So you might’ve seen this comment on a previous post about fake nerd girls from some brave hero called “wtfwhateverdood“. I’m waiting for some work to download, so I thought I’d give a response, because I’m such a nice guy and must continue to defend “the honour” of women (that’s from the comment before)
F you and your encouragement of the cultural appropriation of nerd culture:
First fail. My comment policy clearly indicates no swearing and yet that’s the first thing you did. Welcome to the banned list, bro. But please do link to me when you write your thoughtful ranting elsewhere on the big wide internet, as I am under no obligation to continue to provide a platform. Please, really do: I can’t wait to waste my life reading your deep thoughts about them nasty hot girls, destroying your life with their existence in your vicinity.
“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… “
Zzzzzzzz.
Thanks for the Wikipedia entry, bro. I like that you didn’t even remove the footnote numbers. Cute. If you were my student, I’d fail you for not (1) providing a source of your quotation, (2) not indicating it’s not your words thus becoming plagiarism, and (3) using WikiPedia instead of another source.
Also, boring.
“Here’s a quiz Tauriq”
I love quizzes from strangers demanding I give them attention! Please! MOAR!
how do you feel about Dartmouth canceling a Cinco De Mayo Fraternity fundraising “Phiesta” because one young woman complained about the cultural appropriation?
Eh. What?
Fake girl nerds, with the emphasis on fake
+ have no understanding of what it was like to grow up a nerd
+ were usually the oppressors of nerds
+ take on nerd costume as a way of seeming cool
+ oppress the real nerds still. That is, in their new fake girl nerd role, they still shun nerds
You don’t define “fake” so I don’t know what it means. Emphasising is not the same as defining.
“[They] have no understanding of what it was like to grow up a nerd”. And?
“were usually the oppressors of nerds” – so?
“take on nerd costume as a way of seeming cool” – What a crime! Arrest them!
“oppress the real nerds still. That is, in their new fake girl nerd role, they still shun nerds” – Circular arguments make me dizzy, bro. They oppress because they oppress. Wow. Insight!
Are you trying to justify why it’s ok for bros to be dicks to women? If you’re explaining why it happens – that’s one thing. If you’re justifying it, that’s another thing entirely. And I don’t think you’re interested in explanation, since you’d be indicating it’s wrong to unnecessarily target women. Even make-believe ones like “fake nerd girls”.
Oh, it’s cute. Oh, what does it matter? Oh, it’s just a name.
No, it’s cultural appropriation, it’s disrespectful, it’s oppressive.
Yes, disrepectful. Totally. The elders of nerdom must be appeased!
Oppressive. Wow. Yeah, really oppressive when non-existent groups of people enter your conventions and… “oppress” you. What does this mean? You keep saying oppress and shun and so on, but never provide examples. Just their presence apparently is enough.
That says more about you than the women, bro. Also, how come men aren’t guilty of these crimes? When I was bullied, it was by other boys my age. Not women.
So well done there bro, you’re totally not looking like a sexist jerk.
Portlandia, written and starring two nerds, including a real nerd girl, understands what you are too much of a dipsh*t to understand
REAAAAAAAL NEEEEEEEEEERD GIRLLLLLLLLL! SHE HATH PASSED TEH TRIALS SET BY THE LORDS OF NERDOM, AROSE VICTORIES THROUGH THE FIRES OF GEEKERY! PRAISE BE HER NAMES! [sic]
Go away. You are boring, bro. And this is incredibly, incredibly sad.
UPDATE (because of Comment #1):
It seems as though the commenter’s only way to communicate on the Internet is through my blog’s comment section. This leaves me in a dilemma! What should I do?! He’s already so oppressed!
Clearly the entire rest of the Internet is closed to him – that’s the only conclusion I can reach from his desperation to appear on my blog.
What kind of cowardly tard yells at a commenter you have already banned?
Oh, I guess it’s an intellectually dishonest cowardly tard.
Must be a SJW.
I think wtfwhateverdood has a point.
There’s something slightly icky about cultural appropriation, and simply sweeping it under the rug and reveling in the trend feels shallow and exploitative.
Here’s my translation:
1) Nerd-dom is not defined by what genres you like — it is defined by the social ostracism you receive from liking those genres. Sure, you can go around liking Game of Thrones now that everyone’s talking about it — but would you have had the guts to read Tolkien back when it would get you beaten up?
