
What to say when someone is being an asshole - karenxcheng
http://www.karenx.com/blog/what-to-say-when-someone-is-being-an-asshole/
======
mrkurt
This is a good thing to do when you _think_ someone is being an asshole. It
gives them a chance to recognize if they are, and you a chance to recognize if
they're not.

~~~
pelario
The point is to calmly verify if the person was aware that he is behaving as
an asshole.

If he was not, not only the communication improves; you also make the guy a
favor.

~~~
makomk
The only downside is that, if he was doing it deliberately, it's going to make
him even more unbearable to deal with.

------
brador
Question is, does pregnancy affect viability of an investment?

In my opinion, yes. Sleepless nights, days off taking the child to medical
appointments. This isn't magic and you can't wish these things away. It's hard
to run a startup, it's even harder when you're not sleeping well. Just my
opinion.

Edit - I covered post-pregnancy here, which also applies to fathers, my bad.
The women only part would be the hormones and lack of sleep from around t-6
months.

~~~
abalone
Guess fathers can't be founders then.

~~~
gizmo686
No, it means that being a father (negatively) influences your ability to be a
successful founder. Like any other barrier, this can be overcome.

To get to the question I think you are trying to raise, it does seem like
gender has a non-zero effect on this influence. Even ignoring the fact that,
for likely cultural reasons, mothers tend to spend more time with their
children, being pregnant itself presents something of a (short term) barrier.
Again, it should be quiet possible to overcome this barrier, but not by
pretending it does not exist.

Undoubtedly, one could make a case that being a parent is actually a benefit
towards being a successful founder.

~~~
nailer
> for likely cultural reasons, mothers tend to spend more time with their
> children

I don't think men's inability to feed infants is cultural.

------
jgrahamc
I've seen a co-founder get pregnant and have a baby while running a successful
start-up.

I think people take an unnecessarily negative view of pregnancy and child
rearing. Sure you can enumerate distractions (such as sleepless nights). But
how about enumerating positives: for example, what if having a baby made a
founder, man or woman, happier and more fulfilled? That would have a positive
effect on the start-up.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The question you are asking is "what will make Founder A more productive". You
are hypothesizing that a baby will (I find this unlikely, but it's
irrelevant).

That's not the question the investor was asking. He was asking whether to
invest in Founder A or Founder B. Suppose A gets their happiness from a baby -
this makes them happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60
hours/week. Founder B gets their happiness from marketing - this makes them
happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60 hours, plus they spend 20
extra hours on marketing.

All else held equal, B is a better investment than A, even if A+baby is a
better investment than A sans baby.

~~~
abalone
You're making an incredible assumption that marketing offers the same level of
happiness as parenting. You might say it's just a hypothetical, but it's a
totally unsupported one that offers zero insight on the question.

The questions is not merely one of "happiness" either. Parenting also involves
maturity and well-roundedness. Much like other extracurricular interests and
accomplishments which are considered great positives in say college
admissions, despite how they might take 20 hours away from studying each week.

~~~
yummyfajitas
As an investor I care about productivity, not happiness. If you want to run a
trading strategy on the theory that parents are better founders, be my guest.
Complaining that this investor ran a different strategy is silly.

~~~
mst
Running that strategy may or may not make him wrong.

Saying "actually, if I'd known I wouldn't've funded you", when (a) he already
had (b) she was already committed to parenthood provided no useful information
whatsoever to her ... except for the information that one of her investors was
capable of engaging in pointless criticism based on couterfactuals and that as
such her estimate of his capacity to maintain relationships with other people
should likely be revised downwards.

Because, realistically, non-actionable after-the-fact criticism is a WOFTAM
and risks damaging the relationship to no gain.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Elsewhere in the thread I agreed with this point. The profit-maximizing action
for the investor to take would have been to hide his feelings of
disappointment from the founder, and quietly alter his process and raise the
bar for women or try to assess the likelihood of them becoming pregnant.

He screwed up and spoke honestly for a moment. That makes him human, not an
asshole.

~~~
mst
Given it's already happened, he should either be focusing on the specific
negative consequences on her engagement with the startup ... or if there
aren't any such, recalibrating to not be disappointed. Continuing to hold the
estimate related to a guess when you're about to get actual data seems ...
suboptimal, at best.

Also, I specifically said that the "estimate of his capacity to maintain
relationships with other people should likely be revised downwards" which was
intentionally rather more nuanced than "asshole"/"not an asshole".

------
chomp
But having a child is a -huge- commitment- I don't think I'd be able to have
one, and run a business at the same time. Sleepless nights devoted to the
baby, medical concerns, etc. all of those are large factors that weigh on the
effectiveness of a leader.

I do agree that most of this stuff is ingrained behavior that most people know
is wrong, asking for a clarification usually can snap them out of it.

