It seems to me that she was a little more specific:
But I confess that I don’t really agree. This behaviour is annoying, but it’s not necessarily sexist.
I’m not sure the problem is that white American nerds have any sort of special sexist leanings that don’t exist in other personality types or subcultures, but that some people *expect *them to be more sympathetic towards anyone who’s oppressed (women, racial minorities) because of their own life experiences e.g. being bullied. But expecting people to be more sympathetic to underdogs because they themselves have been victimized has never been a good bet, IME.
Misgyny means hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women, so it doesn’t look like “view(ing) women as irrational, mysterious beings that are just beyond their grasp” them qualifies.
And this is a generalization:
Women like all people have many desires in who they want to interact with.
But what is the gender relevant feature of that little hypothetical? Male heterosexuality. Males finding pictures of women attractive.
I love women. I love pictures of naked women.
I never knew I was a misogynist.
msmith537 is a guy, you know. And his opinions regarding “nerds” are a matter of public record.
And? It’s still calling hetero males sexist for being born hetero.
I was only correcting you calling him “she”.
OK.
Isn’t there a fallacy where a person starts with a premise and accepts data that supports this premise but ignores data that is contrary to it?
It’s a simple message; I even left a few things out.
I play role playing games which is an admittedly nerdy hobby. For the most part I wouldn’t say that my fellow gamers were misogynistic but there were a lot of them that seemed to have a lot of problems interacting with women. Strangely enough I suspect that they also had a problem interacting with other males outside of the hobby.
When I was president of a local gaming club (how nerdy is that?) we set up events and invited the general public (ie. the public who came to our game store) to participate. On one such occasion a couple showed up to one of our game days to play some Dungeons and Dragons. Two hours into the game one of our regular players would address the new woman by her name but would constantly refer to her boyfriend as “you,” “hey,” or “dude” even after being reminded of his name several times. I thought this was rather rude on his part and I said “You can remember her name but you can’t remember his?” His reply: “That’s because she’s a chick.” Maybe some of you don’t think he was being rude in the least and some of you might think I exacerbated the situation by calling him out on it. I think his behavior was rude but I don’t think it was misogynistic.
In a slightly more misogynistic vein I have seen gamers assume that a woman doesn’t know the rules to the game, can’t really do math, and needs a male to help them with gaming in general. There’s sometimes an assumption that they’re only there because their boyfriend’s playing or something like that. Sometimes it’s true. On the reverse side I’ve seen women milk it for all it’s worth and a sort of queen bee mentality manifests itself but I’ve seen that in non-nerd groups and it’s probably fodder for another thread.
Nerds really aren’t any better or worse than anyone else. I dropped out of playing Warhammer 40k because the people I hooked up with in my area couldn’t stop making ignorant and offensive comments about Muslims and Arabs. I dropped out of a D&D group when one member referred to his “friend” as a nigger when he wasn’t in earshot.
Odesio
One of the things I’ve seen is that there seems to be more scrutiny for female nerds. I can just go in and start talking to a few nerdy types, and I’m immediately accepted. When my female friends do this, they seem to have to prove they actually know something about whatever nerd culture they are trying to be a part of.
But I only see this with attractive girls. I’m not so sure it is so much misogyny as it is a prejudice: people are assumed to be either physically attractive or intelligent, but not both.
There is also a small subtype of nerd that seem to view women not as people, but as objects of sexual desire. This is, unfortunately, common amongst all men, but these guys’ approach is different. Rather than go out and meet people and learn through experience, they appeal to books that supposedly teach the “secret” to getting women to have sex with them. These books go out of their way to explain that they aren’t about building a relationship, but “scoring” with as many women as possible. And these guys go about learning as much about these books as they do about their other fields of interest. They wind up with books like Speed Seduction that teach you to “program” women into being attracted to you. And I’ve heard them say stuff like, “I used to respect women until I found out how easy it is to get them to have sex with me.” Yuck.
I also note that, despite Justin’s protestations to the contrary, nerds often seem to have crushes on fictional characters. It’s especially common with Otaku (anime nerds) and gamers. And some of the characters they have crushes on reek of sexism. There’s the maid-type, the little girl who is really hundreds of years old but still needs a male figure, the action girl who has to dress provocatively to be accepted into a male-only club, the damsel in distress. the Moe (can’t think of how to describe her), the innocent fanservice girl–I could go on all night. And they seem to be disillusioned with real women who don’t fit these types. This could be perceived as a level of hate towards them.
There seems to be some contention about what it takes to be nerd. I am using the definition that means someone who not only has a large level of knowledge about a subject, but is completely obsessed with that subject, or learning of other subjects to the same degree. One of the indications of this obsession is lack of knowledge in non-geek areas, which sometimes includes social skills.
