
This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup - frankdenbow
http://ariannasimpson.com/post/74400025051/this-is-what-its-like-to-be-a-woman-at-a-bitcoin
======
meritt
> In my mind, it’s a little preposterous that if I want to do so, however, I
> have to be ok with being felt up and indirectly insulted.

To the author: You're right, it's unacceptable but you know how to fix it? You
say something at the point in which it occurs. Nip it in the bud. Running off
to write yet another gender-division-in-the-tech-world blog which will be
read, primarily, by the sort of folk who already agree with you isn't going to
make nearly as much of a difference as taking care of issues promptly. After
doing so, blog about what happened and the resulting reaction. That's the sort
of story that'll spread like wildfire.

~~~
hbags
I think it's absolutely disgusting that you criticize the victim for
documenting what happened to her.

It's despicable and downright fucking evil that you basically accuse her of
sharing her story solely because she wants attention.

The worst part of your god-awful post is that it's currently pinned to the top
of this board.

The fact that your disgusting, insensitive post is at the top is why women
don't work in tech. They don't want to have to deal with assholes like you who
have nothing better to do than say "she should do X instead of sharing her
story", or whatever else you want to do to silence her, and shame her for
sharing her story.

She is brave for doing anything, because she knew the world is full of
assholes like you: cowardly bigots who will criticize ANY action she takes.

I'm sorry she had a problem. And I'm more sorry that HN has degraded to the
point where a cowardly attack from a piece of shit like you is pinned to the
top.

~~~
rosser
All I can think of in response to this diatribe is a line from _The Big
Lebowski_ :

"You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."

Seriously, dude; chill. You can communicate your (not incorrect) point so very
much more effectively without ragefacing all over the person you're replying
to. It gets in the way of successful communication, and probably does horrible
things for your blood pressure to boot.

~~~
hbags
I'm not dumb enough to try to change the stripes on a proudly bigoted jerk
like Meritt.

I just want anybody who sees his spew to know that his opinion is not the only
one. I want any human who is harassed to know that if they share their story
after the fact, that's good.

And they shouldn't worry about the fact that some utterly worthless assholes
like Meritt will try to shame them for speaking out. They shouldn't be ashamed
if they were too afraid, too shy, or too confused to respond in the moment.

It is GOOD that we share these stories. It is GOOD that we move towards a
world where these things happen less often.

And the utterly worthless assholes like Meritt who want to shame people for
sharing their stories... they might be well represented in HN, but they're a
minority of normal humans.

And I'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it is
that he tried to shame the victim into silence.

~~~
vacri
I'm fine with a bit of profanity and would like to see more, personally. But
when your comment is basically nothing but invective, you don't really have a
leg to stand on when you're calling someone else worthless.

 _And I 'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it
is that he tried to shame the victim into silence._

Meritt said 'say something right then and there, it's more effective. Then
write a blog post about that instead'. Whether that's true or not could be up
for debate (likewise the victim's responsibility to do something), but you
have to be pretty one-eyed to read that as shaming the victim into silence
rather than encouraging the victim into action.

~~~
hbags
No. what Merritt said that if you don't say something right there and then you
should never be allowed to say anything.

He's an asshole and a bully. If a victim doesn't protest withim his designated
free-speech zone he doesn't want them to protest at all.

~~~
vacri
No, he never said or even intimated "don't write about it". He said that
writing this article this way would only be read by people who already agree.
He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree
with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire, but there is nothing in
what he said that meant "don't write at all". That's your projection. He said
"if you do A, it won't be as effective as B".

The person who is being an arsehole and a bully is you, naming, shaming,
strawmanning, abusing, and being generally vituperative.

~~~
dragonwriter
> He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree
> with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire

He didn't say that being proactive at the time would spread like wildfire, he
said that being proactive at the time _and writing about that experience
afterward_ would.

~~~
vacri
Yep, that's what I meant. And to be specific, I don't think if the article was
"I asserted myself with the groper and he withdrew" would spread like
wildfire. It wouldn't reach a particularly different audience to this one,
methinks.

