#doesn’t help that I’m mostly seeing white gen z men making these posts so it just feels very performative

[squirrelstone]

I keep getting posts like "check on elder gen z they've been through this twice!" and it's seriously rubbing me the wrong way like please shut up y'all were Jill Stein's biggest fanbase and gen z men voted for Trump just as much as boomer men, and that’s not even getting into the people who have been fighting since before gen z’s parents were even born.

[shiredded]

A white animation student’s take on Soul and POC cartoons

This got long but there’s lots of pretty pictures to go with it.

Hi, I’m Shire and I’m as white as a ripped-off Pegasus prancing on a stolen van. Feel free to add to my post, especially if you are poc. The next generation of animators needs your voice now more than ever.

My opinion doesn’t matter as much here because I’m not part of the people being represented. 

But I am part of the people to whom this film is marketed, and as the market, I think I should be Very Aware of what media does to me. 

And as the future of animation, I need to do something with what I know.

I am very white. I have blue eyes and long blond hair. I’ve seen countless protagonists, love interests, moms, and daughters that look like me. If I saw an animated character that looks like me turn into a creature for the majority of a movie, I would cheer. Bring it on! I have plenty of other representation that tells me I’m great just the way I am, and I don’t need to change to be likable. 

The moment Soul’s premise was released, many people of color expressed mistrust and disappointment on social media. Let me catch you up on the plot according to the new (march 2020) trailer. (It’s one of those dumb modern trailers that tells you the entire plot of the movie including the climax; so I recommend only watching half of it)

Our protagonist, Joe Gardner, has a rich (not in the monetary sense) and beautiful life. He has dreams! He wants to join a jazz band! So far his life looks, to me, comforting, amazing, heartfelt, and real. I’m excited to learn about his family and his music. 

Some Whoknowswhat happens, and he enters a dimension where everyone, himself included, is represented by glowing, blue, vaguely humanoid creatures. They’re adorable! But they sure as heck aren’t brown. The most common response seems to be dread at the idea of the brown human protagonist spending the majority of his screen time as a not-brown, not-human creature. 

The latest trailer definitely makes that look pretty darn true. He does spend most of the narrative - chronologically - as a blob. 

but

That isn’t the same as his screen time. 

From the look of the trailer, Joe and his not-yet-born-but-already-tired-of-life soul companion tour Joe’s story in all of its brown-skinned, human-shaped, life-loving glory. The movie is about life, not about magic beans that sing and dance about burping (though I won’t be surprised if that happens too.)

Basically! My conclusion is “it’s not as bad as it looked at first, and it looks like a wonderful story.”

but

That doesn’t mean it’s ok. 

Yes, Soul is probably going to be a really important and heartfelt story about life, the goods, the bads, the dreams, and the bonds. That story uses a fun medium to view that life; using bright, candy-bowl colors and a made-up world to draw kids in with their parents trailing behind. 

It’s a great story and there’s no reason to not create a black man for the lead role. There’s no reason not to give this story to people of color. It’s not a white story. This is great!

Except...

we’ve kind of

done this

a lot

The Book of Life and Coco also trade in their brown-skinned cast for a no-skinned cast, but I don’t know enough about Mexican culture to say those are bad and I haven't picked up on much pushback to those. There’s more nuance there, I think. 

I cut the above pics together to show how the entire ensemble changes along with the protagonist. We can lose entire casts of poc. Emperor's New Groove keeps its cast as mostly human so at least we have Pacha

And while the animals they interact with might be poc-coded, there’s nothing very special or affirming about “animals of color.” 

So, Soul.

Are we looking at the same thing here?

It’s no secret by now that this is an emerging pattern in animation. But not all poc-starring animated films have this same problem. We have Moana! With deuteragonists (basically co-protagonists) of color, heck yeah.

 Aladdin... Pocahontas... The respect those films have for their depicted culture is... an essay for another time. Mulan fits here too. the titular characters’ costars are either white, or blue, and/or straight up animals. But hey, they don’t turn into animals, and neither do the supporting cast/love interests.

Dreamworks’ Home (2015) is also worth mentioning as a poc-led film where the  deuteragonist is kind of a purple blob. But the thing I like a lot about Home is that it’s A Nice Story, where there’s no reason for the protagonist to not be poc, so she is poc. Spiderverse has a black lead with a white (or masked, or animal) supporting cast. But, spiderverse also has Miles’ dad, mom, uncle, and Penny Parker.

I’d like to see more of that.

And less of this

if you’re still having trouble seeing why this is a big deal, let’s try a little what-if scenario. 

This goes out to my fellow white girls (including LGBTA white girls, we are not immune to propaganda racism)

imagine for a second you live in a world where animation is dominated to the point of almost total saturation by protagonist after protagonist who are boys/men. You do get the occasional woman-led film, but maybe pretend that 30 to 40 percent of those films are like

(We’re pretending for a second that Queen Eleanor was the protagonist, because I couldn’t think of any animated movies where the white lady protagonist turns into and stays an animal for the majority of the film)

Or, white boys and men, how would you feel if your most popular and marketable representation was this?

