Being a woman in geek culture

[satindesire]

If any man says that women aren't smart enough to be intensely geeky, I can point them to this thread with pride.


ETA: A friend pointed me to this EXCELLENT site!

Manboobz...Mocking Misogyny one MRA article at a time.

http://manboobz.com/

 

[BrightlyGo]

Men, you see, get to pick and choose and be the chaser.

You see 'get to,' i see 'are forced to.' But i've already ranted about how fucked up the 'rules of the game' are once this thread, i think...

Women get to say no until she means yes, be a bitch if she says no for reals, be a slut if she does the chasing.

You get to be a 'slut' if you just say yes a lot. Is there even a word for the sexually aggressive woman who acts like a 'player' and chases men (maybe even has her way with a guy who's a little too drunk to say 'no' now and then)?

 

[Noor]

You see 'get to,' i see 'are forced to.' But i've already ranted about how fucked up the 'rules of the game' are once this thread, i think...

You get to be a 'slut' if you just say yes a lot. Is there even a word for the sexually aggressive woman who acts like a 'player' and chases men (maybe even has her way with a guy who's a little too drunk to say 'no' now and then)?

Me, I won't do drunk men.

 

[satindesire]

You see 'get to,' i see 'are forced to.' But i've already ranted about how fucked up the 'rules of the game' are once this thread, i think...

You get to be a 'slut' if you just say yes a lot. Is there even a word for the sexually aggressive woman who acts like a 'player' and chases men (maybe even has her way with a guy who's a little too drunk to say 'no' now and then)?

We call that a rapist.

 

[BrightlyGo]

http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html

5 ways modern men are trained to hate women:

It's cracked.com, so i don't want to take it too seriously, but all five of these are basically 'because: sex.'

#5
And what we learned as kids is that we males are each owed, and will eventually be awarded, a beautiful woman.

We were told this by every movie, TV show, novel, comic book, video game and song we encountered. When the Karate Kid wins the tournament, his prize is a trophy and Elisabeth Shue. Neo saves the world and is awarded Trinity. Marty McFly gets his dream girl, John McClane gets his ex-wife back, Keanu "Speed" Reeves gets Sandra Bullock, Shia LaBeouf gets Megan Fox in Transformers, Iron Man gets Pepper Potts, the hero in Avatar gets the hottest Na'vi, Shrek gets Fiona, Bill Murray gets Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters, Frodo gets Sam, WALL-E gets EVE ... and so on.

Something has been bothering me about this one, and i couldn't quite articulate it, until i realized it's not just one thing.

One reason the idea rings false with me, i finally realized, is because i just wasn't identifying with the heroes in movies and storybooks. They were aryans or athletes or soldiers or princes or whatever - strong, confident, physically capable, decisive, and not that prone to thinking things through - they didn't look or act like me, i couldn't see myself being like them. Rather, i'd find myself identifying more with characters who were there for exposition, the scientists and sidekicks and such. That's just a personal reason, though, and i'm sure i was an atypical little kid in that as in so many other ways.

The other, though, is that even if you do find yourself identifying with the hero, it's hard not to notice that there are a lot of other guys in the story, and they're not getting the girl. So, no, the lesson isn't 'everyone gets a girl,' the lesson is the big, strong, aggressive, /important/ guy gets the girl, everyone else gets killed or ignored - so be that guy, or else. No pressure, boys.

And, finally, there's the flip side of the idea: Every princess gets her prince, too - only she doesn't have to slay any dragons or duel any rivals or brave any dangers - she just has to look pretty and be well behaved. And, as we keep hearing, there may not be that many other female characters. In Star Wars, for instance, there were two female characters: Princess Leia and Aunt Baru. That's it. One was long since married (and got killed), the other was the freak'n Princess. So, are guys being taught they 'deserve' a girl? Well, maybe, if they're big damn heroes. But, by the same token, the princess thing is out there, so girls will presumably be thinking about the same thing - they just have to hold out for the really awesome guy. The whole princess thing is not a new idea, either, it's just that it's recognized as a perverse message that teaches girls a mal-adaptive lesson.

 

[KoPilot]

If any man says that women aren't smart enough to be intensely geeky, I can point them to this thread with pride.


ETA: A friend pointed me to this EXCELLENT site!

