@sponfawn / sponfawn.tumblr.com
Of all the nerd sex symbol archetypes, “perpetually scowling girl whose only visible emotion is being vaguely annoyed at everything” perplexes me the most. Since when is grumpiness sexy?
Nothing says sexy like the person you’re interested in rolling their eyes at all of your advances!
Huh.
You’re proposing that the Grumpy Girl archetype is a geek sex icon because it provides a frame for socially maladjusted nerdboys to reinterpret women’s hostility and disinterest as an expression of affection?
I think my biggest “huh” moment with respect to gender roles is when it was pointed out to me that your typical “geek” is just as hypermasculine as your typical “jock” when you look at it from the right angle.
As male geeks, a great deal of our identity is built on the notion that male geeks are, in some sense, gender-nonconformant, insofar as we’re unwilling or unable to live up to certain physical ideals about what a man “should” be. Indeed, many of us take pride in how putatively unmanly we are.
Viewed from an historical perspective, however, the virtues of the ideal geek are essentially those of the ideal aristocrat: a cultured polymath with expertise in a vast array of subjects; rarefied or eccentric taste in food, clothing, music, etc.; identity politics that revolve around one’s hobbies or pastimes; open disdain for physical labour and those who perform it; a sense of natural entitlement to positions of authority (“you should be flipping my burgers!”); and so forth.
And the thing about that aristocratic ideal? It’s intensely masculine. It may seem more welcoming to women on the surface, but - as recent events will readily illustrate - this is a facade: we pretend to be egalitarian because it suits our refined self-image, but that affectation falls away in a heartbeat when challenged.
Basically, the whole “geeks versus jocks” thing that gets drilled into us by media and the educational system isn’t about degrees of masculinity at all. It’s just two different flavours of the same toxic bullshit: the ideal geek is the alpha-male-as-philosopher-king, as opposed to the ideal jock’s alpha-male-as-warrior-king. It’s still a big ego-measuring contest - we’re just using different rulers.
*rubs my feminist little hands all over nerd culture* does this upset you
Yes, because none of you should have a say in something you’re not interested in. You also shouldn’t be policing developers and censoring their content.
So, yeah, we are upset.
If you’re allowed to rub your hands over nerd culture without permision. Then rapists are allowed to rub their cocks over women’s vagina’s and faces without their permission. No now means yes! Thank your local feminist today!
What the fuck. This just in: nerds think that women participating in nerd culture is equivalent to rape
This just in: male nerds are scary as shit and also somehow can’t imagine that feminists may in fact actually be interested in nerd culture
