Female journalist writes of female issues in a tech journal. Yawn.

[Rikurzhen]

No wonder women have such credibility problems when stepping out into the real world. This female reporter wrings a column out of the trauma another woman felt when a man talked to her.

When Jessica Livingston, a co-founder of the influential startup accelerator Y Combinator, arrived at The Wine Room in Palo Alto, Calif., a little early for our meeting, a man who was also waiting outside the wine bar started to chat her up.

He asked what she was doing there all on her own, and whether she was there maybe for a Match.com date. Livingston said that she worked in tech, and was meeting a reporter. He said he was an investor. She said she was, too; that she co-founded Y Combinator. He asked if maybe she had some startups in her portfolio that other investors had overlooked, and asked for her contact to set something up.

She gave him the name of YC’s male president, and said to talk to him.

When I arrived, Livingston said she was shaken, and apologized to me. The Wine Room was closed anyway, so we walked to a different bar across the street.

“I’m not crazy, right?” she said. “He was hitting on me? He was offering to invest in our weaker companies as a way to get me on a date, right? Did that just happen? Today, of all days. I just can’t believe it would be today.”

Livingston said she wasn’t sure if this man was just flirting, actually attempting to talk investments, or offering venture funding for a date.

It was supposed to have been a relaxing Wednesday afternoon for Livingston, whose newest fleet of 25 companies had pitched before investors at the Y Combinator Demo Day just the day before. We were meeting for a lighthearted conversation for my Two Drinks With column, and I was thinking that I’d call the resulting feature “Demo Day Detox,” but it didn’t seem like a good time for that.

What happened to Livingston outside the bar is the latest in a series of stories to arise with a depressingly similar pattern: Venture capitalists sexually harassing female founders (the few that exist).
​

If this wasn't so pathetic I'd think that this article was a prank, but this female solipsism is quite common. She's a businesswoman, so instead of focusing on business and making profits and developing investors she's pissing away her efforts on ramming this sexual harassment nonsense further down everyone's gullet.

Livingston and I headed to a large beer hall called The Old Pro. She ordered a Hefeweizen, and joked that she might need a pitcher after what had happened. The waitress said she was sorry, and asked if everything was okay.

“I think so,” Livingston said.

She was wearing makeup, which she said she rarely does, and she wondered about the impact of lipstick.

I asked whether a man had offered funding in exchange for a date to her before.

“No, absolutely not,” she replied. “That’s not the culture of YC. It’s not a pattern with us.”

Why had she written that blog post banning sexual harassment?

“There are so many new investors coming into the Valley from New York and everywhere else, and we just wanted to lay that out there,” Livingston said. “The overt sexual harassment you read about — the men who say they don’t invest in women — I can’t force them to invest in women, but I can say you can’t sexually harass our founders. And so that’s what I did.”
​

It's not sexual harassment when men say they won't invest in women-run companies, you nitwit. Your behavior and attitude is exactly why they won't invest. They don't need this damn female drama. This is just liberal status-whoring. She's enhancing her reputation with other liberal and feminist nuts whose entire social personas revolve around being "social justice warriors" and constantly harping on about nutty things like sexual harassment.

Livingston will be launching a site in the next month to help draw attention to the female founders within YC. She started to describe it, and then paused.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just still really shaken up. That’s never happened to me before.”
​

All she's doing is sending a clear signal to stay away from her fund and her companies. Too much damn drama. This is why so many employers are hesitant to hire women and minorities. You can fire a white man for being incompetent, for being disruptive in the workplace, or other foul-ups and that's the end of the story, but with women and minorities, they never believe that they're fired for cause, it's always discrimination and so a whole new headache is dropped into the lap of the employer. Far better to simply bypass this misery right at the hiring stage.

Look at this venture capitalist. A man talked to her for a minute, perhaps, and this threw her off her game for the entire interview she conducted with this reporter and she brought up how it unsettled her 3 times.

Check out how deep into the feminist kool-aid the reporter is:

I asked who the investor who had harassed her earlier in the night had been. She didn’t want to share his name.

Why?

“What if he wasn’t hitting on me? What if I totally misunderstood?” she said.​

The man harassed the this female VC by talking to her. Talk about a low bar for what constitutes harassment and also talk about a low bar for what constitutes journalism. Male reporters write about wars, the stock market, political matters, etc but they never, ever approach this level of navel gazing about male insecurities.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Any women want to defend the newsworthiness of this article?

 

[Katzndogz]

She was shaken? Really?

The article posts an issue, female start ups don't get a lot of funding. Then it answers its own question. Offers of funding are considered a form of harassment. Men who don't want to be harassers don't offer funding. There you go. Issue resolved.

 

[Mr. H.]

This should qualify her for disability.
Or PTSD compensation.
That poor womyn...

 

[Rikurzhen]

She was shaken? Really?

The article posts an issue, female start ups don't get a lot of funding. Then it answers its own question. Offers of funding are considered a form of harassment. Men who don't want to be harassers don't offer funding. There you go. Issue resolved.

I particularly liked the definition of sexual harassment - men who don't invest in female-led companies are sexually harassing women.

This article packs quite a punch. It demonstrates what's wrong with women in journalism - too much navel gazing with writing about female issues for female audience to make females feel important - and what's wrong with women in business - focus on business not all this fucking drama. Men don't want all this drama. So long as women inject drama to enliven their business lives, men won't take them seriously.

If you're a woman who is an accountant, be an accountant. That's it. Do you job. Every minute you spend on changing the culture of the office to be more "woman friendly" is a minute that you're not doing your job. This signals to the boss that a male accountant will be more productive and less disruptive.