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, I'd say the group interested in and reposting/linking a story of
"Addressing the problem directly works" would be very different in composition
to the group that tends to repost/link a story of "Bad things happen" alone.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the size/scope/impact of the two groups was
about the same.

------
McGlockenshire
>Was either of us mistreated? Technically, no.

This doesn't really line up with the entire second paragraph, in which she was
basically groped. _Groped._ And then treated like a piece of meat instead of
as a human being.

If that's not mistreatment, I really don't know what would be.

~~~
rosser
I think it's actually disturbingly telling that women's (or at least this
particular woman's) expectations for how they'll be treated at tech meetups
are so low that the described behavior _isn 't_ considered mistreatment.

------
jellicle
To the younger folks out there: if you see something like this occur as a
third party (you're neither the groper nor the gropee, neither the misogynist
nor the victim), you need to not politely ignore it but to step in and correct
the asshole, as firmly as necessary.

Whether it's groping or just verbal putdowns of some sort, you should step
forward and add yourself to the situation, making it clear that the behavior
you witnessed is not acceptable to you.

Otherwise, you're part of the problem too.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Are you suggesting that "younger folks" just start trying to intervene in
every public display of affection they see at a meetup?

If I hug my wife the last thing I need is some white knight running up and
calling me names because they have some imagining of what is going on.

Honestly that advice on the face of it is terrible. We should discourage this
behaviour but it should be through having rules for meetups, a
complaints/reporting facility, and banning the offenders (or giving them
warnings in less egregious examples).

Recommending people get into a confrontation if they get a bad vibe is just
bad advice that will result in bad situations (see dongle-gate, et al).

------
blairbeckwith
I agree wholeheartedly with this article, however I don't think it's fair to
use such a wide brush. "This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at _This_ Bitcoin
Meetup" would have been more appropriate. There are bad apples in every
community, and it certainly sounds like the author met some, but it's
important to realize that a few bad apples don't ruin the whole bushel.

~~~
jpwright
How many more posts like this are needed to convince you that the whole
community of tech meetups is hostile towards women?

Of course that individual deserves the lion's share of the blame, but writing
this off as an isolated individual acting inappropriately misses the forest
for the trees (i.e. misses the root cause [culture] for the proximate cause
[assholes]).

To further analogize, perhaps the bad apple was there because the bushel was
poisoned?

~~~
2gg2rg
> How many more posts like this are needed to convince you that the whole
> community of tech meetups is hostile towards women?

A whole lot more, because I don't see this shit at the tech meetups I go to.

~~~
jpwright
Looks like you have some reading to do. Here's a good place to start:
[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents)

~~~
2gg2rg
One of them was by a registered offender who they shouldn't have hired,
another was PG admitting he didn't know young women all that well, so it
doesn't support what you seem to be implying all that well, unless the month I
looked at isn't representative. And also there's the fact that the list
doesn't report the number of meetups/cons where no incidents are reported. But
as I said before, I'd certainly need to see it happen at the events I attend
before I believe it happens at all events or that the entire community is
hostile towards women. You might as well list all such crimes reported in the
US and use that as evidence that everyone living in the US is a misogynist.

------
rayiner
> “Wow. Women don’t usually say that type of things”.

To be perfectly honest, this is something I might have thought (but even then
had the sense not to say) when I was working as an engineer. The mere lack of
women in tech leads to perceptions that make it unpleasant for women to enter
the field. Most people interact with just a few spheres: people they work
with, people they meet on the street, and their friends, which are often drawn
from people they work with or people they went to school with. When you go to
school with very few women, and work with very few women, as engineers usually
do, your perception of the whole gender is disproportionately shaped by those
women you meet on the street, in the course of day to day activities. For
people who work in intellectually demanding fields, the people you meet on the
street are quite likely to not be as smart as the people you work with or the
people you went to school with. And that as a real impact.

~~~
js2
Really? I've been a geek since, well, always, have a CS degree and have been
working as a sysadmin and programmer since 1996. There have been women along
the way, in my CS program, as coworkers, at the various startups I've worked
at. Some of them have been a whole lot brighter than me. And in all that time,
I've never thought "oh wow, how unusual." I just don't get it.