2) Since the definition of nerd-dom is based upon how socially ostracized you were back in school, and since a girl cannot be socially ostracized because, yaknow, look at those knockers, she cannot possibly know What It Truly Means To Be A Nerd.
3) And they’re oppressing me still! How, you ask? THEY STILL WON’T DATE ME! If they aren’t sexually available to ME, they’re probably still laughing at me behind my back just like those girls in home room! I don’t care if they’ve memorized every character in the Marvel universe, don’t they understand what their real function is in this community? It ain’t discussing Star Trek, that’s for sure!
— Dad of Nerd Daughter
It’s only cultural appropriation if you accept the premise that “nerdgirls” aren’t actually already members of nerd culture. Or even that there is a uniform, definable nerd culture, which allows you to say who is and is not a member.
My nerd subculture is full of science and math nerds who sneer at your fake nerd culture that consists of people who merely play video games. Is that fair?
Also, I get the definite impression that in your nerd culture, “oppression” translates as “won’t have sex with me”.
Why would you make this about having sex, PZ?
wtfwhateverdude – Please stop appropriating our culture by commenting here. It’s disrespectful and oppressive. ¬_¬
Don’t you have many responsibilities presiding over your high court of “Real Female Nerdom™” issuing licenses to women that are Real Nerds™ and chastising those that are fake?
How do you ever find the time to comment here?
Luckily males don’t need a license to identify themselves; being male and all.
The whole concept is ridiculous. There is no such thing as a “fake” nerd or a “real” nerd.
All of us get to choose how we self-identify and no one else gets to decide if you’re a “real” or “fake” anything. Anyone who tries to claim a superior position that they’re “real” and you’re “fake” is the world’s largest real douchebag and nothing they say means anything anyway.
Never let anyone ever tell YOU what YOU are. You’re the only person who ever gets to decide that everyone else can take a long walk off of a short pier.
Yes, some of us remember being picked on for being nerds and to turn around and pick on others cause they don’t meet some kind of criteria (who sets that criteria in the first place? some basement dwelling neck beard?) its just f’n nuts.
I like how Simon Pegg phrased it, “Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.” – and really this is how ALL of us should be about the things we love. That’s not a reason to put anyone down or take an attitude of superiority, or claim that they’re fake, it’s a chance for all of us to share the things we love with anyone who is willing to stand still long enough and listen.
What kind of cowardly tard yells at a commenter you have already banned?
Lots of ’em.
When I get a really annoying troll one of the things I do is let them reply ad nauseam until they have invested a huge amount of time and effort in the discussion, then I delete all their postings as a way of showing how little I value their opinion. And sometimes I follow up with a comment explaining exactly that, since being the owner of the blog/comment stream gives you that power.
You ought to start your own blog. I’ve read enough of your comments here that I’d be happy to know you were spending your time somewhere where I wouldn’t see any of the products.
I don’t think we can say what a “nerd” or a “geek” is because if we took all those people and asked them for heuristics of how you identify a “true nerd” or “true geek” we’d wind up with a uselessly broad description. Aaaaand, if it’s uselessly broad then that probably means that there’s a very wide set of behaviors that can define a ‘”true nerd” and therfore it’s less likely to exclude people from “true nerdhood.”
Shorter tl;dr: a true nerd would understand that there is no objective standard of “true nerd”iness.
PZ if you read my comment I distinguished between
“fake” nerd girls that College Humor lampoons, ie, regular girls putting on thick glasses
and
“real” nerd girls like Carrie Brownstein
It helps PZ if you read before typing, just as it would help Moosa if he were to click on the provided links.
The term ‘geek’ was appropriated from real geeks.
The ones with the chickens.
Even though you’ve apparently tutored critical thinking, you didn’t actually address any of his arguments.
And did you really ban him for substituting the ‘f-word’ with the letter F? Wow, that’s… wow.
It’s also amusing to me how you again make it all about ‘men being dicks to women’ (oh, sorry, ‘bros’ – seemingly that’s a thing now with radical feminists) when he doesn’t actually say nerds or geeks can only be male, and it’s repeated by some commenters and even PZ Myers himself (who mocks their supposed inability to get laid). I can’t tell whether that’s a geniuine problem with reading comprehension or deliberate.
He only complains about girls being fake.
EVERY time the word fake is used with the word nerd…. the word girl is between them.
