What would the male-only version of the Female Founders Conference be? | Hacker News Reader

What would the male-only version of the Female Founders Conference be?

istommydrunk.svbtle.com

22 pointstomasien37 comments

I don't agree with the mirroring proposed by this post. A true mirror would be a Male Founders Conference focused on the problems that male founders specifically face (maybe dating / work-life balance / fatherhood / fitness / ???). Closing the gender gap is the wrong takeaway (I think).

Having nitpicked the author's take on the FFC, I'll throw out my own: it seems like a mistake to make it a female only event (or am I misreading that?). I could see a lot of value (for women) being generated by having high profile (male) VCs and tech advisors attend the conference as well. Right or wrong, the vast majority of advisors and VCs are men at the moment, and educating them on how to help female founders seems just as valuable as educating the founders themselves.

As I understand it, the conference isn't female-only, it's female-prioritizing.

this whole tempest in a teapot reminds me of Morgan Freeman's sage comments on "Black History Month":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh8mUia75k8

To paraphrase:

"I'm going to stop calling you a 'female founder' and I'm going to ask that you stop calling me a 'male founder'. I know you as Jane Doe and you know me as John Smith."

If your goal is to create unity and harmony, it is a funny tactic to focus on and amplify that which separates and differentiates rather than that which is shared and common across any of the perceived 'differences'.

From what I understand, it's not so much about unity as it is preparing women who wish to be founders for the challenges they will meet specifically as a female in the tech industry.

Also, on a long enough timeline, ignoring differences between groups of people may equalize them if participation is high enough, but it can often help things along a lot if more energy is put into the side of the misrepresented. That's not to say this can't be overdone, there's a balance, but equality doesn't come from just sitting around not being sexist/racist/whatever. You often have to convince others that you are deserving of having a place at the table. Source: civil rights movement.

I happen to think women in tech are pretty under-represented, and having a conference that prepares them better for a male-dominated industry (as well as networking with other men and women alike) is a good thing.

I like this part:

This could take many forms, but my suggestion would be helping men, especially men who believe they are in no way sexist, identify some of the biases they have and some of the things they do that make women uncomfortable. We could talk pretty openly, get some of the horrible things we believe off our chest because we’d be explicitly there to identify and combat them,

So there's no possibility men who think they are not sexist actually aren't sexist. They just haven't been properly shown how exactly they are sexist. They haven't been shown how uncomfortable they make the women around them (and this is a topic so deep even a specialized conference can cover only "some" of it). They haven't been exposed to the fact that the things they believe are actually horrible and need to be combated.

I found it icky, like a scientology training manual.

There's some possibility men who believe they're not sexist aren't sexist, it seems unlikely that it's a common thing though. It would take an incredible force of will for anyone to be totally devoid of the influences of patriarchy.

Postulating existence of the "patriarchy", whose grip is unescapable, makes the argument perfectly circular. Of course (nearly) all men are sexist, what do you expect if they are influenced by the patriarchy? And of course patriarchy exists - what else you expect from the sexist men?

It's not a circular argument, it's a circular reality. That's exactly how things actually work - we're raised in patriarchy, so we all carry some of that with us. The goal is to carry less and less over by becoming conscious of it. Then the circle becomes an inward spiral, continuing to perpetuate itself, but getting smaller all the time.

Is it? We're talking about it for four generations at least now, and all men are still irredeemably sexist. When we know that it got small enough so a man has a workable chance of not being sexist? 25 years? 50 years? 100 years? Who would determine that and how?

One word... sexist. It would be called sexist. While I'm totally pro female, exclusivity is still bigotry no matter how you look at it.

From what I understand, the conference is not exclusive. Men can attend as well. It's really about meeting the challenges that female founders will face in the tech industry which, although I'm not a female, I would guess are a lot different than the challenges men face.

Yes but it's ok when the minority does it.

I didn't know women counted as a minority?

Not at all. Why must there be a label associated with everything?

I supposed girls nights out are now sexist as well, or just chilling with the guys and no girls.

How far will it go?

Any time you distinguish a group based on gender by definition it's sexist, plain and simple. Is that bad? Arguably not (then again, some people would say it's an issue).

Once you start to give one group preferential treatment based on their gender, that's sexism. There's a difference between the -ist and the -ism, but it's an important one :)

The old gentle man club of the past was considering sexist and a cause for the glass ceiling. Mechanically, its no difference with girls nights out, but to be a problem, it depend on what such time is used for. Networking and work related discussion?

Jessica and PG if you see this - there are some assumptions I made about you guys and the conference in this piece that I will correct if they're wrong (namely - the timing of the conference is somewhat in response to the Information incident and the goals of the conference). Just let me know. It's not the core point, so I'd love a fact check there.

I think the male equivalent of the Female Founders Conference would be a Male Elementary School Teachers Conference -- or possibly a Male Daycare Workers Conference.

Except in most fields where women dominate demographically, men face few issues (men are actually, in my experience, praised for doing carework) and are actually paid more than women on average. FFC is obviously more than just "women are sparse in tech"

men face few issues

This is certainly not the case for the male elementary school teachers I've heard speak about their experience. Unless you don't consider being accused of being a pedophile to be an issue...

Or male nanny (I hate that people call them "mannys" like it would ever be ok to say "womengineer")

That's not an "issue" with being a male elementary school teacher, that's just too many men being pedophiles.

I regret I have but one downvote to give. This guy really thinks that all male primary school teachers should be presumed paedophiles unless proven otherwise. Or maybe a more charitable interpretation would be that paedophilia is a normal male thing. Either way this person makes Mary Rosh look like a decent human being.

Not sure how you got any of that from what I said. The public image of the pedophile is male for a reason. "Most sexual offenders against children are male" (Lisa J. Cohen, PhD and Igor Galynker, MD, PhD (2009-06-08). "Psychopathology and Personality Traits of Pedophiles". Psychiatric Times.)

If pedophilia was as common in men as it is in women, no one would be stigmatized. On the other hand, women in programming face problems, marginalization, violence, from men, just for being women. But if you didn't understand that initially I doubt you will 15 minutes later.

I wonder if statistical approach is ok to apply to only men or everybody? E.g. if group X statistically commits more crimes, proportionally, than its share in population, is it ok to presume every X is a criminal unless proven otherwise? If group Y statistically produces more false statements on topic T, is it ok to assume, unless very strong evidence to contrary is given, that any statement of a member of group Y about topic T is false by default?

>>> just for being women.

And this is different from you justifying stigmatizing every male as potential pedophile by statistics - how exactly?

"is it ok to presume every X is a criminal unless proven otherwise"

I never said this? I don't think that men should be assumed to be criminals.

You supported the idea that men are stigmatized as criminals by providing statistics that criminals are encountered among men. I am just asking if that applies to any criteria and any group.

Male Nurses Conference.

http://www.socalaamn.org/Men_in_Nursing_Conf.html

Admins: what happened to this post? It's been bumped from the front page twice, is there something wrong with it? If it's my account, I'd love for someone else to re-post it - you can even take the text and put it on your own blog I don't care. I feel this is worth discussing.

People are flagging it, probably because they don't want to see yet another thread on this topic.

Oh. That's too bad!

What are you doing??? Didn't you just condemn[1] this nonsense? ...now you're doing it.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7099199

Or you could try reading the post before responding...

Male Founders Conference???

I'd love for you to actually read the post if you have a second - even if you stand by that opinion, I think you'd have more to say if you read it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com