Manboobz...Mocking Misogyny one MRA article at a time.

http://manboobz.com/

I used to love reading that site back when there was a little more variety in the people/orgs/articles he'd snark, but now he's more or less just sticking to making fun of A Voice For Men and Paul Elam and there are... a lot of slow news days to be had there compared to what he could be snarking.

 

[KoPilot]

It's cracked.com, so i don't want to take it too seriously, but all five of these are basically 'because: sex.'

If women are to be seen as fuckable chattel, then yeah... they all would come down to sex, wouldn't they?

But yes, the idea that you can only be the protagonist of your own story if you're an aggressive asshole who wants/gets a girlfriend is messed up. But it's also like you said-- there are a wide variety of other kinds of male characters to look up to in practically every media, franchise, and story who are also seen as good, emulable characters in their own right. To use your own Star Wars analogy: girls/women basically have a choice between Aunt Beru and Princess Leia (not really a choice, is it), but boys/men can be Han, OR Luke, OR Fett, OR Lando, OR Vader, OR Obi Wan... none of them have women in their life except for Han at the end, and they are all extremely valuable characters that do really important things.

And just an FYI, dude, you are sort of derailing the discussion every time you bring up these points here. It's generally seen as bad form if you piggyback on discussions concerning women to bring up stuff concerning men.

 

[Recidiva]

A moment for an awesome rebuttal to criticism. Seize the opportunity to turn idiocy back on itself.

http://www.upworthy.com/an-awful-ta...ead-of-her-music-so-she-responded-awesome?g=3

And thanks to Felicia Day who is present in lots of my favorite places...She was in House, Lie To Me, Supernatural, Buffy, and she has a quest giver in Everquest 2 and she has her own expansion in Dragon Age 2.

Go ladies.

 

[Keroin]

A moment for an awesome rebuttal to criticism. Seize the opportunity to turn idiocy back on itself.

http://www.upworthy.com/an-awful-ta...ead-of-her-music-so-she-responded-awesome?g=3

And thanks to Felicia Day who is present in lots of my favorite places...She was in House, Lie To Me, Supernatural, Buffy, and she has a quest giver in Everquest 2 and she has her own expansion in Dragon Age 2.

Go ladies.

Yeah, I love that Amanda Palmer video.

And...

Hi Recidiva! *waves*

 

[Recidiva]

Yeah, I love that Amanda Palmer video.

And...

Hi Recidiva! *waves*

She is my heroine.

Hi Keroin! *hop*

 

[Netzach]

If women are to be seen as fuckable chattel, then yeah... they all would come down to sex, wouldn't they?

But yes, the idea that you can only be the protagonist of your own story if you're an aggressive asshole who wants/gets a girlfriend is messed up. But it's also like you said-- there are a wide variety of other kinds of male characters to look up to in practically every media, franchise, and story who are also seen as good, emulable characters in their own right. To use your own Star Wars analogy: girls/women basically have a choice between Aunt Beru and Princess Leia (not really a choice, is it), but boys/men can be Han, OR Luke, OR Fett, OR Lando, OR Vader, OR Obi Wan... none of them have women in their life except for Han at the end, and they are all extremely valuable characters that do really important things.

And just an FYI, dude, you are sort of derailing the discussion every time you bring up these points here. It's generally seen as bad form if you piggyback on discussions concerning women to bring up stuff concerning men.

Part of the fun of being a "gender, fuck" if not outright genderfucked geek is that I stopped feeling like I need to ID with the female ciphers at all and that there's nothing stopping me from being Team Boba Fett. That was good.

Of course, that's what the whole sexist shitpile of storytelling in the mainstream is banking on, that we'll just universalize the experience of male beings (really, why can't the wookie be a fucking female or something? Female wookies would have to be just as wookie...right?)

The Roddenberryverse even gave us tantalizing peeks at this kind of a thing here and there, when it wasn't being rapey. One of the sympathetic slime mold adversaries was going all momma grizzly. Kirk actually identifies with HER in between kissing people and that's the solution to the problem and the inability of the other characters to solve it.

 

[KoPilot]

Part of the fun of being a "gender, fuck" if not outright genderfucked geek is that I stopped feeling like I need to ID with the female ciphers at all and that there's nothing stopping me from being Team Boba Fett. That was good.

Yep. I didn't really know that I wasn't "supposed" to want to grow up to be Luke.

...or Mewtwo.

And then I went to middle school, hit puberty, realized my newly-minted boobs would prevent people from treating me like Luke, and I turned into a woman-hating misanthrope.