Speaking of gender representation, binary trans and especially nonbinary trans people are hard pressed to find representation of who they are without the added twist of Lizard tails or horns and the hand-waving explanation of “this species doesn’t do gender” But again, that’s a different essay.

Let’s look at what we do have. In reality, we (white people) have so much representation that having a fun twist where we spend most of the movie seeing that person in glimpses between colorful, glittering felt characters that reflect our inner selves is ok. 

Wait, that aesthetic sounds kind of familiar...

But I digress. Inside Out was a successful and honestly helpful and important movie.  I have no doubt in my mind that Soul will meet and surpass it in quality and and in message. 

There is nothing wrong with turning your protagonist of color into an animal or blob for most of their own movie. 

But it’s part of a larger pattern, and that pattern tells people of color that their skin would be more fun if it was blue, or hairy, or slimy, or something. It’s fine to have films like that because heck yeah it would be fun to be a llama. But it’s also fun to not be a llama. It’s fun to be a human. It’s fun to be yourself. I don’t think children of color are told that enough. 

At least, not by mainstream studios. (The Breadwinner, produced by Cartoon Saloon)

It’s not like all these mainstream poc movies are the result of racist white producers who want us to equate people of color with animals. In fact, most of those movies these days have people of color very high up, as directors, writers, or at the very least, a pool of consultants of color.

These movies aren’t evil. They aren’t even that intrinsically racist (Pocahontas can go take a hike and rethink its life, but we knew that.) It’s that we need more than just the shape-shifting narratives of our non-white protagonists. 

It’s not like there isn’t an enormous pool of ideas, talent, visions and scripts already written and waiting to be produced. There is.

But they somehow don’t make it past the head executives, way above any creative team, who make the decisions, aiming not for top-of-the-line stories, but for the Bottom line of sales.

When Disney acquired Pixar, their main takeover was in the merchandising department. The main target for their merchandise are, honestly, white children.

So is it much of a surprise

that they are more often greenlighting things palatable for as many “discerning” mothers as possible?

I saw just as many Tiana dolls as frog toys on the front page of google, so don’t worry too much about The Princess And The Frog. Kids love her. But I didn’t find any human figures of Kenai from Brother Bear, except for dolls wearing a bear suit. 

So. What do I think of Soul? 

I think it’s going to be beautiful. I think it’s going to be a great movie.

But I also think people of color deserve more. 

Let’s take one more look at the top people who went into making this movie.

Of the six people listed here, five are white. Kemp Powers, one of the screenplay writers, is black. 

It’s cool to see women reaching power within the animation industry, but this post isn’t about us.

We need to replace the top execs and get more projects greenlit that send the message that african, asian, latinix, middle eastern, and every other non-white ethnicity is perfect and relatable as the humans they were meant to be. 

Disney is big enough that they can - and therefore should - take risks and produce movies that aren’t as “marketable” simply because art needs to be made. People need to be loved.

Come on, millennials and Gen Z. We can do better.

We Will do better.

TLDR: A lot of mainstream animation turns its protagonists of color into animals or other creatures. I (white) don’t think that’s a bad thing, except for the fact that we don’t get enough poc movies that AREN’T weird. Support Soul; it’s not going to be as bad as you think. It’s probably gonna be really good. Let’s make more good movies about people of color that stay PEOPLE of color.

[autumnleaves--wintertrees]

Made on June 10, 2017 9:17:23 pm Posted: June 14th, 2017 12:41:02 pm

the b.s. that women date jerks. fact: we don’t.

This post continues under the ‘Read More’/‘Keep reading’ break line below.

Here is the link to the original list. The post I am talking about in this list is number 16. If you just want to see the image I am talking about, I put that up too. I would have included the link I got from using ‘Open image in new tab’, but it is unverified.

http://whisper.sh/stories/cc9fc428-8cf1-4b3a-a613-4cefbaec4583/We-May-Have-Answered-The-Age-Old-Question-Of-Why-Women-Date-Jerks?page=2&root_story_id=cc9fc428-8cf1-4b3a-a613-4cefbaec4583&story_index=0

The person who wrote that Whisper headline is none too bright. (I’ve also noticed how cringey Whisper is at trying to relate to millennials and Gen Z with the words and phrases they use. It’s like several other online companies/products/businesses. It’s pathetic, cringey, desperate, and it doesn’t work.)

The white text with black shadow outline is displayed over an image of a large, white, clothes-filled closet, and says: Little girls are told that when a boy picks on you, it’s because he likes you. And guys wonder why women date jerks?

