Silicon Valley social justice warriors are planning to publish a blacklist of venture capitalists they deem sexual harassers.
SiliconValley.com reported that Y Combinator, which has been the largest incubator for start-up tech companies in Silicon Valle,y sent a form out to 3,500 local entrepreneurs to gather personal information about venture capitalists (VCs) and their attitudes toward women.
Y Combinator Partner Katharine “Kat” Manalac, told SiliconValley.com, “We don’t call it a blacklist,” but she then admitted, “that is essentially what is happening.”
Social justice warriors are sensitive to the term “blacklist,” because screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other entertainers who were alleged to be communist sympathizers were blacklisted from employment in the 1950s.
Breitbart News reported earlier this month that Silicon Valley venture capitalists were preparing for a coordinated attack on their business model and ethics with the September 19 release of Ellen Pao’s book, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change.
The book is being hyped by social justice warriors (SJWs) and the liberal media as the “firsthand account of the depth of workplace discrimination from the tech feminist hero who is determined to empower the status of women in the struggle to be heard in the industry.”
“Kat” Manalac, who goes by the title of Director of Outreach for Y Combinator, was Chief of Staff for Reddit co-founder and investor Alexis Ohanian in 2013, when Pao was serving as Reddit CEO and suing Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield Byers. Pao claimed that at Reddit she was creating the type of open, empathetic, and inclusive culture where women could flourish.
Pao’s 2013 lawsuit alleged that while she was employed from 2007 to 2012 as technical chief of staff for KPCB senior partner John Doerr, she was the victim of gender discrimination. Pao’s complaint demanded that the prestigious Silicon Valley pay $16 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages of up to $144 million.
With Pao claiming she sued KPBC was to unmask how greedy Silicon Valley venture capitalists continue to victimize women and minorities, including by hiring 70 percent white and Asian men for tech jobs, her salacious allegations became a lightning rod for Jesse Jackson and other SJWs to disparage Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurship as a “backward culture.”
But San Francisco jurors voted 12 to zero against Pao on all four claims for gender discrimination and retaliation in March 2015. Pao’s was eventually forced to pay Kleiner Perkins $275,966 for legal costs to settle counterclaims in September 2015.
Breitbart noted shortly thereafter that Pao had created user turmoil at Reddit by launching a policy to muzzle any harassing comments by “trolls.” Reddit’s users and volunteer monitors went into full rebellion and Pao resigned after 200,000 users signed a petition stating that she was killing Reddit’s free speech reputation for no-holds-barred debate.
But the sexual harassment issue heated up last month, when the VC-dominated board of San Francisco-based Uber fired the CEO and 80 percent of its senior management after a 47-point report by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, who criticized the company’s corporate culture.
Silicon Valley is a hotbed of progressive attitudes, and is nicknamed the “Valley of the Democrats.” That may add to the pressure companies feel to cooperate with “blacklists.” But lawyers warned SiliconValley.com that blacklists “may be fraught with risk,” including the risk of being sued for slander.
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