------
blhack
Nobody deserves to be physically or verbally assaulted like that, and it's up
to the rest of the community (at everything: hackathons, meetups, open hours,
etc.) to deal with toxic people.

People in situations like this: please if somebody is making you
uncomfortable, speak up. Maybe the guy putting his hand on your leg is your
boyfriend? The "good people" in the room want to make you feel comfortable,
but sometimes its hard to determine if somebody is a friend or not.

------
mercer
This sounds absolutely horrible, but it raises a questions.

I'm a guy, and I tend to be quite aware of things happening around me. If I
were to notice things unfold as described in this post... Assuming I'm not in
charge: is it preferable that I somehow try to play a role in this, or would
this only make everything more complicated/awkward. Should I stay back and
just be pissed off?

What would be the best way to approach this situation?

~~~
sliverstorm
If you are worried about causing a scene, butt in about something else.

 _Hey <NAME>, I heard somebody say you like <TECHNOLOGY>! I'm a huge fan too!_

If he's resistant to your interruption, be more forceful in trying to engage
him. Maybe sit down next to him. Worst-case he becomes aggressive towards you,
but so long as you stay bright & friendly, everyone else will see him picking
the fight. That way you can try to defuse the situation indirectly. Maybe you
get him engaged in conversation, or maybe the girl seizes the moment to excuse
herself. Maybe you offer to the girl, _Some other girls were looking for their
friend, they said she had a blue shirt, was that you?_

If he seems reasonable yet misguided (rather than a total asshole who _knows_
the girl wants nothing to do with him), you can optionally try leading him
away and quietly saying something like, _I noticed that girl was starting to
feel uncomfortable, tone it down /back off/try a different tactic_.

Anyway, that's what I'd do if I was trying to avoid making a scene.

~~~
mercer
Excellent advice. Thanks.

------
aferreira
Congratulations, you have successfully determined that scumbags are
everywhere.

The behavior of these people should not be directly correlated with
bitcoin/tech/startups/whateveryouwanttocallit.

------
hosh
Good thing that, unlike meetups, the bitcoin protocol doesn't care if a
bitcoin address is controlled by a man or a woman.

I mean, that's the whole point of having a collective ledger where every agent
is untrusted. There is no one saying, "Your money is no good here," based on
your gender, race, creed, or political leanings.

~~~
throwawaycoder
This story made me realize that eventually we will get some sort of "FemCoin",
though. Anybody who continues to use Bitcoin will be labeled a sexist and be
made a social pariah.

The reason is that women didn't have a fair chance to get into Bitcoin in time
because the community was so hostile. Therefore all the Bitcoin wealth is
unfairly shifted to white men.

Edit: turns out Femcoin already exists
[https://bitbucket.org/valerieaurora/femcoin](https://bitbucket.org/valerieaurora/femcoin)

~~~
hosh
That's interesting. What you are suggesting is that, with lower barriers of
entry to create new currencies, we will see a rise in forking economies just
as open source and distributed source control allowed open source communities
to maintain forks.

Leaving aside that, however, notions of "fairness" is flawed. Fairness for me
means that a hostile community self-destructs under its own weight of
hostility, not that "Bitcoin wealth is unfairly shifted to white men."

An unfair economy that discriminates against a class of people will see people
leaving. I am not sure if it will happen like that, but that's an interesting
thought.

~~~
throwawaycoder
There are already a lot of forks of Bitcoin, some even moderately successful.

Actually independent of feminism I have long wondered if other cryptocoins
might supersede Bitcoin exactly for the reason of fairness. Assume the world
wakes up to Bitcoin in a couple of years. Then the BTC wealth will be very
unequally distributed. Why should people start using BTC if they are poor in
it? They could as well say "hey, cryptocurrencies are swell, but let's use
another one were nobody had a headstart".

I guess part of dogecoins success story is that everybody got rich in dogecoin
quickly (1 Million doges per minute). A lot of people who didn't like Bitcoin
like dogecoin.

~~~
hosh
Sure, I know there are lots of forks of Bitcoin. I'm talking about forking the
whole economy though, which requires being able to at least trade for basic
survival needs.

From an existential point of view, there is no such thing as fairness and yet,
people still create whatever notions of fairness. Fairness tends to be deeply
rooted into emotional makeup of a person. Many conflicts come about because
the parties involved have different, deeply rooted sense of fairness.

