Why is the hacker scene so damn queer? (emf2026)

At the first glance sexuality doesn't have much to do with technology.
But understanding the history and interlinking between both fields is helpful to understand both scenes better.

As everything involving humans, things are a bit blurry, terms and concepts change and with these also the understanding. In philosophy there is a concept "hermeneutical circle" which means, you go around a subject from different perspectives and often end up where you started but in that process you learned more about the subject and have some better understanding of the broader topic. That is what I hope to achieve with this talk.

In that regard I will try to show that there are good arguments why queer folks early on used the internet above average.
I will also try to work out why queer folks designed tech in some specific way.

And how these (early) developments become subject of scrutiny when nearly every human on earth (or in the orbit) is on the internet and big business basically has taken over the internet. How regulating the internet for a majority might harm some minorities. And help others.

The development I see lately is rather paradox. I feel like queer people are slowly vanishing from the internet and tend to do more things offline then the average.
Where the internet once was a safe space for queers it seems now the offline world might be that safe space nowadays.

Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/232-why-is-the-hacker-scene-so-damn-queer