9 ms·

Genuine question, if you were a man in that situation, what would you do?

by dageshi 6y ago

DoreenMichele 6y ago
In what situation?
- dageshi 6y ago
  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.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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.
        DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I've been contemplating your remark and how or if to reply. 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? This is a really thorny issue -- that there are people who have been so hurt that they see no path forward. Trying to reach them is really difficult and complicated and puts you at risk of being burned, which tends to leave them painted into a corner that they can't find their way out of. I'm glad you know other women that are more reasonable and do not feel like giving up over this one incident. 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. To be fair to her, it gets really hard to not attribute certain patterns to your gender. It gets really hard to try to make that nuanced distinction that "Not everything is about sexism." and this also ends up being a thorny issue because trying to tell someone who is in that head space that they are wrong gets experienced by them as just another means to undermine them and gaslight them. I think the best strategy is to try to avoid talking to women about their "personal" stuff. Try to not make it into a "personal" relationship when it really isn't. I lived a really private life for a lot of years because I was a homemaker for roughly two decades and what I eventually came up with was this idea that women generally get treated like "private" individuals and men generally get treated like "public" people and the way men and women get socialized reinforces that pattern. So men frequently have "personal" conversations with women in public settings that they wouldn't have with a man or in a way that they wouldn't have with a man and it happens so often that women don't realize "This is not normal and it is not good for your work life." It's normal for them in their lives and they don't see that this is a problem. Men focus on the importance of networking and women tend to be better at the social thing and at making personal connections and that tends to be one of their strengths. It is one of mine and I have been baffled and frustrated that it doesn't turn into professional connections. People talk to me and they want to see me as their new best friend for life or their one true love or something like that and it ends up being enormously frustrating for me because they generally don't have as much to give back to me as I have to give to them in that regard and what I most need is more income and that's never something they want to help with. People don't want to pay money to their friends for their friendship. Men don't want to pay money to their girlfriend for being their girlfriend. And people also don't want to open doors for me professionally once it veers into that "personal relationship" space. And it's not simply because they are being selfish jerks or something. If a man is sleeping with a woman or hopes to, it can be hard to vouch for her. It can be hard to overcome the public perception that "You're just saying that because you are sleeping with her and I can't actually trust what you say about this woman." I spent a lot of years being a walking, talking train wreck waiting to happen. I tend to "turn heads" so to speak. I tend to be attention grabbing, but all that attention was directed at me as an individual and I didn't know how to get it onto my work and translate that into traffic for my websites and income. So what I will say is if you are male, try to focus on her work and try to avoid getting into her personal shit. Women being overly personal in work settings is part of what holds women back. Not everyone is your Fwend at work and women can be slow to get that memo. That was one of my biggest stumbling blocks because I was a homemaker for a lot of years and the people I had relationships with were basically all friends and family. For years and years, I didn't have a boss or any coworkers, etc. And it's really hard to do this because it seems like just telling her "You need to stop doing X" would help her but it won't because that is just you getting into her personal business and that de facto reinforces this pattern where women relate to other people in an overly personal fashion and people relate to women in an overly personal fashion. If it isn't your sister, mother, wife, etc, don't get into that with them and don't talk about it as her problem. Talk about it as "not my problem." "Oh, well, sorry, I barely know you. This is outside the scope of our relationship. I'm going to go have a coffee now. Catch you later." With enough repetition women can get the memo. If you want to help her career, give her work some positive attention. Tell other people she does good work. Tell her she does good work. Tell her you would like to help her connect with people who would appreciate her work. Make sure the focus is her work and not her as an individual. Keep saying it until it slowly sinks in. Rinse and repeat on the "I'm going to go have a coffee now. This is not my problem." when she tries to turn you into a shoulder to cry on because she has big feels about you giving her work positive attention because no one has done that before and blah blah blah. Men learn that it's not about them. It's about their work. Women frequently seem to not learn that. I was very slow to learn that and my gender and the life I lived for a lot of years as a homemaker and the way other people reacted to me because of all that made it super hard to sort this out because I would talk to people like they were my friend and people who were emotionally starved would eat that up and then not know how to say "Look, that's the problem." and no one knew how to say "So, show me your work. Do you have samples I could see and maybe share with some of my contacts?" People still tend to err on the side of replying to me on HN as if comments I make about gendered issues are just me whining about my personal problems and me being in need of advice and it continues to be a pattern I have to actively work at shutting down. Everyone wants to make that personal connection to me and that always ends up in a pattern of meeting their emotional needs at my expense and continuing to fail to open doors for me professionally. So if you really want women to reach some kind of professional parity with men, stop being so personal with them. Get your own emotional needs met some other way and stop investing in having these personal conversation with women and let them know this is not your thing and you want none of it but don't alienate or shun them. Instead, talk about their work. Help them with their work. Promote their work. I think women relate less to their work than men do and I think this is the crux of why men's careers tend to stronger than women's careers. I worked at Aflac for a few years. The CEO at the time that I was there was, I think, the son of one of the three founders (they were brothers) and he made the risky decision to go with the Aflac duck commercials and it made the company a household name. Aflac had something of value that was underrecognized. If you have something of value that is underrecognized and you add some promotion to it, you can really rake in the dough. But if you don't have much of value, lots of advertising amounts to a con job, basically. So when women try to network, sometimes they are trying to promote themselves when there isn't much to promote. It ends up being just an empty social activity and not a career maker because they haven't really done the work and they aren't really promoting the work. So those are my rambling thoughts at 1am my time, for what it's worth.