Forking in open-source software allowed it to more or less outcompete
commercial software in many (though not all) areas, and what finally made it
work was a relatively cheap way for forked projects to be merged back together
again. In other words, if we are forking along the lines of fairness (and come
to think of it, notions of fairness are _the_ psychological factor from which
economies arise from), then eventually, for things to work out means being
able to merge economies back together again.

~~~
hosh
@throwawaycoder I see. You're underlying assumption is that there will ever be
only one single "economy" of which there are multiple markets. I'm not sure
that is wrong either (though I am not sure that is right). Thanks for bringing
that up.

~~~
hosh
@throwawaycoder huh, not sure why your comments get downvoted.

The forking I mean is not necessarily the technical part of it, but rather the
interactions of people. On the other hand, I also just talked with someone I
know who has been in the payment space for a long time -- he says he prefers
to keep things simple, so not necessarily a "forking" that happens.

Eh well, something to think about for me. I think the "forking" concept is
useful for me when we start talking about markets for which there is
oppression. I'm not particularly interested in things like drug or gun trade.
I'm much more interested in things like, being able to 3D print a tractor so
people can farm land and grow food even if vested interests try to suppress
that tractor.

------
lincolnq
Great examples of what not to do. I would guess that many of these are fairly
easy mistakes to make if you haven't been inoculated.

For most people, I think a single article like this is enough to "inoculate"
\-- to make the reader substantially more aware of potential mistakes / hidden
assumptions in their social interactions, and likely change their behavior.
Yet we still read lots of stories like these. I guess distributing these
stories widely should help the situation.

~~~
ariannahsimpson
Yep, that was my objective. I hope it helps someone, at some point. Goal was
not to bitch aimlessly.

------
jakejake
The story is pretty sad and not reflective of the tech community in my
opinion. It sounds like a group of either a) nerdy guys with severely lacking
social skills or b) just garden-variety douchebags.

------
guard-of-terra
Maybe it isn't related to Bitcoin and Tech so much as it is related to, say,
USA and SF?

Because I can't imagine such stories materialize in other places (of developed
word and large parts of developing world either).

You just seem to have enough peculiar traits from both gender sides for a
perfect storm.

~~~
rayshan
The event was in NYC not SF. SF / SV has its own share of problems but the one
being discussed here isn't unique to SF or the U.S. Though I do wonder how the
U.S. rank in terms of % of women in STEM majors or STEM careers.

Also the issue here has something to do with bitcoin attracting early adopters
and groups with certain political preferences. I certainly wouldn't call the
bitcoin subculture mainstream yet.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Okay, I have to admit I picked SF from comments.

I think this issue doesn't have to be correlated to "% of women in STEM
majors". I think that by tackling this as simple the numbers problem you're
only making it worse.

Maybe it's not so much Bitcoin attracting certain early adopters, rather USA
having a peculiar supply of early adopters (for many things) that also happen
to clash with USA's supply of women? This way you can't win, Bitcoin or no
Bitcoin.

------
moron4hire
I've had some experience with managing tech meetups, and the inevitable
occurrence of creepers making the attending women uncomfortable. The correct
solution is for the people running the event to be paying attention to the
behavior of the attendees and kick people out who are being disrespectful. And
to do it noisily. It needs to be made an example of.

Unfortunately, these guys creep out other guys, too, so it's often the case
that you see nothing happen because nobody wants to deal with the 'tard.

But it's no excuse. Pull up your big boy pants and give the asshole the boot.

------
ljf
Amazing to see this story so swiftly knocked from the front page. Sad
reflection on our industry.

------
ghc
If nobody bothers to challenge or set boundaries with cretins like this, how
will the situation ever change? I don't think this is a situation where you'd
have to fear for your safety for showing a little bit of a spine. It's not as
if people who are socially retarded enough to think that behavior is okay will
change without negative repercussions for their actions.

------
pera
I am really sorry about your experience.

