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"Male founders have to run this emasculating gauntlet too, except that they can’t blame gender discrimination for how dirty they feel at the end of the day." T

"Male founders have to run this emasculating gauntlet too, except that they can’t blame gender discrimination for how dirty they feel at the end of the day." This is something I think about a lot. I am white & I am male, so my race and gender are naturally things that I don't think of very often (and I understand that constitutes a level of privilege). An exercise that I like to do sometimes is just imagine the situation I'm experiencing as if I was female, or as if I was black. If I'm in a meeting and everyone ignores what I'm saying, as a white male, there is no voice in the back of my head saying "it's because I'm female." If I don't get a job, or the interviewer was condescending, there is no voice in my head saying "it's because I'm black." So I entertain these ideas every once in a while, and it's actually amazing how many misfortunes I can quickly associate to being black or being female, that had I actually been black or female I would have ABSOLUTELY attributed to those features. What makes this interesting is that my point isn't to say that a female or person of color won't actually have a different experience, and face real instances of racism and sexism...because they absolutely will. The thing that I DO find interesting is that they basically have no "control" experience by which to measure their victimhood. Once you've taken on the role of a victim, any number of injustices that are just part of human nature can be attributed to whatever you perceive as the source. The end result is a major overestimation of remaining institutional injustices, in my opinion, and the constant reinforcement of this victimhood status is largely responsible for continuing to plant this voice in the head of individuals that is constantly asking "am I being treated this way because I'm ________." The inverse is obviously true in that a white male is very likely to underestimate the injustices encountered by a black person or a female, but I find this to be much less interesting. The reason being that no person is very aware of the injustices we DON'T face, we are acutely aware of the injustices that we DO face. If a black man experiences a 15% increase in injustices vs a white man, the white man is likely underestimate the impact of those of the black man. The black man, however, can rightfully attribute those extra 15% to the fact that he his black, but there is no clear differentiator between those that were truly racial in nature vs those that would have been encountered regardless of race.

jblow 9y ago
Many times I have read internet complaints about how sexist and horrible some conference is, and thought, "wait a minute, I have had this exact experience several times -- and I am a white male."
- gozur88 9y ago
  White men are expected to shrug off shitty behavior on the part of other people, so they do. IMO that makes life a lot less stressful.
  - watwut 9y ago
    Men don't shrug off bad behaviour. They quickly put down those who insulted them and it is accepted as normal.
    - gozur88 9y ago
      Yeah... no. That's just the apex fallacy. Your boss puts you down. Normal guys just shrug it off and think "what an asshole".
  - sgift 9y ago
    > IMO that makes life a lot less stressful. IME shrugging of shitty behavior makes life seem less stressful for a while, but the hidden stress of holding everyone on arms length so they cannot hurt you takes its toll. Sometimes you break down, sometimes you just get cynical and start seeing everyone as an asshole.
  - jblow 9y ago
    It's not even usually "shitty behavior", it's just social interactions that are imperfect for one reason or another. Concrete example: I see a lot of complaints from women about being talked over in conversations at conferences. I used to get talked over a lot too. It seems frequent that there are one or two people in a conversation who will talk over anyone with a less-pushing conversation style. I think most of these people are not doing it on purpose, they just really want to say things and don't properly gauge the social balance of the conversation. Also there are other weird human tendencies happening -- for example, someone habitually wanting to display how smart they are -- which, while being mildly negative, are not negative in a way that involves hostility to others.
burkaman 9y ago
> Once you've taken on the role of a victim, any number of injustices that are just part of human nature can be attributed to whatever you perceive as the source. Why do you think this is happening? When a woman is ignored in a meeting, she doesn't think "it's because I'm a woman". She thinks "every single day people make jokes about me sleeping my way to the top, they try to hit on me while I'm doing my job, they criticize my outfit even though they've worn the same suit every day for five years straight, they refuse to meet with me alone, why would this meeting be any different?" Next time something bad happens to you, don't just imagine being female or black in that moment. Imagine if you've been female or black for your whole life, and have direct daily evidence of people not respecting you.
- daenz 9y ago
  Except people can be generally shitty to you for most of your life regardless of your race or gender or any other label, so one more experience of a person being shitty isn't evidence of any of those things. It's what the parent post meant about "control experiences." There's no accurate baseline to judge true prejudice vs general terribleness, because it's all being viewed through the lens of oppression. From people who play the race or gender card, I cannot recall ever reading about them ever blaming any experience on people just being baseline terrible, even though "privileged" people experience that baseline terribleness every day, but have nothing politically correct to blame it on (speaking for myself, nor would I want to blame it on anything besides human nature).
  - burkaman 9y ago
    > I cannot recall ever reading about them ever blaming any experience on people just being baseline terrible I mean, that's not really newsworthy. "I experience a lot of racism, but today someone was a dick to me for a racially neutral reason." It's hard to imagine someone being motivated to write this story, since it's such an obvious fact of life. I hope you don't think that people who talk about racism believe that every negative event in their life was solely caused by racism. Have you discussed this stuff with any women or non-white people? I find it's a lot easier to understand when you're having a friendly conversation rather than reading an angry blog post.
marcus_holmes 9y ago
I'm a white male too, and have thought about this too. So I asked some women what their experience was, explaining that I was truly interested in understanding, and listened to them. It's different. Soooo different. You and I might get ignored, or disrespected, or treated badly, this is true, and part of normal human behaviour as you say. And if this constituted 85% of the picture, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I was going to list a bunch of treatments that we don't get because we're white males. But I decided not to. Go find out for yourself. Ask some female friends who you respect about their experiences. Make sure to make it clear to them that you're trying to understand, because most women will actually minimise their grievances so that they're not seen as whinging or complaining. Remember, we don't have a "control" either. We don't get to experience our reality and then another person's reality. It's easy to dismiss. But in order to fix it, the first step is to understand it. And the only way we're going to do that is by listening, really listening, to the other's perspective and experiences. Good luck :) It's eye-opening, it really is.
analyst74 9y ago
I agree with everything you say, but sadly the disadvantaged person have a tough decision to make: A, ignore the injustices, this allows the person to function better without the victimhood mentality, and generally blend in with the mainstream better. B, recognize the injustices and try to raise awareness and fight against them, it's easy to fall into victim mentality because of reason you mentioned, and also counter-productive for the purpose of blending into the mainstream. So generally speaking, option a is easier, with a caveat, that if everyone chooses the easy route, then who will fight against those injustices?
- mikekchar 9y ago
  White male here who has been a visible minority in an office before. The decision is not so tough. Try to influence people where you think you will be successful. Try not to put yourself in harms way when you think you will not be successful. In my experience, people are often jerks. They will harass you, abuse you, mistreat you, and bully you for a variety of different reasons. Being a visible minority is one of those reasons, but it is far from being the most common one. I've suffered much more from the usual office politics in companies where I'm not a visible minority, than from discrimination in companies where I am. Standing up to a bully is fantastic if you win. It's not fantastic if you are pounded into the ground with no hope of success. Sometimes it's hard to be patient and wait until the best time to act, but it is important. Anyway, anyone who has ever experienced abuse that they could not escape from should be able to relate, even if the circumstances are different.
ncallaway 9y ago
> The inverse is obviously true in that a white male is very likely to underestimate the injustices encountered by a black person or a female, but I find this to be much less interesting I'm not sure I followed you reasoning for why this situation was less interesting. I follow that people will tend to be blind of injustices they do not face, and will be aware of injustices that they _do_ face. I don't see the connection to why that makes the lack of perspective of the experience of others' less interesting. I personally find the opposite. The more I learn how significantly different people's experiences are the _more_ interesting I find hearing these other perspectives.
watwut 9y ago
Was you ignored once in a while or systematically no matter how you change the way you communicate with group? That makes difference. I was in situation when I was treated differently and in situations when I was treated equally. It is night and day difference. If I am treated equally and they are dicks, they are dicks against new dudes around too. That is how I tell them apart - there are enough groups who treat me equally to see difference agains those who do not. The other difference is that I was flat out told that women can't code or "guys are too good in it" and it was not meant as a joke - in one case it was meant to inspire me to change major. I know it is not just in my head.
d--b 9y ago
Someone should make some kind of VR experience where you can slip in the skin of someone who's of different color / gender.

jblow 9y ago

Many times I have read internet complaints about how sexist and horrible some conference is, and thought, "wait a minute, I have had this exact experience several times -- and I am a white male."

gozur88 9y ago
White men are expected to shrug off shitty behavior on the part of other people, so they do. IMO that makes life a lot less stressful.
- watwut 9y ago
  Men don't shrug off bad behaviour. They quickly put down those who insulted them and it is accepted as normal.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    Yeah... no. That's just the apex fallacy. Your boss puts you down. Normal guys just shrug it off and think "what an asshole".
- sgift 9y ago
  > IMO that makes life a lot less stressful. IME shrugging of shitty behavior makes life seem less stressful for a while, but the hidden stress of holding everyone on arms length so they cannot hurt you takes its toll. Sometimes you break down, sometimes you just get cynical and start seeing everyone as an asshole.
- jblow 9y ago
  It's not even usually "shitty behavior", it's just social interactions that are imperfect for one reason or another. Concrete example: I see a lot of complaints from women about being talked over in conversations at conferences. I used to get talked over a lot too. It seems frequent that there are one or two people in a conversation who will talk over anyone with a less-pushing conversation style. I think most of these people are not doing it on purpose, they just really want to say things and don't properly gauge the social balance of the conversation. Also there are other weird human tendencies happening -- for example, someone habitually wanting to display how smart they are -- which, while being mildly negative, are not negative in a way that involves hostility to others.

