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.
lowquacks – feckin’ oath! Preferencing One Notion??? What’s got into their alleged minds?
The irony is that my iffy feelings about them went the other way, not that they were going to be in bed with (yeah, I know, couldn’t resist) the Oxleymoron’s crew.
And the Qld ALP preferencing The Mad Katter … I mean, okay, it’s Queensland, but still …
I mean, I know the preference dealings process is arcane, but who in the civil-libertarian centre-left party with a SEX SEX SEX gimmick thought that people who couldn’t get them in might want their votes to go to the party only just subtle enough to be labelled as crypto-fascist?
Exactly!
You guys ever notice too how the dudes who rant about sexy women cosplayers being horrible attention seeking fakes are usually the same crop of dudes whom, if you bring up how ridiculously sexualized and/or objectified many female characters are, they will lose their shit. Suddenly then its all oh, sex sells, and its to be expected its the market and why? are you ugly feminists jealous of sexy comic/videogame ladies? Hurr hurr ithinkimsocleverlulznooneevercalledfeministsuglybefore
Once again their entitled, inconsistant and miserable personalities come out. As a woman, you just cant win with these types, be they MRAs or you garden variey misogynist. If these jerks are so damn offended by women cosplaying as over the top sexy lady characters that dominate every geek medium out there and who happen to be the most popular and iconic, then they should have no problem when feminists critique how women are portrayed in these mediums.
But that would be expecting consistancy, intelligence and human decency. And at the end of the day it doesnt matter who the fuck women cosplay as, Sexy or not, they can do so without being targeted by angry misogynist geekbros.
Oh and as a lady geek who was teased from elementary school until highschool (some of which was because of my interests) and has never once been popular, I hope these assholes step on legoes everyday for the rest of their lives. Thanks for erasing my existance.
@Quackers
You might find this amusing!
I heart this thread with so much passion that Captain Planet might recruit me, but there’s so much greatness that I won’t even start to quote. I started gaming before the Commodore 64 was even a thing. I grew up playing games And who are these abject idiots who complain about women playing games think they’re foolin’? Or who make odd-ass distinctions between casual and hardcore? Playing oldschool adventure games is much more a sign of being a real gamer (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean) than playing Halo Gears Of Modern Solid Honor Medals Warfare Space.
And yet again, we “girls” who have been playing video games for 30 years, who started out in the arcades before consoles even existed (the way we know them today, Atari and Colecovision existed), are invisible to these jerks.
I understand the irritation when your pasttime has been appropriated by popular culture. However, these assholes target their rage specifically at an entire gender, which is beyond messed up. Women and men are casual gamers in equal numbers. Only female casual gamers are treated with this kind of hatred.
I wish I could find this tumblr post I saw. This gamer girl finally said something after seeing one too many misogynist post on the gamer Facebook group she belonged to. She was immediately quizzed by the group leader to name the “top five games.” She listed things like Call of Duty (don’t remember the others) and was immediately sneered at for playing “girly casual games.” The goalpost shifting on that one has gone to incredible extremes.
>Girls have all the power in high school since what football team?
I thought the football-team phenomena wasn’t even about the kids themselves, but about how the town surrounding the campus being ways too caught up with their success and failures on the field? Without that validation and support they’re just another sports club.
I don’t understand dissing on cosplayers either.
My friend is very comfortable cosplaying as the sexy characters in the anime she likes. I chose to be more covered up. Which means I spend a LOT of time coming up with characters I can cosplay as instead of just picking my fav. character (because most of my fav characters have revealing outfits). This year I’m thinking I’ll go as Ice Queen from Adventure Time for the first day and TenTen from Naruto the second day. I’ve done Rosette Christopher from Chrono Crusade in the past. And my friend is doing Wonder Woman. Nothing wrong with any of these characters.
I’ve found a group of geeky folks to share my passion with. A majority of them are men. My friends husband and I are currently reading Kamisama Kiss together. Which I find to be unusual in the geek world. Most guys are very dismissive of Shoujo as a genre because its for “girls”.
I cut my gaming teeth on the spectrum 48k and have worked my way through every incarnation of the PlayStation. My computer is upgraded regularly to handle games…well, Civilisation. I have played Myst through the night, argued over chaos engine and toejam and earl with Mr Bigmomma until dawn. Kids kinda halted it…too tired…but I still love civ, and collaborate with Mr Bigmomma over Assassin’s Creed. I’ve been oblivious to this anti -gamer girl vitriol until I read this blog and followed some links.
Quackers.
They’ll complain even more that it’s supposed to be a he-man boysclub; no labia allowed. It’s a “stupid, sexy, Flanders” kinda thing.
“It’s a safe place to not have to exemplify masculine traits.”
FUCKING BULLSHIT.
If that was true I wouldn’t have gotten so much shit for being gay from the nerds I hung out with. I wouldn’t have been in a tabletop RPG where I was only allowed to join on the condition that I don’t “act gay”.
