I’m back from a brief vacation in Migraineland, and thinking about the ways in which Men’s Rights Activists love to appropriate the language of feminism and other progressive movements, usually in ways that are face-palmingly ass-backwards.
Take this recent discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit of the dire threat of “fake gamer girls” invading the “male space” of gaming. The generically named guywithaccount sets up the discussion with this post:
![I want to talk about "fake geek girls" (self.MensRights) submitted 9 days ago by guywithaccount For those of you who don't know about this, there's a bit of a controversy in what I'll call the geek community. Apparently, when women attend geek conventions (that is, those celebrating e.g. video games, comic books, sci-fi and fantasy), some men accuse them of being "fake geeks" or demanding that they prove their "geek cred" by correctly answering trivia questions made up on the spot. Here's one article (of many) that talks about it: [1] http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2013/08/08/the-fake-geek-girl-nonsense/ My concern for this issue is that, like anything else that involves gender, feminists and feminist sympathizers are attempting to dominate the discussion and frame the whole thing from a feminist and gynocentric perspective. The prevailing analysis might be summed up as "geek culture is deeply misogynistic, and the people complaining about fake geeks are just sad little losers who hate women." IMO, the geek subculture has provided a somewhat-safe space for many men who have been snubbed by the rest of society, where they are not expected to prove their value to each other by carving notches in a bedpost or exemplifying traditional masculine traits. The increase in mainstream appeal and female participation over the past decade or so threatens the safety and exclusivity of this space, and the backlash from male geeks is a somewhat-predictable response to the invasion of their space. Of course, there are few spaces just for men, and when someone tries to create or preserve one, they're accused of misogyny. I suspect that some of you don't give a crap about any of this and see the whole thing as petty, but realize that it's not happening in a vacuum. I believe it's merely a symptom of the fact that men have almost no voice in gender discussions and their needs are routinely denied or ignored.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fakegeek.png?resize=573%2C541&ssl=1)
Now, there is a teensy bit of gold in this pile of bullshit: the notion of a “safe space,” where oppressed people can come forward and discuss their issues without fear of being talked over or shut down by those outside their group — who have more power in the world and who may not have their best interests at heart (or who may just be Blabby McBlabbypants types).
But there are a couple of giant problems with this notion when it comes to gamer dudes declaring gaming a “safe space” for men. The first is that, despite lingering resentments over being “snubbed” in high school or wherever — evident in the OP and in comments throughout the discussion — these guys are not actually an oppressed people by any measure that really matters.
Indeed, many of them — as tech dudes in a male-dominated tech world — are in fact in fairly privileged positions. For them to claim they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from the evils of “fake gamer girls” is a bit like Klan members claiming they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from blacks, Jews and Catholics. (Which is more or less what Klan members have argued over the years, albeit in less PC language.) No, I’m not claiming that all MRAs are the equivalent of hood-wearing Klan members. Only some of them are.
The second problem with the “game world as safe space for men” aregument is that YOU CAN’T JUST DECLARE BIG CHUNKS OF THE WORLD TO BELONG TO MEN. Yes, men dominate the gaming world in sheer numbers, both as game-makers and game-players. (While women make up nearly half of all game players — 47% — men tend to dominate the “serious” games that many geek dudes claim are the only ones that really count.) But gaming doesn’t “belong” to men any more than, say, novel-reading “belongs” to women — even though surveys suggest that women make up a staggering 80% of the fiction market in much of the English-speaking world.
Yep, that’s right: Women dominate “noveling” much more dramatically than men dominate gaming. Yet you don’t find women denouncing “fake noveler boys” or declaring that the male brain isn’t wired to understand the subtleties of written fiction.
No, in fact men are actively welcomed into book clubs. And my best friend, a woman, has spent much of the 18 or so years or our friendship trying to get me to read this novel or that novel, though over the years she’s only succeeded in getting me to read maybe one or two of her suggestions, which were pretty good, I have to admit. (I do plan to read some of the others, really.)
