Ok, where to begin with this trainwreck.
Gaming was never yours. Never. It was not designed as a safe space for guys free of women and you have no exclusive rights to the medium in the same way that no gender have exclusive rights to film and television. If women said you were not allowed to read books because that is their safe thing you would think they were ridiculous, you do not own a medium.
Women are not required to want to hang out with you in real life in order to game, that is another bullshit standard you apply to them and not to men. If a guy is a jerk whom you wouldn’t want to hang out with in real life you don’t throw a tantrum.
Women are not a hivemind, we each have our own individual thoughts and feelings and judge you individually.
That being said, women don’t want to hang out with you, not because you’re socially inept, but because you are an entitled asshole who thinks that women owe you their time outside of games in order to be able to play games without hostility.
If men weren’t hostile towards women, who have just as much a right to game as them, and weren’t so hostile towards the concept of fair representation then there would be any changes to the “scene” required, because people would already have a fair and fun experience.
Games are not your sanctuary mate, they are a product medium and never once has it been yours. Get over yourself.
Okay but wait, let’s talk about geek culture as distinct from the product mediums, let’s talk about geek culture as a place where socially shunned geeks can be with like-minded people and be themselves. Because that really is a valuable thing, and it’s reasonable for geeks to feel a little threatened when their sanctuary is invaded by – wups, hang on, we skipped a bit.
Where the hell did anyone ever get the idea that all socially shunned geeks are male?
I mean, I know where you got the idea, Nony, you got it from thinking of The Women as a single homogenous entity that’s distinct from “people”. The Women reject you. The Women exclude you from social acceptance. The Women are the holders of the status and power you so desperately want – not that they actually have status and power, not the way individual people do, that would be ridiculous, but that by their acceptance or rejection they confer that status onto actual people, i.e., men. And of course The Women consistently deny that status to geeks, i.e., a specific subset of men.
The notion that any individual member of The Women could experience social rejection, especially for being a geek, is clearly laughable from this point of view. (Is there a singular word for a member of The Women? What would you even call that?) So there can’t, obviously, be any fellow-feeling between any given geek (i.e., male geek) and any given … Women-singleton? … yeah, okay, let’s go with that. They can’t possibly have anything to share in geek culture, such as an interest in gaming or science fiction, much less similar experiences of a childhood full of social ineptitude and being bullied and feeling unwanted and hated by the beautiful people. Obviously.
And anyway there’s no reason for a Women-singleton to need a safe space like geek culture! Why would they? They’ve got The Women to be part of, don’t they?
Where the hell did anyone ever get the idea that all socially shunned geeks are male?
SERIOUSLY THIS. “Women hate socially inept males.” Dear god. You think there are no socially inept women in the world? You think women never experience rejection?
And again with The Women. Lots of women have liked and loved lots of socially inept males. I married a self-described socially inept male.
This touches on a myth I see often and absolutely hate: the “women have all the dating power” trope. “Women can get a date/get laid any time they want, but men can’t!”
The trope has an inherent double-standard: what it’s really saying is “women can get laid any time they want if they don’t care who they’re fucking, but men can’t get the beautiful hot sexy woman.
ANYONE can get laid any time they want, if they don’t care who they’re fucking. Men can totally get laid any time they want. But that’s not how it works, for any gender. Everyone wants someone that fits their own standards of attractiveness, personality, etc. Whatever. That’s fine! You have the right to be choosy about who you give your time, attention, and body to!
But this trope assigns that right to men by unspoken default, and vilifies women for exercising it.
“The Women” is my new favorite thing
(And can I just say, one of the most amazing things to me is how a certain asshole subset of geeks just…pretends like there are no geeky men ever who have had successful relationships. Like. You listen to them and you’d think no geek man ever even had the option of sex ever.
Meanwhile almost all the geeky men *I* know are in long-term relationships, many with children, happily doing the geek-dad thing.
Anon’s mournful and put-upon tone is just … ridiculous. It’d be funny if it weren’t for the fact that he’s trying to justify attacking and harassing women out of spaces they were instrumental in creating.
Also:
– Geeky may have been uncool once. This is no longer true.
– You are a wealthy probably white Western male. The whole world is your safe space. Sod off, honey.
There’s an argument to be made that it’s actually much harder to be a ‘geek girl’, in whatever geekdom you’re into, because many geeky things are ‘boy things’, so if girls like them, they can experience even more victimisation for not fitting in. It can be very alienating to not like ‘girl things’, especially for teenagers and young women, and to also experience rejection from a community you actually want to be a part of is a real kicker. (Although I’m not a gamer, when I was a teen I often felt this in the indie community, because I wasn’t ‘indie enough’ [or maybe just cos I’m a weirdo bwc, you get me].) Women in geekdom isn’t like the cool kids in school coming into the computer room in order to laugh at you and take your stuff. It’s just people wanting to be part of a community around something they love!
suchasinistergame 