Noah Kagan and the Faceless Bitch slide

At this point, if anyone ever described me as "edgy", I'd be aghast.

I'm not defending his presentation; that slide offends me too. But I know that he deserves better than to wake up seeing this on the front page of Hacker News.

The author could have used the slide as a jumping off point for greater issues like gender equality in tech, or the pros and cons of being offensive in a presentation, or even a discussion about the word "bitch". Any of those topics would have forwarded the point more than writing a long ad hominem attack on someone who surely didn't intend to hurt or offend anyone personally.

And I get that it was probably meant in a jokey way, but this was simply not the venue for sexist jokes. Consider that there is very little separating "ironic sexism" and "actual sexism."

So imagine a woman on stage, picture of some dude with a blot over his face and 'BASTARD' written on it.

- Sexist? Not sure it would indicate the speaker hates all men per se, just this one.

- But lame, like the speaker couldn't control themselves over their anger at someone and had to bring it on stage for some kind of pathetic vindication? Sure.

I'd advise not doing this not because it's sexist, but because it makes the speaker look like an angry, sad individual.

PS. If the hot sauce was glass, that's obviously even worse. Lesson: stupid drama (like throwing some ex girlfriend on an unrelated talk) invites more stupid drama (like throwing bottles at someone rather than using words as a first resort).

Sometimes, a good cause's worst enemies are from within.

If I even get to make a presentation in such a place, and fill it with Nazi symbols I may be asked to go (or the attendents might leave) but I am not going to be physically attacked for it.

Yet bitch never killed anyone.

(Not defending him, just pointing out the irony)

Noah's a great guy (and a personal friend) who made a joke that didn't go over well.

Was it in poor taste? Possibly.

But let's get some perspective here before judging others and remember that everybody makes mistakes. You probably were lucky enough not to make them in such a public forum, where random people would holler words like "sexist" and "douche" at you from across the internet.

I know nothing about Kagan, except that he sounds like a self-promoter who values name recognition above all else. So whomever wrote this screed was successful at: A - Demonstrating to the world that she is an immature, passive-aggressive type and B - Letting me know who Noah Kagan, a man I have never heard of, is.

Who "won" here?

This behaviour is never appropriate and is completely unjustifiable. It not only embarrasses you and demeans your target(s), but it sends public opinions of our entire industry backwards.

The slide is offensive, because it relates to objectification of women. It's just that. It would be hard to explain it to you, and, actually, the only reason you don't get it is because you don't want to get it, so I won't even bother for your sake. But, like, I don't think things like what you said should be left without an answer, because some innocent might stumble upon them and think no one objects.

It's because of the way women are treated. It's because of the prevalence of violence and rape. It's because a dude probably won't be battered and raped due to him being an ex, but it's something that happens to women all the time. It's something that's hard to grasp for most dudes, including you. It does relate to a form of violence/abuse, and only way you can reject that is by being intentionally obtuse.

Oh, and if he put up his previous boss face with the word "cock" on it, he would stand a serious chance of being fired. He put up his ex's (or just random woman's, still relevant) photo with a word "bitch" on it and he still has a job. And the job lets him speak publicly. What. The. Hell.

In certain company, any reference to the female gender that doesn't fall in close proximity to the words "empowering", "role model" or "inspirational" can be taken to be a slight on the gender and a demonstration of the speaker's disrespect for them.

Note that I haven't shared whether I agree with this or not but.. it's how it is. And depending on how safe you want to play it, you choose your words accordingly :-)

I used to be an idealist, acting as I thought the world should be (everyone equal, etc.) but business has been a lot better since I've acted how it is, which includes avoiding potentially negative references to any physical traits whatsoever. Think.. would the President use this on a slide? Why not?

Don't confuse working by yourself with working for yourself. When you work by yourself, you can do as you please.

When you work for yourself, you have employees, customers, investors, landlords, and many other people with whom you have complex relationships full of consideration for each other's objectives and feelings.

Do not start a business with the goal that since you're the boss, you will be above the consequences of words or actions that hurt people. You are a person. When you deal with other people, it's more than a few bits here, a few dollars there.

We can disagree with whether the word "bitch" is appropriate or not in a presentation at a conference, but I implore you not to think that somehow running a business means that you need never worry about hurting other people with your words or deeds.

This isn't the world of stodgy HR policies and training manuals.

Leona Helmsley once said "We don't train people to be nice, we hire nice people." I bring this up to say that no, I abhor HR policies at least as much as you do, but I suspect for different reasons.

Your words suggest that the problem with HR policies is that there will be a rule that you may not use the word "bitch" in a presentation. My problem with HR policies is that there is a focus on following the rules rather than taking responsibility for making choices. Kinda like the difference between law and morality.

Like you, I prefer to work in an environment where people speak their mind. However, I also prefer to work in an environment where people apply their own filters, where people take responsibility for their words and don't shrug it off as automatically acceptable since there are no rules, no HR people vetting their decks.