~~~
eli
I can't believe this needs saying, but discriminating against mothers is wrong
(and likely illegal!) no matter how hard you might imagine it would be to be
one.

~~~
argumentum
It's certainly not _illegal_ to decline an investment opportunity because a
founder is pregnant or just had a child. No one can force you to invest in
something if you don't want to.

It may be _stupid_ to turn down a great founder for this reason, it may be
ass-holish, but it's not illegal.

~~~
eli
You seem very certain about that. IANAL, but I would not be so sure. It's true
that no one can force a bank to offer a loan to a female-owned business but I
don't think they are allowed to consider the founder's gender anywhere in the
process.

~~~
jsmeaton
What about a bank offering a home loan? The bank needs to verify your capacity
to pay, and if a single income isn't going to cover the loan then a pregnancy
probably does come into it. I'm just speculating though, and rules/laws in
your area may vary.

~~~
eli
That's an easy one:
[http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_release...](http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2013/HUDNo.13-155)

~~~
jsmeaton
So it is.

I couldn't find a specific law from Australia, but many lending institutions
offer a 6 month deferral of payments for parental leave. I would also assume
that if the second parent plans to return to work, then the second income
would be included to calculate serviceability.

------
abalone
I'm a founder with a young child. It's awesome. You can't do it alone
obviously but with a partner and a support system it's totally doable. Even
the sleepless night thing is mostly contained to the first couple months.

"What do you mean" is a nice easy response. I like it. It's not going to stop
all assholes but it will filter out the ones are are ashamed of themselves,
which is probably a lot. What it won't stop is the ones with pernicious
superficial rationalizations for excluding women.. the "short people shouldn't
be firefighters" crowd.

------
taspeotis
What to say when someone is being sexist^

If someone's being a dick to piss you off saying these magic words might
inflame the situation.

Best to keep them to examples of sexism.

------
millstone
Was the first investor an asshole for thinking what he did, or for voicing
that thought?

If it was for voicing the thought, is there a more delicate way he should have
phrased it? Or should he have just kept his mouth shut, denying her useful (if
insensitive) feedback?

~~~
eli
There is no delicate or acceptable way of providing blatantly sexist feedback.

------
DanBC
I'm always surprised in threads like these that people express ideas that
leave them open to legal action in the future.

I hope those people have rigorous documentation for hiring people and that
reasons for rejection are kept on record.

------
Mz
I am not a fan of the framing here. This is not about someone "being an
asshole." This is about someone opening mouth and inserting foot. Okay, so
when men unthinkingly default to stupid assumptions and phrasing, it can
seriously hurt women. The fact that women get hurt doesn't mean the harm was
intentional, malicious, etc.

What the investor said was probably just the uncomfortable truth coming out.
IIRC, Paul Graham has made remarks not terribly unlike that. A lot of
investors are leery of investing a woman of child-bearing age. Is that
"unfair" to women? Perhaps. But I don't think saying it after the fact is
"being an asshole." He did invest in her company. Now she needs to preform,
baby or no baby.

This piece is not about "people being assholes." It is about men opening mouth
and inserting foot, probably fairly innocently in both cases cited. A lot of
remarks of that ilk are not intended as hostile. I think the phrase "what do
you mean?" is probably a good one to use in such situations but I really think
this article with this ugly title rooted in ugly assumptions does women more
harm than good.

------
wavefunction
Don't finance people (at least Wall Street) pride themselves on being big
swinging dicks? I'd give them a chance in private to fix things, then I'd put
them on public blast. By that I mean go to their partners or whatever.

I don't know, I'm just a simple country programmer, your big city ways
frighten and confuse me!

------
bifrost
As someone who's recently had a child, and who's been through several
startups; I think this is excellent.

I've made the offhand comparason of having a child to working for a variety of
1990's startups, I'm an ops guy and craptastic perl code made my sleep
schedule less than ideal. I optimized and my life got easier _.

The training from that made dealing with the wakeups a lot easier, and my wife
and I worked out a schedule.

Working for a startup, like having a baby, requires good partners. If you
don't have a good partner(s), life becomes significantly more complicated and
I am not sure I'd recommend it.

