alt Hacker News> Plenty of male-led businesses also turned out to be scams, and yet no one goes 'that guy looks sharp, but he is male so seems suspicious'.
The scam was sold on her gender ("successful female entrepreneur"), so unfortunately it's going to be part of the heuristic.
Male-led scams aren't sold on the gender of the scammer; gender is completely ignored (No one describes those as "a successful male entrepreneur").
Unfortunately, the gender sale was a big part of the scam. I'm looking at many male-led scams, and they did not sell it based on the gender of the scammer.
> Which only proofs how deep sexism is rooted.
No, it only proves that you have ideology deeply rooted. I believe you see sexism everywhere. The type of person you just want to say "oookay, huh, is sexism here, in the room with us?"
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I'd hesitate to jump to the conclusion that Holmes had editorial control over the way journalists portrayed her. The idea that a 'young woman overcoming the odds' story sells more than 'young man overcoming the odds' doesn't take any leaps of faith to explain.
That doesn't mean that Holmes didn't benefit from such coverage, she obviously did, but to call it part of the scam as if it was under her control seems a bit far fetched.
No, that's just sexism backfilling which things to discriminate against.
She was sold as a successful Stanford dropout, a genius who had a simple idea and assembled a very powerful group of people to push the idea and a ton of funding. Nobody is saying we shouldn't trust Stanford dropouts anymore.