Re: While we're on the topic of forks, here's one of a different sort

I have a problem with the implication running through a lot of this that
women don't care about technology. Over and over I'm hearing that the block
chain is a geeky dude thing, that to appeal to women things have to relate
to how people use them, etc etc.

There's a lot of reinforcing of horrible gender/tech stereotypes here.

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 22:27 Tao Effect <contact@taoeffect.com> wrote:

> I have no idea whether that link is on topic for this list. Maybe a mod
> could provide some guidance here?
>
> In the meantime, I’ll point out that Arianna Simpson (subject of the
> article) took issue with it:
>
> https://twitter.com/AriannaSimpson/status/591406001674321921
>
> Re:
>
> The lack of women in Bitcoin isn't just an issue of equality. It's a
> fundamental weakness of the currency itself. As long as the Bitcoin
> community is dominated by men geeking out about the blockchain, it's never
> going to be able to make the human connections that are required for
> widespread adoption.
>
>
> The word “fundamental” should be reserved for things that are fundamental,
> not “possibly associated with”.
>
> The “lack of women in Bitcoin” is not an issue of equality any more that
> the lack of men in nursing is an issue of equality. Nor does it really have
> anything to do with Bitcoin, but is more likely simply reflective of the
> gender gap in tech.
>
> The title of the article also seems to be nonsensical clickbait.
>
> The word “Bitcoin” could refer to a piece of software, a currency, a
> network, or a community. None of those, except for the community, are
> capable of expressing feelings toward women (or anything else).
>
> As far as the community goes, I have seen no evidence that the Bitcoin
> community has any “problem” with women, at least in the Bay Area. To the
> contrary, in the many meetups that I’ve attended, it’s been entirely
> supportive.
>
> The only exception to that which I can think of was a single instance of a
> poorly worded comment by a presenter at a Bitcoin meetup group. I don’t
> think it was reflective of the “Bitcoin community”, however. It might have
> been reflective of poor social skills, a different cultural background, the
> speaker’s honest real-world experience, the fact that English was not his
> native language, or any number of other possibilities related to him as an
> individual.
>
> The Bitcoin community (in the Bay Area at least) seems to have a healthy
> relationship with women (to my male eyes and ears, at least). The largest
> Bitcoin meetup group in SF (and probably the entire Bay Area) is organized
> by two wonderful ladies who’ve been doing a fantastic job of running the
> meetup.
>
> Yes, there are few women in tech. In most of my CS classes, there were two
> or fewer women. It may therefore be surprising to some when a technically
> sophisticated female enters the room, because in some circles it is simply
> a rare event, and expressing reaction to rare events is pretty much the
> definition of surprise.
>
> That said, it’s worth reading the source material, Arianna’s post, to
> understand what it’s like to be in her shoes (or similar shoes), and how *not
> *to behave:
>
>
> https://medium.com/@ariannasimpson/this-is-what-its-like-to-be-a-woman-at-a-bitcoin-meetup-b07f3bb6ab5b
>
> - Greg
>
> --
> Please do not email me anything that you are not comfortable also sharing with
> the NSA.
>
> On Apr 26, 2015, at 6:40 PM, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:
>
> Bitcoin's Problem With Women
> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/bitcoin-women-problem
>
> --
> Joseph Potvin
>
>
>