 

[trysail]

*edits compulsively*

You do realize, of course, that in your absence I have repeatedly used this quotation as my excuse.





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[Recidiva]

You do realize, of course, that in your absence I have repeatedly used this quotation as my excuse.





​

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That is absolutely charming

 

[Stella_Omega]

Yep. I didn't really know that I wasn't "supposed" to want to grow up to be Luke.

...or Mewtwo.

And then I went to middle school, hit puberty, realized my newly-minted boobs would prevent people from treating me like Luke, and I turned into a woman-hating misanthrope.

This, exactly. Hating the woman in me, anyway.

 

[BrightlyGo]

If women are to be seen as fuckable chattel, then yeah... they all would come down to sex, wouldn't they?

Only if men, likewise, are seen only as sex-driven penis-werewolves, yes.

But yes, the idea that you can only be the protagonist of your own story if you're an aggressive asshole who wants/gets a girlfriend is messed up.

But it's also like you said-- there are a wide variety of other kinds of male characters to look up to in practically every media, franchise, and story who are also seen as good, emulable characters in their own right. To use your own Star Wars analogy: girls/women basically have a choice between Aunt Beru and Princess Leia (not really a choice, is it), but boys/men can be Han, OR Luke, OR Fett, OR Lando, OR Vader, OR Obi Wan... none of them have women in their life except for Han at the end, and they are all extremely valuable characters that do really important things.

Yep, there's two sides to every one of these cultural biases. Girls have fewer characters to identify with than boys in heroic genres. If Star Wars were the whole cultural experience, yes, a girl would be faced with the choice of being the kind married woman, or the rebel princess (who still needs to be rescued and is presumed to end up with one of the heroes), while the boys get the wider menu (which includes heroes, losers, villains, collaborators, and an old hermit). Neither of those lessons is a good one. The girls get the old princess deal (only slightly livened up by Leia occasionally blasting stormtroopers or trash-talking her would be rescuers), the boys get taught that only violence and double-dealing will get them what they want.

And just an FYI, dude, you are sort of derailing the discussion every time you bring up these points here. It's generally seen as bad form if you piggyback on discussions concerning women to bring up stuff concerning men.

Actually, i think it's right on topic. We have an issue with how geeky guys are treating geeky girls in the geek sub-culture. Thus, it's not a discussion concerning women, but concerning both sexes and how they interact with eachother.

Traditional cultures' ways of dividing roles by assigned sex is problematic, today, but it's not going to get fixed by acknowledging only half the symptoms (and only doing something about them when its politically expedient).

 

[Stella_Omega]

Part of the fun of being a "gender, fuck" if not outright genderfucked geek is that I stopped feeling like I need to ID with the female ciphers at all and that there's nothing stopping me from being Team Boba Fett. That was good.

Of course, that's what the whole sexist shitpile of storytelling in the mainstream is banking on, that we'll just universalize the experience of male beings (really, why can't the wookie be a fucking female or something? Female wookies would have to be just as wookie...right?)

or female dwarves.

Heh. In trawling tumblr for images, I notice that dwarf women might have a bitchy resting face if the artist drew them without a beard. Bearded dwarf women tend to have sweet and happy smiles, so that we can be sure they are female.

One of the rare exceptions;

 

[Netzach]

Yep, there's two sides to every one of these cultural biases. Girls have fewer characters to identify with than boys in heroic genres. If Star Wars were the whole cultural experience, yes, a girl would be faced with the choice of being the kind married woman, or the rebel princess (who still needs to be rescued and is presumed to end up with one of the heroes), while the boys get the wider menu (which includes heroes, losers, villains, collaborators, and an old hermit). Neither of those lessons is a good one. The girls get the old princess deal (only slightly livened up by Leia occasionally blasting stormtroopers or trash-talking her would be rescuers), the boys get taught that only violence and double-dealing will get them what they want.


Actually, i think it's right on topic. We have an issue with how geeky guys are treating geeky girls in the geek sub-culture. Thus, it's not a discussion concerning women, but concerning both sexes and how they interact with eachother.

Traditional cultures' ways of dividing roles by assigned sex is problematic, today, but it's not going to get fixed by acknowledging only half the symptoms (and only doing something about them when its politically expedient).

