It's 2022 and we're doing our best to be more inclusive in all aspects of society, right? Well, sort of. It's certainly the goal for many of us, myself included as it directly effects my life, as a bisexual woman marrying a transgender woman. It's an unfortunate truth in our world that neither one of us are accepted enough to be ourselves together in every part of the world. There's even a constantly ongoing "debate" as to whether my fiancée is actually even a woman or not, and it is so incredibly exhausting.
I say all of this because in LGBTQ circles, the crypto community is seen as a bunch of bigoted "crypto bros" to them. I see this as a problem, and not on them. While it is clearly not true about everyone here, there is obviously a reason we have this reputation.
Now before anyone writes an angry comment or downvotes me, this is not really a call out post so much as a call to action post. The people in the crypto community that I've met have been really cool, wonderful people and I'm writing this article for them too, because I don't want them to be subjected to this negative view.
For the most part, the bigotry that is seen is mostly on Twitter and Reddit, which to be honest are cesspools for horrible people anyway, I am on both after all. I have seen more sexism than homophobia/transphobia in the actual crypto spaces, and even that has been fairly mild.
So if this is a call to action post, what is my call to action? Well, I think that we can do two things here. One, call out any bigotry when you see it. Don't sit idly by and let it happen. If it is called out more often, it will stop, or at least lessen, and thus making crypto much less scary for those of us in the LGBTQ community.
The second thing that can be done is to actively work to be more inclusive and create spaces specifically for LGBTQ people in crypto. This has been done on a smaller scale in many places but on the whole has not happened. If we want to grow crypto, we need people to join, including LGBTQ people, and if we want them to join we need to make it accessible to them. This is a big reason for why I started QueerCoin, but we need more projects like this to be truly accessible.
Let me know in the comments of any spaces within crypto you have noticed with specifically active LGBTQ spaces in them, or ideas to make more of these.