    - ldiracdelta 6y ago
      I think the pattern that has recently been abandoned is trial by jury instead of rule by emotional, angry, partially-informed mob. If you see people in your sphere of influence jumping into a 15-minutes-of-hate session, call them to the mat.
      - theamk 6y ago
        And then there is a chance that their next 15-minutes-of-hate session will be pointing towards you. Safer to stay away.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    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.
    - themolecularman 6y ago
      > Easy choice. I stay silent. Agreed same here. Unfortunately I think the reality will be that male founders may get even more funding than before, which will then lead to a potentially wider gap. And then the cycle will continue, a misread of the situation as sexism or more accusations of sexism than before will lead to more people staying with the easy choice of being silent. I'm reminded of that quote, "better to be silent and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove any doubt people have." The same thing is true for investors but with idiot replaced by sexist.
    - darkerside 6y ago
      Actually, biggest upside is, you make a change, the business succeeds because of your change, and you not only make huge profits on the business but also continue to cement your reputation as a top tier advisor. But yes, doing it safely requires skill.
    - pm90 6y ago
      Third choice: you invest in creating a better relationship with the female founders so that you’re capable of expressing your concern without appearing sexist. I’m not sure why female founders are being portrayed as a different species? They’re humans. They know about sexism. They know when what they’re seeing is sexism vs critical feedback. And they will understand if you express your concerns with that.
      - threwawasy1228 6y ago
        The path of least resistance requires less work? I don't disagree with your view on this but it seems like the incentives simply aren't aligned to learn how to dodge an ever evolving anti-sexist culture that is interpreted as having different communication rules by different people. If it was as easy as like "don't misgender people" or something sure, fine everyone can learn the rules of the protocol in under 15 minutes. There is no reason why anyone can't do that. The rules for interacting aren't this simple though, and they are often differently interpreted by different people. Learning how to communicate in a way that makes every person feel comfortable often just isn't worth the time investment. If we want people to take this other option it has to have significant and demonstrable positive incentives that make people want to invest the time.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    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.
    - sidlls 6y ago
      The Dutch aren't any more analytical or rational than any other nation or nationality.
      - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
        Of course there is a cultural difference between how much numbers speak in different cultures. What you want the world to be isn't what the world is, and in this case it's true, as by law in the Netherlands, various promotional and termination choices are required to be justified by numbers, which is not the case in Anglo-Saxon countries, where employers are more so at liberty to subjectively assess whom they wish to promote, and whom not.
        sidlls 6y ago
        Yes, and I'm sure the Dutch robotically compute such numbers, and there is rarely or never any subjectivity in their decision making that is justified ex post facto by clever accounting.
awb 6y ago
You give the honest feedback. We won’t progress as a society by being afraid.
- oblio 6y ago
  What's good for society might not be good for the individual.
  - awb 6y ago
    True, but a broken society isn’t good for the individual either.
    - dkarras 6y ago
      But a broken society might maybe affect you somewhat vaguely in decades, but putting your neck out now can demolish your career today.
      - awb 6y ago
        Yes, it’s a question we all need to ask ourselves. If you have kids though or plan to live more than a decade or more, the choice is hopefully one of bending towards the greater good for society rather than the individual.
        refenestrator 6y ago
        I have kids. Providing for them is number one, becoming a meaningless casualty of culture wars doesn't help their future at all.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Also, in the spirit of guilt by association, kids may become collateral damage too.
        awb 6y ago
quicklime 6y ago
For that particular situation, I'd stay silent. I agree there's a risk, and that this is a problem. Longer term though, I'd make sure we hire female investors into my VC fund. I'd take them along the journey of investing with this startup, and if I felt a female CEO needed to be replaced with a man, I'd discuss this with my investment partners. Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.
- protomyth 6y ago
  Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism. Nope, a hostile founder/CEO will pick the men out of the panel and sick the mob on them. The women on the panel are either oppressed or anti-feminism. The mob doesn't care and won't hear the whole story.
  - viro 6y ago
    > The women on the panel are either oppressed or anti-feminism. "internalized misogyny" is the term you are looking for.
  - quicklime 6y ago
    Yep, that's why I used the word "harder" instead of "impossible". At that point, the situation would be within my threshold of acceptable risk.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
  > a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism That's not how this works. People eager to engage in this kind of ideological battle always have Internalised Misogyny as an argument to fall back on in this situation.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Use another woman as a shield? Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
skc 6y ago
If SV is run on candor as the author believes, then surely the solution is to state empirically why you think the roles should be swapped?

