So, this scenario isn't exactly uncommon in the startup world. It happens all the time. But because she's a minority female and her competitor is a white man, it suddenly becomes an example of white supremacy and the patriarchy conspiring to oppress her. The VCs who funded the competitor? Obviously racists and sexists, and she called them out explicitly as that on Twitter.
I considered reaching out to her to offer some perspective, but ultimately demurred. Why? I didn't want to be caught in the wurlitzer. Better to let her make more problems for herself than offer a sense of perspective that could get me cancelled.
So, this scenario isn't exactly uncommon in the startup world. It happens all the time. But because she's a minority female and her competitor is a white man, it suddenly becomes an example of white supremacy and the patriarchy conspiring to oppress her.
One consequence is so many opportunities for insight and thoughtful constructive reflection are lost. It's funny to me that under the guise of narratives that supposedly empower women (narratives which have also, as in the above example, been abused beyond their true purpose of calling out actual unfair bias), women are instead holding themselves back and getting in their own way mightily... and they don't seem to realize it? How can so many smart women have such a whopping blindspot to be duped into acting this way and think this is "power"?
I think it has something to do with how compelling and self-satisfying these stories are. You know, the ability to blame everyone else rather than face yourself and take personal responsibility. So, sadly i think, many people just get addicted to this as a short circuit substitute for actually doing the hard work of processing experiences and cultivating useful insights out of them. They just short circuit to feeling good temporarily, sadly prioritizing these fake stories and reasons over getting results.
It seems if a movement was really interested in empowering women it would try to address this glaring structural weakness of the current approach rather getting them hooked on these fake payoffs that don't get them anywhere :(
You are painting an entire gender (or the majority) with really broad generalities, all under the premise that gender based discrimination is overrated and exaggerated?
But even presuming that you are right, it still means it's on all of us to stamp out whatever discrimination exists from our industry, especially those of us that are straight cis het white males. So that each of us can be treated on our merits, including those of us who risk being accused of discrimination rather than facing it.
Each of us should absolutely be able to give completely unfiltered constructive feedback to our female and minority peers, and if anyone has any questions or doubts about whether they can do so without concerns of impropriety, that is not is not the fault of the woke or feminists, but that of our privileged arrogant predecessors who have created this status quo in the first place.
The fact that I, as a straight white male have to be careful with feedback is a FAR smaller cost than ACTUALLY having to face discrimination I never have to imagine seeing.
Keep in mind, cartoonish levels of either are no longer present. What remains is frequent and constant micro aggressions driven by unconscious bias that the offenders may not even be aware of. Each individual example is easy to dismiss and explain in other ways. But in the aggregate, this adds up to, and drives people all the way out of the industry.
*You are painting an entire gender (or the majority) with really broad generalities, all under the premise that gender based discrimination is overrated and exaggerated
But the second half of your comment I really agreed with. I think there are a lot of these things happening but I think the term microaggressions is a misnomer because it incorrectly dismisses the validity of or presumes a magnitude of people's feelings where you don't actually know if that's the case.
You can't in general say that everybody needs to react the same way so you don't know if something which seems small to someone else is actually really big to another person.
but what I think the mistake of that kind of talk about this is that really this comes back to people being able to communicate effectively about their own feelings with other people who might be crossing boundaries or hurting them somehow. Like you said the other people might not even realize they're doing it and that's reasonable because everybody's reactions are function of their own individuality. so I think the mistake here is in sort of trying to aggregate and assume you know a common reaction and try to solve this as a you know sociological level rather than going no this is a personal problem of being able to communicate effectively with people you interact with and letting them know how you feel about something.
And not having to feel "oh I need to invoke sort of the mighty sword of the Zeitgeist discourse" you know in order to give validity to how I personally feel about something. It should have validity in and of itself and I think if people can be effective communicators about that then they will have a fine time navigating you know personal situations.
the other problem which I think is a basic interpersonal thing which seems to be missing from this discourse is that you can't blame other people for how you feel and react to things. And trying to hold them hostage to or blame them for your own reactions it's just a violation of a basic interpersonal boundary and it's just wrong. and it's also deeply connected with incorrectly mislaying responsibility for things. because by blaming other people how you feel and react you're incorrectly mislaying responsibility for how you feel and react.
The "lifting" of one's own personal reactions to the level of you know a social offense, (as in, my feelings are hurt therefore somebody did something "wrong", sociologically) unfairly limits the ways in which offended people are allowed to react or things about which they're allowed to feel offended, but it also incorrectly invokes the language of systemic bias for things which don't cross that level, which then starts witch hunts and creates more bias, when these common things (incorrectly called "microaggressions") are simply the result of I think interpersonal communication issues. The other thing that that type of labeling of anything that goes wrong for you as some sort of part of something that's wrong with society is that it traps you in and supports The narrative of you being a persecuted victim of some institutionally oppressed class. Which is very disempowering and very limiting for how you will then be able to respond and think about things.
from a cynical point of view of trying to control large numbers of people in groups and that would be great if I wanted to control you and limit your reactions but it would not be great if you valued freedom, authenticity and personal expression.
you might say you can't separate those things like this systemic sociological bias from interpersonal communication but I think it's really important to separate them because you have to have effective individuals to have an effective society and you can't have effective individuals if people do not respect these basic interpersonal boundaries and you know ways of communicating about themselves, that work.
so I think this is the case where there's a sociological solution for a personal problem but it's not very useful, and is actually maladaptive.
so I think there is a separate issue which can be dealt with sociologically and that's the elimination of unfair and discriminatory bias in all forms and education about bias... but confusing, in the way i try to describe here, the issues of responsibility, personal reactions and interpersonal communication with this sociological issue is a mistake.