Then talk to guys about fixing it. Seriously - we're not the ones who made up this shit. If every guy who felt burdened by the narrative or by the fact that sexism fucked him over too spent less time trying to insert this "me too" into the space of women discussing it, and more "that sucks, and here's what I do about it when I see it happening around me among other guys, when you CAN'T see it..." that'd be super.

 

[Stella_Omega]

"fraid so.

White people don't get cool points by talking to black people about how hard it is to be white. We need to talk to other white people about the consequences of racism. That's what helps.

Christians don't get to complain about how badly the rest of the world regards Christians. They need to stop other Christians who abuse their religion.

Men don't need to complain to women about what men do to themselves. They need to talk to other men about it-- especially since men tend to not listen to women saying these things in the first place.

 

[Recidiva]

or female dwarves.
Heh. In trawling tumblr for images, I notice that dwarf women might have a bitchy resting face if the artist drew them without a beard. Bearded dwarf women tend to have sweet and happy smiles, so that we can be sure they are female.

You got to hand it to the female dwarves with beards. They commit. I always appreciate character builders when they give you the non-svelte, non-cookie cutter options.

 

[Stella_Omega]

You got to hand it to the female dwarves with beards. They commit. I always appreciate character builders when they give you the non-svelte, non-cookie cutter options.

commit to what?

 

[KoPilot]

Actually, i think it's right on topic. We have an issue with how geeky guys are treating geeky girls in the geek sub-culture. Thus, it's not a discussion concerning women, but concerning both sexes and how they interact with eachother.

Traditional cultures' ways of dividing roles by assigned sex is problematic, today, but it's not going to get fixed by acknowledging only half the symptoms (and only doing something about them when its politically expedient).

No... it actually does your case a disservice. If you can't find a way to talk about the issues concerning narratives of masculinity on their own terms, and judge them by their own shortcomings, then it's really not that much of an issue, is it? If you truly understand that women are, as a class, subjected to more and worse discrimination than men, as a class, are, then what you're doing is taking a discourse that is meant to allow a disadvantaged class to speak about their experiences, and you're taking the mic away to talk about not only the less disadvantaged class, but the class that benefits from the discrimination to begin with.

There's a reason "but what about teh men??" is a feminist meme.

Men need to find good, honest ways of talking about their own problems without taking over women's spaces to do it. Men run the largest companies in the world, make the most money, own the most land and property... and still they can't create their own safe spaces? I find this very hard to believe.

I'm not trying to tell you to leave the thread, but every time you contribute, it's to derail and talk about men's issues. Go make your own thread. A number of us would be more than happy to follow you over there and talk about the ways men are taken advantage of and the narratives they're expected to emulate. But there. Not here. This thread is called "being a woman in geek culture".

 

[KoPilot]

or female dwarves.

I love the female dwarves so hard ;-;

 

[Recidiva]

commit to what?

To "non-feminine" according to stereotype characteristics and stature and behavior.

To dark elves with bumpy faces. To melee classes.

My favorite name for the non-typically feminine characters is "Rafflesia." Botanical name of the corpse flower.

I have lots of crushing, stomping, two-hander swinging dwarves and trolls and firbolg and...well...lots.

 

[BrightlyGo]

Then talk to guys about fixing it. Seriously - we're not the ones who made up this shit. If every guy who felt burdened by the narrative or by the fact that sexism fucked him over too spent less time trying to insert this "me too" into the space of women discussing it,

'Society' isn't 'guys.' Where do you think acculturation starts? It starts with primary care-givers and pre-school and grade-school teachers - and they're overwhelmingly female. Men & women both make culture what it is. Women and men are both limited by the strictures culture places on them based on their assigned sex.

There's a flip side to every one of these issues that's hurting the guys at the same time. Both sexes would be better off without this medieval BS.

i do get it, though. Usually, when someone pops up with 'but men can't blah, blah, blah,' they /are/ trying to de-rail a political agenda. i'm making a special effort to point out that i'm not here to minimize the issue by saying 'guys have problems, too,' rather, i'm trying to accomplish the opposite, to say "this really needs to change, because it will benefit both sexes."

and more "that sucks, and here's what I do about it when I see it happening around me among other guys, when you CAN'T see it..." that'd be super.

...hmmm... now that i think about it, because our geeky hobbies are things we do together, and because there are more women involved in them than there used to be (a trend that became pretty strong back in the 90s), i don't think i've been in that situation in a very long time.