burkaman 9y ago

> Once you've taken on the role of a victim, any number of injustices that are just part of human nature can be attributed to whatever you perceive as the source. Why do you think this is happening? When a woman is ignored in a meeting, she doesn't think "it's because I'm a woman". She thinks "every single day people make jokes about me sleeping my way to the top, they try to hit on me while I'm doing my job, they criticize my outfit even though they've worn the same suit every day for five years straight, they refuse to meet with me alone, why would this meeting be any different?" Next time something bad happens to you, don't just imagine being female or black in that moment. Imagine if you've been female or black for your whole life, and have direct daily evidence of people not respecting you.

daenz 9y ago
Except people can be generally shitty to you for most of your life regardless of your race or gender or any other label, so one more experience of a person being shitty isn't evidence of any of those things. It's what the parent post meant about "control experiences." There's no accurate baseline to judge true prejudice vs general terribleness, because it's all being viewed through the lens of oppression. From people who play the race or gender card, I cannot recall ever reading about them ever blaming any experience on people just being baseline terrible, even though "privileged" people experience that baseline terribleness every day, but have nothing politically correct to blame it on (speaking for myself, nor would I want to blame it on anything besides human nature).
- burkaman 9y ago
  > I cannot recall ever reading about them ever blaming any experience on people just being baseline terrible I mean, that's not really newsworthy. "I experience a lot of racism, but today someone was a dick to me for a racially neutral reason." It's hard to imagine someone being motivated to write this story, since it's such an obvious fact of life. I hope you don't think that people who talk about racism believe that every negative event in their life was solely caused by racism. Have you discussed this stuff with any women or non-white people? I find it's a lot easier to understand when you're having a friendly conversation rather than reading an angry blog post.

marcus_holmes 9y ago

I'm a white male too, and have thought about this too. So I asked some women what their experience was, explaining that I was truly interested in understanding, and listened to them. It's different. Soooo different. You and I might get ignored, or disrespected, or treated badly, this is true, and part of normal human behaviour as you say. And if this constituted 85% of the picture, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I was going to list a bunch of treatments that we don't get because we're white males. But I decided not to. Go find out for yourself. Ask some female friends who you respect about their experiences. Make sure to make it clear to them that you're trying to understand, because most women will actually minimise their grievances so that they're not seen as whinging or complaining. Remember, we don't have a "control" either. We don't get to experience our reality and then another person's reality. It's easy to dismiss. But in order to fix it, the first step is to understand it. And the only way we're going to do that is by listening, really listening, to the other's perspective and experiences. Good luck :) It's eye-opening, it really is.

analyst74 9y ago

I agree with everything you say, but sadly the disadvantaged person have a tough decision to make: A, ignore the injustices, this allows the person to function better without the victimhood mentality, and generally blend in with the mainstream better. B, recognize the injustices and try to raise awareness and fight against them, it's easy to fall into victim mentality because of reason you mentioned, and also counter-productive for the purpose of blending into the mainstream. So generally speaking, option a is easier, with a caveat, that if everyone chooses the easy route, then who will fight against those injustices?

mikekchar 9y ago
White male here who has been a visible minority in an office before. The decision is not so tough. Try to influence people where you think you will be successful. Try not to put yourself in harms way when you think you will not be successful. In my experience, people are often jerks. They will harass you, abuse you, mistreat you, and bully you for a variety of different reasons. Being a visible minority is one of those reasons, but it is far from being the most common one. I've suffered much more from the usual office politics in companies where I'm not a visible minority, than from discrimination in companies where I am. Standing up to a bully is fantastic if you win. It's not fantastic if you are pounded into the ground with no hope of success. Sometimes it's hard to be patient and wait until the best time to act, but it is important. Anyway, anyone who has ever experienced abuse that they could not escape from should be able to relate, even if the circumstances are different.

ncallaway 9y ago

> The inverse is obviously true in that a white male is very likely to underestimate the injustices encountered by a black person or a female, but I find this to be much less interesting I'm not sure I followed you reasoning for why this situation was less interesting. I follow that people will tend to be blind of injustices they do not face, and will be aware of injustices that they _do_ face. I don't see the connection to why that makes the lack of perspective of the experience of others' less interesting. I personally find the opposite. The more I learn how significantly different people's experiences are the _more_ interesting I find hearing these other perspectives.

watwut 9y ago

Was you ignored once in a while or systematically no matter how you change the way you communicate with group? That makes difference. I was in situation when I was treated differently and in situations when I was treated equally. It is night and day difference. If I am treated equally and they are dicks, they are dicks against new dudes around too. That is how I tell them apart - there are enough groups who treat me equally to see difference agains those who do not. The other difference is that I was flat out told that women can't code or "guys are too good in it" and it was not meant as a joke - in one case it was meant to inspire me to change major. I know it is not just in my head.

d--b 9y ago

Someone should make some kind of VR experience where you can slip in the skin of someone who's of different color / gender.