Being a woman in geek culture

[satindesire]

Hah!

We dearly need a hug emote.

:hugemote:

Uh oh. That looks like huge mote. Not the same.

That DOES look like huge mote. Kinda cute.

*hugs back!*

 

[Noor]

this post is not PC -warning... also rambling thoughts

In the old days comic books and games were part of what you did, they were not a person's identity, there was no special status granted for just for buying or playing.

I find I have a lot more trouble in modern day "geek" cultural among those who self define as "geeks" than I did say 20-30 yrs ago. Of course we were called nerds then and we rarely used the term except maybe to describe a person as someone who could speak nerd.

I am part of several cons (<-sci if/fantasy/comic/gaming/anime conventions) that seem to be filled with IT managers, system administrators, gatekeepers, sys ops, tech support and database programmers. The competition for these jobs is a lot fiercer than high level computer jobs in some ways because the barrier to entry is much lower.

I understand some people really love this area of IT and they are definitely needed, but unless you are working for a start up, telecommuting or at one of the few truly cutting edge high tech companies, attending from out of town, you aren't likely to be in a serious contributor in high tech. Many attending remind me of old DOS programmers whose claim to fame seemed to be "I know DOS and you don't."
There is a lot of one-upmanship going on among people who are not and never have been key employees in a company and unlikely ever will be. With that kind of general competition many people try to keep the rising tide down.

The women tend to be much more skilled than the men, but I think that is because part of a general societal reality where women must outshine men to get the same work. As long as the top jobs in the world are given to men mainly because they are men it will trickle down to everything.

I realize in many ways I have lived a charmed life in terms of experiences. When I was in high tech in the 1980's I swear almost the entire silicon valley, silicon glen, Austin, etc... was full of aspies but it was not particularly sexist. You were treated like everyone else, your stuff worked or it didn't and if didn't, you kept at it. There were so many people from different places and cultures that you always had "signal your turns" anyway. Much of what I saw at MIT was like this too, back then. I remember farm kids who would ask you if you spoke "foreign," but they quickly were assimilated.

People worked together, helped others up when they fell, and together companies and products were stronger than the sum of their developers. As long as you weren't part of the evil empire or microsloth, you even helped other companies out when things were desperate. I remember a bunch of us from all sorts of companies spending a weekend straightening chips so a certain company could ship product the next week.
When you were going under you tried to not take down other companies with you.
Sexism had no place in that world, there wasn't time, and while relationships happened, we were busy changing the world and that was more important than being mean to each other based on accidents of birth.
I would not say it was all roses, I can remember some epic disagreements/arguments/fights but they were about tech stuff and direction. People surviving on caffeine and pizza for months can get a bit strained at times. Some of the best people were a bit more than marginally insane, there was a lot of coke floating around so paranoid could erupt easily, meetings at 3am, dancing with elephants like HP could get interesting, were there extraterrestrials, how public we should be with our stance not to sell to S. Africa, the usual...

Some companies gave free help/software/testing to startups like Xerox, 3M, Cray... This world no longer exists on the scale it once did, I suspect mainly due to the focus on management and share price versa innovative products and revenues.
Now it is more every person for themselves even if it will hurt us all in the long run, and in this kind of world anyone who can be marginalized is and will be. It seems okay with the country to take away women's access to abortion and birth control, to continue to allow unequal pay for the same jobs/same work, so why shouldn't the males of geek culture also treat women as inferior?

The business world in US that used tech was never particularly nice to women. I remember going to a local business computer show with about $25k to spend on computers and being ignored. I was invisible to the point in most booths that I was able to reprogram their display screen savers advertising a competitor and no one noticed who had done that. The next week I was at Cebit (Hannover, Germany) where there were very few women but I was treated like everyone else, so it was a real contrast.

The non tech world has never really liked people who were different even though the US was a country created by those that didn't fit in, I find it very disturbing that geek culture is this way.

 

[KoPilot]

Interesting stuff, Noor.

It's pretty obvious (to me at least) that this isn't the way things have always been. We are definitely going through a major backlash right now for whatever reason, hypermasculinity throwing a fit or going through death throes, I don't know.