_ Ask me about my ops strategy, stuff I design generally can do 99.999 uptime.

------
cgriswald
This is a very useful and adult tool for dealing with these types of
situations, but the child in me will always want a witty retort, usually in
the form of a quote from The Princess Bride.

------
lazyjones
Perfect example of a dumb investor who thinks he has a better idea of how to
run the company than the founders themselves. I'm quite certain that bad
influences of such investors have broken more startups' backs than
pregnancies.

Founders, please choose your investors well.

------
gcb0
the only difference is that male founders can try to hide their "pregnancy".
an investor would shun both a male if he knew a baby was on the way.

of course not saying said investor is right, but that is probably what happen.
not really a sexist thing though.

------
nipponese
She knows what they mean...

------
peteforde
I think it's amazing that people would debate whether to fund a company led by
a hard-working mother when nobody questions the logic of funding a company run
by someone who worships a malevolent invisible sky wizard.

Warren Buffett figured out that hiring women was all-win long before most.
Kudos to him.

~~~
argumentum
Why do you say no one would question that logic? If a founder ended his pitch
claiming that his startup would succeed because he prayed all the time, I'm
pretty sure questions would be in order (along with a polite decline).

~~~
peteforde
Fair point; I don't think we disagree.

Essentially I was trying to make the point that as a non-religious individual,
it's always wild to me how people can find the time to ponder whether a woman
would have the audacity to start a family while building a company, but nobody
questions a founder that worships a paranormal creator entity. Lots of people
do both, yet somehow it's becoming a mother that is considered crazy.

And, I was trying to say it without being an asshole myself.

~~~
argumentum
As an atheist myself, I don't know what to make of people who _say_ they're
religious or believe in god. Are they for real, or are they just saying that
for cultural reasons.

I don't remember ever believing in anything supernatural (not even santa claus
or the tooth fairy), so I can't know whether it's really possible.

I find the vast majority of "religious" people aren't really religious, but
rather quite agnostic if you question them.

~~~
baddox
I would think that the willingness to suffer or die because of your beliefs is
a reasonable piece of evidence that the beliefs are genuine. Obviously that
doesn't happen much in the Western world these days, but it certainly has
happened a lot throughout history and continues to happen today.

~~~
lutusp
> I would think that the willingness to suffer or die because of your beliefs
> is a reasonable piece of evidence that the beliefs are genuine.

Surely you didn't mean to say "genuine", assuming you understand the meaning
of the word. You may have meant "sincere". But "genuine" implies that the
belief is true, which is a property not necessary for a belief to be sincerely
held, and that contradicts the meaning of "belief" as a view held without
regard for the evidence.

~~~
baddox
In my sentence, "genuine" modifies "belief," not the thing that is believed. I
believe this is common English usage. "Genuine belief" is a common phrase with
the meaning I intended, as in "I hope you don't genuinely believe that."

~~~
lutusp
This doesn't change how the original reads -- as granting credence to the
belief, rather than the holding of the belief.

~~~
baddox
I don't think that's a reasonable reading of my comment. My phrasing matches
standard English usage.

~~~
lutusp
All I am saying is that, in English, to avoid confusing people about your
meaning, you're much better off saying "sincere belief".

> My phrasing matches standard English usage.

So does saying "literally" when you mean figuratively -- all the dictionaries
now list this perversion, but it's still inadvisable and still sows confusion
among educated readers.

It's one thing to argue that a usage is accepted by lexicographers, but quite
another to try to engage in effective communications.

~~~
baddox
> So does saying "literally" when you mean figuratively -- all the
> dictionaries now list this perversion, but it's still inadvisable and still
> sows confusion among educated readers.

No, that's not advisable. Just like I'm using "genuine" correctly (it has
meant "authentic" at least as far back as the 17th century), "literally" can
also be correctly used to mean "figuratively." Simply put: you are not the
authoritative body of the English language.

~~~
lutusp
> I'm using "genuine" correctly (it has meant "authentic" at least as far back
> as the 17th century) ...

Yes, you did use it correctly, but in a context that leads the reader to
wonder whether you're referring to the belief itself, or to its holder's
sincerity in holding it.

> Simply put: you are not the authoritative body of the English language.

Point to any of my words that give you that idea. Can't do that? My point is
not correct usage, it is effective communication. With respect to that, there
are no authorities except the outcome.

~~~
baddox
> but in a context that leads the reader to wonder whether you're referring to
> the belief itself, or to its holder's sincerity in holding it.