Were you only paying attention to the wiki copy/paste?
And please, what arguments exactly did he make? This:
“Fake nerd girls don’t understand, oppress, costume, and oppress?”
That’s his argument?
Let me know when he’s properly reviewed all the “nerd girls” and categorized them into real and fake groupings.
Tell me something, Marcus: jock who spends his time mocking what he deems are “nerds” with no discernable hobby or past-time that he spends time working on to pefection, gets a pair of glasses and posts a selfie on Facebook declaring, “I am such a nerd” – real or fake?
To reiterate, I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “fake” nerd, but occasionally you have to wonder about someone’s disposition.
No, he doesn’t. He complains about the particular girls in the pictures, and then makes a general definition which he thinks “fake nerd girls” all share.
For what it’s worth, I think he has a point. If you oppress other nerds while also proclaming yourself to be a nerd, there might be an argument to be made that you’re not being 100% genuine – or at the very least, embarassed to be thought of in the same company.
Well, that would be a paraphrase, certainly. Some might even say a strawman. Alternatively you could quote him directly but maybe that would ruin the rhetoric.
Excuse if I have a few questions regarding the original comment. Maybe it’s because I don’t live in the US, and my last visit was decades ago…
I read that Ms Daniela Hernandez complained about a Greek-Letter-Festivity called “Phiesta”, calling the name and the setting of said festivity “culturally and racially insensitive”. She detailed her opinion, referring to the original meaning of the “Cinco de Mayo”, and its Americanization as a binge-drinking opportunity.
(1) What has all this to do with “Nerd oppression”, or even “Radical feminism”?
(2) Are only “true nerds” entitled to criticize Greek-Letter-Festivals?
(3) Are fraternities and sororities a Geek thing?
@steffp (#15)
It’s supposed to be some sort of “gotcha” using social justice concepts against advocates of social justice. He’s trying to redefine male nerds’ gatekeeping as preservation of their “culture” (begging several questions in the process) so he can accuse us of having double standards when we criticize real examples of cultural appropriation, such as fraternities appropriating Cinco de Mayo by striping it of its cultural context and turning it into a drunken party involving wearing sombreros and eating burritos.
@A.Noyd, #16
Ah, now I see. So these guys wants to be an ostracized minority these days, whining about their own suffering ( apparently because others imitate their style – shocking), while at the same time holding the un-reflected majority view that there is no “hidden privilege” unless you’re holding a few slaves. No slaves, no racial privilege, no prejudice and no cultural dominance. It’s like saying that you’re no Anti-semite unless you start killing Jews. Discontinuous threshold-fixated thinking.
The juvenile fear of the other sex, fed by insecurity, disinformation, and remains of gender-segregation, leads to strategies of devaluation, intimidation and rape fantasies. Not a mindset to get into successful contact with the other gender… But it’s not perceived as a communication failure, it’s seen as a strange property of “today’s women”: These gals hate me (and all other men) although I’m the pinnacle of manhood (because I’m like all other men, only a bit more so). Running in circles…
So apparently the fake nerd girls “shun” the real nerds — by trying to participate in their culture? A culture defined primarily by participation in nerdy activities? Something doesn’t seem quite right there…
^+1000
#16 and 17 is proof is that you can create whatever narrative you like and people will believe it without question, as long as you don’t give it any critical thought.
I’m simply amazed at how quickly’s A. Noyd’s view of events was accepted as true, just like that with seemingly no effort to check facts or verify it for themselves. Just blind faith. On this here “free thought” blogs, that’s more than a little ironic.
You generally don’t attempt to participate in a culture by insulting it, especially not by insulting its proponents – which many so-called “fake nerd girls” do, call themselves nerds and then berate other nerds. I would say that’s pretty damn disingenuous, and might reveal an uncertainty whether they really want to identify with other nerds or not. Tauriq seems to think that even though these people were quote “usually the oppressors of nerds” unquote, that it doesn’t matter and even bringing that up is an excuse for “bros* being dicks to women.” Which is a) a double standard and b) sexist. Frankly, if they were “dicks” to other nerds, then I see that as an excuse to be a “dick” back. I don’t see how ignoring the former and giving them a free pass on their behaviour just because they’re women helps any.* But again, I’ve given up on trying to decipher this kind of logic because, again, I’m not a radical feminist.
*Dubbing men “bros” as villains is inherently transphobic. Guys, don’t do that.
**If we’re using Hornbeckian logic, sex is a social construct and there is no such thing as a man or a woman.
And no, this doesn’t just occur from “fake nerd girls” – there are plenty “boys” who do it, too.
There is also the mistaken assumption that only “bros” suffer from this kind of behaviour. Both women and men who inhabit the “nerd” culture are harmed, and it’s not fair to give it this unbalanced perspective that men are trying to keep women away from their “boy’s club.” It seems only feminists have this view, whom many nerds we shall note (women as well as men) DO NOT identify as feminist, and it paints nerd culture in a bad light.
Since Tauriq considers himself to be a part of nerd culture, I would’ve guessed he would have had a better understanding but I suppose not.
It appears that Pitchguest is going on about his personal experiences without reference to the comment linked in the original post. In that comment, there are no links to pictures of “fake nerd girls,” only a link to the article about the “Phiesta” cancellation and the Portlandia video. Furthermore, while Pitchguest might detest “fake nerd boys” as well, the linked comment talks only about the women, so that is what everyone is going to respond to. Furthermore, the only concrete definition of oppression given in the comment we’re talking about is “shun[ning]” nerds. The most charitable interpretation of this defintion is that the commenter believes that not wanting to talk to or socialize with someone oppresses that person. Well, the definition of oppress is “to burden with cruel or unjust impositions or restraints; subject to a burdensome or harsh exercise of authority or power.” What power is a “fake nerd girl” exercising by choosing who she wants to associate with? What “cruel or unjust impositions of restraints” is she imposing?
Lol, your first run in with wtfwhateverd00d. I’d say pray it’s your last, but he showed it won’t be in the very first comment. He’s an oblivious sack of poop that manages to turn every single post that is even tangentially related to women into a whinefest about how oppressed teh menz are. I got used to ignoring him at Mano’s blog, which he seems to have vacated as of recently (and for some reason, the comments got a lot more on-topic and intelligent (actually, I’m shortchanging him just a little here, when he wasn’t ranting about feminism he had the occasional comment that was slightly intelligent)). And I love Pitchguest’s little whine @ 21:
Notice the phrase ‘which many so-called “fake nerd girls” do’ that he spouts without any actual substance behind it? He’s got a hard on for assumptions and seems to think the rest of us won’t notice. I have never seen a ‘fake’ nerd girl berate a real nerd, so I’d really like to see some actual references to real acts of ‘oppression’ before I swallow that big fake load he’s spraying around. Of course, he’ll pretend it’s common knowledge that it happens, or perhaps cite a flimsy example or two. In another of course, the rest of us will get on with our lives in which we respect both sexes and, surprise surprise, we won’t run into the alleged oppression that he talks about. Funny how it always happens that way.
I think when Pitchguest is complaining about women who join a culture just to insult it, he may be talking about those uppity women who start coming to nerdy events, and then have the unmitigated gall to vocally complain when they are insulted or treated as sex objects. I mean, really, the nerve!
I also want to ask — what is so terrible about cultural appropriation? I mean, if you look at the history of music in the Western Hemisphere — what is it but one group borrowing rhythms, or melodies, or techniques from a different group, and then the original group borrowing it back again, over and over and over? What’s wrong with restaurants that combine spices from one culture with ingredients from a different culture? Sure, there can be problems when one culture borrows from another culture to belittle it or make fun of it — the Frito Bandito effect — but there are also some great things that happen as a result of cultural borrowing.
@24 Drewzilla
But now we have Randy instead over at Mano’s blog…
Back on topic, I did too notice the double-standard Pitchguest seems to be setting up. We supposedly take things on blind faith, but then he shortly follows that up by making unsupported claims. So are we expected to take his claims on faith? Or are we supposed to go to Google and do the research ourselves? Or, as you’ve said, does he think this is supposed to be “common knowledge”? It’s not. I haven’t really seen any berating, other than suggesting that nerds be respectful to women and other human beings. If that’s the berating Pitchguest is complaining about…forget that. If being a “real” nerd means being a jerk, I don’t want to be a real nerd.
I think the definition WTF and PG are using for ‘fake nerd girl’ is ‘geeky girl who is kind of cute but doesn’t like exactly what I like and more importantly won’t give me the sex I’m clearly entitled to’.