The sexism seems to be a lot more sinister and deliberate now than it was back in the 80's. Of course my understanding mostly lies with gaming and pop culture and not tech. Yeah, sure you didn't have any girls playing with Voltron toys in commercials back then, and Frazetta art all over the place, but now you've got comic book writers in Transformers saying that being a female robot makes you a homicidal nutcase and that they only reason you exist was because of a bored mad scientist*, you've got legions of adult men trying to usurp a popular franchise that was deliberately meant to empower little girls while turning around and saying women can't like fighting robots. You've got Dan Didio talking smack about aspiring female comic creators in public. You've got the "fake geek girl"myth. And so on.

Maybe it has to do with men being alright with women in "their" space so long as they are outnumbered at least 10 to 1. As far as I know, we didn't start seeing this happen in pop culture fandoms and communities until the ratio more and more started resembling 1:1. The angry men very clearly feel like something is being taken away from them and that the appropriate response is territorial bigotry.

Not sure how this translates into "brogrammer" culture, though. Maybe the song is the same.

 

[Noor]

Recently a graphic novel/comic writer, whose work I respected and to whom I am very grateful to for helping me out, recently brought back a character that is very sexual and posted some panels with "morally reprehensible tentacle sex." The only saving grace might be that the character's face is looking very male. I just don't get it.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I was invisible to the point in most booths that I was able to reprogram their display screen savers advertising a competitor and no one noticed who had done that.

I never thought of doing this! It's perfect!

 

[Noor]

I always had the policy of not having sex with men who did not support my right to choose abortion.
Maybe some propaganda that "men who treat women as equals get more sex" might help.
It's true too, men who really love women in general get a lot more sex and more importantly real love.

 

[Noor]

Sure I'll wear a tiara...

I just clarified my definition of "conventions" in the rant post.

 

[satindesire]

I would not say it was all roses, I can remember some epic disagreements/arguments/fights but they were about tech stuff and direction. People surviving on caffeine and pizza for months can get a bit strained at times. Some of the best people were a bit more than marginally insane, there was a lot of coke floating around so paranoid could erupt easily, meetings at 3am, dancing with elephants like HP could get interesting, were there extraterrestrials, how public we should be with our stance not to sell to S. Africa, the usual...

....Wait, WHUT?!

 

[Primalex]

I always had the policy of not having sex with men who did not support my right to choose abortion.

Now if this isn't the ice breaker topic for the first date...

 

[Stella_Omega]

Now if this isn't the ice breaker topic for the first date...

separate the wheat from the chaff -- real fast.

 

[Primalex]

a popular franchise that was deliberately meant to empower little girls

Pardon?

 

[Noor]

....Wait, WHUT?!

Not crack, out right coke. I didn't do it but some did. This is back in the day when people did drugs to do something, LSD to paint, coke to code, pot music...

 

[Noor]

Now if this isn't the ice breaker topic for the first date...

Yep, I liked to pick during meals to talk about birth control and abortion, it's fun to watch their mouths drop open. That way they knew what I was thinking about and I knew how they felt.

Although I am not particularly concerned about birth control now, but condoms are still a given. Recently had that discussion with someone from Lit who doesn't like condoms but will use them when necessary, I am necessary.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I always had the policy of not having sex with men who did not support my right to choose abortion.
Maybe some propaganda that "men who treat women as equals get more sex" might help.

Nina Hartley did a XXX video "How To Make Love To Women" (or something like that) which starts out by making this point, among several other good ones. I would seriously consider leaving that video around for an eighteen-year-old lad to 'accidentally find'.

Need to be very careful how it's framed, though, otherwise it risks playing into the whole Nice Guy "I treated you like a human being now you owe me sex" thing.

 

[Keroin]

Yep, I liked to pick during meals to talk about birth control and abortion, it's fun to watch their mouths drop open. That way they knew what I was thinking about and I knew how they felt.

I am a big fan of getting the hard topics out in the open quickly. Saves a lot of time and heartbreak. On our second date, I asked L if he wanted kids and made it clear that I did not. Ever. (Thankfully he felt the same).

I see too many couples that put off these important discussions until the love-bond (or even marriage!) prevents them from just walking away. It can get ugly.

Religion, kids, abortion, politics, etc, I want to know where you stand on the issues that are important to me before I start getting all heart-y.

 

[Recidiva]

I am a big fan of getting the hard topics out in the open quickly. Saves a lot of time and heartbreak. On our second date, I asked L if he wanted kids and made it clear that I did not. Ever. (Thankfully he felt the same).

I see too many couples that put off these important discussions until the love-bond (or even marriage!) prevents them from just walking away. It can get ugly.

Religion, kids, abortion, politics, etc, I want to know where you stand on the issues that are important to me before I start getting all heart-y.

