
Women Entrepreneurs Created a Fake Male Cofounder to Dodge Startup Sexism - jenny8lee
https://www.fastcompany.com/40456604/these-women-entrepreneurs-created-a-fake-male-cofounder-to-dodge-startup-sexism?partner=rss&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss
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Uhhrrr
Here is an interview with them, from July: [http://www.dumdumzine.com/text-
message-interview-with-witchs...](http://www.dumdumzine.com/text-message-
interview-with-witchsy-by-megan-ranger/)

Their personalities seem pretty effervescent. This might also have contributed
to the need to create a persona who just says, "OK, I need that status
update."

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tomlock
That interview seems deliberately casual though.

Could it be that sometimes the perception that someone is "effervescent" is
attributable to a tendency to perceive women as "effervescent"?

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anaheim_ducks
Bingo. Does he seriously think the two women would write emails the same way
they would give interviews?

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Mz
I'm a woman. I tend to effervesce. I actively work at toning things down.

I wonder a lot how much of that is innate wiring and how much of that is
socialization. But, generally speaking, when a guy does the same thing, it
gets interpreted as _gay._

Stereotypes tend to come from somewhere. We don't just make them up whole
cloth due to innate assholery.

I don't have all the answers. In fact, I am not sure I have any answers. But I
feel like I am finally starting to ask the right questions. And one of those
questions is "Am I really just innately feminine or is my concept of
femininity a learned cultural construct that is not serving me well?"

~~~
tiggybear
Im hesitant to even type this, but I've had similar thoughts.

If a lot of gender is just a construct and our gender roles are rooted in a
time when women were taught to be subservient to men, then it's highly
possible that a lot of traits that are deemed "feminine" are just traits that
were taught to women to make them subservient/less competitive/etc.

So maybe being timid, shy, soft-spoken, and like traits should not be
considered "feminine" in a biological sense. They should be considered traits
that make you less likely to get what you want and much more likely to be
taken advantage of. And those traits were included in the feminine construct
of yesterday to make women easier to control.

So maybe it's ok to discriminate against some of those traits when hiring
because you aren't discriminating against biological traits but rather learned
traits that may or may not make you more productive in certain environments.

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Mz
I think your first three paragraphs are fine, but your conclusion sounds very
much like a casual justification for sexism. That doesn't sit well with me.

(Among other things) I am not soft spoken. That fact actually gets me a lot of
social friction for failing to be what people expect from a woman.

I am trying to sort the wheat from the chaff. I hope to start blogging soon in
a "thinking out loud" manner. My hope is to sort a few things out for myself
and maybe help other people think through the problem space a tad.

I am not ready to write about it. I have started several posts and the attempt
is just not going well, plus I am hip deep in other goals right this minute.

My hope is to "bring solutions, not complaints." And justifications for the
current status quo are just inherently problematic and a great way to provoke
ugly reactions.

But thank you for replying. I realize it involves sticking your neck out.

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CodeWriter23
Taking a page out of Laura Holt's playbook. Brilliant!

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rodgerd
That was my first thought - but while it's a clever response to a problem,
it's more sad that it's necessary and that it works.

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squozzer
As an old dude, not sure I would enjoy working with these two ladies, but then
again my favorite pair of ladies are Daria and Jane -- it's the boots, I
think.

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wpietri
An excellent story, and entirely relevant. I'm disappointed that this keeps
getting flagged.

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coloneltcb
agree on all counts.

the flagging of this story reinforces what these entrepreneurs were up
against.

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sctb
This story was originally killed by the software because it was submitted with
a link shortener.

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wpietri
Huh. Was it killed manually subsequent to that?

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sctb
Users vouched for it and then we updated the URL, and to my knowledge it
hasn't died since then.

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sctb
We've updated the link from
[https://apple.news/Aric4YYSmRzWy1eAlVj_Dyg](https://apple.news/Aric4YYSmRzWy1eAlVj_Dyg)
which redirected to this.

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DarkKomunalec
Whoopi did it first:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115580/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115580/)

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baalimago
Where do they find so unprofessional webdesigners..?