To summarize, like you I love the freedom of small startups. But the whole point is to use that freedom in positive ways. Perhaps you and I disagree about whether the word "bitch" is negative or not. But I hope you can appreciate that with freedom comes responsibility, and by ditching the HR department we voluntarily take on the responsibility to make good choices, and we accept accountability for our actions.

This. I speak as an entrepreneur: if you're crossing a moral line and using this as justification, you're using the philosophy in the "wrong" way.

I appreciate your defense of your friend Noah; you have some insights no one else brought to this forum.

But I do think you have one thing backwards. I certainly wasn’t out of my element at MicroConf; Noah may have been. This wasn’t a YCombinator dinner or a Business of Software conference -- not I think his slides would have been appropriate at either of those but I do believe Noah would fit in at those VC-funding-focused venues better than I would. This was MicroConf 2011, a conference for small, bootstrapped startups.

Bootstrapping a startup is something I’ve done and succeeded at in the past. And VC-funding, with a run at an IPO, is something I’ve lived through and don’t expect to try again. However, I did both as a co-founder, not solo, and did it a number of years ago, when the software industry was very a different place. So as I ramp up my new venture, I’m doing a lot of things to educate myself. One of these was attending MicroConf where I found a conference put on by people like me for people like me.

Not “like me” as in gender, “like me” as in what matters when you are starting a business on your own dime and looking for tips on how to make a go of it. Most of us have day jobs or on-going consulting companies and are trying to create product companies on the side. Ages ranged considerably but I’d guess many of the attendees had a lot more business experience than Noah’s normal audience. I now know he puts a lot of energy into helping very young entrepreneurs and college-dorm-room startups. Good for him but that wasn’t who he was talking to at MicroConf.

Other presenters paid attention to the audience and what we were looking for; I'm told one second-day presenter even went back to his room and revised his presentation after he heard the questions that were asked the first day. IMO, a 'brilliant marketer' should always be paying attention both to his target audience and to his effect on them; it sure didn't seem as if, that day, Noah was doing either.

As for the 'small but influential line' -- I write software for nurses, truck drivers, first responders, county extension agents, and the like. People I respect enormously but for whom the industry represented by HN is pretty incomprehensible. That line is for them, not the folks here on HN.

I'd be willing to wager that OP is simply an unhappy, angry person who enjoys playing the victim whenever possible. Nobody called her a bitch. Nobody called all women in tech bitches.

If someone is so sensitive that one slide in a presentation would keep them out of our industry, it's safe to say we're better off without them. I've worked with plenty of women in tech and they're no different to me than my male colleagues.

If this qualifies as your motivation criteria for building a company, you're most likely in it for the wrong reasons. There's a difference between taking "the enormous energy available as the sex drive and convert[ing] it into useful work" and letting your sex drive be a motivator to your success.

The disturbing thing with insults is that even today, they're mostly used in gender-specific ways. Even the ones that don't seem gender-specific, such as "jerk", are rarely applied to women. That's sexism in itself -- when we want to insult a woman, instead of reaching for a word that communicates exactly what we feel, we fall back on the generic "bitch" because her gender seems to have something to do with her transgression. There are so many words to choose from that communicate exactly what's wrong with someone: jerk, liar, pig, dumbass, worm, bastard, loudmouth, traitor. It should feel just as right and satisfying to apply them to a woman as to a man. But in the heat of the moment, your aggression amplifies every negative feeling, including your sexism, and you watch to lash out at that bitch. Better control yourself, though. When you call someone a "bitch", it sounds like you think what they've done was inappropriate for a woman. I.e., maybe it would have been fine if she was a man. Now you've got everyone wondering how you feel about women instead of thinking about what she's done to earn your enmity.

So next time you want to lash out verbally at a woman, choose your words carefully. Is she an idiot? A jerk? A dick? (Hmmm, maybe there's a better word for that.) Let's let "bitch" go the way of "harpy" and "harridan". When you hear those words, you don't really trust them, because they give away the fact that the speaker is holding their target to a sexist standard of femininity. Somehow "bitch" survived as our only remaining insult for women (except "whore", "slut", and all the other words that mean "woman who makes me feel bad by having sex with men who aren't me".) Well, there's "cunt", but that's mostly a Briticism, and it's just as lazy and meaningless as "bitch".

There are so many ways to give your listener a vivid image of your target instead of have them wondering about your misogyny. You could call someone mealy-mouthed, two-faced, greedy, ruthless, petty, malicious, mercenary, or disloyal. (When a woman's sexual behavior disturbs you, try "dishonest": if that doesn't apply, then she probably isn't doing anything wrong.)

Not only will you seem much more composed, serious, and credible than if you resorted to "bitch", not only will you leave your listeners with a more vivid and convincing image of your target, it's also much more efficient, since you'll be using the same store of insults for both men and women. And as hackers we should always be using the most abstract solution.

(Of course, if you really want it to hurt, then sexism never hurts. Or rather, it always hurts. But when you're playing to an audience, malice undermines your credibility.)