If you’re a socially awkward guy and want a safe space to discuss that, find a therapist, find a support group. Don’t pick on women gamers and pretend this is somehow your right because you’re oppressed as a socially awkward guy.
Anyway, here are some other dumb comments from the Reddit thread. YetAnotherCommenter warns feminists that they may lose some powerful allies if they continue acting so feministy.
Speaking of nerds who can’t get laid — which we weren’t but which these guys keep bringing up (and identifying themselves as) again and again — guia7ri seems to harbor some lingering resentments from high school, and who better to take that out on than attractive geeky women?
Hey MRAs, if you wonder why feminists sometimes describe MRAs as bitter men who hate women because they can’t get laid, it’s because MRAs like gui7ri so often EXPLICITLY DECLARE THEMSELVES BITTER MEN WHO HATE WOMEN BECAUSE THEY CAN’T GET LAID.
Meanwhile Byuku blames it all on evil feminists pretending to be geeks in order to make trouble. Because that’s what feminists do.
That’s how they get you!
EDIT: Added a sentence to temper and clarify my assertion that men “dominate” gaming.
I’m quite aware of field experiments and that they aren’t exactly the same thing as lab experiments. That does nothing to dispute that science is no longer interested in truth.
If by capital “T” you mean metaphysical truth then, no, it does not.
Eh, I think it’s just a case of bloviating bores tending to troll as a hobby.
Science is concerned with describing the natural world and making predictions based on those observations.
How is this problematic for you, again?
We may need to write an Asher-to-English dictionary. Pretty sure no one would have guessed that “lab experiw2qemments” meant “anything that isn’t philosophy,” particularly from the guy who uses language so precisely that he says “downfall of civilization” is totally different than “collapse of society.”
(Sorry, Ralphie decided to add something.)
Not caught up yet but…
“You don’t understand the way the world works. My three year old thinks he has a “right” to ice cream before dinner. I assure you, he does not. While I am no fan of Jeremy Bentham he nailed it when he called rights “nonsense on stilts”.
No one *deserves* anything. That’s just not the way the world works.”
Ok then, I hereby revoke your right to safety from government sponsored torture. Oh, right, I’m not caught up because I was discussing, among other things, how torture is never ever justified and thus we all have a right to be free from it. Hm, clean water, I can revoke that? No wait…that was also part of that convo, somewhere around me noting what MSF does…
Well, I could keep going, but seeing how I have morals, I wouldn’t revoke any of your rights even if you don’t see them as rights. The rest of us are entitled to the right to things like clean water, medical care, freedom from torture, etc.
That you don’t think these are universal deserved, nor even deserved by anyone, is quite fucking telling.
LBT — born of trauma to protect the body and core person, of course (which I think is bullshit, sometimes, ok, but always? No)
There’s a certain amount of irony to someone claiming scientific knowledge simultaneous with arguing that men and women are so different their roles must be complementary. I mean, that amount of ignorance that in sufficiently large groups, variations within the groups will be broader than variations between them is just impressive.
And… trying to claim science is interested in “the truth.” Science is interested in things which can be seen by many people and replicated by many people using the same basic characteristics.
Something which is hampered by people claiming quasi-experimental data (data between non-randomly assigned groups) is the same as experimental data… All of the recent research on perception really gives a lot of insight into the whole mess.
Asher’s funny, but I wish he didn’t have such a cool name. 8( He doesn’t deserve it.
How is Ralphie, katz? ::sends virtual pats::
I’d much rather read what he has to say than boring wall o’ text troll who’s sooooo wounded about MRA/geek misogynists being mocked.
Those worthless scientists. All they did was discover a living teddy bear when they could have been making themselves useful sitting in their basements with a bong and quoting Nietsche.
He’s fine. He is not the sick kitty, he’s my fat roly-poly kitten.
That you don’t think these are universal deserved, nor even deserved by anyone,
Everything that exists comes from somewhere. What caused these “rights”?
They prevent the collapse of society.
I believe that kittens prevent the collapse of society, because they are the gatekeepers of happiness. But wait! If that’s true, puppies must also be the gatekeepers of something. What is that thing?
