a white man
| saying that to a black woman, your contexts and backgrounds are
| so wildly different that surface area of what you could mean is
| quite large.
|
| So when you had the chance to clarify yourself and you
| backpedaled, that made it look even worse because it implied
| that you had bad intentions and were trying to take your words
| back.
|
| So yes, it's true. You can't say the same thing word for word
| as one person say to another if you and the other person do not
| share the same contexts.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > had recently attended a diversity panel where someone in a
| similar role as me said that in a similar situation, and her
| advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white man would
| do" and everyone applaud such an insightful advice. So
| identifying such an opportunity, I said the exact same thing
| word for word, basically "I see you're hesitating to take
| credit for your work. Think about what a white man would do."
|
| That's...horrible advice generally, though there are specific
| circumstances where it might be useful, and it is tragic if it
| was an example used in a _diversity panel_ as anything but a
| negative example without a whole lot of context because it (1)
| appeals to race /gender stereotypes, and (2) requires, for it
| to even approximate actionable advice, for the mentor and
| mentee to _share_ race /gender stereotypes. In fact, I've been
| to lots of such panels/trainings, and fairly commonly seen
| exactly that used as a negative example.
|
| What would be more useful if your first instinct is to give
| this advice is to first unpack what behavior you are
| stereotyping as white/male behavior that you actually want to
| encourage, and then just advise that behavior _without appeal
| to race and gender stereotypes_.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| South park did an episode on that mentality where cartman
| helped minority kids in an inner city school graduate.
| adflux wrote:
| How can I reach these kiiiiiiiidssss
| ativzzz wrote:
| I'm not saying what she did is right, but you unnecessarily
| brought in race into a situation that could easily have been
| handled without race.
|
| > I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work
|
| Could easily be followed up with actionable items to take
| credit for her work: do a company/department wide presentation
| for instance. Instead you gave her vague non-advice. I'm a
| white man and I have no idea what a white man would do because
| I know a ton of different white men who would all do very
| different things.
| soneca wrote:
| I think the learning for you should be: don't repeat other
| people's words without understanding what they are supposed to
| mean, what's the context, what's the reasoning behind them. I
| would say that a proper answer to _"What do you mean?"_ (or
| even better, a well communicated preamble before the phrase)
| would pass the right message and not sound ofensive.
| baby wrote:
| As an Asian guy I probably would have reported you if you had
| told me something like this :D
|
| My advice to you: "Think about what you would have told a white
| man"
| BonoboIO wrote:
| "Think about what you would have told a white man"
|
| Well that leads to something like "Toughen Up, It's Part of
| the Job".
|
| I don't think it helps to activly missunderstand people, when
| they are trying to be helpful EVEN if their trying is in the
| wrong. Try to think about the intention and maybe ask what
| they really meant by that.
| baby wrote:
| How is it? My advice is to avoid telling such bullshit
| based on how I look.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I did't want to hurt you, but i don't see the path to a
| better world to just think the worst of people. The most
| people want to be good and create good things, sometimes
| they don't know better ...
| baby wrote:
| True, the problem is that we get so much shit on the
| daily based on how we look that at some point we just
| have to fight back.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I don't say you should not fight back. Racism has to be
| fought!
|
| I hope we can all agree that in 90% of the cases we can
| hear on the tone in the voice what the poster meant. If
| unclear ask and if racism occurs report the ** out of him
| :D
| throwaway113421 wrote:
| It seems as if there's an idea that if we install women in
| corporate leadership skills we'll get better corporate governance
| overall. In my experience women's ego can be just as fragile as
| men's. And guaranteed corporate governance is not necessarily
| true.
|
| One company I worked for ended up being no different than the
| good-ol-boy system, except all the men were women -- looking out
| and protecting each other, figuring out how to screw with
| employee's yearly reviews in order to game the system for the
| cabal of women leaders. This was getting to the point that the
| management chain was vacationing with each other in the south of
| France.
|
| In one particularly painful case, they celebrated a big cloud
| move to AWS with T-shirts. The devops engineers who did all the
| painful up front work to make it happen got t-shirts. When the
| devops team completely turned over, they left the t-shirts
| hanging in their cubicles.
| oirjjlksjmfljaj wrote:
| There's a rhetorical pattern I see in many articles, this one
| included, that perpetuates the issue this article is trying to
| address: men are the problem. Before, it was men saying bad
| things. Now, it's that men aren't saying things at all.
|
| "I'm not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men
| clamming up." If not, then perhaps that's the wrong problem
| statement, and solutions will become more readily obvious and
| suggestible when not coached as the problem of men.
|
| That's as candid as I can make it, and I feel that I have to use
| a throwaway account to do so.
| hiofewuhfribfjj wrote:
| It's clearly a sign of sexism in our culture. Sexism against
| men that is.
|
| And yes I feel like using throwaway too, happy times.
| bvaldivielso wrote:
| That's not at all the way I interpret the article. The author
| empathizes with the male investors, and justifies their
| behaviour. If anything, she's blaming society, not men.
