zlacker

>>femfos+(OP)
If you are a woman you can easily counter this behavior by labelling it and saying that you don't have a porcelain skin. Bonuspoints if you laugh about a guy giving you super bad feedback and how this did not bother you.

Putting people at ease around you (especially customers) is a critical entrepreneurial skill.

You can't blame people for being cautious when a lot of people are buying into victim-narratives and convinced to act against their "oppressors".

>>cynusx+Gx
As a woman, I adopted this solution about a year ago. I will literally tell new teammates, "Look, I'm new to this career, I have a TON to learn, and I would love to be critiqued and given advice on how I can improve. I operate under a good-faith policy, so I will always assume you're being helpful and not condescending, unless you're overwhelmingly insulting (ie: telling me women aren't made for leadership roles.)"

I do not exaggerate when I say that the amount of meaningful advice I've been given since I adopted this technique has increased 5x.

Another perk--due to my vocal policy on this, I had an autistic colleague tell me that I'm the only woman he feels comfortable working with. He struggles to read social situations, and he frets that women will interpret his bluntness as him being dismissive or "mansplaining." It made me very sad to think he's missing out on good relationships with so many talented women in our office, just because of this environment of fear. But he's a wonderful friend and colleague, and I am so happy to have his advice and support.

>>paperw+g11
At a previous job, I worked under a woman who managed a practically-all-male engineering team. I think part of what made her successful at this was that people in our company had a great sense of humor, and she was an enthusiastic participant in our lunchtime bull sessions, ribbing each other and whatnot.

>Becca: What are you doing here? I figured they’d have locked you away in the psych ward for good by now.

>Scott: Nope. And what are you doing here? You haven’t killed off all your patients yet?

>Becca: Only person in this hospital I might kill is standing right in front of me.

>Scott: Be careful, I’m armed and dangerous picks up a central line placement practice set menacingly

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/23/friendship-is-counters...

Not only did these kind of conversations make the company a more fun place to work, they also made it easier to speak critically to each other, because our critical feedback didn't seem like a big deal in light of the daily ribbing. There wasn't a lot of corporate BS at that company either--maybe not a coincidence.

I imagine there are other things you could do, like curse frequently, if you wanted to broadcast that words don't easily upset you. But telling jokes seems best if you think of one.