Geek feminism and relational aggression: Are we the real “Mean Girls”?
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This is the first in a multipart series on the intersection between feminism and geekery, inspired by this post at Geek Feminism. Stay tuned for what will, hopefully, be a weekly column from several of our staffers.
Geek Feminism is not something that I’ve put a whole lot of stock into until recently. As a latecomer to feminism (indoctrinated shortly after reading Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth”), I have often looked past the misogyny inherent in (nearly all facets of) geekdom. More often than I care to count, I’ve been the recipient of blatant sexism and downright hatred of women, especially during the time I spent working in the IT world. I’ve been a technician, a software developer, and a web developer. I’ve been involved in many avenues of geekery since I was old enough to hold a controller.
Up until 2009, I really didn’t like women.
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I’d always thought of mainstream feminism as bra-burning and terrifying. Most of the females that I knew (especially those I knew during my days of gender dysphoria), were petty, anti-intellectual, and shared a singular mob mentality whose tendencies were more virulent than vibrant. I had nothing in common with the typical woman. For me, woman had become the enemy. Woman would often steal away my male friends during game nights. Woman would often crash our gaming parties and pout petulantly in the corner. Woman would destroy my relationships with my male friends because of jealousy.
Woman was, above anything else, dangerous.
Misogyny isn’t something a person is born with. We love our mothers. We love our sisters. We love our aunts and cousins and best friends at school. Misogyny is learned behaviour. Misogyny and anti-feminist attitudes amongst gamers and geeks are often developed because of an absence of a strong female role-model. In addition to no chicks in the gaming circles, guys find articles on the internet (that may or may not) tout the superiority of men in a genetic sense.
I didn’t learn to hate women from my father. If my dad hated women, he never would have taken any interest in my development. He would have ignored me. But he didn’t. He was (and still is) a veritable role model for me as a geek.
However, learn to hate women I did. My days were spent with teenage boys whose anti-feminist attitudes were more poisonous to my growth as a woman than I care to admit. Often as the only girl in the group, I spent my time mouthing off about how much I hated the fact that girls didn’t get us. They were often the ones throwing gum at us or writing snide remarks on our lockers in indelible ink. I figured that if my fellow geeks didn’t respect women, then there must be something wrong with mainstream chicks.
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In 2009, I met @gamingangel on Twitter. It was the beginning of a long road of recovery from years of learned misogyny. I’m the Gaming Angels poster child of the Recovering Woman Hater.
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We are on the cusp of something great, we women in games and women in geekdom. We find ourselves in an interesting position as we move forward with geek feminism. We have the opportunity to shout our existence from the rooftops. We have the ability to support our fellow woman geek and lift her up. We have the responsibility to curb learned misogyny before it starts, especially with young men.
Instead, we find ourselves exhibiting the same kind of relational aggression that helped contribute to my learned misogyny in the first place.
Female geeks are ten thousand times more likely to look at a woman who self-identifies as geeky in some way and say, “Oh, she’s not a real geek/she’s not a real gamer,” with the understood end of the sentence being, “…like I am.” We need to embrace our fellow females, regardless of perceived level of geekiness, and also to recognize that “coming out” as a geek woman is a tough process, especially when it comes to having to deal with learned misogyny and the males within geek culture.
How often have we heard that coming out of our mouths or flying from our fingers as we angrily type text messages, IMs, and forum posts? I can tell you that I still find myself discounting other female geeks just because they’re not as hardcore as I am about gaming or RPGs or CCGs or whatever the heck I’m playing at the time. In addition to slagging fellow female geeks, we have the tendency to go back to the same list of female celebrity geeks and discount their geekdom almost as easily as dudes have discounted us in the past. We often think of them as celebrities first, female second, and geek far, far down the line. Suddenly, we’re wallowing in, “They can’t be geeks because of XYZ Reason.”
Hasn’t that reasoning been applied to us at one point or another?
It’s time to gather our courage and stand next to one another – we female geeks – and support. The only thing derision is good for is dividing us and making it that much more difficult to identify with one another. We will be inadvertently alienating the young women who have been subject to learned misogyny within our geek culture by making it more difficult for them to break into “the club”.
“No, you are not a Real Geek. Go away, little girl.”
Enough is enough.
Stand together or not at all.
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We fall apart in our resolve, more often than not. Actually practicing what we preach, especially in this arena, is one of the most difficult things in the world. Think about it: the majority of human beings are taught to recognize that the male half of the species does things one way, the female half does things – likely completely different things – in other ways. Unless you have some extremely progressive parents, you probably grew up with one of these mindsets, even if you’ve worked to forget it in favor of complete equality between the genders in your life.
Unfortunately, this learned gender divide (which originated in the practices of prehistoric generations) manages to subsist, even in subcultures like Geek World. For some, Geek World and Girl World just can’t co-exist. We know the types – the game store manager who asks if you’re shopping for your boyfriend, the frat boys who won’t let you into their Halo tourney, even members of your own family.
When you’re confronted with this personal disconnect, it’s hard to recover. Many women do, but when some don’t, we’re left with self-defeating reminders of a truth that isn’t. Even in gaming subcultures, preconceived notions about women get pounded into our skulls. Women only play casual games. They don’t play online, they don’t play shooters, they don’t do the things that we can assume men do. In defiance, we subconsciously (or consciously) define the “male” way of doing things as right.
We’re left with “Real gamers play shooters, they don’t play casual titles and they definitely play online multiplayer” along with a whole host of misconceptions that we don’t really tend to think twice about.
We tend to discount our fellow females as a result. It has to stop, but knowing and understanding the “why” is the first step.
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We question the validity of our status as geeks. We question the validity of the other women in our geekdom, sizing them up as both competition and comrades. Our validity is questioned by the masses as we fight to maintain our Geek without losing our Female.
We Angels are standing up for Geek, both as women and as geeks. We encourage you to do the same.
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This article was co-written with Tiffany (@kweenie), Trina (@gamingangel), and Elizabeth (@cherithe). Tell us what you think in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
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