Prodding the feral otaku

The Skeptic Lawyer has discovered the dirty little secret of nerd boys…only it’s not really a secret. This has been a problem for a long time.

While doing the research for this post, I found that the largest gaming convention in North America has to remind attendees to wash daily and use deodorant in its program. I’ve seen a man who a woman rejected on the basis of his online gaming hobby tell her she ‘needed a good raping’. And there was worse than that in some places, which had to be closed down on the basis that they had reached the incitement stage. Incitement, in case you didn’t know, is a crime, and I’m afraid saying ‘it was only on the internet’ will not impress any judge of my acquaintance.

I am amused that she’s just discovered this. Every SF convention I’ve attended posts hygiene warnings: it’s not just in the program, but they’ll mention it in the opening program and drop frequent hints during the day. It is a significant concern — try attending a panel or a screening, only to have some guy (it’s always a guy, sorry) sit down next to you who hasn’t bathed or brushed his teeth in a few days, hasn’t changed his clothes, and has been subsisting on a diet of cheetos, peanut butter sandwiches, and beer. And don’t you dare to point out that he’s not fit to be in human company — normal people would sheepishly admit that you’re right and go slink off to the showers, but these are self-righteous nerds who will shriek at you indignantly that they must not miss this essential discussion of the Thundercats or zombie survival or the Doc Savage canon.

It is not a purely male problem: I attend science conferences that are bigger, and unfortunately sometimes even more male-skewed in the attendees, and yes, professionals can manage to take a shower every single day. It is not a purely nerd problem: the majority of attendees at these events are perfectly capable of civil behavior and basic hygiene. This is a problem of a a small subset, the feral otaku or savage nerd, and it’s going to emerge in every subculture that attracts privileged and obsessive males and rises above a certain level of popularity: comic book and science fiction conventions have been there for a long time, and skeptic and atheist groups are just rising above that critical mass that brings in these people.

I don’t think atheism/skepticism has a special problem with nasty sexist nerds — but it’s a real problem that has just begun to rear its unkempt, unwashed head, and it’s good to see that major organizations are taking preemptive steps to deal with it. And then, of course, there are these deeper problems that need wider cultural responses to address. Yeah, we’ve got to occasionally talk back to those oblivious nerds who will reply with the indignant shrieks.

However, of late I have started to encounter ‘geeky’ men (I’m sorry for this appallingly inexact term, but that’s all there is, alas) who demand–even when others find their geek-activity completely boredom-inducing or otherwise irritating–that women date them. This is like women who demand that their large dogs complete with muddy paws be allowed to take up residence on sundry boyfriends’ beds. It is rudeness, pure and simple. Just as the woman in question needs to find a dog-loving boyfriend who doesn’t mind muddy paw-prints, the geek needs to find a girlfriend who shares his interest in whatever geekiness happens to be his passion. And if he finds that men outnumber women in his particular geek environment, then I suggest he learn a little bit about the law of one price and modify his behaviour accordingly.

In an efficient market, all identical goods must have the same price; however, when there are fewer women than men in a given market (and assuming that most people in that market would like either sex or a relationship), then their relative scarcity presents women with an arbitrage opportunity. In financial markets, if the price of a security, commodity or asset is different in two different markets, then an arbitrageur will purchase the asset in the cheaper market and sell it where prices are higher. Women, when they have scarcity value in a given market, do not have to tolerate bad manners. Similarly, the male who shows that he is not ‘an identical good’ by exhibiting courtesy and charm will be able to make the most of the market in which he finds himself, always acknowledging however that arbitrage profits will persist until the price converges across markets (something that may never happen; it is often argued that perfect competition and efficient markets only exist in economics textbooks).

In other words, geek boys, smarten up your act. I mean, really smarten it up.

In related news, John Scalzi is about to get widely reviled by the ferals: he’s written a post titled Shut Up and Listen. Sound familiar? I’ve still got angry people protesting my insensitivity to men’s needs.

No Jerry, no cure

We’re finally rid of Jerry Lewis and his smarmy, condescending sponsorship of a telethon for muscular dystrophy. I think he meant well, but he had the wrong ideas: this article celebrating his absence makes a significant point. There are many diseases for which there can be no cure short of magically rebuilding entire bodies and brains — that is, no cure short of changing essentially the entirety of who the person is.

