The Human Rights of Women Entrepreneurs by Reid Hoffman | Hacker News Reader

The Human Rights of Women Entrepreneurs by Reid Hoffman

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31 pointsdankohn136 comments

This is what I wrote earlier in reaction to this piece, then decided to not post for REASONS, but given how this is going, I am going to throw it out there now:

Oh, give me a break.

This piece posits that we need to punish male VCs who sexually harass female applicants.

First of all, this approach (of doing things like basically boycotting them) is so ridiculous and impractical that it amounts to saying "I want you to think I am a highly ethical person, but I don't actually want to do anything about the problem. I just want to say things that sound good so I will look good."

Second, it gives zero remedy to the women who were seeking funds from VCs.

A much, much better answer would be to find a solution that involves getting money into the hands of the female entrepreneurs who not only had to put up with this shit, but also (in most cases) did NOT get funding from these men who see them as nothing but sex objects.

Failing to find a means to get more funding into the hands of female entrepreneurs also de facto reinforces the current status quo. Advocating some kind of punishment for the men who assaulted them while doing nothing to remedy the material harm done to their career aspirations makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I don't really care if any men get hung high here. What I really care about is how in the hell do women get more opportunities? And everyone is so focused on being angry and outraged and also outraged at the presumed lack of outrage that no one can be bothered to do anything about this critical piece of the puzzle. Yet, it is the single most important thing here and it is the one thing I never see anyone talk about at all.

Why is no one starting a fund to get monies into the hands of female entrepreneurs in the face of this problem? I am not seeing that piece happen.

Am I wrong? If I am wrong, please link me to the fund that someone has started to get money into the hands of women in the face of this.

Maybe I am biased because I am not in SV and my company funds itself, but you don't have a right to anyone's money / funding. That is an extremely entitled sentiment.

People aren't starting a fund to fund women entrepreneurs because it is simply a less effective way to make money than funding whoever you feel will be the most profitable regardless of gender or any other such consideration. When I decide what to do with my money, I do whatever I think will be the most profitable, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is not my responsibility to pay to fix the bad things other people do. And you probably do the same with your money.

Edit: I don't want people to misunderstand me, I do believe you have a right to other people's money in the sense that I agree with the government taxing us and helping those in need (like healthcare and education for everyone, etc). But I don't believe you have a right to someone throwing a ton of money at your startup. It just sounds ridiculously entitled.

I'm just going to leave this here and then step away from the insanity here on HN:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-crux-of-...

I'm nowhere as involved as you are in HN, but I can't help but notice your obsession with karma and leaderboards. What gives?

I don't think anybody owes you a job or any other sort of quid pro quo for that comment you made "in tptacek's defense" 6.5 years ago, and it's not because you're a woman.

You "backed" someone who has a large amount of karma on HN and you expected this to result in some significant positive effect on your life? And you think if you were male, this would have been the case? You also feel people on HN are partly responsible for your financial problems? O_O

I am sorry that you are homeless, I think nobody deserves that and that the government should fix this problem but I think you have an unrealistic view of how the world works and an unhealthy relationship with this web site.

Your comment here is at least as harmful as edw's "man up and face your problems" comment to aaronsw. You need to restrain yourself in this situation.

Don't kill yourself. Hopelessness is not a permanent feeling. You may not be able to imagine it now, but you will feel better.

What mental health resources are you able to access where you are? There are people who can and will help you -- it's just a question of finding them and getting to them.

I don't need mental health resources. I need money. The TLDR is that my ex husband did not get my alimony to me yesterday like he said he would and he is not answering my emails either.

If people are concerned about me, rather than suggesting I am merely crazy, it would be much more helpful if they did one of the following:

1. White listed my sites on ad blocker and/or promoted my writing on social media.

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/my-sites.html

2. Left a tip or gifted me some money to get through this crisis.

3. Became a patron.

https://www.patreon.com/MicheleinCalifornia

4. Hired me to do resume work.

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/resumes.html

PSA: Every time someone either commits suicide or talks about suicide, the big feels brigade who claim to care come out in spades and it makes me crazy. If you actually care about people and want to prevent suicide, then focus on helping people solve their actual personal problems instead of acting like feeling suicidal is merely a form of insanity.

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/01/preventing-c...

You have read a lot into my comment that wasn't there. I don't think you're crazy, and not every person who needs mental health care is insane. Everyone needs it during difficult times that feel hopeless.

I can't help save you or help you from suicide. No one can because it's your decision. I was just imploring you to use the resources available to help yourself.

> "I don't really care if any men get hung high here."

What kind of place are the moderators of HN running here where this kind of comment is allowed? It's absolutely ridiculous the double standards going on here.

I think you are reading that to mean the exact opposite of what I intended. The entire point of all my comments here is that going on a witch hunt with the intent to hang men high (as suggested by the article we are discussing) is not productive. It is counterproductive.

"I don't often write immediate reactions to recent news."

