“Hey guys, anyone want to get coffee?”
“Sure”
Random SJW: “why are you focused on genitals? What a weird perversion”
Everyone else: “Huh?”
Is this a projection thing? Half the time the lazy pronoun use appears to be the exact opposite of this claim - the writer hasn’t stopped to think and classify readers by their genitals.
How does the author know the gender breakdown of a currency where we can't even figure out who the person behind the bitcoin address is...
The insistence that someone is focusing on genital's and have a pervasion when asking this really does seem like a projection on the part of the folks making that claim, and I have noticed the genitals things come up over and over now in this context - it seriously is WEIRD! Please read up on projection.
Many of us are married, with kids, and focusing on the genitals of work colleagues is the LAST thing on our minds.
I've broadened it in the past, hey guys and girls or hey guys and women - all less than ideal in my view, girls doesn't have same connotations as guys, and women or ladies feels awkward. Hey people works well in my view. But when a women says to me, hey guys, want to get coffee - I don't freak out on them with this type of focus on genitals / perversion language. I just say, sounds great - 5 minutes? And away we go very happily to chat about whatever issue has come up.
It’s 2021. “Guys” has been gender neutral since basically forever and a day. It was so in my schools in the 70s/80s, and by my mother’s recollection, the same back in her school days.
And it pretty much has to be so: we lack a good alternative second person plural.
Note though that “guy” (singular) is gendered.
But absolutely NO ONE considers it a perversion or focus on genitals except for a few folks. This line, why are you focusing on my genitals or why are you focusing on their genitals comes up repeatedly in this context so it has to be a commonly used argument in some more activist circles.
That and focusing on "perversions" - which I find even weirder, most of the offenders are just normal people who didn't even realize "guys" was offensive or might be offensive to some.
Some of the activists who start yelling about perversions and genitals seem a bit more off their rocker at times then the folks they are accusing. The only thing that caught my eye was the perversions / genitals thing, because I'd just been reading someone else who used this same argument in a similar context.
I'm just trying to show that any gender based argument is pretty broad and sort of ridiculous (hence use of the word genitals, to show how absurd the argument is..)
A large number of whales holding BTC is known / very public and vocal - as the article itself discusses. You can also do a survey of Bitcoin related conferences. You can look at large datasets like the public list of MtGox debts. At this point you'd need some good supporting data to claim BTC holders and traders are not a male-dominated group.
I don't think anyone can actually prove these numbers..
If I say 70% of cash is held by group 'x'. prove me wrong, you can't. No one is going to be able to do that.
Let me know if you have a link to MtGox sharing gender breakdown of their owners..
Nobody is making a court case out of it, except for you.
Everybody else is just using their common perception, that it is indeed mostly men holding bitcoins because it’s mostly men talking about it and it’s commonly known that mostly men are into computer technology.
Let me know if you can’t justify a correlation between those things and I’ll help you “read the room” better.
Anyway, the article says that “Coinbase Global Inc.” is mostly men, not holders of Bitcoin. Without even looking I can tell you that’s most likely 100% accurate.
Just curious, do you think this is accurate and if so why is that the case?
"Mostly men are into computer technology."
Where exactly in the bitcoin purchase or process the gender of a person relevant or disclosed? Why do people try to drag gender into things where it has zero relevance.
I'm not trying to be a lawyer, the point is, that this argument has as much logic as "Aquarians are better swimmers." You can't prove or disprove it.. either way, it's irrelevant..
First though, I think you're confusing what was said. The starting sentence of the article is:
> Coinbase Global Inc.’s filing to become a publicly-traded company provides a glimpse into the remarkably small circle of mostly men who command the incredibly lucrative digital landscape.
That's not a statement about "men own most bitcoins" it's saying that Coinbase Global is run mostly by men. This is easily proven. You can look right here - 5 out of 7 of their executive team are men and 7 out of 9 on their board are also men - https://www.coinbase.com/about
So someone responded about that first sentence saying 'Any article that uses the sentence "mostly men" in the first paragraph is highly likely not worth reading'. You agreed with that sentiment, pointing out why - you think mentioning gender is irrelevant and furthermore it is a "perversion" for someone to do so. (Would it be a perversion if they said "hair stylists"?)
Here's why I think you're wrong on that point though. You're strictly equating "gender" and "genitals" as if they're synonyms. They're not. If you think that's true, try an experiment: Ask random people the first thing that comes to their mind when you say the word "men" or the word "women" to them. I'll bet you money that the vast, vast majority of people will not just say "penises" or "vaginas". They'll say so many other things because those words convey so much more than just genitalia.
