Dave McClure's Talk: Shock and Oh!

Evidently, Dave did a talk, and there was brouhaha. I didn't see the presentation, and my response was written into a comment. While the comment is awaiting approval, I posted the link to Tracey Ullman to my Facebook profile.  Well, I guess Tracey piqued interest.

Here's the comment on Susan Mernit's post.

(1) Saying "two women entrepreneurs don't find it offensive so you shouldn't either" is belittling. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Dave (and others) to their opinion that Dave using image(s) that some might feel are exploitative to make his point is the right route; other people who opine that exploitative/erotic photos are never the right route in a professional environment.

(2) The one thing I've learned in life is that it's important to strike a balance between being consonance and dissonance. Yes, it's important to get along. Yes, it's important to stir the pot. It's a difficult line to walk sometimes.

Dave's take here is that he used a visceral image to evoke a visceral response. Dave: I think that worked. This is what a visceral response feels like. Some women feel that you, as a social arbiter and community leader, have attacked them by putting sexuality in a work context in an inappropriate way.

(3) Let me unpack how that reads for me.  The social assumption is trivial: (straight) women need men to take care of them. You have "women entrepreneurs that you funded." I'm glad you've provided resources for women, of course that's a huge step.  But let me ask this: how many female VCs do you work with? How many do you know?

If you (and I really mean anyone, of course) met a woman with a start up idea who was middle aged and a single parent, would you think she was able to also go through the rigors of founding a company?  What about if you met a man who was middle aged and a single parent?  Did you just think "oh, the woman is soft and nurturing - not tough enough!" or "oh, the man won't probably have full-time custody, so he'll have more time"? Because those are both widely held beliefs (Remember Blink? http://www.understandingprejudice.org/iat/ )

And what if the father had full-time custody? Would you figure - oh, I'll pay him market rate and he'll just get in some help and deal with it? "Courtship of Eddie's Father" time? Because what happens for women is that hiring managers *tell* them they "know they want work-life balance," and believe me this is reflected in pay rate and opportunities for advancement. (My idea of work-life balance involves staff, let me tell you.)

Further, if "you" ran across a man who only saw his kids every other weekend, would you still identify with him, think he's a good guy, maybe pal around? If a woman only saw her kids every other weekend, would you see her the same way?

So. The reason, for me, why I pay attention to this stuff is that the gender roles are widening, and the assumptions are corrosive.

(4) All that said, I think keeping porno in the workplace is possibly *better* in the long run for women!

The most culturally corrosive thing I've seen over the past decade or so is the return to good-girl / bad-girl mentality. To assume that "Virtuous" women should be frigid, controlling, and pure means that women who are passionate, supportive and experienced are "dirty." I'm not ok with that. I see it increasingly.

(5) And last but not least, the inimitable Tracy Ullman:

Comments

[dave mcclure]

not sure i got all that, but i think there are some positive & negative takeaways for me there... so be it.

re: the "do you work with women VCs?" question, the answer is absolutely yes. not sure in this context whether fingering them by name will hurt / help them or not, but at least for reference there are probably 5 women VCs that i work with somewhat regularly and/or trust. that's not a lot, but given there may only be 2x men that i say that about, i'd probably say that on average women VCs tend to have their shit together more than men (less of them, but their batting avg is better).

re: women entrepreneurs with kids -- yes, there's a time commitment to consider. but the more important point is demographic fit / customer knowledge. there's a woman founder i'm talking to about a language education product, and i trust her MORE *because* she has kids. i probably wouldn't find someone in that arena who didn't have kids, and so it's not so much whether she has time to be an entrpreneur, but whether she understands the market, the customers, and has the requisite skills to build the product. so i think my answer is "yes, i'd fund a woman founder with kids" but the reasoning isn't exactly what you were suggesting.

anyway, if i missed a few other points you wanted me to address lemme know. i don't think i understood what you wanted me to say about all woman entrepreneurs, but again i don't really evaluate on gender that much... i know talented entrepreneurs who happen to be women (or minorities, or gay, or whatever... doesn't really matter).

to some small extent, i think women & minority entrepreneurs probably do better than white males due to more oppression and them having to be better (think the Jackie Robinson effect), but again it's probably not the first factor i'd evaluate deals/people on.

your mileage may vary.

[Jessica Margolin]

Thanks for the response, Dave. I'm glad you are finding at least parts of this situation to be thought-provoking. I believe that what you did is being attacked because it feels ubiquitous. So consider "you" to be used in the general sense, at least from me.

What I was getting at with those questions was how biases subtly work their way into decision-making. I believe you agree with this in principle when you mention the Jackie Robinson effect? So, why DO women & "minority" people have to be *better*? Well, because people (and not only white men) come into the situation with a bias that says women and minorities are inferior.

So tying that back into the presentation, when we use naked women to shock, many women would feel that this just reinforces the bias that women are for mating with, not for working with.

Which means you're reinforcing the idea that we have to be better - we have to overcome the fact that we're women.

Truly, if we want to shock, why choose a naked woman's body? As Tracey Ullman asked while in character, where are all the penises? If we stop and think about it, I'm not sure it's too surprising to anyone that many women find naked-women-for-effect causes them to have a visceral aversion.

Don't men ever have actual nightmares where they are, for whatever reason, naked in public?

[dave mcclure]

nope, you're missing my point.

i'm not "using naked bodies to shock" -- and for the record, please make sure you are quoting reality here: it WAS NOT a naked body, it was a CLOTHED butt... altho i reserve the right to use a naked body in the future.

i was using a "clothed big butt stuck in your face" as a way to demonstrate the psychology of the brain, and how it reacts to body parts, specifically in this case, a big butt.

while it may have been shocking (which is common for me), it was also the entire point of the post which i was demonstrating.

lastly, i'm not saying there's a Jackie Robinson effect because *I* am oppressing anyone... in fact, quite the opposite. i tend to trust oppressed parties more in any profession where they are oppressed, because it's likely they are more competent. however, that has little to do with my post, and more to do with my personal philosophy.

in any case, thanks again for the discussion :)