This is a peculiar statement to start with. Was this "news" because it only now came to his attention via this particular article. Was the head of the largest social network dedicated to the "world's professionals to make them more productive and successful" ignorant to the reality that half of them were facing in HIS industry for so long or was it simply not an issue to him until it was reported (for the umpteenth time) in this news article?

While I'm glad he's at least now publicly acknowledging the problem, I think it'd be great for the men who want to solve this problem for women to be a bit more humble, sit down, and listen to how women would like their human rights acknowledged and respected.

Takes me to a LinkedIn sign-in page.

"I guess I'll never know."

> YES, MANY OF US DO CARE

But this story will still be flagged off the HN front page in 5, 4, 3...

The amount that we care is greater than it appears.

EDIT: Called it.

Human -> all sexes. Women -> one sex. If you're going to talk about Human Rights then by definition you can't be talking about a single gender.

So... a bunch of school girls in Africa being kidnapped and raped and forced into marriages can't be considered a violation of their human rights because those responsible didn't do the same to little school boys, too?

No, obviously not. All cows are animals not all animals are cows kind of difference.

Really, is it that hard? There are no specific Human Rights of Women Entrepreneurs, there are only Human rights of all Humans including Women Entrepreneurs.

That women entrepreneurs have human rights need not be stated because they are humans too.

Which by the way the article uses as a hook but then totally fails to expand on.

Focus doesn't mean exclusion. (borrowed)

Neither does it mean extrapolation beyond intended use.

If we're going to try to re-frame the whole tech issue with being hostile to women as a human rights issue then we have bigger problems. It's assholes being assholes, they're not going to be impressed by any appeal to higher morality such as the human rights. Besides that plenty of corporations make large amounts of money because they trample those very human rights. If you want to go down that road then what we are looking at right now is a 'first world problem' and can be safely ignored until we've brought the rest of the world up to the level where they can complain about how the women in their tech sector are being dealt with.

The way I see it is simple: shine as much light as possible on those that are actually committing these acts so that it can be made perfectly clear that such behavior is absolutely unacceptable.

No violation of human rights needs to be implied, this is simply a case of inter-human error and frankly a lack of education.

If you're a guy in tech treat women (and in general others) the way you'd want your mom or dad or brother or sister to be treated. That single rule should make things a lot better.

"... then we have bigger problems."

Yes, I think this is precisely the point of this issue...that the problem IS bigger than just some outlier assholes and extends to a systemic bias/-ism towards women in tech and probably many (most?) other industries. Which, if true, necessitates that we frame the problem as an attack on the human rights of 1/2 the population.

If you read Reid's posting, once he gets out of the intro he suggests gender-neutral rules. And the intro is about the actual recent news. And the title appears to be a reference to a famous speech on human rights from 1995.

Unacceptable workplace behavior is as old as time, tech is no exception though it is in some sense worse than others but I've seen the exact same thing in finance, automotive, industry and entertainment.

The fact that a couple of visible-in-tech people have their 'seen the light' moment is great but they only have that because a few women have been brave enough to stand up and make it stick.

But if you want something to change for the better in the longer term and not just a couple of somewhat visible males to score easy points by taking this up because it happens to be the story of the day then it simply starts with each of us, men and women alike to not accept this kind of bull-shit in any circumstance and in any sector.

Because what you see in tech is an outgrowth of something that is strongly present in our societies as a whole and ignoring that fact. The title seems to single out women entrepreneurs as if that's somehow the class that has the biggest problem but it really isn't that simple, in fact those women that have made it to the level of independent business owner are generally going to be very well placed to push back compared to those women who are in regular employment.

Sexism is a societal problem, not a tech problem and as long as we're trying to frame this as a tech problem affecting a few women entrepreneurs we are very much missing the bigger picture with possibly disastrous consequences.

My point was that you were misrepresenting what Reid Hoffman said. Is this an answer to my point? I guess your 4th and 5th paragraphs finally get there, but I don't read Reid's statement as saying what you think it does.

Why don't you directly discuss the issues instead of trying to complain about your reading of Reid Hoffman's words supposedly framing the problem incorrectly?

> Sexism is a societal problem, not a tech problem

While I agree that it's a societal problem, I think such issues primarily manifest in pockets of monoculture and insularity. Tech teams often have wildly skewed gender disparity ratios, making them particularly susceptible.

Your critique of Hoffman seems like a tactical disagreement rather than a strategic one. Hoffman is standing up to be counted -- just as you have, repeatedly. I wish both of you would get cut a little more slack. At least neither of you is minimizing the problem.

But that's exactly my problem with him: he is minimizing the problem. The title speaks of 'women entrepreneurs', rather than women in society in general, which is where the problems are felt, at all layers of society and across all races as far as I'm aware. By minimizing the problem to reduce it to an absurdly small portion of all women who are experiencing a continuous stream of trouble is exactly why we will not solve this like this.

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