while i don't disagree with holman's statements, i do think he misses the point. for me, trunk's article was about how the statement 'women should work at startups' is patronizing because it implies that they are less capable of making that decision for themselves than men.
advocating for a more equal distribution of startup awareness and technical training across demographics is a separate issue and i think holman and some of the commenters are confusing trunk's message as a denial of that. this is why her analogy of saying men should stay home and raise children is so apt. if they wanted to, they would. they don't need anyone's help or special attention to make sure they know all the opportunities for them in the stay-at-home-dad scene so that we have an equal number of men and women at home raising kids. maybe to some degree it's ok that different parts of society are skewed towards one gender or another since men and women are different.
we don't need to go around forcing our utopian vision of equality on systems as long as everyone has the opportunity to make the choice for themselves. whether or not women have that opportunity is a separate question. i think a lot of women do and it can be a slight to suggest otherwise based solely on their gender.
this is why her analogy of saying men should stay home and raise children is so apt. if they wanted to, they would
I'm trying to figure out if you're way more privileged than me (unlikely) or way more capable (possible!) but none of it really adds up. I'm wondering what world you live in where you think that people can just do whatever they want to, without resistance. "If women wanted to start companies, they would!" "If men wanted to stay home and raise kids, they would!"
I mean, I can get behind statements like "If someone really wants something bad enough... if it burns in their heart and their soul bears down on it like a million years of rock on a diamond, then they can achieve it."
That I believe.
But this idea that everyone is just doing exactly what they want to be doing, and that there aren't structural impediments that are unequally distributed across demographics... I mean, really?
Comments
while i don't disagree with holman's statements, i do think he misses the point. for me, trunk's article was about how the statement 'women should work at startups' is patronizing because it implies that they are less capable of making that decision for themselves than men.
advocating for a more equal distribution of startup awareness and technical training across demographics is a separate issue and i think holman and some of the commenters are confusing trunk's message as a denial of that. this is why her analogy of saying men should stay home and raise children is so apt. if they wanted to, they would. they don't need anyone's help or special attention to make sure they know all the opportunities for them in the stay-at-home-dad scene so that we have an equal number of men and women at home raising kids. maybe to some degree it's ok that different parts of society are skewed towards one gender or another since men and women are different.
we don't need to go around forcing our utopian vision of equality on systems as long as everyone has the opportunity to make the choice for themselves. whether or not women have that opportunity is a separate question. i think a lot of women do and it can be a slight to suggest otherwise based solely on their gender.
this is why her analogy of saying men should stay home and raise children is so apt. if they wanted to, they would
I'm trying to figure out if you're way more privileged than me (unlikely) or way more capable (possible!) but none of it really adds up. I'm wondering what world you live in where you think that people can just do whatever they want to, without resistance. "If women wanted to start companies, they would!" "If men wanted to stay home and raise kids, they would!"
I mean, I can get behind statements like "If someone really wants something bad enough... if it burns in their heart and their soul bears down on it like a million years of rock on a diamond, then they can achieve it."
That I believe.
But this idea that everyone is just doing exactly what they want to be doing, and that there aren't structural impediments that are unequally distributed across demographics... I mean, really?
I mean, read this article and tell me that the only thing stopping, say, American men from staying home and raising kids is that "they don't want to": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden....