Young women and possessiveness over "Nerd/Geek"

In My Humble Opinion
201

I think people are really good at lying to themselves especially if they’re loners to begin with and have lots of time to argue with themselves. If people can fetishize feet, bondage, and ladyboys, I don’t think there’s much stopping them from also fetishizing the underaged.

Furthermore, I don’t think there’s so much expectations of the community to embrace them as deviants but rather a slow pushing of the envelope to see what’s accepted. By the time they get to full on perving on 12-year-olds, it’s a result of them not being sufficiently rebuffed by the community at large. I don’t mean to point fingers but your (Dangeroza example of allowing repeat pervs to not be banned feeds this vicious cycle.

As a coda, I don’t think “ostracizers are evil.” It really depends on the circumstances. Irrational, baseless, petty, and shallow ostracizers are evil. If you have grounds for it, I say ostracize away.

202

I find it amazing that such an extensive and passionate debate has raged on about geek culture for this many posts, and no one has attempted to analyze the claims being made and spot the dispositive issues in play.

Well, that’s what law geeks do. :slight_smile:

The threshold issue is, it seems to me: what does the word “geek” mean, and is it susceptible to any kind of objective analysis? One side of the discussion seems to argue that simply self-identifying as a geek is sufficient: there is no test, no objective rule, no standard apart from saying, by word or deed, “I am a geek.” The other side has suggested that this is not so: being a geek involves certain key elements, although individual commentators differ greatly on what those elements might be.

My own reaction is that while I have a certain joy in being able to quote Monty Python and The Princess Bride, once legitimately rolled[sup]*[/sup] an AD&D character with 18’s in Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, and Charisma, and played a game of War in the Pacific that took longer to play than the war took to fight[sup]**[/sup], I recognize that someone can be a geek without ever watching those movies, playing D&D, or touching a board game.

I have a strong sense of what geekdom is as a general principle, though: having an unusually intense knowledge of and interest in a particular pastime and a desire to share the expressions of that intense interest with others. But I am not willing to limit the field of interest in any particular way: I would recognize the sports geek who can rattle off the starting offensive line for every team in the NFC East, even though a hobby like that did not likely lead to ostracism in high school. I would recognize the stamp geek that can instantly spot a fake Benjamin Franklin Z Grill and still fumes with anger about Postmaster General Day’s reissue of the Dag Hammarskjöld invert. and I’d recognize a zillion other insert-your-own-prefix-geeks about whom I’m not even knowledgeable enough to cobble together a convincing example.

And finally, I’d recognize that at some point, every single geek, even the most hyper-aware and hyper-knowledgeable about Red Hulk’s origins as Thunderbolt Ross, started out not knowing anything at all about the subject. At some point, they were babes in the woods. And presumably, at some point along that journey to the hyper-expertise position that they now possess, they encountered a community.

It seems to me that it is of obvious benefit for that community to be welcoming. I suppose it;s possible that not every encounter the community has is with true interest. Perhaps some people approach the community merely feigning interest. But as Left hand of Dorkness cogently observes above: what of it? Perhaps the association will be the beginning of true interest. Maybe it won’t…either way, who is hurt? The true joy of geekdom is, as also mentioned above, to me seems to be not only the knowing, but the sharing of the arcane. And since not everyone can possibly operate on the same level, doesn’t it makes sense to try to minimize the discomfort that a new entrant to the area of interest might feel, instead of highlighting and reinforcing it?

So I argue that THIS is what we should do.

Have fun storming the castle!

203

Oops.

  • Four dice rolled for each stat and taking the best three as the stat.

** OK, only eight months.

204

The Booth Babes controversy is the one that truly baffles me - not just the idea that a crowd roughly 80% comprised of hetero males wouldn’t want a scantily clad model at their three day party, but that the objection has something to do with those women “faking” geekiness to “trick” the men into paying them attention. My question is, do these guys also object to the appearance of, say, William Shatner at the same convention? Because I assure you, Mr Shatner could not give a shit about discussing “The Naked Time” with the con goers, is only there for a paycheck, and possibly to enjoy the attention of being a big name. Kinda like those “fake” booth girls.

As a semi-regular female con goer, who is a cute-ish but average looking 20 something, I’ve never been harassed. There was a comic book store where I felt a bit of an icy breeze once, but for all I know, it could have been my imagination - no one actually made a disparaging comment to me. So I’m not sure how big of a problem all of this actually is.

