All of this is true, but in addition, if Justin Bieber wants to dress up as a hardcore rapper, what harm is he doing? At worst he’s only making himself look like an idiot. He wouldn’t be doing anything that thousands of other suburban kids haven’t done. Same with someone who Cosplays without knowing a lot about the character. They aren’t harming you or interfering with your enjoyment in any way. At the very worst–the very worst–they make themselves look foolish, Like someone going into a sports bar and asking if Peyton Manning has thrown any home runs.
Even with “booth babes,” who cares if some video game company hires an attractive young woman to advertise Generic Zombie Slaughter #5618? It doesn’t hurt you and shouldn’t offend you. (The general you, of course.)
There are legitimate IMO concerns about cultural appropriation of minorities that live in poverty due to historically racist and discriminatory policies. If a person from a privileged background comes along and yoinks their culture and makes money off of it (Elvis I’m looking at you), I certainly understand why folks from that culture get annoyed.
And that’s what’s happening, I think, when someone who grew up in the ghetto gets pissed at Bieber.
But that’s so totally not what’s happening when women participate in geek culture, which is why I find the analogy so offensively stupid.
The “very little mainstream success” pie? I had to Google Felicia Day just now to find out who she is. I do not consider it remotely plausible that there are a bunch of beautiful young women with zero personal interest in geekdom out there thinking “If only there was some way I could be beloved by nerds, people I do not actually like and with whom I have nothing in common, without achieving mainstream success. Oh how I envy the life of that woman from The Guild, a web series that I am somehow familiar with despite not being a real geek or gamer!”
Yeah, I think there’s at least some element of wishful thinking going on with some of these conversations. And general, garden-variety distrust of women.
Ever been to Comic Con or similar SF convention? I’m assuming either: a) no, or b) you fit neatly into the crowd there. There are geeks and then there are über-geeks. Cons are starting to attract crowds outside the former, while they used to be made up almost entirely of the latter.
Despite some fairly wide geek-related interests, I’m not an obsessive who will watch a single movie over and over and catalog all of the nuances, continuity errors, and just plain oddities. I don’t read ALL of an author’s output and stalk him/her online, and discuss everything in exhaustive detail with other geeks. I’m built like a jock because I got seriously back into fitness several years ago, and I ramped up my martial arts practice around the same time. I bathe regularly, and I have a wife and kid.
What all of this means is that I have been shut out or cold-shouldered by some people based either on my appearance, or the fact that I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of their particular niche. Most nerds and geeks are intensely focused. If you aren’t relevant to their interests, you barely deserve acknowledgment as an entity occupying tangential space. If I were a poseur instead of a geek with only moderate cred, I would have gotten a lot worse treatment than being dismissed as irrelevant or implicitly told to butt out while the Mentats commune.
Geek cliques aren’t limited to men either. I was categorically ignored by a small group of women after a few minutes at a fairly recent geek-heavy party thrown by a buddy, because their interests were so completely off from my own. We exhausted our mutual conversation topics and then they went off on a conversational tangent into shôjo manga and Johnny’s J-Pop. If I had attempted to re-enter the conversation (as another guy who was less able to read signals did) after I’d ceased to exist from their point of view, I would have been given a dirty look and told to go away.
Yes, one girl actually said that to him. He said nothing offensive, nor was he acting out of the norm for conversation at a mainstream party. Geeks and nerds are infamous for a lack of social skills, which makes their rejections rather more unpleasant than what you encounter in most social groups.
Dude, it’s the same cultural appropriation regardless of whether you decide the merits of the suffering of the geek community to be worthy of legitimacy or not.
For a multitude of reasons now it’s suddenly cool to be a geek. I’m talking about the stereotypical geek here. The socially inept, turned-inward person. When I was growing up, this certainly was not a ticket to popularity. In fact, it usually led to a mild ostracism at best.
Now, the same types of people that would have previously been doing the ostracism have done an about face. Have they seen the error of their ways? No, it’s just the latest trend. This obviously causes some consternation among those have been geeks and nerds all along.
Personally, when I read about some feminist legbeard with lens-less glasses talking about being a nerd while blabbering about some British children’s show, I really can’t help but wish someone would dislocate her shoulder by shoving her into a locker so she can earn some real geek stripes.
The whole idea of promoting yourself by hijacking a label is ridiculous. Adding your gender as a prefix to that label is even more ridiculous. I hate to continue Habeeb’s analogy, but Lil Wayne said it best.