This picture from whisper still brings up a good point even though only some women date jerks, and god almighty I hate that question of “Why do women/men only date jerks?”. If you are asking that then you do not know much about women or people at all, do you? Plus, why don’t these two questions get as much attention?➜ “Why do guys only date bitches? Why do guys only go after women who use them?”

Do not try to push that “women date jerks because they are attracted to certainty and confidence.” That is the same thing as saying, “women don’t date a ‘genuine nice guy’ because a man cannot be a ‘genuine nice guy’ at the same time as naturally having certainty and confidence. Women also want to see certainty and confidence more than they wish to be respected.”

I actually do swing from rage to pity for men like this. I respond in their face with, “No you turdfuck misogynist, I am much more attracted to someone who respects me as a person, not ‘as a woman’ because there is no such thing, but just as a person than I would ever be towards something like you. Please get professional help.” The reaction is the same thing towards a KKK member or a TERF - swinging between rage and pity.

The speaker of the nonsense claim thinks that there is a one-way ticket to attracting and keeping a woman and that it is to have confidence. The claim is mostly a lie, but works in giving men who may have low confidence or who may be a ‘fake nice guy’ a false sense of hope because they and the speaker all share similar and extremely limited experiences and shallow relationships with the female gender.

It might work to attract a woman for a short time before she realizes the truth. Most stories from women of having dated a jerk in their past begin with, “He started out as such a nice guy. He was helpful, generous, romantic, caring, attentive, charming, and sweet. Then after I moved in with him/after we got married/after I had the baby he changed. Or really, what was there before came out.” This is also what is said by women who escaped an abusive relationship, or a relationship with a serial killer or a sociopath. *So good job, men. Brilliant work.*sarcasm* On rare occasions though, simply having confidence is enough to keep her around... but that woman has an ulterior motive such as she is only looking for sex or money, or she has personal issues such as low self-worth.

It is not hard to treat another person as another living thing deserving of respect. It is a shame and a goddamn embarrassment that posts like these should ever need to be made as some kind of teaching tool, and that people still argue about this topic.

I’m going to mainly speak in terms of a female dating a male jerk for this list considering this post is centred on the ridiculousness of the “Women only date jerks and assholes.” saying. Also, all real life situations are different and complicated so don’t think anyone’s situation can easily be marked down as just one of these or even any of these. I may be a woman, but I shouldn’t have to think for you.

(I know it’s hard for someone who thinks in such narrow lanes about women, but try to use your brainpower in understanding this. I believe in you.) - If she (or he! It works the other way around too!) is dating a ‘jerk’ the 26 reasons may be: —————

1. They could be determined to stick with an unhealthy relationship out of stubbornly believing the relationship works, to have, change, heal, or help something, or stick with it out of fear of losing something or out of fear of the results (see #3), however unhealthy it is. - 2. Maybe “being a jerk” is a part of their kink, their sex life; it is consensual and conducted safely. In every other case when you are not around or they are in private, she/he treats them with respect. For example, there is such a thing as an embarrassment kink. If your boy/girlfriend is constantly making you feel badly, physical or other, that is not a kink. That is (a form of) abuse. Immediately seek help and find a way to leave the relationship safely. This brings me to #3, the most disturbing reason— - —3. This person may be in an abusive relationship. What appears as their partner making small verbal jabs at their weight and physical appearance in public plus a combative attitude with friends, it is actually much worse in private. They may not be able to leave the relationship. I am in no way an expert on this subject, there could be multiple reasons why an abuser reacts a certain way. However, the research is out that:

(These links provide posts and articles with gender-neutral information. I was determined not to post anything with phrases centred only on females that were in or are in heterosexual relationships. It is great when people acknowledge, “domestic violence and abuse can happen in any relationship regardless of sexual orientation, race, financial situation, religion, gender, age, or culture”, but then is hypocritical and unhelpful when the rest of the discussion only involves female pronouns and references to female-only sufferer and survivor cases. It supports the idea that only biologically born heterosexual females, females in heterosexual relationships, or biological females experience domestic violence and that those cases and women are more deserving of attention. It is close-minded, harmful, and ignorant when people ignore the effect their words or phrasing has.)

Leaving an abusive partner is the most dangerous time. by Lisa McAdams | Aug 22, 2016 | Lead the Way | http://lisamcadams.com/leaving-abusive-relationship-dangerous-time/ lisamcadams com leaving abusive relationship dangerous time **the link above and below are the same articles, but the one above is from the writer’s own website.** Leaving An Abusive Partner is the Most Dangerous Time Published on October 19, 2016 Lisa McAdams Domestic Violence Workplace Strategist | Speaker | Media Comme... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leaving-abusive-partner-most-dangerous-time-lisa-mcadams linkedin pulse leaving abusive partner most dangerous time lisa mcadams

Danger Assessment Updated: August 5, 2015 https://www.womenslaw.org/danger-assessment womenslaw danger assessment

