Illustrated in this “Casey and Andy” strip. The punchline – “How do they have girlfriends? I just don’t understand.” – would make no sense if the genders were reversed. I can cite no actual stats – how do you scientifically measure geekdom? – but it’s a cultural meme that pops up everywhere and is never, AFAIK, seriously contradicted. It seems to apply to all forms of geekdom. E.g., when Rob Gordon in High Fidelity describes his shop’s record-collecting-obsessed customer base as “mostly young men,” nobody seems to find anything sexist or remarkable in the comment.
Why are there so relatively few shegeeks? What innate or acculturated difference is there between the male and the female mind, that makes the former so much more prone to nerdery?
Because it is easier for women to become at least marginally incorporated into society by becoming sexually available. Eventually, someone will date you.
And men (on average) are more analytical, therefore drawn to technical stuff.
For one thing, men tend to be more obsessive. And men tend to be more extreme in general; look at any extreme, you’ll typically find more men there. And finally, the things that more women stereotypically get obsessed over aren’t the things that get labeled geekish; someone whose interests revolve around Star Wars is a geek; someone whose interests revolves around, say, sewing and weaving isn’t. Having posters and models of Star Wars stuff all over is geekish; having samplers and baskets of sewing materials isn’t.
I think men tend toward intellectual stuff whereas women tend toward sensual stuff. Thus the difference between geeking out on obscure music vs sewing materials or shopping for clothes. Women geek out on stuff all the time, like candles, bath soaps etc… It’s just considered to be more normal.
My theory is that most geeks are somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Most of us don’t have it bad enough to earn the autism or Asperger’s label, but we have just enough mildly autistic traits (obsessiveness, poor social skills, lack of physical coordination) to make us fall outside the bounds of the “normal”, non-geek culture.
And for whatever reason, autism is 3 times more common in men than women. I’m willing to bet that the male geeks outnumber the female geeks by the same ratio – has there ever been a study of geek rates by gender?
That’s a very interesting point. I honestly hadn’t thought about it from that perspective before. I can think of quite a few anecdotal examples, e.g., women I know with a horse/cow/cat fixation.
At the same time, there seems to be a difference, at least as I’m thinking about it – male “obsession” tends to have a technical bent (computers, baseball stats, power tools, etc.), while female “obsession” tends to be more…um…organic? Or, as mswas puts it, sensual.
I don’t know that I can separate my own values/mores/cultural beliefs, though, so maybe that’s not accurate. An interesting thought, nonetheless.
I think there’s something to that. I read and watch a lot of science fiction, but I’m not a fan girl. I don’t go to cons or spend hours on message boards debating Battlestar Galactica. I dress fairly fashionably, and I don’t have any outward geek “tells.” I suspect that a lot of female SF fans and gamers are in the same boat. We might be geeks in our hearts, but we don’t gravitate toward the obsessive end of the fan spectrum.
Even among men, obsessions are not treated equally. Fill a room with Star Trek memorabilia and you’re a geek. Fill it with New England Patriots merchandise (along with a nice expensive fathead) and you’re a super-fan.
I agree with burundi. I enjoy being a “girl geek” who married a geek, but, while I go to SF cons and Mensa Regional Gatherings (RGs) I have a standing arrangement with friends that if I ever spend a con in costume without getting paid (that last bit is very important), they are to shoot me because I’ll already be braindead.
Der Trihs also made a good point when he said this:
The fact that I knit and spend time in a message board dedicated to knitting actually makes me less of a geek than if my hobby was painting miniatures and I spent a lot of time on a Warhammer 40K message board. A woman in a crafty, handmade or decorated-looking sweatshirt is seen as being well within the bounds of normal. A guy in a Star Wars or Marvel Comics sweatshirt is seen as a nerd.
I’ll kick out one other factor. While things have changed a lot in the last 30 years, I think girls are still discouraged by society from having interest in stereotypically male interests such as math, science, and computers. It was only a few years ago that a friend of mine who was in college told me in an e-mail, “girls aren’t good at math.” Society sees nothing wrong with a girl playing with Barbies, but playing war games is a different matter. Because computers, science fiction, etc. aren’t seen as typical female interests, girls have to go further outside the norm to become geeks than guys. If a girl has an analytical bent, it’s likely to be channeled into things other than computers. Don’t believe me? Try figuring out a pattern for knitting lace sometime!
Finally, as Shodan pointed out, girl geeks have a distinct advantage guy geeks don’t. The guys outnumber us, therefore, when it comes to finding someone, the odds are very much in our favor. As a friend of mine put it, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” Now, personally, this suits me quite nicely, and it’s one reason I’m happy to be a geek. It made finding a suitable geek of my own much easier and it was nice to know there was somewhere I was desirable. On the other hand, the shortage of girl geeks does make it harder for the guy geeks out there.
Then again, why are a bunch of guys without girlfriends watching Farscape at a friend’s house seen as losers, while a bunch of guys without girlfriends watching football at a friend’s house aren’t?
Even if a girl is true geek, she is almost never a social outcast. If she is good looking enough, most guys won’t care about how many SF conventions she went to.
I think, though, you could say the same of guys. If a guy’s handsome, even if he does turn up at an SF con or an RG, women aren’t going to be asking how many of them he’s gone too.
I’m right with you on the sensual angle. To pick my geekery of choice, think about the stereotypical gamer geek guy or girl. Regardless of sexuality, which dice-roller is going to be more attractive: The chubby unshaven guy in jeans and a grimy +10 T-shirt of smiting, or the chubby wayward-haired girl in a velvet dress and leather corset? We girl geeks just can’t help it
I’ve meant to point this out to the developer who wears this actual shirt at my work, but I didn’t want to bruise his masculine ego (or reveal my full hand of geek cards) (first-edition foils, of course).
I think what governs being a social outcast is whether or not he is obsessive. If a Sci Fi geek can talk about other things and empathize with what other people are speaking about, then he’ll be just fine. It’s the habit to make constant non-sequiturs because your erudition is limited and specific, that makes one incapable of assimilating. I’ve been on both sides of the coin. Sometimes I have been geeky and awkward, and other times I’ve been the one who gets the girl and comes across as smooth.
Conversely, while you’ll see a lot of women at SF cons, a disproportionately high number of them often are . . . ahem . . . healthy-bodied, or otherwise apulchritudinous (by the narrowminded standards of our shallow patriarchal culture, etc., see this thread). Which applies no less to the male fans, of course, and it’s not hard to discern the cause-and-effect in operation here. The Life of the Mind is a more attractive option to those who can find little joy or success in the Life of the Body.
Now, personally, this suits me quite nicely, and it’s one reason I’m happy to be a geek. It made finding a suitable geek of my own much easier and it was nice to know there was somewhere I was desirable. On the other hand, the shortage of girl geeks does make it harder for the guy geeks out there.