I’ll just leave this, and this here.
This whole ‘fake geek’ is ridiculous and shameful.
Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group.
It’s probably worth pointing out that “wearing thick glasses” isn’t a specific element of a real culture. It’s a Hollywood trope. Basically it’s a short-hand meant to communicate that the character reads a lot (and so has poor eyesight), and doesn’t care about fashion (and so prefers to buy cheap, practical glasses). One popular indicator is the broken eyeglass frames repaired with white adhesive tape: “Why should I spend money on new glasses? These still work perfectly well; I’ll just patch them and use the money I saved to buy something I really want.”
Since it doesn’t borrow from a real culture, I don’t think you can call this “cultural appropriation”. You could call it a “negative stereotype” and start lobbying Hollywood to come up with more positive portrayals of nerds. (Actually I think they’ve started doing this already. I’d cite the “Bones” TV program for fashionable nerdy characters with good eyesight, or the early Harry Potter stories for a character with nerd-stereotype eyeglasses who is heroic and popular.)
Anyway, if this negative stereotype is the line where you want to stand and fight, then good luck to you! Let us know how things work out, or if there’s anything we can do to help.
Here’s a quiz Tauriq, how do you feel about Dartmouth canceling a Cinco De Mayo Fraternity fundraising “Phiesta” because one young woman complained about the cultural appropriation?
This could be considered cultural appropriation because it takes an actual bit of Mexican culture (Cinco De Mayo) and turns it into yet another excuse for a drunken frat party. (And why is it relevant that the student who complained is a “young woman”?)
Maybe part of the incongruity here is that “nerds” are a subculture, not a culture. Cultures have somewhat well-defined membership, whereas subcultures are fluid and nebulous. You can’t become a member of a First Nations culture, or Greek culture, or Persian culture, etc. But you can certainly become a nerd, or a goth, or a plays-golf-at-every-opportunity guy, or any other subcultural identity. You can’t “appropriate” something that is inherently up for grabs by anyone with the slightest interest.
brucegee1962 (#26)
I’d suggest you do a little research on it before trying to defend it. Keep in mind that a lot of “borrowing” happened/happens within a context or legacy of colonialism and forced assimilation. You can start here.
I got my first copy for my 12th birthday, which was in the last millenium. Does that make me a real nerd-girl even though nobody beat me up for it?
I also spent a lot of money on Trading Cards, am I cool now?
Actually, I just enjoy a lot of the things “nerds” apparently enjoy, too. When did they get a trademark on that stuff?
In approximate order of appearance starting at age 5 1/2 (because that’s how time is measure when you’re a kid), and only counting things that I actually kept up on for a noticeable period of time (ie My Little Pony does not count as nerd-dom for me):
Astroboy (Yay! Anime right out the gates FTW!)
Lego (may or may not actually be tied with Astroboy)
Dungeons and Dragons (my first character was a Kender)
Math (THAC0 = introduction to negative integers)
Tolkein (yes, I could read and understand hobbity adventures in grade 2)
Unicorns
Space (I got a huge, hardcover book about the solar system for Christmas that was just about as big as I was and almost never set it down)
Dragons
Star Trek
Blade Runner (and my intro to cyberpunk)
Aliens
Nancy Drew
Super Mario Bros
Zelda: Link to the Past (I’m actually in the process of rescuing the princess again)
Hating popular kids
Magic the Gathering (still play… there’s a pile of cards beside me right now)
LARPing
Aeon Flux
Moar Anime
MUDs
Diablo
H.P. Lovecraft
Shadowrun
SCA (short but awesome)
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yet moar Anime
Firefly
Faeries
Trigun
Sid Meier’s Civilization (late starter to the series, too many hours since then)
Doctor Who
… Okay, now I’m just running them together in my head. The point is, I have been involved in quite a variety of topics, classics, and genres at varying levels of intensity and duration for about 30 years. Some of them are directly relevant to my career and life skills, many are just awesome to get lost in. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge geek and a huge nerd and I really don’t give a crap which you call me because ohlookfoilJace and it’s only fun to discuss the semantics of it with people who don’t hate me for having mammary glands.
Yes, I have been accused of being a fake geek girl.
No, I am not a fake geek girl.
No, there isn’t really such a thing these days.
