Horror Stories From Women in Tech

First this:<p><i>"The first half is going to be your pitch, the second will be me hitting on you."</i><p>Then this:<p><i>"Honestly, the thing I'm most excited about is the prospect of seeing you naked later tonight."</i><p>Please don't forget that any pitch must work <i>both ways</i>. We entrepreneurs should be evaluating potential investors with at least as much rigor as they evaluate us. They're not <i>giving away money</i> to lucky lottery winners, they're trading it for something else, something often much more valuable than their money: our blood, sweat, and tears in what could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.<p>It's difficult to find a silver lining in this cloud, but let me give it a try:<p>Anyone spoken to by people like these, no matter who they are, should thank these investors for eliminating themselves. Better to find out what they are like now before wasting any more time (or worse) on them. The only thing that really surprised me about this story was:<p><i>She said she felt nauseous but pressed on with her pitch.</i><p>Why bother? Better she should focus her energy on building a great business that will attract investors with professionalism and integrity. They're out there, just harder to find.<p>At least they were until the pigs like this opened their mouths.

There are "groups" of people. You don't talk to your family the same way you talk to your friends. You don't talk to older people the same way you talk to younger people. I'm not even talking about the conscious stuff, like maybe trying to watch your language around certain groups. People unconsciously talk louder to older people. It's not because people consciously believe that all older people have hearing problems, it's just a pattern that they picked up by watching other people. Certain things get absorbed unconsciously. There are lots of ways of saying "I'm interested in your project". Sometimes, a person will only mean to say just that, but they will unwittingly couch it in a sexist form that they learned from other people. They don't mean to <i>be</i> sexist, but certain attitudes, vocabulary, phrases, etc can simply be copied from other people without understanding exactly how they affect the listener.<p>This isn't easy to fix. If we treat women like men, many of them will be put off. But apparently a lot of people (possibly including women?) in our "geek" culture don't know <i>how</i> to "be friendly to women", even when they want to be (because they've learned bad habits from other people). We can only fix this if women point out good role models for the rest of us to follow, or give us an itemized list of things that make them feel welcome. Pointing out bad stuff strikes me as ineffective.

I find myself torn between the "assholes are assholes, deal with it" and "woman have to deal with a lot of bullshit in tech" viewpoints.<p>I guess the reason for me is that I recognize that the best course of action for the individual woman is not to spend a lot of time complaining, but to recognize that tech is, for better or worse, a man's world, and the way to get ahead is to simply learn how the game works.<p>On the other hand I don't want to give assholes and their apologists a free pass. If it seems like some women are overly sensitive about this issue, it's important to realize it's because they are dealing with this shit all the time. It's similar to racism, and why reverse-racism claims by whites fall flat—because they already have every advantage, and they don't have the weight of that historical oppression on their shoulder. Does that mean that you have to be a little more sensitive to minorities and women? Sure, but with good reason. It's just basic interpersonal relations to understand that people may be sensitive about stereotypes that they deal with repeatedly.<p>That's where I think a lot of guys in tech go wrong—they want to believe in objective equality, so they trot out some examples of shit that guys have to deal with that women don't, which may be true, but it's irrelevant to the ultimate question of how common dynamics actually make people <i>feel</i>.

No one complains about the lack of female plumbers, sanitation engineers, or electricians. Men are four times more likely to be murdered, and ten times as many are in jail. Why is it that genders are supposed to be equal except when men are considered inherently inferior?<p>Life isn't fair and people with treat you unfairly. No this doesn't entitle you to special treatment. Yes it will limit you if you fixate on it.

The article does a poor job of convincing me that any of these problems are unique to the tech industry.<p>Journalism: <a href="http://jezebel.com/#!5738019/where-are-the-women-at-highbrow-magazines" rel="nofollow">http://jezebel.com/#!5738019/where-are-the-women-at-highbrow...</a> Film: <a href="http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html" rel="nofollow">http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html</a> Music: <a href="http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news/e3i3a5fb1561d2145a3761cc5529f5b780c" rel="nofollow">http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news...</a><p>A more appropriate title would be 'Horror Stories from Women dealing with Wealthy Men in Powerful Positions"<p>Can anyone name an 'Industry' in which is this NOT the case? Otherwise, singling out the tech industry is counterproductive and unfair.

I had one male coworker ask a female coworker what bra size she was. (He was shopping for implants for his now ex-wife.) Awesome. She went into an empty office and cried.

Other headlines today from jezebel.com:<p>Pete Wentz Discusses Divorce, Thanks God For Charlie Sheen<p>Woman injured by Dolphin jumping into her boat<p>ABC Casting for "Stem-Cell Face-lift" Show<p>Al-Qaeda Expands into Women's magazines

Oh please. Occasionally running into a rude man? THE HORROR! THE HORROR SPECIFIC TO TECH!<p>I found it interesting that the women didn't just walk out of these situations. Why were they willing to submit themselves to such indignities? Surely they weren't forced to continue pitching. But no... they wanted the money.<p>If you want the money more than you want respect, well, you're not going to get respect.<p>As a woman genuinely in tech -- which, coincidentally, means a lot more than "in search of VC" -- I can say that I've been treated ill by just as many women as men over the years. But when a woman is horrible to you, you don't cry sexism, because well, she's got the same equipment as you do. Also, nobody's interested, because "everyone knows" women are catty, shallow, and wield their social abilities like a weapon. Kind of like how "everyone knows" men are uncultured brutes, who look down on noble, long-suffering women, assume they are dumb, and hit on anything that moves.<p>Please.<p>Fact: some people are shitty. By "people" I mean "of any and all genders, equally." If a person is shitty to you in what seems like a gender-specific way, chances are s/he is shitty to people of a different gender but in a different way.<p>Take it personally and you're just telling yourself a story. But in reality, it's not about you. The way a person treats you is very rarely about you. It's about them. So ignore them and move on with your dignity intact, and stop telling yourself lies.<p>By the way, selling cosmetics -- but being in search of VC -- does not a "woman in tech" make. For the love of god, are your cosmetics web-enabled?

&#62; "Who's watching your kids?" She retorted, "Who's watching yours?"<p>Let's be honest. It's a rather valid question, from an investor perspective.