Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far<br />Onstage at a recent event, the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said harassment in Silicon Valley was “rarer than in most other businesses.”<br />Many men now feel like “there’s a gun to the head” to be better about gender issues, said Rebecca Lynn, a venture capitalist at Canvas Ventures,<br />and while “there’s a high awareness right now, which is positive, at the same time there’s a fear.”<br />The backlash follows increasingly vulgar harassment revelations in Silicon Valley.<br />Warren Farrell, who lives in Marin, Calif., and whose 1993 book, “The Myth of Male Power,” birthed the modern men’s rights movement,<br />said, “The less safe the environment is for men, the more they will seek little pods of safety like the tech world.”<br />This turn in the gender conversation is good news for Mr. Damore.<br />Mr. Graham said in an email that there needed to be more distinction between fact and policy, and Mr. Weinstein said there was “a sea of brilliant women” and<br />that more needed to be done to “figure out how to more fully empower them.”<br />Now men’s rights advocates in Silicon Valley have galvanized.<br />“But we’re talking about women staffing positions — things like autos — where it cannot be explained other than manipulation.”<br />Those leading Silicon Valley’s gender equality push said they were astonished<br />that just as the movement was having an impact, it opened up an even more radical men’s rights perspective.