I was commenting to a friend recently about the plethora of octopus flavored swag that can now be got at any curio shop or alternative clothing store. On the one hand, “I liked tentacles before they were cool (but probably not before PZ)”. On the other hand, now that I’m not the only one who likes tentacles I get to be excited about it and there’s a d20’s chance in hell that someone standing near me will join me in my childish glee over my new octopus socks that I couldn’t get before the ENTIRE WORLD realized that everyone has their own kind of nerd inside, and that’s just awesome.
Pitchguest@#14
Tell me something, Marcus: jock who spends his time mocking what he deems are “nerds”
What is “jock”? Another vague stereotype?
I don’t get it. A guy sees some girls wearing glasses and proclaiming they are nerds. Said guy has no idea whether these girls are nerds or not, he just decides they aren’t, and further that they are making fun of (?) nerd culture by appropriating the fashion of nerds, and proceeds to condemn them for it.
Why does he even care? Why get so upset over a couple of girls wearing glasses and posting their pics? They’re young girls, exploring their identity, fooling around on social media. Is this really something to get upset over? It reminds me of those people who get so angry at the girls making duckface or posting cute selfies. Really, do we need to get upset about this? Even if they *are* “fake nerds”, so what? Who are they hurting?
As a bisexual, I get irritated by straight girls who make out with each other as an attention-getting ploy, and as a kinky person I get irritated when people appropriate kink culture, fashion, and terminology (which they often use wrongly, LOL) but at the same time I can’t claim that only *I* have the right to these forms of self-expression. People should be able to try on new identities and experiment. I might not *like* them diluting my culture, but I’m also not going to get up on my high horse and start dictating to other people how they should express themselves or what label they are allowed to use.
If there is HARM in something, then by all means – we need to speak out. A lot of the criticism over 50 Shades of Gray, for example, was about how irresponsibly BDSM is portrayed and the danger inherent in the abuse of such power. But I see nothing here that could be defined as harmful, so I fail to understand the reasoning for the backlash here. It’s a tempest in a teapot, at least as far as I can see.
Well I’m impressed with wtfwhateverd00d! He’s evolved since last time I interacted with him in a comment section about video games (I think it was on Avicenna’s blog, but it might have been Mano’s). Back then, his problem was with all geek women invading nerd culture. Obviously, his experience with rejection meant that all women are now nerd traitors – whether those women were bullied growing up for being nerds or not. I am glad he’s revised his opinion on that.
Speaking of which, there’s a place in North America where girls weren’t bullied for being nerds before it was cool? Really? Damn, I should have bugged my parents to move there in 1996 instead of getting stuffed in my locker by funny dudes. I wish I knew where that whimsical land was.
Sercee
Sorry, you fail. You almost fooled me (btw, since when is LEGO a nerds toy?), but you included unicorns and faeries. Those are girl things and thereby disqualify you from being a nerd. 😉
+++
I’m wondering…
Do you all know The Gamers? Of course you do, do you also know The Gamers 2?
I’m wondering how often that scene in the games and comics store has been played out, the one where a girl/woman enters the store and the reaction is probably stronger than it would have been if ET in person had entered…
Duh… a fake nerd girl is a female who criticizes nerds in any way from inside the “culture”. If she was a real nerd, she would know better than to criticize the boys.
**If we’re using Hornbeckian logic, sex is a social construct and there is no such thing as a man or a woman.
No,, that would be Pitchguestian strawman logic.
I’m really interested in seeing an actual example of a Fake Geek Girl oppressing a Real Geek in any way other than existing without passing out blowjobs. Was it their failure to buy Red Hood and the Outlaws which oppressed the Real Geeks by convincing DC to make Starfire an actual character again and not the vapid sex-bot they’d presumably prefer? (I mean, I thought that was awful, but clearly I’m not a Real Geek since I don’t moan about icky girls oppressing me with their hotness.)
It’s certainly can’t be that these Fake Geek Girls criticize their fellow geeks, because in my experience there’s nothing Real Geeks love more than tearing each other down. By that standard, Evan Dorkin is not a Real Geek, since obviously no Real Geek would create The Eltingville Club.
Nerds have a culture now? I thought we just played chess and didn’t get invited to parties. And….em…had to take a circuitous route home from school on some days, when we said something withering to the bully in the cafeteria.
So clearly I’m 40 years too late to the Nerd Party. But here’s what I don’t get….you’re objecting to girls?
