I’m an avid fan of Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me”, which inspired the term “mansplaining”. But there’s one variation on that theme which leaves me more than dissatisfied: women who don’t explain things to me.
It happened to me just the other day. I met up with a friend-of-a-friend, and with little else to talk about, the inevitable topic of “What do you do?” came up.
“I work in VC,” she said.
“Oh nice. Which fund?” I asked her.
“You wouldn’t know it,” she said, shrugging.
“I have friends in VC,” I pressed her, “What’s it called?”
“It’s super niche,” she said. The conversation went back and forth a couple more times. Her, resisting. Me, feeling shut down but also too nosey to give up. I probed again.
“It’s in the crypto and web3 space,” she said at last, before she switched the topic to something completely different.
We continued to talk. We parted ways. But that afternoon, I felt a light wake of anger brewing in me. Was it that hard for her to tell me about what she was doing with her life? Then came the voice of my insecurities. Maybe she had written me off when I told her I was a writer? Maybe she thought I was someone who frolicked about with words and sang to my books all day? Did she know or care that I had interned in VC on Sand Hill Road one summer, or that I knew what LPs and GPs and carry meant?
Later that day, I stalked her on LinkedIn. It turns out that her VC fund is not niche. It’s one of the biggest funds in crypto and web3. But then again, this was the week that FTX crashed. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that in January 2022, only 11 months ago, her fund had joined a slew of others in investing a total of $400 million in FTX, at a $32 billion valuation. Eek. That has got to hurt. No wonder she didn’t want me probing.
Still, my awkward interaction with her brought a couple thoughts to my mind. Firstly, it reminded me that the way people respond in any given situation has nothing to do with me. And secondly, why can’t we as women make more of an effort to explain to each other what we do? A ten second explanation would probably have satisfied me. Instead, I felt like a door had been shut in my face.
If you think I was being petty about my conversation with her, you’re totally right. But at the end of the day, there is a deeper point here. This is about the thousands of tiny, incremental bits of knowledge that we as women could be sharing with each other. We could be helping each other to learn one step and one definition at a time. In the fields of business, politics, science, and yes, even the bro-lands of web3 and crypto. Even if it’s just learning 1% more, it could change everything. Instead, we are inadvertently stunting each other.
At this rate, how do you think we’re ever going to reach a 50:50 gender split in governments? How do you think we’re ever going to solve climate change? How do you think we’re ever going to replace the crazy male dictators and save humanity from itself, without an army of highly educated and collectively freaking knowledgeable women? The short answer is that we won’t. The truth is that we need other women to clue us in on the worlds of mad scientists, Wall Street buffs and genuinely mind-bending, highly technical, powerful individuals. Otherwise, I guarantee it, we will never get there. The dreams and ascensions and achievements of this current generation of curious women will also die slow, painful deaths by a thousand cuts. Don’t be the woman who dismisses her counterpart who asks questions. Don’t be the woman who dampens someone else’s dreams.
The fact that women don’t explain things to each other has measured, dire consequences for us. Anna Fels talks about this in her HBR essay “Do Women Lack Ambition?”[1]. She says that “recognition”, or “an evaluating, encouraging audience”, “is one of the motivational engines that drives the development of almost any type of skill”. It turns out that women get less recognition, and that’s one of the main reasons why we accomplish less than men in the professional spheres that we care about.
I didn’t need the VC girl to praise my achievements or womansplain the structure of a VC round. But I did need her to recognize that I might be interested in the investment topics of her “super niche” fund. I happen to be dabbling in creating crypto art (lol), and her fund invested in OpenSea, a vast market platform for crypto art. Our conversation could have been a huge learning opportunity for the both of us, but instead, we missed it. It’s no wonder to me now why I was one of only two females in a sea of 20 male students in my crypto art classes. We are still trailing behind men because we are not teaching each other things. And we sure as hell won’t get to 50:50 parity if we don’t open up more to other women about the nerdy, bro-y and often money-making things that we’re interested in.
I’ll leave you with an analogy about my grandmother, Patricia Weinberg. She’s 85 years old and grew up as part of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which in those days was essentially a strict, homophobic, racist Christian cult. You’d expect her to be one of those raging old conservatives who loves Tucker Carlson and watches Fox News 24/7, right? No. Instead, she loves AOC. She loved Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Rather than becoming fearful of other people as she aged, and shutting other people out, my grandmother went the other way. She once put it to me, simply,
“I prefer to be open, as opposed to closed.”
[1] Fels, A. (2004). Do women lack ambition? Harvard business review, 82 4, 50-6, 58-60, 139 .
Delightful, Tash!
"...I felt a light wake of anger brewing in me....Maybe she thought I was someone who frolicked about with words and sang to my books all day?"
You're saying you're NOT that person? 🤣