205

The booth babes thing has nothing to do with the “real”/“fake” geeks issue, it’s considered a feminist statement. PyCon does it too, the idea is that booth babes are objectifying, and I believe it has been shown that more women tend to attend conventions and conferences that disallow booth babes (PyCon, again, has the highest female turnout at any programming/technology conference, I think PAX has a generally higher turnout by women than most gamer conferences too). Or, at the very least, cons that are likely to disallow booth babes generally have female-friendlier policies and atmospheres, even if the booth babes thing isn’t a big deal.

Of course, there are also feminists that take the “disallowing booth babes!? Why not make women wear burqas!?” stance. I haven’t noticed any consistent split, there seem to be both sex-positive and non-sex-positive feminists on both sides of the camp.

206

Its a problem. Its a problem big enough that the SFWA is currently in a blow up about sexism and geekiness. That cons all over have been revising (or instituting) their sexual harassment policies for the past several years, and the blogosphere is alive with stories.

The harassment that occurs is not the same thing as the “but you aren’t a real geek” thing - however, the two are related. Women are more likely to be the victims of both. And sometimes the second is used to justify the first.

207

I’d argue that the “but you’re not a real geek” thing is a form of harassment.

208

Fair enough, though there was some talk in this thread about ire directed at cosplay models exploiting geekiness for commercial gain, which brings to mind booth babes. But even if we’re talking about your every day con attendee, who the hell would assume that a girl at a convention is a faker? Those things are expensive! Why would someone drop 50-75 dollars (not including possible hotel and costume costs) to attend a convention if they’re not interested? To expand on that, why would a girl spend hours and hours playing D&D if they don’t care about it? To cocktease a few boys they’re not attracted to? Really? REALLY? There are better ways to meet men. Even socially stunted women, self included, know this.

It occurs to me that I’ve actually attended several conventions surrounding fandoms that don’t interest me. I attend San Japan yearly, even though I know basically nothing about manga and anime. Last month I went to a Babylon 5 convention - I had never seen an episode of the show (I’ve now seen one). So what? Why would anyone care? I wasn’t there to laugh at anyone. I was there because I love conventions, I love bright costumes, and geeky, overpriced merchandise, and all the fan artists, and panels, getting nervous and giggly in front of the celebrity guests. I assume most others, girls and boys, were there for the same reasons. Why assume otherwise?

209

Not sexual harassment - which is probably a bigger issue in the fanish/geek communities than playing true scotsman games of exclusion. However, it helps justify the sexual harassment that does occur - “she is not one of us, she is the other, and she is the type of other that made us feel bad about ourselves in high school, therefore, our behavior is justified.”

210

The output of cash is not in itself proof of belonging. In many subcultures, probably as long as there have been subcultures, there have been complaints of posers buying the trappings of membership. This is, in essence, what Trimalchio is viciously lampooned for doing in The Satyricon – a freed slave whose buying of social status is portrayed as tacky and comically excessive. Personally, I have often proposed that every movement needs posers. They bring in money and can be talked into doing some of the work.

I read a book once dealing with the anxiety that arose when the world got big enough that it became difficult to be certain that a person you met was really a member of your own class. Elaborate codes of conduct and dress arose in response that were supposed to make a person’s status detectable in their implicit understanding of arcane rules. Only… these rules were written up in books that anybody could buy and read, and the physical trappings became cheaper and easier to obtain with industrialization. Even more recently Paul Fussell wrote about the unspoken system of class signifiers that persists in America. I also read an article in Playboy about a decade ago comparing “Guys” to “Men” wherein Guys were clearly understood to be lower middle class and Men were upper middle class. Recent documentaries about Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan have taken up the issue that though both skaters were of humble background, Kerrigan was more successful at presenting herself as classy.

Class, of course, has always been desirable. But in it we can see cycles of panic about imposterism that may inform our understanding about the narrower cultural identities that people are so invested in. Geek culture has lost some of its stink, and we’re now witnessing a panic about legitimacy of membership under conditions of fair weather. I suspect that like the flannel shirts that people in the 90’s claimed always to have been into when it was part of a “look” in ascendancy then mysteriously disappeared from the backs of self-described lifelong enthusiasts when the fashion waned we’ll see a slow shakeout of the less passionate, leaving some former posers paid-in-full members for life.

211

From my conversations with my friends who are into the nerd/geek subculture*, it seems the “We had to put up with years of shit from people who didnt understand us or made fun of us, and people think they can just co-opt parts of our culture because it’s a bit cool now???” thing has a lot to do with it. (They direct this dislike at anyone being a “fake geek”, male or female, though).