(Oh, and re Pitchguest, every time on any blog anywhere I see the term “RadFem”, I immediately know the comment’s probity is completely undermined. I actually live and work in a genuine Leftist environment, and I attended a Leftist college and a Leftist university, and I’ve dated several brilliant and accomplished women who may or may not have called themselves feminists but who definitely were….. and yet…. I’ve yet to meet my first example of this Fairy Unicorn myth called a RadFem….I just know a lot of women who have the ovaries to speak out when someone’s being a jerk to them)
Fake girl nerds…oppress the real nerds still.
What fucking bubbleverse are these hateful wankers living in? I knew plenty of nerds back in high-school — waaay back before there were alleged to be “fake nerds” of either gender — and believe me, no one “oppressed” them but the jocks and bullies. The MALE jocks and bullies. There were girls who sneered down at them too, but they weren’t faking the nerdiness, they were disdaining and distancing themselves from it every chance they got.
These “dudebros,” or whatever you want to call them, aren’t just stupid; they’re uneducable.
How peculiar, then, that nobody who claims this can ever actually cite anything beyond “well they look like the girls who picked on me in high school!”. This is toxic nonsense; odd that you, such a great proponent of “critical thought”, immediately accepted the claim of “insulting its proponents” without a sliver of evidence behind it.
Quite strange that nobody ever brings it up, in that case. I like to call myself active in several nerd subcultures; I’m a huge astronomy geek and tend to travel cross country for gaming cons several times a year. I’ve encountered several instances of this toxic phenomenon, and without fail, it’s always been aimed at women. If you have any actual citations of significant complaints about “fake nerd guys”, I’d absolutely love to see them.
Nobody “suffers” from “fake nerds”, except for the nerds unfairly tarred by the nonsensical epithet.
Are you yourself at all active in any nerd subculture? It doesn’t seem to be a majority, but to deny that there’s a loud minority who do view it as a “boy’s club” is either suggestive of a involvement in a very feminist-friendly nerd subculture, or pure delusion. It’s akin to claiming that racism isn’t a serious problem in US politics in its absurdity.
@Shockna #43
Good reply, but that commenter has been banned. So don’t expect a reply – at least on my blog. Amazingly, the entire Internet exists on which to make his screeds, but it won’t be here.
The fact that I read and write is cultural appropriation (given a certain latitude in definition, such as the one wtfwhateverdood seems to be adopting). The fact that I appreciate the various musical and artistic art forms of the european elites is definitely cultural appropriation. So what? I saw it, I liked it, I helped myself. The justifiable application of the idea of cultural property is and should be really very limited. Limiting peoples participation in cultural activities that interest them isn’t good for anyone, especially those who make their living out of said cultural activity. And it easily leads to exclusivity, the entrenchment of privileges and outright discrimination. Ahem…
I think he means they won’t sleep with him.
I’m still trying to figure out how you even find a dreaded “fake nerd girl.” Is there a detector I could buy? Do their various “fake nerd” accessories give off some rare isotope as they decay? This seems important as I could be surrounded by these “fake nerds” even now and they could be oppressing me! They could be taking away my ability to…something? Read fantasy books or watch cartoons! No, wait, if they did that then I would know they were “fake” and that would defeat the whole purpose!
On another note, I was unaware that being beat up by boys and girls was requirement of being a nerd and/or geek. I grew up reading fantasy books, watching sci-fi, roleplaying, and other such things on the Great Checklist of Geekdom, yet I was never beat up for it. I guess this means I have to turn in my card and lightsaber.
Seriously, though, how is it we are still dealing with this? I go to a convention and the attendance is very near 50/50, yet we’re having an argument that many (maybe all?) of the women there are some how fake geeks, as if that is even a thing. These women put in the labor to make their amazing costumes, spend the hundreds of dollars on room and travel, to do what? Up their fake cred? Is this the means to some diabolical end where they…I don’t even know. I can’t even think of a goal for this.
So, wait: cultural appropriation is bad when it borrows an ethnic or religious identity… but it’s perfectly okay/doesn’t exist when it borrows a social identity? Is that how it works?
People are born into their ethnic identity and given very little choice about their religious identity. But social identities are accessible exclusively by appropriation. No one is born a nerd, popping out of the uterus in a full Darth Bane cosplay outfit. Every nerd has to appropriate the subculture for themselves. That’s just how subcultures work.