Just in front of me, a little boy fell and the familiar line that I’ve heard since I was a kid myself rang “stand up, a man does not cry when he falls”. Solid advice, very macho, and also very insidious in the bigger picture of things because it got me thinking if, and what we say to little girls when they fall.
In my experience, from observations, nothing at all, or nothing empowering, steeling at the very least. They are usually just picked up or asked to get up and probably chastised for running with the boys or playing “roughly”, which is for all intents and gender-driven purposes, not girl-like.
The connection between this and the new world we are building in the Open Web and on blockchains, and in the Metaverse, is that it has become part of social learning, an implicit way of wiring minds that is based largely on what we leave unsaid than by what we say. It is the actions we do not take, the little details we ignore, the same way the dark matter of the universe makes up everything else that we cannot see, feel, touch, etc in the universe.
As we build this new world, let us make a conscious effort to power inclusion, diversity, parity, equity, and maybe even the utopic concept of equality, by not leaving things unsaid. Let boys know it is ok to cry sometimes, let girls know that too. Tell girls that emotions don’t make them weak, tell the boys too. Tell them tech is cool, and so are other sciences or non-sciences.
And hey, if you can, let them be together when you tell them, let them know you are sending the same message across. 