Sexism
1 : prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women
2 : behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex
Misogyny
: hatred or contempt of women
Sexism is a behavior. Misogyny is a feeling or attitude. Sexist behavior manifests itself whenever someone feels that women are not as competant or deserving of the same respect as a woman. We are talking about the contempt here.
That is correct. However, it becomes misogyny when that “viewing women as irrational mysterious beings” turns into either resentment or a sort of general viewing of women as something other than or less than human. It’s not an AND / OR thing and that’s what maybe the (for lack of a better term) nerds on this board have a problem with. Sure it’s ok to look at Maxim magazines or Playboys or whatever. We naturally find women attractive and those materials are designed to feed into that. But if your thought process is such where you only value women as sex objects and targets of sexual conquest, suitable only for dressing up in golden bikinis or posing for Boris Vallejo paitings, it’s a bit mysogynistic, IMHO.
…and women for that matter. So wrap your mind around that.
Also “nerd” isn’t a protected class of people. I, like many, dislike people who are overly pedantic, shrill, opinionated, immature, socially awkward, borish or otherwise annoying. If a person recognizes these traits in themselves and sees them as part of their particular social subculture instead of personality defects that they should be working on, that isn’t my problem.
Elsewhere on the Web I’ve seen male roleplaying fans who disliked White Wolf games complaining that WW is only successful because girls like their games, and that girls only like their games because they have less math than other roleplaying games.
No, really.
I’ve known this to happen to friends who were fairly average looking, although I guess the geekier one looks the more likely others are to believe one genuinely has geeky interests. I do think it’s funny that some geek guys apparently suspect good-looking women of lying about liking roleplaying games, comics, etc. Like there’s so much for a woman to gain by feigning interest in a hobby viewed with contempt by much of mainstream society.
Oh boy, another msmith anti-nerdrage.
Maybe, but I tend to think of myself as a nerd, while I don’t usually think of myself as a woman. 
I may call myself a nerd, but I definitely don’t think this describes me.
ETA: okay, I concede “opinionated”.
It’s possibly another example of conditioned sexism. She’s the woman. She does the laundry. The appropriate sales behavior is to assume that they are making the decision jointly unless they tell you otherwise.
Because he might end up like a certain car salesman that just could not cope with the idea that I really, really, really was picking out the Jeep Wrangler all by myself and I knew exactly what I wanted to custom order, and that even though my husband was with me, he had no input at all. I did everything but flash the man to get his attention, but he just couldn’t address his comments to me. I gave him a final warning and then walked out.
If you “address the man by default,” you will make a bad impression on the woman and often on the man for being so insensitive. Why would you want to do that when it wouldn’t cost you anything to be courteous enought to find out who is doing the shopping? Not all feminists are women.
You don’t live in the South, do you? At my Club it’s hard to get enough members together for lunch and bridge on Saturdays in the fall. SEC football. And if timing allows, we will throw in a few other games too. Then on Sundays we watch the Titans. (One of my Club members is in her eighties and has never missed a home game in the ten years the franchise has been here.) These women are Titans crazy. Some go to Predators games too. Wish I could get my husband to take me! And I was there when the Nashville Sounds played their first game. And I’m not unusual among my friends!
Well sure, they’re fictitious and exaggerated for entertainment purposes. But there was enough real about those women that women all over the country could identify with them. There was a lot of truth.
Dennis Kucinich may not be a nerd, but he looks a little like he might have been one at one time. If you’ve never seen his wife, you will want to check out this video of his talking while she stands watching over his shoulder. If you have seen her already, you will probably want to refresh your memory. What is really fun is to watch her walk into a room where there is a Senate hearing about to take place. Every eye in the room is on her – except for his and he is looking down, shuffling papers on his desk, and grinning. Just to look at them, you wouldn’t think they had much in common.
Self-esteem issues. When the majority of a person’s experience with good looking people involves being abused and ridiculed, they develop a perfectly reasonable expectation that any such interaction is heading in that direction. From that prospective, it makes perfect sense that any seeming common ground must be being feigned in order to open him up for some new torment.
Well… I certainly don’t think White Wolf would have been nearly as successful among young women if it’s rules contained the same amount of crunch as D&D. Then again, do a lot of women play Exalted? I won’t play Exalted because it’s way too complicated. Maybe there’s just something about the World of Darkness setting that appeals to a wider range of women than D&D. I wish I liked WW games because they do attract a lot more women than most other games in my experience but I just don’t like the setting and I’ve had bad experiences with the people I know who play it. I don’t know if one set of rules is more likely to attract women gamers than others. I do know that never before have I heard a woman say “Let’s play GURPS!” Though that’s entirely anecdotal and certainly not enough to made broad declarations. I assume that anyone who is playing a game has some familiarity with the rules unless they tell me otherwise.
I think something important to remember is that being a nerd or a geek doesn’t automatically make you a good person nor does it automatically get you picked on. There are people who love comics, computer games, and table top role playing games who are just plain jerks.
Odesio