Genuine question, if you were a man in that situation, what would you do?

DoreenMichele 6y ago

In what situation?

dageshi 6y ago
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.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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.
        DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I've been contemplating your remark and how or if to reply. 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? This is a really thorny issue -- that there are people who have been so hurt that they see no path forward. Trying to reach them is really difficult and complicated and puts you at risk of being burned, which tends to leave them painted into a corner that they can't find their way out of. I'm glad you know other women that are more reasonable and do not feel like giving up over this one incident. 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. To be fair to her, it gets really hard to not attribute certain patterns to your gender. It gets really hard to try to make that nuanced distinction that "Not everything is about sexism." and this also ends up being a thorny issue because trying to tell someone who is in that head space that they are wrong gets experienced by them as just another means to undermine them and gaslight them. I think the best strategy is to try to avoid talking to women about their "personal" stuff. Try to not make it into a "personal" relationship when it really isn't. I lived a really private life for a lot of years because I was a homemaker for roughly two decades and what I eventually came up with was this idea that women generally get treated like "private" individuals and men generally get treated like "public" people and the way men and women get socialized reinforces that pattern. So men frequently have "personal" conversations with women in public settings that they wouldn't have with a man or in a way that they wouldn't have with a man and it happens so often that women don't realize "This is not normal and it is not good for your work life." It's normal for them in their lives and they don't see that this is a problem. Men focus on the importance of networking and women tend to be better at the social thing and at making personal connections and that tends to be one of their strengths. It is one of mine and I have been baffled and frustrated that it doesn't turn into professional connections. People talk to me and they want to see me as their new best friend for life or their one true love or something like that and it ends up being enormously frustrating for me because they generally don't have as much to give back to me as I have to give to them in that regard and what I most need is more income and that's never something they want to help with. People don't want to pay money to their friends for their friendship. Men don't want to pay money to their girlfriend for being their girlfriend. And people also don't want to open doors for me professionally once it veers into that "personal relationship" space. And it's not simply because they are being selfish jerks or something. If a man is sleeping with a woman or hopes to, it can be hard to vouch for her. It can be hard to overcome the public perception that "You're just saying that because you are sleeping with her and I can't actually trust what you say about this woman." I spent a lot of years being a walking, talking train wreck waiting to happen. I tend to "turn heads" so to speak. I tend to be attention grabbing, but all that attention was directed at me as an individual and I didn't know how to get it onto my work and translate that into traffic for my websites and income. So what I will say is if you are male, try to focus on her work and try to avoid getting into her personal shit. Women being overly personal in work settings is part of what holds women back. Not everyone is your Fwend at work and women can be slow to get that memo. That was one of my biggest stumbling blocks because I was a homemaker for a lot of years and the people I had relationships with were basically all friends and family. For years and years, I didn't have a boss or any coworkers, etc. And it's really hard to do this because it seems like just telling her "You need to stop doing X" would help her but it won't because that is just you getting into her personal business and that de facto reinforces this pattern where women relate to other people in an overly personal fashion and people relate to women in an overly personal fashion. If it isn't your sister, mother, wife, etc, don't get into that with them and don't talk about it as her problem. Talk about it as "not my problem." "Oh, well, sorry, I barely know you. This is outside the scope of our relationship. I'm going to go have a coffee now. Catch you later." With enough repetition women can get the memo. If you want to help her career, give her work some positive attention. Tell other people she does good work. Tell her she does good work. Tell her you would like to help her connect with people who would appreciate her work. Make sure the focus is her work and not her as an individual. Keep saying it until it slowly sinks in. Rinse and repeat on the "I'm going to go have a coffee now. This is not my problem." when she tries to turn you into a shoulder to cry on because she has big feels about you giving her work positive attention because no one has done that before and blah blah blah. Men learn that it's not about them. It's about their work. Women frequently seem to not learn that. I was very slow to learn that and my gender and the life I lived for a lot of years as a homemaker and the way other people reacted to me because of all that made it super hard to sort this out because I would talk to people like they were my friend