All that money was supposed to find what Jerry called “a cure.” Every year he said “We’re closer than ever to a cure.” But every doctor and nurse will tell you the same thing: there is no cure. In the program for the 2011 annual meeting of the Muscular Dystrophy Coordinating Committee, the word “cure” does not appear.

What people with the disability need is help with their symptoms and with mobility. Their quality of life can be improved, their symptoms can be reduced. They also need “accessible public transportation and housing, employment opportunities and other civil rights that a democratic society should ensure for all its citizens.” That’s what Mike Ervin says—he calls himself “a renegade Jerry’s Kid” who was an official telethon poster child in the 1960s.

That’s not a message of hopelessness. To the contrary, it’s saying there are positive improvements that can be made that don’t involve relegating the disabled to the rubbish bin of ‘God’s mistakes’.

(Also on Sb)

A gay Australian poll

I don’t even understand why this is a matter for debate, but yes, Australians are also wrestling with the idea of legalizing gay marriage. It shouldn’t be an issue, but there it is. One thing particularly notable, though: a Catholic(!) MP spoke out clearly in favor of gay marriage.

But Catholic Labor MP Graham Perrett said he supported a change to recognise gay marriage because it would protect young gay people from abuse.

Mr Perrett, who has two gay brothers, said if the Marriage Act was to be changed over night he would not notice a change.

He said his Catholic faith was a “private matter” and he had no qualms about speaking out in support of gay marriage.

So many things said exactly right — he’s my favorite kind of Catholic.

There’s a poll. It’s mostly going the right way, but you can play with it if you’d like.

Do you support gay marriage?

Yes 68.09%
No 31.91%

A very sad story

What does this religious puritanism do to people? It screws up their lives with needless guilt. This is a kind of oppression of the mind, where women are inculcated with unrealistic and shameful views of their own bodies.

Mental purity is a state of mind Renaud came to after years of struggle. When she was 10, she discovered a dirty magazine in her older brother’s bathroom. She had never seen male genitalia before; she became increasingly curious and began to search for pornography. When she hit puberty, she says, her curiosity turned into compulsion, and she added masturbation to her porn-seeking behavior. At 15, she attended a Christian summer camp and heard the pastor talking about “a Father in heaven who loves you unconditionally regardless of what you do.” From then on, she became active in the church and vowed to end her masturbation and porn habits.

“I’ve been sober for seven years now,” she says of her masturbation-free life.

Although some married women participate in Dirty Girls Ministries, Renaud’s crusade is largely for single women like herself. The majority of Dirty Girls’ members are in their 20s and 30s, but many teenagers and preteen girls, some as young as 11, have also joined. Technically speaking, most are virgins, but because of their below-the-belt explorations, they report feeling tainted, undesirable, and perverted.

Being orgasm-free is not the same as being sober, and masturbation does not make someone tainted or undesirable. There are, of course, extreme cases of sexual obsession where the behavior can interfere with day-to-day, productive living, but that isn’t the case in this story: this “Dirty Girls Ministries” regards masturbating or even reading a romance novel twice a week as a dangerous case of excessive addiction. Given that attitude, I suspect they’d regard the Pharyngula readership as a nest of decadent, pervy wastrels obsessed with sex. You should be proud.

But the reverse is true: having a fairly casual attitude towards sex — it doesn’t define you, and your worth is not a function of abstinence — is healthy, and this weirdly repressed perspective inflicts unforgivable pain on ordinary human beings.

Indeed, guilt and shame are emotions commonly expressed by the women involved in Dirty Girls Ministries. “Once I’ve actually committed the sin (of porn and masturbation), I find myself feeling such sadness, frustration, disappointment, anger, shame,” writes one anonymous commenter on the Ministries’ forum. “It makes me feel sick and unworthy,” writes another. One girl even reported feeling guilty after simply dreaming about masturbating.

Isn’t that just the most wonderful thing about religion? Once you’ve infected someone with it, it’s incredibly easy to put them to work punishing themselves for you.

You’ve got a choice. Either you accept the artificial guilt of an ancient dogma and stop doing a perfectly normal, harmless, and universal behavior, or you stop accepting the guilt and find human happiness in being who you are. Rational people choose the latter. Deluded people follow the former, and suffer lifelong for it.

(via Skepchick)