In the news they constantly mention the gender of people, especially if the group of people they're discussing are all or even mostly one gender. That's because it helps listeners picture what's happening in their mind. Moreover, reversed gender roles are absolutely interesting to people. For instance - most criminals are men [0], so if a group of women robbed a bank you can rest assured that the news would absolutely say "A group of women robbed a bank" and also that it would be so interesting to people that they'd make a movie about it. Even if men robbed the bank, they would say "a group of men" because if they said "a group of people robbed a bank" people would want to know - so if it's a mixed group the news will say "two men and a woman robbed a bank today."
Why are most men criminals though? It's probably because men are just generally more aggressive than women. That fact is just one of the many that will occur to people when they hear about a group of people doing something. Genitalia is the furthest thing from their mind.
In the end, I don't know exactly why Matthew Leising, the author of this article, even mentioned that it's mostly men that run Coinbase Global. I know for a fact that most people would not be bothered at all by this tidbit of information being mentioned though. I'm not. I don't even care about bitcoin and I'm not even sure why I bothered to read these comments. One thing I am concerned about though is how people are squaring up to fight over these types of things. Why do you have such a strong reaction to someone mentioning the possible/probable gender ratio of a group of people? Perhaps the subject of societies treatment and recognition of gender in general is something close to your heart? I don't know - but I don't want the world fighting over this too so I'd like to help if I can.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=gender+percentage+of+crimina...
It's often tied to what appear to be intentional misreading's or overbroad readings of relatively innocuous statements.
"small circle of mostly men" turns into some sort of absolutist statement about bitcoin ownership, genatalia and perversions.
One reason to mention gender is that gender, and broader access by women in particular to tech is a current topic. So here you have a VERY male dominated space worth billions. While a women caring for a child at home get's paid nothing. I actually see some major issues in the way society rewards people, and the gender concentration mentioned in this story is interesting in that context.
Americans workers are paid $x per hour to work. Bangladeshis are paid less than $1 a day. It is the fault of the Americans?
Some people have ample food, others are dying of hunger. Who takes responsibility of the dying people? all the people that have food?
I can see you are pointing out a difference in life outcomes of different people, but how are you tying this with gender? this is my question.. are you suggesting a woman can't take care of her child and be successful at the same time? are you saying women don't have enough agency to make their own life decisions till a savior comes along and makes the right decisions for them? What if it appeals to this woman that she care for her child as a higher priority than trying to go out and increasing some number on a banks database - Are you trying to say the value systems of each individual should be aligned to money alone? that, the ones that have money are successful and the ones that don't have it have failed somehow?
If I make the argument, person x is religious, see how god blessed him with a good life. Look at person y, he's poor and misrable, its because he doesn't follow this religion. Its not a very sound argument because I am just confidently asserting a co-relation where none may exist..
The reason for using that word is to show the absurdity of any gender based argument, feel free to substitute it with "people who can grow beards" if you like. As specific data points they may have relevance as tools, but, making sweeping claims about 50% of humanity makes for bad reasoning..
I think if you can be nuanced about gender vs biology then I'm sure you can see what I'm talking about.
"Why are most men criminals though? It's probably because men are just generally more aggressive than women."
You probably meant to say, why are most criminals men.. That is the danger when we start dealing in sweeping arguments.. it's easy to jump from the specific to the general and not notice..
I just think it's pointless to bring in gender into things where it's not relevant.. 4 out of 5 top defence companies are led by women.. it's a data point sure, but live through the life of that person who got to the top, did she get there because of being a man or woman, no, there is a bunch of hardwork and time they put in to get where they got to.. can you replace that woman with just any other woman, both are women right? Ofcourse not, because she is there because of what she can do, not because of her biology.
The individual has more power over their lives than just being robots dictated by biology. Making biology central to reasoning about larger things is denying the power of the individual.
And yet, when confronted with reasons why that's completely wrong, all of those reasons remain unaddressed.
People are obviously interested in knowing the gender of a story's subject. That's why it's constantly mentioned in the news and also why there's a huge thread of people constantly talking about it...everywhere.
> The individual has more power over their lives than just being robots dictated by biology.
So, we by stripping them of their gender when talking about them we make the individual more human? That's completely illogical.
Also - simply mentioning someone's gender in a news story is causing some individual's entire life to be dictated by their genitals? I don't buy it. If someone I knew felt that they're being turned into a robot because an article mentioned the gender of a person, I'd be concerned for their mental health.
First, I'd just stop arguing with them though because it sounds like it would be a fruitless endeavor.