Lonsdale Calls Men Who Take Six Months Off to Parent ‘Losers’

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Lonsdale, a founder of Palantir Technologies Inc. and a prolific venture capitalist, stoked a debate on Twitter about parental leave, saying any prominent man who takes six months off with his newborn is “a loser.”

The comment was made in response to a tweet about Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. Transportation secretary who took time off to care for his children, and criticism from the podcast personality Joe Rogan.

Among the many responses to Lonsdale’s post Wednesday, the founders of another venture capital firm, Initialized, offered a rebuke. Alexis Ohanian and Garry Tan

Initialized has 4 months leave, and I took all 4 months to make sure everyone at Initialized felt like they could do it.

Respect that people have different choices, but being a dad is awesome and there is more to life than work and money.

Ohanian, a founder of Reddit Inc. and husband to tennis great Serena Williams, has been a leading advocate for men to share care-taking responsibilities. Doing so would enable women to seize more opportunities for career growth and fair pay, research has shown.

Democrats are expected to abandon paid family leave in President Joe Biden’s economic plan after facing opposition from Congressional Republicans, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. That would leave the U.S. as one of only seven countries that don’t provide paid leave, at least to mothers.

A father of three, Lonsdale is a regular critic of “woke” politics. He is a longtime associate of Peter Thiel, the powerful conservative billionaire. Lonsdale’s venture investments include Flexport Inc., Joby Aviation Inc. and Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook Inc. He also runs an advocacy group with his wife called the Cicero Institute, which focuses on criminal justice, health care and other causes.

Last year, Lonsdale decamped from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, because he disagreed with San Francisco city leaders and was attracted to the more liberal gun laws and absence of personal income taxes in the state. (Austin is, of course, not the most conservative place in Texas.)

Despite his reputation, the response to Lonsdale’s message Wednesday was unusually strong and mostly negative. Later on Twitter, he said using the word loser was “uncalled for,” but he doubled down on the importance of maintaining traditional gender roles.

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