2 women who invented fake male co-founder say acting through him was 'like night and day'
Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Image 1 of 1 Witchsy cofounders Penelope Gazin (right) and Kate Dwyer created a fake male cofounder to conduct business by email. Witchsy cofounders Penelope Gazin (right) and Kate Dwyer created a fake male cofounder to conduct business by email. 2 women who invented fake male co-founder say acting through him was 'like night and day' 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Witchsy cofounders Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer created a fake male cofounder to conduct business by email. They noticed an enormous difference between how contractors and contacts treated him versus how they treated the women. They're glad to see that the story of Keith Mann, their fictional cofounder, is bringing more attention to sexism in tech and in the workplace. Penelope Gazin, Kate Dwyer, and Keith Mann are the cofounders of art marketplace Witchsy.
Gazin and Dwyer told Fast Company's John Paul Titlow that they invented their third, male, cofounder after repeated instances of condescension with a sexist tone, like a developer who addressed an email to them starting, "Okay, girls ..."
"It was like night and day," Dwyer told Titlow of working through Mann. "It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with."
On Quartz, Dwyer told Lila MacLellan that before Mann existed, "it was very clear no one took us seriously and everybody thought we were just idiots." But when those same people received emails from Mann, Gazin told MacLellan, "they'd be like 'Okay, bro, yeah, let's brainstorm!'"
Dwyer told MacLellan they even gave Mann a backstory:
"He was a dude's dude, they decided, the kind who played football in college. He was devoted to his wife of five years, and he couldn't wait to be a dad. 'He was just a really good guy,' says Gazin. 'He doesn't really understand Kate and I, but he's been happy to help us with our project before we find husbands.'"
Dwyer and Gazin's experience struggling to be taken seriously as company founders isn't as unique as you might hope. Gender bias and sexism in the business world is well-documented.
One of the biggest stories in tech this year was the internal memo sent by Google engineer James Damore, who was fired from the company after writing that there are biological differences to blame for the lack of women in tech. Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded that the claims were "offensive and not OK," but that "people must feel free to express dissent" in a respectful way.
And the stunning string of blows that ultimately led to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick stepping down from his post began with a blog post by former employee Susan Fowler alleging she experienced gender bias and sexual harassment at the company.
There have been reported instances of gender bias and sexism in every industry from Hollywood to economics.
In an email to Business Insider the day after Fast Company reported on Mann's existence, Dwyer reflected on the reaction they've gotten to the news.
"People have been losing their minds over the fact that we just gave him the last name Mann," Dwyer said. "So masculine."
She continued: "When people read about Keith they've been pretty upset at the idea that a fake character was taken more seriously than we were. He's being used as a tool now to help highlight how rampant sexism is in tech and the workplace in general. It's been great seeing so many people respond positively. Once again, Keith has done a great job!!"
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avaenuha on September 2nd, 2017 at 05:42 UTC »
The last lease my partner (m) and I (f) signed, the estate agent had exclusively dealt with me: we're living off solely my income while my partner finishes university, so: I made all the phone calls, went to the inspection, made all the appointments, sent the applications from my email address, took the phone call that we'd gotten the place, and arranged for all the rent and bond to be transferred from my bank accounts. They had never even spoken to him. When I arranged an appointment to sign the lease, I warned them he was unavailable that day: that I would sign it, hand over the rent cheque, and we'd bring back the fully-signed lease later.
I get there, my partner is listed as the primary tenant on the lease, primary point of contact, and the sole payer of the bills. And I know it doesn't make any material difference, but it's so damn exhausting and infuriating when the world assumes you're the secondary party just because you're not a man.
ninth_account on September 2nd, 2017 at 04:03 UTC »
I used to work in tech support for a TV/internet/phone cable company. There were many women who phoned in and would refuse to speak to a female tech support representative (it wasn't uncommon for them to sound like they were maybe 25 to 40 years old). I remember when I directed one female customer (using very easy and clear instructions that my grandmother had no problem following once) to unplug the power to her digital cable box, and she responded with a seemingly hostile tone to her voice "Okay, so I'm a woman; I can't do that!". Are you frigging serious?
Men of all ages would refuse to speak to female TSRs, too (especially older men), but it was really messed up to hear it from women.
Anyway, when this happened, it was pretty much unwritten policy for the female TSRs to transfer the call to the guy near them, who would then act like a completely incompetent imbecile, constantly asking the initial (female) TSR (loudly, intentionally not putting the call on hold or mute) how to do whatever needs to be done, have her explain to the make TSR perfectly confidently and efficiently how to do it (loud enough for the customer to hear her), have him still pretend to not know how to do it, and have her act exasperated and explain very slowly how to do the task, purposely dragging it out to emphasise how much faster it would have been if the sexist idiot had just stayed with the female TSR in the first place. In the situation that the caller wanted to speak to a supervisor, the interaction would just go something like:
TSR: "Hm, I don't think you'll want to actually speak to the supervisor..."
CUS: "What? Why not?"
TSR: "Well, you were already speaking with her, specifically and asked to be transferred away from her."
You want to waste our time for stupid reasons? I have no problem wasting yours by trying to be stupider.
So yeah, some of us tried to kill this male superiority garbage, but since some of these stupid requests came from women, I wonder how many of the contractors who preferred interacting with Keith were women themselves.
It makes sense that gender equality efforts need to result in more men not seeing woman as lesser, but apparently a fair amount of effort needs to be spend on having women not think lesser of each other, too.
It was utterly mindboggling.
yoshinosumoto on September 2nd, 2017 at 00:18 UTC »
When I used an Americanized first name on my resume, employers' interest level was like night and day.