and people who were emotionally starved would eat that up and then not know how to say "Look, that's the problem." and no one knew how to say "So, show me your work. Do you have samples I could see and maybe share with some of my contacts?" People still tend to err on the side of replying to me on HN as if comments I make about gendered issues are just me whining about my personal problems and me being in need of advice and it continues to be a pattern I have to actively work at shutting down. Everyone wants to make that personal connection to me and that always ends up in a pattern of meeting their emotional needs at my expense and continuing to fail to open doors for me professionally. So if you really want women to reach some kind of professional parity with men, stop being so personal with them. Get your own emotional needs met some other way and stop investing in having these personal conversation with women and let them know this is not your thing and you want none of it but don't alienate or shun them. Instead, talk about their work. Help them with their work. Promote their work. I think women relate less to their work than men do and I think this is the crux of why men's careers tend to stronger than women's careers. I worked at Aflac for a few years. The CEO at the time that I was there was, I think, the son of one of the three founders (they were brothers) and he made the risky decision to go with the Aflac duck commercials and it made the company a household name. Aflac had something of value that was underrecognized. If you have something of value that is underrecognized and you add some promotion to it, you can really rake in the dough. But if you don't have much of value, lots of advertising amounts to a con job, basically. So when women try to network, sometimes they are trying to promote themselves when there isn't much to promote. It ends up being just an empty social activity and not a career maker because they haven't really done the work and they aren't really promoting the work. So those are my rambling thoughts at 1am my time, for what it's worth.
  - ldiracdelta 6y ago
    I think the pattern that has recently been abandoned is trial by jury instead of rule by emotional, angry, partially-informed mob. If you see people in your sphere of influence jumping into a 15-minutes-of-hate session, call them to the mat.
    - theamk 6y ago
      And then there is a chance that their next 15-minutes-of-hate session will be pointing towards you. Safer to stay away.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  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.
  - themolecularman 6y ago
    > Easy choice. I stay silent. Agreed same here. Unfortunately I think the reality will be that male founders may get even more funding than before, which will then lead to a potentially wider gap. And then the cycle will continue, a misread of the situation as sexism or more accusations of sexism than before will lead to more people staying with the easy choice of being silent. I'm reminded of that quote, "better to be silent and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove any doubt people have." The same thing is true for investors but with idiot replaced by sexist.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    Actually, biggest upside is, you make a change, the business succeeds because of your change, and you not only make huge profits on the business but also continue to cement your reputation as a top tier advisor. But yes, doing it safely requires skill.
  - pm90 6y ago
    Third choice: you invest in creating a better relationship with the female founders so that you’re capable of expressing your concern without appearing sexist. I’m not sure why female founders are being portrayed as a different species? They’re humans. They know about sexism. They know when what they’re seeing is sexism vs critical feedback. And they will understand if you express your concerns with that.
    - threwawasy1228 6y ago
      The path of least resistance requires less work? I don't disagree with your view on this but it seems like the incentives simply aren't aligned to learn how to dodge an ever evolving anti-sexist culture that is interpreted as having different communication rules by different people. If it was as easy as like "don't misgender people" or something sure, fine everyone can learn the rules of the protocol in under 15 minutes. There is no reason why anyone can't do that. The rules for interacting aren't this simple though, and they are often differently interpreted by different people. Learning how to communicate in a way that makes every person feel comfortable often just isn't worth the time investment. If we want people to take this other option it has to have significant and demonstrable positive incentives that make people want to invest the time.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  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.
  - sidlls 6y ago
    The Dutch aren't any more analytical or rational than any other nation or nationality.
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      Of course there is a cultural difference between how much numbers speak in different cultures. What you want the world to be isn't what the world is, and in this case it's true, as by law in the Netherlands, various promotional and termination choices are required to be justified by numbers, which is not the case in Anglo-Saxon countries, where employers are more so at liberty to subjectively assess whom they wish to promote, and whom not.
      - sidlls 6y ago
        Yes, and I'm sure the Dutch robotically compute such numbers, and there is rarely or never any subjectivity in their decision making that is justified ex post facto by clever accounting.