What to remember about abusers during the most dangerous time in a relationship December 15, 2013 12:03 pm Updated: December 15, 2013 12:04 pm https://bangordailynews.com/2013/12/15/opinion/editorials/what-to-remember-about-abusers-during-the-most-dangerous-time-in-a-relationship/ bangordailynews 2013/12/15 opinion editorials what to remember about abusers during the most dangerous time in a relationship

The most dangerous time for domestic abuse sufferers is when they try to leave or do leave. Sometimes the abuser doesn’t make good on their threats of killing their partner or make any threats of that kind at all until their partner actually makes it clear they wish to leave or does so. The abuser’s mental state can devolve into something of “How dare you leave me” mixed with “If I can’t have you, no one will” or “you are never leaving me and you are staying here forever”. Concerning such a possessive and obsessed way of thinking as that, the abuser’s reaction does make sense; up until then there was no threat of the other person leaving, and now there is so the abuser grasps for control. They seek control. What the abused person needs right now is safety and support, and so again I repeat— If your boy/girlfriend is constantly making you feel badly, physical or other, that is not a kink. That is (a form of) abuse. Immediately seek help and find a way to leave the relationship safely. - 4. However inane the ideas that a jerk may be better in bed, more attractive, more fun, or more honest are it may be the way she thinks. - 5. Maybe she has only ever dated and been around jerks because she has only ever known jerks, so it is not as if she knows there is anything different. - 6. Some women who date jerks on purpose as in the women are aware and accepting of their behaviour, know where they stand with them. These women overlap with other women who don’t know what a real nice guy is, as in a genuinely good, honest, respectful person who just so happens to be of the male gender and confuses them with guys who are extremely shy or guys who let themselves be pushed around and controlled. –Maybe the guy has extreme anxiety, low self-esteem, low confidence, or a number of different things, but they can still be a jerk. ‘The extremely shy guy’, ‘the pushover’, and ‘the genuine nice guy’ are not the same things.–

Addition: There is such a thing as a ‘fake nice guy’. They can also be called a ‘fuckboy’. They like to believe that they are actually good people (or they like to pretend they are), and some women only date ‘obvious jerks’ because again, they know where they stand with them. “Obvious jerks don’t play games.” is the thinking here. These women’s opinions of ‘nice guys’ have been soiled, and now they only see ‘nice guys’ as liars, cheaters, and posers so they date guys who are honest and clear about who and what they are. Within this sense, these people want the ‘right’ jerk or a certain type of jerk. Therefore, you can thank all of the fuckboys and fake nice guys for doing that shitty thing where one or a few people ruins something for anybody else, in this case, her attitude. - 7. Look up to the picture. Now read all of the text or the verbatim text I provide underneath. Now let your brain process what you just read. - 8. Maybe she doesn’t know he is a jerk. He may never act that way around her. - 9. Maybe she wants to try something completely different. - 10. On the other side of the coin, she may be scared to try something completely different. She might be worried that she will fail at a healthy relationship. - 11. She doesn’t want to ruin you. - 12. Toxic masculinity and the patriarchy are two real and horrible things bringing up abusive or neglectful fathers, so yeah, your father not engaging with you → you seek relationships with the first man who gives you attention/affection. Your father abused you → you think pain and abuse mean love or that abuse is acceptable. Your father parented you with unbending religious values and rules → you think your places are in the kitchen, bedroom, and nursery, and so on. (Everything in life is situational, nothing is in black and white, and it certainly can’t be summed up in two lines of text.)