That's been my point this entire time. You appear to be the only reader who
was confused, and it seems to be due to some rather bizarre ideas you have
about the English language. I am confident that my original comment would
serve as effective communication to the overwhelming majority of native
English speakers. The intended audience of my comment did not include
advocates of prescriptive linguistics, which is fine, because vanishingly few
of those exist, and the ones who do spend most of their time attempting to
argue that everyone else doesn't know how to effectively communicate.

~~~
lutusp
>> but in a context that leads the reader to wonder whether you're referring
to the belief itself, or to its holder's sincerity in holding it.

> That's been my point this entire time.

Yes, I know, and rather than take the advice of someone with six decades of
English writing experience, you chose to defend a questionable word choice as
thought it was self-evident.

> You appear to be the only reader who was confused ...

How very scientific. Has it occurred to you that I am also the only reader? In
any case, this is easily resolved by polling common usage:

Google: "Sincere belief": 207,000 uses, "Genuine belief": 137,000 uses.

And looking more carefully, one finds that many of the "genuine belief"
citations are meant to refer to a belief in something thought to be true.
Example
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBCrMLBCPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBCrMLBCPw),
in which this remark appears in the comments: "How could a belief that
contradicts available information be a genuine belief?"

> and the ones who do spend most of their time attempting to argue that
> everyone else doesn't know how to effectively communicate.

To the degree that I do this at all, I reserve my efforts for examples in
which ... wait for it ... someone clearly doesn't know how to effectively
communicate.

~~~
baddox
> Yes, I know, and rather than take the advice of someone with six decades of
> English writing experience, you chose to defend a questionable word choice
> as thought it was self-evident.

I don't care how much writing experience you have or claim to have. You're
wrong in this case. All the evidence is against you, and frankly I'm confused
why you persist in your argument.

Your use of Google results of as suppose evidence is extremely damning to your
own position and to your grasp of the English language. So my usage is 66% as
common as yours? That's pretty good evidence that both are very common and
well-accepted. You're also implying that only the most common way to phrase an
idea should be used, which is ludicrous, especially coming from someone who
claims to have writing experience. "Cat" has 447 million results, while
"feline" has a mere 11.2 million, so according to your logic, "feline" is a
misuse of the English language.

> And looking more carefully, one finds that many of the "genuine belief"
> citations are meant to refer to a belief in something thought to be true.

In something _thought_ to be true? That's what the word "believe" means. Have
you been reading my comments closely? My entire point is that a "genuine
belief" is a belief which is sincerely held by someone, regardless of whether
the thing believed is itself real. The Google results for "genuine belief"
support my usage. I checked literally every result in the first two pages, and
every single one supports my usage. A few examples:

"As rape is sexual intercourse without consent, a man who has a genuine belief
that the woman was consenting cannot be convicted of rape even where she did
not in fact consent." [http://www.hkclic.org/en/topics/sexual_offences/I_Non-
consen...](http://www.hkclic.org/en/topics/sexual_offences/I_Non-
consensual_Sexual_Offences/B_Rape/1_Elements_of_the_offence/b_Consent/iii_Genuine_belief_in_consent/)

"Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If
people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support
of that belief, people would give their lives in support of that belief."
[http://www.mydd.com/users/gary-boatwright/posts/the-man-
the-...](http://www.mydd.com/users/gary-boatwright/posts/the-man-the-dude-and)

"How do you know when your child has genuine belief and should be baptized?"
[http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/01/how-do-you-know-
when-y...](http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/01/how-do-you-know-when-your-
child-has-genuine-belief-video.html)

"The well known case of British Homes Stores v Burchell (EAT 1980 ICR 303)
provides that where an employer dismisses on suspicion of misconduct they must
establish (i) that they held a genuine belief the employee was guilty of the
alleged misconduct, (ii) that the genuine belief is based on reasonable
grounds, and (iii) the grounds for holding that belief were established after
an investigation that was reasonable in all the circumstances of the case. The
Tribunal does not necessarily have to agree with the employer’s view or
consider whether their conclusion was objectively correct or justified."
[http://www.allanmcdougall.co.uk/employment_law/unfair_dismis...](http://www.allanmcdougall.co.uk/employment_law/unfair_dismissal_conduct.php)

"Liverpool are heading into the final 13 games of the Barclays Premier League
campaign harbouring a genuine belief they can clinch a top-four finish,
according to Mike Marsh." [http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/we-
have-genuine-...](http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/we-have-genuine-
top-four-belief)

------
angelortega
tl;dr

Stop being an asshole.