awb 6y ago

You give the honest feedback. We won’t progress as a society by being afraid.

oblio 6y ago
What's good for society might not be good for the individual.
- awb 6y ago
  True, but a broken society isn’t good for the individual either.
  - dkarras 6y ago
    But a broken society might maybe affect you somewhat vaguely in decades, but putting your neck out now can demolish your career today.
    - awb 6y ago
      Yes, it’s a question we all need to ask ourselves. If you have kids though or plan to live more than a decade or more, the choice is hopefully one of bending towards the greater good for society rather than the individual.
      - refenestrator 6y ago
        I have kids. Providing for them is number one, becoming a meaningless casualty of culture wars doesn't help their future at all.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Also, in the spirit of guilt by association, kids may become collateral damage too.
        awb 6y ago

quicklime 6y ago

For that particular situation, I'd stay silent. I agree there's a risk, and that this is a problem. Longer term though, I'd make sure we hire female investors into my VC fund. I'd take them along the journey of investing with this startup, and if I felt a female CEO needed to be replaced with a man, I'd discuss this with my investment partners. Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.

protomyth 6y ago
Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism. Nope, a hostile founder/CEO will pick the men out of the panel and sick the mob on them. The women on the panel are either oppressed or anti-feminism. The mob doesn't care and won't hear the whole story.
- viro 6y ago
  > The women on the panel are either oppressed or anti-feminism. "internalized misogyny" is the term you are looking for.
- quicklime 6y ago
  Yep, that's why I used the word "harder" instead of "impossible". At that point, the situation would be within my threshold of acceptable risk.
yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
> a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism That's not how this works. People eager to engage in this kind of ideological battle always have Internalised Misogyny as an argument to fall back on in this situation.
imtringued 6y ago
Use another woman as a shield? Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

skc 6y ago

If SV is run on candor as the author believes, then surely the solution is to state empirically why you think the roles should be swapped?