Last year my girlfriend wanted to go to a Bitcoin Meetup in Buenos Aires.
Nothing like that happened in that occasion, but it was really boring imo...
though it was interesting to see how many "bitcoiners" are mostly clueless
about how Bitcoin actually works

btw I would change the title to "This is What it’s Like to Be a Woman."

------
Groxx
I can never tell how to interpret stories like this.

They met assholes. Assholes are everywhere. They're guaranteed continue to
_be_ assholes until their targets stop them / make others aware that they are
assholes.

Slap them (it's loud, shocking, and non-damaging). Make a scene. It's not
acceptable behavior, regardless of gender or location.

~~~
lauradhamilton
You can't just go around slapping people.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
She can go around slapping people who are groping her. Absolutely she can.

What, you're worried about him escalating from there? In a roomful of almost
entirely guys? He won't make it very far with that...

~~~
vacri
The bulk of the article was about not being treated as an intellectual equal
by the group, not the physical contact of one person.

------
EricDeb
Not to defend the men in this story but I imagine they are like many guys in
tech-single and lonely, and see these sorts of meet-ups as an opportunity to
meet women with similar interests. Specifically the line "Oh ok cool, so if we
start dating I can use the app with you!" seems to suggest this objective.

I think a lot of their statements are said to provoke a reaction from women in
a "flirty" manner, not because these men are actually misogynistic. Their
well-intentioned flirtatious remarks are being interpreted as sexist by women
attending these events, likely because these men are inexperienced with women
and unsure how to relate to them.

------
sliverstorm
Semi-related question about the comments on "how women think" and "what women
care about". I am occasionally faced with a discussion, naturally with a
woman, about something that has an empirical gender bias. I'm curious what
other people think. A recent conversation along these lines:

Them: Smiling, _Why are you looking at me like that?_

Me: _Well, I see that you like X. Most women I meet don 't really like X, it's
nice that you do._

Is that a reasonable framing?

------
DorintheFlora
My concern with posts like this is that a) men currently hold most of the
power b) attacking their behavior in a confrontational manner tends to close
doors, not open them and c) I do not see it offering a real solution.

I am female. I think about such things a lot and have, in the past, written
about my own negative experiences. But my concern is that this does not give
us a path forward.

~~~
boon
Not that I have a problem with your premise, I'm just curious what criteria
you used to determine a)?

~~~
DorintheFlora
Men currently hold most of the "worldly" power -- political offices, CEO
positions, etc -- and, on average, make about 150% of the money women make in
the U.S.*

* (These stats may be a bit out of date but I have no reason to believe that they have changed substantially. HN itself is a very male dominated forum and it is a place to meet and greet power brokers and god help you if you are a woman. It is not a very friendly place for a woman trying to make professional contacts, etc.)

------
vacri
It's interesting that so much of the commentary is focused on the actions of
one man described in only the first two paragraphs, when the article is really
talking, at length, about women not being treated as intellectual equals by
the group.

There is an irony here in that the discussion is less about what she's saying
and more about how her body should be treated.

------
gosukiwi
All she had to do is say aloud that she was unconfortable and why did he had
his hand there... Surprisingly most american girls just don't know how to
interact with that kind of people, seems to me for the ammount of similar
posts out there, I know some girls that would have just make the guy blush and
just have a nice time there.

------
VladRussian2
not sure what connection to Bitcoin here. The guy behaved like, for example,
the mayor of San Diego (that mayor). Different age, different business ...
Would it warrant "This is What it's Like to Be a Woman in a city
administration"?

------
coulix
I do not get it, didnt anyone have at least a few female classmates from their
uni time?. Even at work, in France, we have some bright female engineers
leading guys on code reviews. It should not be surprising to see female
bitcoin crypto fans.

------
davidy123
There is an idea of feminist perspectives helping find a way past the current
zero sum dog eat dog approach of society. Aping a bunch of dysfunctional men
in their self-serving comprehension of governments and money systems is not
it.

------
shizzy0
Super yuck.

------
iterationx
I wonder what percentage of men act like that? Is there anyway to make an
educated guess?

------
angersock
Jesus Christ.

Is it only Texans and the South that know how to raise a gentleman these days?

~~~
BlackDeath3
How about we just meet somewhere in the middle of "rushing to open the car
door for her" and sexual groping?