“Bitch, real G’s move in silence like lasagna”
Real geeks don’t feel the need to flash their geek cred. That’s all.
Here’s the thing about the PAX East/Jessica Nigri thing. The women I went with were extremely pissed off about her appearance. The big controversy wasn’t “Shun the Fake Geek” it was “She Knows the Rules, Why Did She Agree to Come?”
PAX East has a very strict anti-booth babe policy and as a common geek, Nigri should know that. As a professional model, she should definitely know that.
Yeah. When people start drawing parallels between geeks and black people, they’ve lost the argument IMHO. Being harrassed in school for choosing to dress like Mr. Spock at the pep rally is NOT the same thing as contending with centuries of oppression or the stigma of urban poverty.
My wife read my response to the terrible analogy last night and said, “Awesome, now you’re gonna draw out racist nonsense too.”
I wouldn’t necessarily go that far; I think that cluelessness can account for a lot of the nonsense contained in that analogy. I don’t think I can really tell the point at which cluelessness verges over into willful ignorance and racism, so I’ll just call it cluelessness.
Yep. I agree completely. That’s why when blacks complain about centuries of oppression or the stigma of urban poverty I, as a Jew, remind them that it’s NOT the same thing as contending with millennia of oppression and a recent historical genocide and that they do not have a legitimate reason to be concerned about cultural appropriation. :smack:
Just because geeks haven’t suffered in the same way blacks have doesn’t mean anything in this context. Of course blacks, in aggregate, have suffered tremendously. I would happily cede that they have endured more hardship than geeks or nerds. But none of that changes the formula for what cultural appropriation is.
Here’s a definition, in case you’re still having trouble.
Cultural appropriation
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Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture.[1][2] It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, can take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.* - Wikipedia
Which part do you not recognize as happening here?
Except that geeks aren’t like other cultural groups because geeks are entirely self defined. You aren’t born a geek. You decide to be a geek. In effect, cultural appropriation is the only method for creating new geeks. It’s not wrong - it’s mandatory.
It’s funny that people who were historically shunned and judged as outside of the mainstream culture want to make sure that they get to do the same thing to someone. The very idea that you get to insult or harangue people for not being truly part of the culture is what led to the marginalization of geeks in the first place. The justification that we get to go after fakers is what allowed going after geeks. They are not like us. They are not really like us even if they might look like us. They must be outed. They must be shamed. They must be driven out. They are bad.
The part where being a geek (being unpopular in 6-12 grade) and being a fan of a particular set of pop culture were one and the same?
News flash, geekwad, you don’t get to call dibs segments of media and then cry foul when someone else who is different from you also tries to enjoy it.
The problem with applying the concept of cultural appropriation to geekdom is that virtually everyone who describes themselves as a geek is, by definition, an appropriator. I didn’t invent Star Wars. I had no hand in its creation. I don’t know a single person who worked on it in any capacity. I was all of two years old when it premiered. I’m a Star Wars fan, because I saw something in it that I like, and adopted it for myself. I don’t have an inherent “right” to Star Wars fandom. I wasn’t raised by Star Wars fans. I wasn’t born into a society where elements of Star Wars fandom were inculcated into daily life. I saw a bunch of other people who were Star Wars fans and thought, “Hey, that looks like fun! I’m going to go do that!”
Geekdom is all about cultural appropriation. Are you a white guy who watches Anime? Are you an American who likes Dr. Who? Did you ever watch The Last Airbender? How are you not at least as bad an appropriator as Jessica Nigiri?
Absolutely, which is why you constantly see “geek men” harassing and “quizzing” women who show any interest in video games or such. Because they don’t seek to prove that they know more, of course!
Again; men are against ‘fake geek girls’ because it proves nobody dates them because they’re awful people, and not just their hobbies.
This whole “cultural appropriation” stuff is godawful, especially when extremely racist as hell video games get tons of accolades year after year, and 2013 was an especially popular year for racist drek.
When grown ass men are calling 8 year old girl fans of My Little Pony “fake fans”, something is wrong - them. And yes, that shit happens.
When you’re getting to the point where your first reaction is to insult the looks of women and to wish them harm on them, as you are mil0, it’s very, very easy to see the truth behind your “fake geek girl” BS - misogyny, plain and simple.