| oirjjlksjmfljaj wrote:
| The author literally calls it "the problem of men clamming
| up." Empathy or not, they're saying the problem is male
| behavior. This could be framed as "the problem of taking
| grievances to the mob" or "the problem of overattributing
| behavior" or anything that puts responsibility for change on
| some group other than men, but it does not. Whether they're
| to blame or not, men are the ones behaving incorrectly.
| bvaldivielso wrote:
| > "the problem of men clamming up"
|
| Even when phrased that way, I don't perceive that the
| author is _blaming_ men. The author is critical of the mob,
| and the dangers of being incorrectly perceived as sexist
| and ruining one's reputation. You may insist on your
| interpretation, and fixate your attention on a couple of
| sentences that ring the wrong way to you, but I think you
| are missing out on the nuance.
| Closi wrote:
| I disagree, the author seems to blame women:
|
| > "If there weren't both women who made false accusations
| and an audience eager to hear and magnify such accusations,
| then the upstanding investors would have nothing to fear
| about being candid. But, unfortunately, both do exist."
| julianmarq wrote:
| Agreed, I'm definitely not comfortable with her phrasing in
| several sections of the article, and it clearly has an impact,
| since one of the top comments labels this behavior by men as
| "sexist".
|
| The author is, _perhaps_ inadvertently, contributing to the
| problem.
|
| BTW, yeah, this is one of my alt accounts.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The structural sexism in this story is arguably the investor
| choosing to spare himself the minor risk to reputation, the
| assumption that the CEO isn't likely enough to listen to the
| advice fairly for it to be worth giving.
|
| (it's not at all a given that the situation would blow up in his
| face...)
| flumpcakes wrote:
| > (it's not at all a given that the situation would blow up in
| his face...)
|
| The article was talking about risk. Risk isn't binary, if it
| was then there wouldn't be a risk...
|
| > minor risk to reputation
|
| I think the article, and at least from some candid comments in
| this thread, indicate that people perceive this risk as much
| more than minor. Almost as if not being labeled a racist or
| sexist or homophobic (founded or not) is worth a few $m lost
| from the inaction taken to avoid that labeling.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Right, they are cowards that put their perception of some
| risk ahead of doing the right thing, and they only act like
| that when they deal with women.
|
| Like what do they do if a man falsely accuses them of some
| trespass?
| neonological wrote:
| I went into this article thinking it was going to be an outrage
| piece about men being sexist towards women. Instead it's about
| men being afraid of being accused of being sexist.
|
| This is a very real issue. It's already gotten to the point where
| the people behind the movement are hysterically unreasonable and
| irrational. Literally even feminists who are integral parts of
| the movement itself aren't safe from their own vitriol.
|
| Below is an TED talk about the story of a activist feminist who
| had her entire activist career destroyed simply by saying
| something that the cancel culture disagreed with:
|
| https://youtu.be/3WMuzhQXJoY
| ridethebike wrote:
| >> And the consequences of being accused of sexism by an online
| mob have now become so extreme that many investors don't want to
| risk it anymore.
|
| I'm glad someone said it and I'm glad that that someone is a
| woman so that there's a chance this message won't immediately get
| drowned in sexism/male privilege accusations.
| hawkice wrote:
| This seems like a classic problem of trust, more than a
| discussion about gender. I can't imagine investing in a company I
| didn't trust enough to be candid with, but I guess that's
| happening, the money in it is probably good.
|
| It's worth saying that people who have no capability to betray
| you in a certain way are easier to do business with. It limits
| downside. I'd prefer to have a reputation for defending my
| friends, but not being credible for a certain attack is an
| interesting advantage. Perhaps vulgar and obnoxious people will
| be easier to work with too. I will look for a way to get mobbed
| that doesn't violate my moral code, might as well break the seal
| on that so I never make anyone nervous.
| Baobei wrote:
| Female founder here. Just wanted to say I'm much more interested
| in advice and feedback from other successful founders than
| investors.
|
| It also seems like investors are more concerned about reputation
| than founders.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Isn't that setting yourself up for a selection bias?
|
| Where as an investor probably has a wider range of experience
| to draw advice from, potentially having seen companies both
| succeed and fail.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| In our middle european country there was the initiative to end
| the discrimination to not employ people based on various markers
| race, skin color, gender, sex, age, education history (maybe
| switiching industries in your fourties) ...
|
| If the potential employer rejected your job application with a
| reason you could fight him in court for discrimination and get
| compensation even if the employer.
|
| Great intention, but it backfired ... after some companies got
| sued for legitimate and illegitimate reasons NOBODY answers with
| a reason why your application was not considered. They maybe hint
| what was wrong or not ideal.
| tlogan wrote:
| Sadly, the current direction in the industry is: "let's cover our
| ass". Which eventually ends up with: less mentoring for women,
| less promotion, etc.
|
| The problem is that our system and society will not reward
| companies which do right things (hire, promote, etc.) but it will
| punish companies for slight irregularities.
| a3n wrote:
| That's been the way forever, the players just change over time.
| It used to mean prison torture and death to criticize the
| church. So people didn't. Now they do.
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