Dunno, but soda cans are the gatekeepers of puppies.
I entirely do not have the patience tonight to walk someone step by step through the evolution of morality, ethics, both, either, neither, any variation thereupon. So, in a nutshell, you familiar with this thing called “empathy”?
Argenti: He can’t even figure out the difference between a hypothesis and a conjecture. There’s no point in trying to explain anything to him. (But feel free to try if you like.)
Maybe you do understand it more than me, and I’m okay with that, but the fact that you think it necessarily draws arbitrary lines is telling and says a lot about your understanding of modern psychology, however thorough it is.
katz – oh! Got my names confused. Well, pats for Writer Ralphie and extra pats for sick kitty.
Argenti – re: empathy, chances are he isn’t.
::snort:: I can only say I’m glad the psychologists (average psychologists of today, maybe) I’ve dealt with were human beings with a) decency b) empathy and c) more concern to help people than to bloviate about Teh Big Picture.
kitteh — fair enough
Katz — idk, maybe. My day has included reading my LJ from a decade ago which is fucked up six ways to Sunday, like, I am the pinnacle of sanity compared to what I was like then (LBT, the parts I told you are the tip of it, I figured you didn’t need to read my barely coherent and highly triggering thoughts on eating, or not doing so); aforementioned ethics discussion with pecunium, though it was actually about the Iraq war, not ethics in general; a very VERY extended analogy relating to trauma responses of degrees and causes (and another discussion about an entirely different sort of response); STD test swaps, penis v cervix, and the importance of condoms; plants, ivy and forsythia specifically; cuttlefish, the sounds of sea creatures…
Yeah, it’s been a very random day. And all of the above was either LBT or pecunium, so a random day with interesting people. And I just haven’t got it in me to explain anything as basic as “you don’t torture because you wouldn’t want to be tortured which is why we put rules into place banning torture”…I prefer to discuss todture with people viscerally opposed to it (*waves* hi pecunium, come be busy over here?)
Puppies are the gatekeepers of comfy spaces!
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9b/55/53/9b55533a9563e39af7ff8fe522482391.jpg
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I only came here to say
>>>If nerd-dom is such a defining identity then a woman isn’t probably a nerd if her sexual activities don’t involve cavorting with nerd men.<<<
You know that not all women are attracted to and have sex with men… right? So what, lesbians can't be nerds in general, or do they gain nerd cred upon sleeping with a woman who has previously slept with a male nerd? I guess as an asexual woman I just need to shred my nerd card right now since clearly my years spent playing video games and collecting trading cards are meaningless since I've never had sex!
*eyeroll*
Rather glad to have missed Asher. Reading those endless posts it is clear that he loves nothing better than to hear his own voice and that he is one of those “debaters”. you know the ones, where debate is not to gain knowledge or understanding but is a sport or game, like fencing or chess. Everything is theoretical, nothing is lived or felt or truly believed.
What a sad passionless way to be.
PS have I mentioned I have kittens? Real furry purry black rescue kittens?
Observation: if anyone uses the phrase ‘the way the world works’ in an internet post, there’s about a 90% chance that they’re an evo-psych/Randian asshole.
Also, I can see why Asher is so hung up on ‘conjecture’ as the starting point of science. Much easier than actually doing research, isn’t it?
Ah yes, science was so much better about a thousand years ago, before Ibn al-Haytham, aka Alhazen, insisted that hypotheses could only be considered truth if backed by quantifiable evidence.
And then that bastard Bacon really sounded the death knell for TEH SCEINCE in the 1200s, with his writings advocating that natural philosophy should be practiced within an empirical framework.
Curse the framework of the scientific method first established a millenia ago. Before that, men could just rock up and declare that their pet ideas were true because they wanted them to be, and they could declare any random occurrence viewed through their biased viewpoint to be “science.” Now those meddling modern Muslim polymaths and Franciscan friars with all those inconvenient definitions of “truth” and “evidence” and “experiments” have really spoiled everything.