There also seems to be some suspicion as to why women would be deeply interested in stuff like Lord of the Rings or superhero comics, with the resulting conclusion there must be some sort of ulterior motive at play (perhaps appealing to their interest in attractive women ostensibly with similar interests to get money off them somehow?)

I’ve seen a few accusations of misogny thrown around in the thread but I would suggest it’s not so much that as partly a concern at yet another Man Thing being turned into “chick stuff”. Whether or not that’s a valid concern is probably a separate issue but I will note there’s not a huge number of “places” guys can occupy with other guys to talk about Guy Stuff. I suspect for a lot of the people railing against “fake geek girls”, it’s about possibly seeing their interest/hobby compromised to make way for the (perceived) sensibilities of a bunch of strange girls** who will probably try and make everything pink and sparkly or something.

*I’m into my computer games, the internets, and quirky TV shows more than most people I know but I don’t really identify as a geek or nerd - I don’t do cosplay and/or go to conventions, I’ve never read a superhero comic book and despite playing Dungeons and Dragons in high school, I wasn’t bullied or treated as a dweeb etc.

**Whose periods attract bears

212

Having been on the other side, its misogny - at least for a small subset of geek men. They are fine with women having an interest in their interests - as long as the women don’t intimidate them. They are intimidated by a few things in women - IME, attractiveness in a woman, professional success, athletic ability - not intelligence alone, though. Once you are intimidating, then - to a SMALL SUBSET of male geek culture - you are other, and it is ok to treat you as the enemy.

The “costume is not consent” movement at cons pisses me off - because it misses the point. The point is not what she is wearing - the point is that she is a human being, worthy of respect, who deserves to be treated as a person, with valid opinions about the things that concern her - especially when it comes to who touches her and when to end a conversation. Regardless if she is dressed like Sailor Moon, or in jeans and a sweatshirt. Regardless of if she looks really good in the Sailor Moon costume, or not. Regardless of if she is the only girl in the entire war game room and doesn’t quite know what she is doing - as long as she is willing to learn - people are not born into this world understanding the movement rules for Warhammer. Perhaps she is not there to piss you off, but because she wants to learn to play the game.

213

I have to wonder if this tortured soul mentality is nothing more than a warped defense mechanism. Once in 7th grade, I saw a jock-ish guy turn around and ask about a geeky kid’s copy of Nintendo Power featuring Ocarina of Time. The geeky kid was super defensive about it the entire time and the jock kid was legitimately interested. The jock had all sorts of questions about the game, and how it related to the SNES games. The jock said that he wasn’t going to play OoT because he didn’t have a N64 and the geek took it as “Wow, what a nerd - going out and asking for a N64?” I know because I eat lunch with this geek and that’s how he retold it at the lunch table. However, being privy to the conversation it simply wasn’t the way it went down.

Again, I feel like this is just more insecurity at play. A sort of “We like this stuff because we HAVE to. We were shunned from mainstream society so to fit stereotypes of what geeks do, we have this geek culture. What’s your excuse?” They just can’t accept that LOTR, superheroes, or Star Trek carry some sort of intrinsic value and appeal and that the world is constantly at odds with them.

I can relate to this. I think it’s offputting when a girl is super into football. I like football because I played it. If I didn’t play football, I probably would pay it as much attention as I would… baseball. To have someone who didn’t participate it in growing up and try to appropriate it as their own is disconcerting. There’s even an element of “Oh she’s not a REAL fan like I am because she’s never put on pads” but it’s not something I get agitated, or even vocal about.

Better yet, I do recognize it as mild misogyny. It’s irrational, it’s gender-biased, and it’s patronizing.

214

But plenty of people who have never played are still into the game.

It would make very little sense for me to be disdainful of football fans because their only experience playing it was pickup games during recess, while I played high school football. And I’d be irked to get the attitude from someone who played at the NCAA level that my football fandom was suspect because I only played high school football (single A, at that!) And presumably that guy would be pissed to hear from an NFL player that his fandom was suspect, and THAT guy would be rightfully stunned if a Hall of Famer suggested that because his pro career never reached HoF territory, his fandom was lessened.

I guess what I’m suggesting is that it makes no sense to me to be disdainful of people, even though they approach a topic with much less experience or knowledge. Welcoming them increases the odds that your fandom will gain a fervent convert, and that’s true if they were genuinely interested at first and even if they were pretending interest for some ulterior motive. I know at least one woman, now a football fan, who only started watching the game because of her then-crush’s intense interest. The crush did indeed become a boyfriend, but the boyfriend dropped out of the picture after three years. The fandom remained. What a good thing she didn’t have to suffer a bunch of guys telling her she couldn’t possibly know anything about football in the days when she truly didn’t. Now, she can hold forth knowledgeably about why Vonn Miller is the best 3-4 outside linebacker in the NFL.