Addition: The media/pop culture is also at fault because it is not just parents who end up raising a child, it is also their friends, teachers, the media, it’s the world around them. The media regularly spins toxic masculinity and the patriarchy into something called the ‘romantic jerk’ or the ‘bad boy’ for drama. The media loves to hold this character up to our daughters. This is the male character that plays a free spirit, wayward, tough guy attitude with life - “He may not have much money or a job or a care about anything, but fuck if he doesn’t fuck you into bliss. He is a man’s man on a motorcycle with bloody knuckles and a heart of gold only for you. Don’t worry, his manipulation, possessiveness, and stalking is just him expressing how much he doesn’t want to lose you, and how much he needs you in his life!” I’ll be clear: A guy like this doesn’t need you in his life, he needs a crutch. He needs someone to take care of him. He needed a mother (or a father) when he was little and he is turning you into that now, or he is trying to. He cannot be without you because he cannot stand on his own two feet. - 13. Maybe she doesn’t believe she’s good enough (for anything else). - 14. She may be a jerk herself, and aww look how cute, they found each other. Two pieces of shit have drifted towards each other in the toilet bowl. In which case, if two awful people can find each other, there is definitely someone out there for you. - 15. They have ulterior motives, which might include wanting a share in the jerk’s money/possessions, getting back at someone, or wanting a child. PSA: Please do not breed with jerks because you risk poisoning the human population with more of them if you do. - 16. She is grieving something or someone. Dating this jerk is liberating for her or is salving, possibly because of what little effort is expected from her to put into the relationship since the jerk puts in minor effort as well. Little effort creates few expectations creates little effort on an endless loop, and this might be good for her at this time in her life. - 17. She or he may be looking in the wrong place for a mate and are seriously under the misconception that “there are no good guys around to date”, and have now ended up settling for this. - 18. Maybe the jerk-gal (or jerk-guy) only mistreats everybody else but never her (or him), and she/he doesn’t care and/or likes that jerk-guy or jerk-gal is this way. - 19. She literally thinks she deserves bad treatment = she hates herself. - 20. For some people whether it is subconscious or not (there may be trauma, it can depend on the kind of environment they live in for ex: a bad neighbourhood, their attitude and the way they treat others, etc.), they are ‘magnets’ for jerks or they are drawn to jerks. They think they can only attract jerks, and therefore ‘jerks’ are as good as they will ever get. - 21. She or he does not want a committed relationship. They can rely on the jerk to be disinterested in a long-term committed relationship too, and that is just what she or he wants at that moment. In this case, they are (probably) perfectly aware of who they are dating and that it is not healthy. An actual good person is/will be the target date for something long-term. - 22. She/he is rebelling. She/he is acting out and/or trying to get attention and/or they are bored. Teenagers are usually the ones who date jerks for these reasons. - 23. The jerk keeps their partner around with sex or by buying them things, travel, or giving them money. - 24. Maybe the jerk just doesn’t like you. Maybe it’s you who is the problem- ooo plot twist: You are the jerk. - 25. Maybe this woman is a ‘beard’ for him. A beard is a term in lgbt+ culture that means - a man starts dating a woman, acquiring her as his beard, as a way to cover up the truth that he is gay. The man is not sexually attracted to her. She is not going to ‘turn’ him. A bisexual man, or a man who is questioning his own sexuality may use a beard as well, but the point is that ‘beard’ is an lgbt+ term. If she is the jerk’s beard, he sure is doing a shite job of keeping himself out of people’s attention. - 26. Personal reason: Maybe they seem like a jerk to you at first glance. However, some people need someone else to help keep them in line because of anything from childhood trauma to addiction to a mental/physical accessibility issue or other, and this looks like ‘being a jerk’ to you. It can be anything from helping to get them on and keep to a medication schedule, to keeping up with them when they are not on medication, to giving them an allowance because they can’t hold down a job. Some people do need that structure that comes with being with someone who a.) cares about them and b.) is able to put in the work to keep up with them (I use “keep up with” instead of “deal with” or “handle” because we are not anybody’s math problem or pet project)✨.

————— There definitely may be other reasons to add to this list that I just cannot think of, and again I say that each situation is different and complicated. What I have posted above are only linear, clear cut statements, but nothing in life is linear and clear cut, and again, I shouldn’t have to think for you.

Why is this discussion gendered in the first place? Anyone can end up dating a jerk. It doesn’t matter if you or the jerk is female or male! What, you think women are creatures made of pure love and compassion? You think women can’t be abusive? You think it is somehow better when a woman is the abuser because the abuse is easier to take, or that it doesn’t count as abuse? The saying runs with an air of the same stupidity as “Women are so confusing.” Women are not confusing - women are people, women are animals, and all people and all animals are different from one another, just like all men are different from each other, and men are animals too! Everybody is complicated. It’s very easy to understand, and much better than continuing to believe that all men are simple brutes who prioritize sex, and all women are too complicated and thus scary to ever really ‘know’.

Honestly, I would never date or even be acquaintances with anyone who asks, “Why do women/men only date jerks?”, and I would tell them to stop embarrassing themselves by asking things like that. Are the people asking these questions children or something? Maybe they’ve never spoken to their opposite gender? Then it is forgivable because with age comes experience. Otherwise, get your head out of your ass and stop asking astoundingly small-minded, sexist questions.

[magzoso-tech]

The rise of the winged pink unicorn

New Post has been published on http://rebrand.ly/utuf520

The rise of the winged pink unicorn

Claire Diaz-Ortiz Contributor

Claire Diaz-Ortiz is an angel investor and bestselling author of nine books that have been published in more than a dozen countries. An early employee at Twitter, she was called “The Woman Who Got the Pope on Twitter” by Wired and holds an MBA and other degrees from Stanford and Oxford.

More posts by this contributor

Latin America takes the global lead in VC directed to female co-founders

Like most investors, I am a little too obsessed with unicorns.

But not just the Silicon Valley kind. As the mother of a five-year-old daughter, my interests also veer in a pink, sparkly direction. So it should not be all that surprising that I recently found myself in a dusty corner of the internet where die-hard unicorn fans go to spread their wings.