RARGH DINOSAUR RAGE
“Though the angry gamer dudes always claim that whatever games these women are playing somehow don’t count as real games.” Ah, yes, the “No True Scotsman” argument is a favorite among gamer geeks who like to degrade female gamers.
These guys like to point out that women only play “Mobile and Facebook games” which they claim are not real games. Besides the fact that it isn’t true, Mobile and Facebook games include Doom, Assasin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Duke Nukem, Madden NFL, Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, Wartunes and many more.
Try telling gamer geeks those are not “real games” and see how they react. 🙂
“It’s a safe place to not have to exemplify masculine traits.”. Well, yeah, it CAN be, but too much of the time it’s just an excuse to live out disturbing ideas and magnify those traits. I wanna play games with Weeboy, not idiots who can’t fuckin’ fathom that their solipsism might be wrong. Sorry, I’m getting angry way too early. And drunk.
There’s something really, mindbogglingly weird about differentiating to a large degree between casual and hardcore gamers.
Well, it’s all relative, innit? Not to insult anyone’s favourite titles, but frankly, high-level Tekken play (I myself am not remotely high-level) is so absurdly deep, precise and complex that all other games seem like mere bagatelles in comparison. I mean, if you want to be really hardcore about it, anyone who doesn’t know the individual frame durations for all of a game’s 5,000+ animations, as top Tekken players do, is a ‘casual’ gamer…
Since we’re talking about cos-players, there is an awesome woman I follow on facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/NicoleMarieJeanPage
I like her because she is a very talented costume maker, which is a whole extra layer of geekery. The geekery in crafting circles is HUGE. I don’t think these whiney dudes realise that you don’t even need to read comics or play video games to be a geek.
*applauds kiki and contemplates actually eating and getting some sleep… Then thinks screw that, it’s too late, and just laughs*
…I read a book that was so mindblowing I’m almost ready to claim the male brain just can’t understand the subtleties of written fiction.
Bonus: it was a science fiction novel.
Written by a woman.
MISAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDRY
… I feel so young (this is rare). I only began gaming in the 8bit era. I had a NES then a Sega MegaDrive then I slowly shifted to PC gaming, but not completely because I like JRPGs and those are mostly found on consoles (I currently own an NDS). I also play point and click adventure games and a metric ton of puzzles / hidden object games. I’m such a casual gamer. I mean I only got 3 endings in Devil Survivor. :] (I’m kind of a fan of the MegaTen series. ^^; But they are too time consuming (because frickin’ hard) for me currently.)
I still have a Caveman game from my childhood. Probably because it was kept at my grandfather’s house so was safe from my mum’s toy purges.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Rare-Vintage-Tomy-Micro-Computer-Game-CAVEMAN-/330933748190?nma=true&si=zL5Xk3J6Xqa6zTyvoWdaSMG2VN4%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
We had an Atari console with Pong and a couple of other games on it too, but it didn’t make it.
@Kim..caveman! My boyfriend in the 80s had that! I was so jealous, and consoled myself with donkey kong
I know there’s a sneering MRA trope that the feminist stand-point boils down to ‘CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALOOOOOONG’…
but seriously, things like this just make me think…it kind of would actually be pretty swell if we all could just…you know…get along. At least until we’ve had time to get to know each other.
Funny how these guys – the redditors in question, I mean, not geek guys as a whole – funny how they were excluded in high school for being different, and now that it’s behind them and they’re happily enjoying their nice tech careers and gaming conventions and stuff, they’re eager to to exclude other people for being different. Would have been sort of nice if they’d taken the approach ‘I remember how shitty it was being hassled and forced to qualify myself all the time when I was in school – if I see that shit happening to someone else in my ‘safe space’ I’ll make a special effort to be welcoming to that person’.
Also, I went on the reddit thread, and the second post down, which is a massive apologia for the necessity of harsher standards for ‘acceptance’ of female geeks because females could just be fake fakers, contains this gem:
‘Most (male geeks) have stories of cruelty and scorn from the hot girls in school, so if they see one at a convention, it’s often automatically assumed she’s there to cause trouble and ridicule people, and not because she could possibly be a geek.’
Just thought I’d share that little slice of batshit here, cause it made me laugh. Love the idea of hot, bitchy high-school-movie cheerleader types cladding themselves in geek attire and infiltrating gaming conventions to ’cause trouble’ just for fun. Have these people lost touch with reality?!
“Some geek girls have admitted how being a female nerd grants you so much attention from men (Rebecca Watson did precisely this in an issue of a skeptic newsletter). They admit the fact that female-geekery conveys a certain level of privilege.”
That’s right, ladies! Your privilege hinges on your ability to garner valuable male attention! Clearly this “privilege” helps you to… um… Actually, I can’t really think of anything that male attention is good for except perhaps having dudes fawn all over you at best, and at worst treat you like you’re a piece of meat.
Sorry guys, no matter how much you harp on about female privilege, you’re never going to come up with a definition more meaningful than “you see, they get attention from the ACTUALLY powerful people, and influence their decisions! Sometimes. Maybe.”
Impressively willful misunderstanding of all those blog posts about the harrassment women receive from men at conventions.