215

I was irritated until I saw that last paragraph. You bet it’s misogyny. But if you can see that, it’s something you can work on.

There’s pretty much no “guy thing” that needs protection, IMO. Heck, in college I knew some women who were trying to learn to pee standing up, and that’s great (I have no idea how successful they were–I knew them, but not that well). But if you’re not homeless, and you really need to have some guy time, there’s a great place to do that: your home. A public convention? Yeah, not so much. Especially not one that’s marketed to geeks instead of to guys.

I teach elementary school, which means I’m very often the only man in the room. Once in a very long while I catch some blowback for that–and when I do, I politely tell the blowhard to knock it off, and am 100% successful at doing so. I don’t tolerate being excluded because of my gender, and so there’s no way I should tolerate a woman being excluded from my hobby because of hers.

216

Both a warped defense mechanism and a lack of understanding that people can be “well rounded.” For a geek, I’m not the best read SF and Fantasy reader. I read a lot - but I read across genres. And one of the accusations thrown against me is that I read across genres - apparently “true geeks” only read WITHIN the genre. By picking up a (gasp!) historical romance or a classic or a work of “literary fiction” I apparently lose geek cred. (Mystery readers are allowed a small amount of crossover - as are romance if its strictly of the paranormal subset).

If you play football, you can’t possibly play WoW (sorry Chris Kluwe). Guys with a lot of muscle don’t roll dice (sorry Vin Diesel). They are mutually exclusive interests - because YOU don’t do both, and none of the people you hang with do both. So any jock making conversation with you MUST be yanking your chain. And granted, I doubt the football team gets together every weekend to watch the last Doctor Who episode, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a guy on the team who has gone back and watched all the old episodes from the first run he can get his hands on.

217

I really can’t see what’s so confusing about people being upset over someone who says “I’m a geek!” then goes on to bash all sorts of “geeky” things because they state the things are “stupid” or “boring”. Of course that’s going to upset some people. The natural backlash for someone like that is, “you’re not a real geek if you’re making a point to disparage so many things other geeks like!”.

Reminds me of an article I read where a “geek girl” goes to a convention and then proceeds, for the entire article, to make nothing but negative comments about the cosplayers there without even discussing the convention itself. Of course some people are going to be irked about that. Of course someone’s going to stand up and say “you’re not a real geek if all you’re going to do is come in and insult us other geeks the whole time”.

And people also can’t understand how the girls who post up provocative photos of themselves licking or nibbling controllers (for instance) might cause a backlash from guys and girls alike, in the camps of “I’m not like that and I don’t want to be associated with that”, and “she’s just trying to manipulate us through sex for attention”? Of course a bunch of people won’t want to associate with that (while the rest go on to message her okcupid profile).

It’s not all that confusing how or why people get upset over those things and create bad stereotypes to work from.

218

In the OP’s example of the annoying article about geeky things, the least interesting thing about the article’s author was whether she has geek cred: attacking her geek cred is a classic ad hominem. I think she made a bunch of bogus points, but I really couldn’t care less about whether she’s a geek or not.

Girl sounds like a hater–but what does hating cosplay have to do with whether you’re a geek? I don’t have much personal love for cosplay (although due respect to the people that do it well), but so what? I went to DragonCon one year where a grognard spent the bulk of his panel time decrying the state of the modern RPG, but not a single person told him he wasn’t a geek, even though he was absolutely being a hater.

So fine–don’t associate with it. “Geek” doesn’t mean “wise, sensible, attractive, decent human being.” You don’t disagree with someone by saying they’re not a geek: you disagree with them by saying that they’re not doing something wise.

For example, there are some lousy misogynist guys out there who try to exclude women from my hobby by saying they’re not real geeks*. Drives me crazy; surely you can see how I wouldn’t want to associate with those guys. But the way I disassociate myself from their repellent shenanigans is to call them out on their behavior: I don’t make some nonsense claim about how they’re not “real geeks.”

219

You actually think what you’re describing is not misogyny. That’s remarkable.

220

Yeah, I kind of goggled at that when I realized he wasn’t being ironic. “It’s not that they hate women, they just hate everything that women like and/or are interested in; i.e. pink things. They just don’t want their awesome guy stuff getting turned into lousy chick stuff. Because if chicks start liking what they like, it will ruin it. Devalue it. Taint it, sort of. You know.”