It was there, deep in the My Little Pony forums, that one question stopped me in my tracks: “is a male alicorn possible in the future?1”

An alicorn, for those uninitiated to the mythological particulars, is the rare winged, female version of a traditional unicorn.

My Little Pony popularized the term, and the fan forum on which user “Green Precision” asked his question back in 2015 had some interesting answers to the particulars of this philosophical dilemma.

Shadow Stallion responded immediately, “I don’t think a male Alicorn will be possible in the future. Not because its [sic] not wanted or because its [sic] not genetically possible…but generally when male characters are introduced to a show where female characters are prominent, things get ugly.”

Malinter posited, “they probably do but given the female-to-male ratio of Equestria2 they are probably exceptionally rare. The real problem for a male alicorn is not that they exist but where is their place in the world? …Our male alicorn has some pretty big hoof prints to fill in while at the same time not make a trainwreck of established lore.”

Wind Chaser went straight from unconscious bias to conscious bias in their response: “aesthetically a male alicorn just wouldn’t look right, because their bodies are already naturally larger than females, thus the wings would cause an imbalance to the design.”

But it wasn’t all bad news.

“Until it’s proven otherwise, it’s safe to say that something like a male alicorn is possible,” responded Geek0zoid. Crysahis agreed. “Overall yes, I believe there could be a male alicorn it may just take a while to actually happen!”

It doesn’t take a PhD in philosophy from Stanford or the one lone female investing partner at Sequoia3 to posit that these same conversations were probably happening all over Sandhill Road in December of 2009, as male VCs discussed whether female unicorns could actually happen4.

As we move into 2020, though, we’re about to see a pink, winged stampede.

Just look at the recent trends. In 2019, more female-funded unicorns were born than ever before.5 And things are only looking up. (I’m looking at you, ClassPass!)

Public opinion agrees. Alongside TruePublic, where I am an advisor and angel investor, I ran a study asking if people believed we would see more female-led unicorns in the 2020s.6 At the time of this article, 68% of the 6,500 respondents said they believed we would see more, with 30% of women responding “many more” (as opposed to only 16% of men). Only 4% of women, but 9% of men, responded “no, not a chance.”7

Kaben Clauson, founder and CEO, says “to represent Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X, TruePublic needs a weighted sample of roughly one thousand Americans to represent that population of the USA.” This particular study already has 6,500 respondents, making it statistically significant.

In fact, female-founded and female co-founded companies are actually over-indexing for unicorn status despite a lack of investment dollars.

Shelby Porges, co-founder of The Billion Dollar Fund for Women, explains: “Recent tracking has shown that female-founded companies represent 4% of all unicorns. That’s astonishing considering that in the past couple of years, they have gotten only slightly more than 2% of all venture funding.” Porges, whose group has mobilized more than 80 venture funds to pledge to invest over a billion dollars into women-founded companies, continues, “It demonstrates why we say, ‘when you invest in women, you’re in good company.’ ”

Here are the three reasons I believe a herd of winged female unicorns (OK, alicorns) is coming down the pipeline in the 2020s:

1. Women invest in women at 3x the rate of men

New data reveals that women invest in women at nearly three times the rate that men do and with the (slow) rise in the number of female investing partners at VCV firms, we are poised to see more and more gender-balanced founding teams getting funding.8 Like one male GP at one of the world’s top VC funds said to me when discussing one of the few female partners at his firm, “she always brings us parenting companies.” It might be cringe-worthy if TechCrunch hadn’t declared 2020 “a big year for online childcare” and that same female partner weren’t about to make a big chunk of cash thanks to all the upcoming parenting alicorns she was smartly funding.

Sophia Bendz, a partner at Atomico who also leads the Atomico Angel Program, said, “I’m confident we’ll see more female unicorns in the next decade because there’s a growing wave of ambitious female founders building incredible products and services. There are also more women in VC now and I’ve seen first-hand the impact having female investment partners can have on increasing the amount of investment into female-led companies. The data shows that women invest in women at three times the rate as male investment partners.”

My study at TruePublic coincided with these findings. When asked if a female investor was more likely to invest in a female entrepreneur, 64% of people responded affirmatively (64% of these individuals were women and 63% were men).9

Jomayra Herrera agrees. An investor at Cowboy Ventures (which thanks to Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn” in the first place), and a volunteer with AllRaise, a nonprofit promoting women in VC, she says: “As the venture industry continues to diversify, especially as it relates to gender and race/ethnicity, I am optimistic that we will see more female-led and people of color-led unicorns over the next decade. We know that diverse teams not only function better, but they are able to see areas of opportunities that more homogenous teams might miss. I think the next generation of investors are more likely to question conventional wisdom, forms of pattern recognition that may lead to bias, and other structural barriers that have historically left out promising entrepreneurs.”