~~~
angersock
Yep.

------
dnautics
might be a west coast thing.

[http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/bitcoin-doesnt-need-
women/](http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/bitcoin-doesnt-need-women/)

~~~
Crito
This apparently happened in NYC.

I've lived on both coasts, and one thing that I have noticed is that people on
the east coast refer to people on the west coast as being either not
sufficiently progressive, or progressive in the wrong ways. People on the west
coast refer to people on the east coast as being either sufficiently
progressive, or progressive in the wrong ways.

Other than that, they both seem fairly identical to me...

------
ossreality
Where do people get off thinking they have the right to touch others,
especially repeatedly, unreciprocated? So many of these tech, gender, sex
issues would be pre-empted so many times if people simply respected some basic
boundaries, were less presumptive and thought about their actions.

I'd love to know what that groper would've done if I'd walked in, as a guy,
and immediately started hitting on him and touching him. Even more bonus
points if he knew I was gay when I walked in. Except that I'm disgusted with
myself even imagining doing that to make a point. Just think people. Have a
tiny ounce of empathy.

~~~
sliverstorm
I think it's pretty simple; human courting is _chock full_ of nonverbals and
hints and read-between-the-lines. You take a guy who understands he's supposed
to pick up on these things and be bold, but is quite bad at detecting whether
interest is reciprocated, and tadah- you have this blog post.

Supporting evidence that I felt greatly bolstered my theory- Not long ago I
went for a kiss with a girl I barely knew. I knew from body language alone she
wanted that, and I was right. She later explicitly told me how happy she was
that I had been bold, taken control, and made the leap totally out of the
blue.

So at least to my figuring, it isn't like these people are fundamentally
misguided. It isn't like courtship is supposed to be started with _" May I
stroke your hair? Ok, now I'm going to kiss you, is that Ok?"_. They are
probably just _really bad_ at navigating these waters.

~~~
ossreality
I uh, I do understand what you're saying. My empathy is overflowing, and I've
seen friends that have gone from timid to "over confident" in order to find
more success in dating... so I can understand that a million thoughts were
flying through his head when he decided to go for it.

BUT, the two were strangers, in a topic-oriented setting, and she rebuffed his
first attempt. That could have, and should have been the end of the story...

Put another way: if he had hugged her, she said "We just met..." and that was
the end of it, we wouldn't be having the conversation at all.

Unfortunately, as you allude, there's not really a definitive way of solving
this problem unless we build a way of giving passive signals constantly. Some
sort of an indicator or smart phone app "Yes, I am willing to be hit on by you
and you, but not you and you". There's a weird idea...

~~~
sliverstorm
You're right, it could have/should have stopped at the first rebuff. But it
_does_ make quite a lot of sense that someone who we are already assuming is
very bad at reading attraction and social clues might miss or chose to ignore
the first rebuff, especially when it is an indirect rebuff like the one in
this story.

~~~
boon
Here's how she responded to that,

"I try giving him the benefit of the doubt and make some quip about his being
a friendly sort"

To be fair, we don't know exactly what she said, but I can imagine a few ways
that she could have said this that would have come across as _playful_ , not
corrective. I'm not accusing her of anything of course, but combined with the
fact that you pointed out that this guy might not have the social intelligence
to pick up on the hints, anything that could be construed as playful would
have been.

It's still his fault for missing the hints, but it definitely turns him into
socially inept, not sexually assaulting.

------
rfnslyr
So you didn't immediately tell him to stop and continue on with your life and
fled to the internet just so you can get HN karma? Yeah I stopped reading
right there. This is why "women in tech" are a problem, because they
constantly put themselves on a pedestal.

~~~
MartinCron
You disapproved of someone's response to _a situation you have never yourself
experienced_ and stopped reading but you had to come here and post an
insulting comment?

Are you OK?

~~~
rfnslyr
Yeah I'm doing OK, are you?

~~~
MartinCron
I'm fine.

I'm just concerned that someone in this community (you) could be so upset
about this story that you're posting things that I can only interpret as
deliberately inflammatory and hostile. Instead of just assuming that you're a
bad person trying to stir up trouble, I was wondering if something else was
bothering you.

