{"id":72289,"date":"2018-03-16T10:50:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T15:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72289"},"modified":"2018-03-16T10:50:25","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T15:50:25","slug":"gender-bitcoin-and-altcoins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2018\/03\/16\/gender-bitcoin-and-altcoins\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender, Bitcoin and Altcoins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the fact that women played a key role<\/span><\/a> in the development of modern technology, the digital domain is a disproportionately male space. Recent stories about the politics of GamerGate, \u201ctech bros\u201d in Silicon Valley, and resistance to diversity routinely surface<\/span><\/a> despite efforts of companies such as Google to clean up their act by firing<\/span><\/a> reactionary male employees.<\/span><\/p>\n

The big tech story of the past year is unquestionably cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. So it\u2019s a good time to look at how cryptos replicate the gender politics of digital spaces and where they might complicate them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Women\u2019s Representation<\/span><\/h3>\n

Crypto holders are not evenly divided between men and women. One recent<\/span><\/a> survey shows that 71% of Bitcoin holders are male. The first challenge for women is simply their representation within the crypto space.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are various efforts on the part of individual women to address the imbalance. For example, Stacy Herbert, co-host of\u00a0The Keiser Report<\/i>, has recently been discussing the possibility of a women\u2019s crypto conference noting<\/span><\/a>, \u201cI know so so many really smart women in the space but you go to these events and it\u2019s panels of all the same guys again and again.\u201d Technology commentator Alexia Tsotsis recently tweeted<\/span><\/a>, \u201cWomen, consider crypto. Otherwise the men are going to get all the wealth, again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly, the macho nature of the crypto community can feel exclusionary to women. Recently Bloomberg reported<\/span><\/a> on a Bitcoin conference in Miami that invited attendees to an after-hours networking event held in a strip club. As one female attendee noted, \u201cThere was a message being sent to women, that, \u2018OK, this isn\u2019t really your place \u2026 this is where the boys roll.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The image of women as presented by altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin) is also telling. One can buy into TittieCoin<\/span><\/a> or BigBoobsCoin<\/span><\/a>, which need no further explanation. There is also an altcoin designed to resist this tendency, Women Coin<\/span><\/a>: \u201cWomen coin will become the ultimate business coin for women. We all know that this altcoin market is mainly operated by men, just like the entire world. We want to stop this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cryptomasculinities<\/span><\/h3>\n

The male dominance of cryptos suggests it is a space that celebrates normative masculinity. Certain celebrity endorsements of crypto projects have added to this mood, such as heavyweight boxer Floyd Mayweather<\/span><\/a>, actor Steven Seagal<\/span><\/a> and rapper Ghostface Killah<\/span><\/a>. Crypto evangelist John McAfee routinely posts comments and pictures concerning guns, hookers and drugs. Reactionary responses to feminism can also be found: for example, patriarchal revivalist website Return of Kings published an article<\/span><\/a> claiming, \u201cBitcoin proves that that \u2018glass ceiling\u2019 keeping women down is a myth.\u201d Homophobia also occurs: when leading Bitcoin advocate Andreas Antonopoulos announced he was making a donation to the LGBTQ-focused Lambda Legal he received an array of homophobic comments<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it would be wrong to assume the masculinity promoted in the crypto space is monolithic. In particular, it is possible to identify a division between Bitcoin and altcoin holders. Consider the following image:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This image was tweeted<\/span><\/a> with the caption \u201cBitcoin and Ethereum community can\u2019t be anymore different.\u201d On the left we have a MAGA hat-wearing, gun-toting Bitcoin holder; on the right the supposedly effeminate Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the blockchain platform Ethereum. The longer you spend reading user-generated content in the crypto space, the more you get the sense that Bitcoin is \u201cfor men\u201d while altcoins are framed as for snowflakes and SJWs.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is an exception to this Bitcoin\/altcoin gendered distinction: privacy coins such as Monero and Zcash appear to be deemed acceptably manly. Perhaps it is a coincidence that such altcoins are favored by Julian Assange<\/span><\/a>, who has his own checkered history with gender politics ranging from his famed \u201cmasculinity test<\/span><\/a>\u201d through to the recent quips about feminists<\/span><\/a> reported by The Intercept<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, it is not surprising that the crypto space appears to be predominantly male and even outright resistant to fair representations of women. Certainly, it is not too dramatic to state that Bitcoin has a hyper-masculine culture, but Bitcoin does not represent the whole crypto space, and as both altcoins and other blockchain-based services become more diverse it is likely that so too will its representations of gender.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Gelfer is a researcher of men and masculinities. His books include\u00a0<\/em>Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and <\/em>The Problem of Patriarchy\u00a0and\u00a0Masculinities in a Global Era. He is currently developing a new model for understanding masculinity,\u00a0The Five Stages of Masculinity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the fact that women played a key role in the development of modern technology, the digital domain is a disproportionately male space. Recent stories about the politics of GamerGate, \u201ctech bros\u201d in Silicon Valley, and resistance to diversity routinely surface despite efforts of companies such as Google to clean up their act by firing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1851,"featured_media":72290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2087,290,140],"class_list":["post-72289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-sciencetechnology","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2018\/03\/Crypto-e1521050335400.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72289"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72295,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72289\/revisions\/72295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}