Camila Farani is a well-known investor in Brazil. As founder of G2 Capital, former president of Gavea Angels and a personality on Brazil’s “Shark Tank,” she says “having diverse points of view at the table makes the decision clearer and more certain. People who think differently than you and have other visions of the market, sometimes can show you what you can’t see by yourself.”

She also reminds us not to forget the impact that angel investors can have. “The investments market is still made up mostly of men, but this landscape is changing gradually. It is interesting to see that angel investing is being the most common choice for women who want to make their first investments.”

This trend of investing more in women isn’t just limited to female investors. Susana Robles has spent two decades leading the charge to invest in women in Latin America and alongside Marta Cruz of NXTP Labs is co-founder of WeXchange, a platform that connects women entrepreneurs from Latin America and the Caribbean with mentors and investors.

As Robles says, “I think the world is finally waking up to the fact that there is serious research proving that startups with women co-founders win in all aspects: profitability, as well as greater social and environmental awareness. Investors should want to have this triple win.” She continues, “women tend to return money to investors faster than men, and at the same time, they obtain higher returns. Women are in charge of 64% of all global purchasing decisions on products and services, so having women on C-level positions increases the chance that a startup [will] be highly attractive to a massive market and become a unicorn.”

It also extends to the LPs in the funds. “I also think many investors in funds (mostly DFIs [development finance institutions] but not exclusively) have become more vocal in stating that they don’t want any more to invest in teams led by an all-white, all-male cast who choose startups with all-white, all-male founders.” Jennifer Neundorfer is the co-founder of Jane VC and an investor in Kinside, a parenting app that just raised a $3 million seed round. When describing her fund’s rationale for focusing on female founders, she drops the mic: “we’re going to invest in an under-looked asset class that is overperforming.” Boom.

2. Female founders are creating new billion-dollar markets

Another reason we’ll see more female-founded “alicorns” in the 2020s has everything to do with the new markets that female founders are creating. Hunter Walk of Homebrew was one of the initial seed investors in Winnie, an online marketplace for childcare that recently raised a $9 million Series A. At the time, he saw something that others investors didn’t. Winnie co-founder Sara Mauskopf explains, “Four years ago when we started Winnie, parenting and especially child care were not hot investment areas. This has been changing. It certainly helps that more investors are women and are in the thick of their child-bearing and rearing years.”

Part of what Walk says he recognized was the clear founder-market fit displayed by Mauskopf and her co-founder Annie Halsall. As Mauskopf says, “With Winnie, we saw an opportunity to solve the child-care crisis that other founders either did not recognize or did not care to solve. While everyone else was starting crypto and scooter companies, we were building the first-ever tech platform for $57 billion child care industry. Lack of access to quality child care disproportionately impacts women, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it took a female led team to capitalize on this opportunity.” Expanding on the concept of founder-market fit, Walk says, “I love to come away thinking, these are the absolute right founders to build this business.”10

Bendz, the Atomico partner who specializes in femtech and is also an avid angel investor, agrees. “Often I meet founders that you can tell are at the right place at the right time with the right mindset and the right team. It’s almost like all of the experiences they have had prior to launching a company have been preparing them to create that business at that time. These are the kind of founders who I know are in it for the long haul, and who are going to weather the ups and downs.” As a woman who uses the products and services she invests in, Bendz is also an example of investor-market fit, which I believe will open new markets in the decades to come.

Something else investors like Walk and Bendz believe in? Outsized opportunities. And the potential for outsized opportunities are especially ripe in untapped markets. The rise of femtech is yet another example of how the intuitive success of the concept of founder-market fit ultimately needed more female founders for certain markets to blossom. As Bendz explains, “Throughout a woman’s life there are many big events that have a big impact on our overall health — from childbirth to menopause. I know all women are tired of poor or non-existent solutions for women surrounding those life events, and that’s why we are seeing so many companies launching to better serve women’s needs. When you think about the fact that women have only had the right to vote and educate themselves for 100 years, it’s mind-blowing how long the world was operating with only 50% of the population in control. That’s reflected in the products and services we as a society have funded.”

Women’s consumer products are another area. Ornella Moraes is one of four female co-founders of Brazilian-led Sousmile, which recently raised a $6 million USD Series A led by Kaszek Ventures. “Our brand is a woman,” Moraes says of her dental beauty startup that retails throughout São Paulo. And so are the leaders of the company. At Sousmile, there are four female co-founders and two male co-founders. “More dentists in the world are women than men, so it’s been critical for our team to have more female founders,” she says. In this way, the rise of female founders and co-founders can completely change markets. “We believe this will fundamentally create a different type of product,” says Walk.

