Example: the following formspring exchange between @TheNerdyBird and someone who chose to remain anonymous because he pretty much assumed he'd be villified by the geek girl community.
Done reading?
Here's a guy who's assuming that just because a geek girl has the word "boobs" in her blog title, she's exploiting herself. Forget that she's being ironic or that it might be her way of addressing the idea that she can't be a girl and read comics.
Nope. She's doing just what Hooters girls do. She's using her boobs to sell the geek girl brand.
Yeah, I'll admit, I got all "rawr". I wanted to go off on a rant about how I'm a geek girl and I want to be taken seriously. But then I would have been affirming the whole reason he chose to remain anonymous, right?
But what really bothered me last night was the fact that this argument seems to come up again and again. Geek guy gets mad because geek girl gets attention. She must be using sex.
So, I grabbed one of my fave geek guys and asked him about it. Because I wanted to understand his perspective on why geek guys might have a kneejerk reaction to a geek girl's request (sometimes demand) for respect in the geek world.
Just a few things he said:
- Male geeks have to work harder to be noticed than female geeks.
- If he had two Twitter accounts (one male, one female) and tweeted the same way on both, he'd gain more followers on the female stream than the male.
- If a geek had a penis instead of boobs, would she be as 'popular', or would she be just another pithy comic book geek in the crowd?
They're all good thoughts and questions.
I even added that, when it comes to Twitter I have may have more followers because I have a lot of girls who follow. Geek boys and geek girls both like geek girls. I don't know if geek guys get that sort of crossover.
Which led me to wonder if part of this is about guys being "guys". If that makes sense?
Problem is, I'm not a guy. I have no understanding of the male side of this situation, which means all I have are assumptions -- and you know what they say about assumptions...
Bottom line, it bugs me. And so I had an idea -- maybe even a challenge-- for the guys and gals out there who have geek followings on Twitter and in the Blogospehere.
What if we did some kind of round table discussion/summit/whathaveyou at SDCC? Get an equal number of guys and gals together and have the conversation? Like really have the conversation? Blog it, report about it. Make it a cross over conversation.
Maybe we can find a way to come to some sort of consensus. Maybe not.
Either way, it'd be pretty dang interesting.
Thoughts?