I did not do this once and then I found out someone I was deeply in lust with was a real racist.

Seriously, get it out of the way when it's easier to back out. It wasn't until he was talking about his kids and what would happen if she brought home the "wrong sort" that that pit opened up...I did not fall in. But I am a fan of the early out of the way now.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I never thought of doing this! It's perfect!

My late mother worked for a tech company, and occasionally she went to Singapore to shop around for widgets. She'd take a minion along, the sellers' salesmen would concentrate all their high-pressure tactics on Junior Guy who didn't actually have authority to buy anything, and meanwhile she'd wander round until she had all the info she needed to make an unpressured decision

 

[KoPilot]

separate the wheat from the chaff -- real fast.

Lex is the last person I would expect to want to get lovey-dovey and committed before talking about difficult things. I guess some man-hearts can't take it.

 

[IrisAlthea]

I am a big fan of getting the hard topics out in the open quickly. Saves a lot of time and heartbreak. On our second date, I asked L if he wanted kids and made it clear that I did not. Ever. (Thankfully he felt the same).

I see too many couples that put off these important discussions until the love-bond (or even marriage!) prevents them from just walking away. It can get ugly.

Religion, kids, abortion, politics, etc, I want to know where you stand on the issues that are important to me before I start getting all heart-y.

Yes, this!

 

[BrightlyGo]

a popular franchise that was deliberately meant to empower little girls

Pardon?

Hint: It's not the first thing you think of when you hear the word "ponies" on a BDSM forum.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

I'm not really in the "geek culture," so I mostly can't speak to this topic from firsthand knowledge, except that in the late 90s, very early oughts, I worked for a tech company (cable internet and telecommunications) where the majority of the female workers were in "clerical" type positions: accounting, billing, customer contact/relations.

One interesting facet of the company, though, was that hires for new positions (inside or outside hires) were interviewed by a team made up of members of various departments, including mine (billing, as a matter of fact). During one cycle of interviews for a tech support position, a female "inside" candidate scored very highly on all the metrics, but one older (60-ish) man insisted a male "outside" candidate who had scored substantially lower on almost every metric was a better fit for the job. Finally, in frustration over our "inability to understand" his arguments, he said (in effect), "She's going to be useless one week out of four, and bitchy the other three, and a distraction to all the male techs!" (She was quite cute and curvy.) After the rest of us quit laughing, he was outvoted (x:1), and she got the job. A few weeks later, the tech support manager quietly told us he'd sent her on a support call to the Neanderthal, and she'd performed so admirably that the old fool now insisted she do *all* the TS for his group, and willingly promoted two women in his group to supervisory positions they'd never have had a shot at before.

So yeah, there *is* a prejudice, and women quite often have to "prove" themselves to be as good or better than the men... but in my (limited) experience, once they do that, their reputation spreads, and some of the cavemen actually change their attitudes and are more willing to accept *other* women.

 

[satindesire]

So yeah, there *is* a prejudice, and women quite often have to "prove" themselves to be as good or better than the men... but in my (limited) experience, once they do that, their reputation spreads, and some of the cavemen actually change their attitudes and are more willing to accept *other* women.

I think that shouldn't exist in the first place, though.

Which sucks because it does anyway.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

I think that shouldn't exist in the first place, though.

Which sucks because it does anyway.

I agree, it *shouldn't exist,* but my limited experience suggests that at least in some situations, it can be counteracted, and I think each step forward is better than one back. Within my lifespan, true equality probably won't even be approached, but it very well might within yours.

 

[KoPilot]

I agree, it *shouldn't exist,* but my limited experience suggests that at least in some situations, it can be counteracted, and I think each step forward is better than one back.

I think there are probably a lot more people who are willing to change their minds about this stuff than it seems, if given enough information about why they're wrong, but there are still a lot of folks who completely ignore science, common sense, and the people in their own lives in order to maintain backward beliefs.

There are always going to be people like my dad, who insisted, even as I was graduating college with honors on the other side of the country, that women are happiest in the home. Don't bother him with facts, as they say; his mind's already made up.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The issue is not;
one woman at a time proving herself in the work place.
It is not;
individual men accepting an individual woman in the community.
and it is not;
Individual, paragon women being accepted once they prove they are BETTER then the run-of-the-mill men that happen to surround them.

It's very simply;
women being targeted because they are female.

The women who are not paragons get blamed for not being better than the men around them who are NOT required to be better.