3. Emerging markets will take the lead

Finally, certain emerging markets pose a particular opportunity for female founders by over-indexing for both large IPOs and female founders. 2017 was the first year that more of the largest IPOs in the internet sector globally came from emerging markets. Nazar Yasin, founder of Rise Capital, which invests in emerging markets, says “This trend isn’t going away.” After all, most GDP growth comes from emerging markets, where most global internet users live. As he explains, “the future of market capitalization growth in the internet sector globally belongs to emerging markets.” And yet this type of innovation takes resilience. “If you’re a startup in one of these markets, it’s like trying to grow a plant in the desert.”11 In an environment that demands more daily resilience, there is a different appetite for risk and innovation. (I call this resilience innovation.)

Perhaps the easiest example of emerging market innovation fueled by resilience is fintech. Emerging markets and their often unstable economies boast a much higher number of frustratingly unbanked individuals. This brings about innovation. Hanna Schiuma, the Brazilian-born fintech founder of ElasBank, where I am an angel investor and advisor, explains how ubiquitous such fintech innovation is becoming.

“Soon all finance will be tailor-made and fintech will be common ground because all financial services will be technology-intensive.” She also argues that the nature of such an innovation allows the industry to become more innovative, and thus inclusive, which is exactly what is happening with her own women’s bank, launching in 2020. “That means great opportunities to better serve women’s financial needs to offer dedicated products, and to gather female talent to build those products from a diverse and innovative perspective.” Ultimately, “resilience is key for us to build that pool of talent and open the doors for gender balance and financial inclusion.”

Furthermore, data shows Africa and Latin America both beat global averages for percentages of startup female founders. Laura Stebbing is co-CEO of accelerateHER, a global community of leaders addressing the under-representation of women in tech through action. Raised in Southern Africa, Stebbing is passionate about Africa’s rise as a hub of female entrepreneurship.

“Africa has both the highest proportion of women founders at 26% [Latam comes in second]12 and a $42 billion funding gap. There’s clearly no lack of talent across Africa’s 54 countries, so for the investors, corporate executives, policy makers and established founders that aren’t moved by the moral arguments for gender parity, notice the enormous business opportunity. We will start to see a higher volume of resilient, scalable companies emerge as leaders build more diverse networks and ecosystems that support women to unlock their entrepreneurial potential.” Nathan Lustig, founder of Magma Partners, a VC firm in Latin America which invests in female founders above the regional average, explains, “investing in and empowering resilient women entrepreneurs is just good business, and is one of the biggest investment opportunities, especially in emerging markets.”

I believe Latin American can have an edge. I am a Silicon Valley-born investor now living in “Silicon Aires,” where I have been thrilled to see exciting numbers of female founders in Latin America. Susana Robles agrees, and says the reason is in part due to the nature of a committed ecosystem to support one another. “It’s the sheer need that forces you to collaborate.” An ecosystem like Silicon Valley doesn’t have the same need to do so. Of Latin America, Robles says, “In 10 years, we will have created a much more collaborative market than the developed ones.” And that collaboration is leading to great female founders. 2019, in fact, saw more funding going to female co-founders in Latin America than in Europe or the USA.13

This will lead to future alicorns. Ann Williams, COO of Creditas, a Brazilian fintech currently closing in on its own unicorn status, says “the conversion funnel for unicorns works just like any other selection process. We fill the top with a bunch of great women in supporting roles in emerging market startups, these women take their experiences and found rocking new companies. A percentage of these will convert to scaleups raising Series C and D rounds with valuations at $1 billion or higher. And voila! we get women-led unicorns.” She continues, “the odds are with us and I am sure the talent is too!”

Juliane Butty, startup head at Platzi and former regional manager of Seedstars, one of the leading accelerators and investors fostering female entrepreneurship in emerging markets, joins Williams. “We have definitely seen the rise of female founders and investors in emerging markets in the last decade. One supports the other. And we know that success breeds success.”

Perhaps My Little Pony fan Malinter said it best when he suggested how a male version of the alicorn could finally emerge in such a female-dominated space: “The simplest way they could probably add one in would be to make said alicorn the ruler of a neighboring nation.” In the same way, emerging markets may just hold the key for female unicorns.

No matter the region, Robles says “if we keep opening doors to women entrepreneurs who are as ambitious as men in growing their companies, we’ll begin to see many more unicorns with gender diversified teams.” Hanna Schiuma, the Elasbank founder who just might be building the next female-founded unicorn, agrees. “The alicorns are coming. And we’re ready to fly.”

2Equestria is of course where the My Little Ponies and their assorted unicorns, alicorns and friends all live. 3Go Jess Lee! 4Yes, Aileen Lee of Cowboy VC first invented the term in her 2013 TechCrunch piece, but we’re in a unicorn-fueled time machine, people. 8“Do Female Investors Support Female Entrepreneurs? An Empirical Analysis of Angel Investor Behavior,” Seth C. Oranburg, Duquesne University School of Law, Pittsburgh PA, USA and Mark Geiger, Duquesne University School of Business, Pittsburgh PA, USA 12Forthcoming research from TechCrunch/Crunchbase 13Forthcoming research from TechCrunch/Crunchbase