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 a different sort of gamer, in that I almost never touch video games and prefer tabletop RPGs. But, we have a lot of the same assholes as the video game culture.
My current gaming group is majority women, including one of the GMs, and each of them, at some time or another, has expressed relief at finally finding a group where they can just show up and have fun and not have to prove themselves to the boys.
I’m grateful for this arrangement, because I don’t have to game anymore with the tiresome misogynist nitwits that I encounter every time I try to recruit new group members. I’m really hoping we can hold the current group together for a long time, just so I don’t have to go wading back into the cesspool of angry gamer dudes who only want to recruit women so they can try to mold them into their Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
I decided a few years back any expression of misogyny would be a deal-breaker for me; as a GM, I wouldn’t recruit such a person, and as a player, I’d refuse to join a group with such a guy in it. Sadly, this makes the pool of people I can game with rather small.
I have a T-shirt that says NERD in giant block letters. It’s amazing the number of strange men–it’s always men–who stop me on the street to ask me if I’m really a nerd and/or demand that I prove it. (The only other item of clothing that attracts this much attention is my Star Wars T-shirt from Skywalker Ranch, which, bizarrely, gets catcalls.) It always strikes me as weird because even without the shirt I’m very nerdy-looking. I’m not some conventionally attractive babe who’s all made up and lookin’ hot except for a NERD shirt; I’m a nerd. Glasses, no makeup, baggy clothes, the whole nine yards.
It happened the other day. I stopped to pet a guy’s dog and he started challenging me to prove I was a real nerd. I finally said, “I’m on my way to my job at a comic-book company. I don’t need to prove my nerd credentials.”
@Shaenon
I hate that. I don’t like having to prove myself to guys. I like some comics, I play some games and I enjoy cosplay. I don’t need to know EVERYTHING about something I enjoy in order to enjoy it.
Shaenon you’re getting stopped and nerd-frisked due to gender profiling by the geekstapo
Case in point: the OP
If having a geek card or being a fake geek were a thing, then a person should get an automatic suspension for trying to card Shaenon.
That is all.
I’m sorry, I know I posted this unrelated r/mr thing here last night, but one of the comments was just so classic MR that I wanted to dump it here too. A dude saw a poster about workplace violence against women, which is the primary cause of workplace deaths for women in the US, at his workplace. He describes his workplace as 95% women. So, at this 95% female workplace, the union decides to put up one poster that focuses on the #1 killer of women in the workplace.
Nope, not allowed! Even at a 95% female workplace, all safety notices must be about men. Anything else is total misandry! In fact, merely making a poster about violence against women in the workplace deserves to be punished most harshly:
18 hours later, that comment stands at 15 upvotes. I give you the MRM, the greatest human rights movement of the 21st century.
MRAs hate posters unless it’s one of their poorly conceived gems.
I swing both ways.
Mine is also a group where women are not challenged to “prove themselves” or anything, but just accepted.
Beloved played one of the more effective fighters I’ve ever seen … wow, almost 15 years ago, in an AD&D game I ran. And one of the other women played a similarly devastating fighter in a 3E game a bit later.
Later, Beloved played a paladin who preferred two-handed swords. I meant to get her a holy avenger, but it just didn’t happen cos that shit’s 120,000 gp.
In the last game we played, we already had a fighter, and I had a cleric because we joined a game where the only healer was a bard, so Beloved played a sorcerer and had a fine time doing it. Not her fault she kept plastering the assassin — he kept hiding in shadows and creeping up on her target.
So, anyway, the women in our group largely have proven themselves..
The two people I do co-op Monster Hunter with are both women. I’d love to see these chuckleheads argue that that’s a ‘casual’ game.
hey, it’s not like it’s Tekken or anything.
RE: Andrew Johnston
@LBT: Honestly, playing old-school adventure games seems hardcore as fuck to me.
We’re just gluttons for punishment. We watch terrible movies too. (Though my friend is even zanier; he SPECIFICALLY enjoys playing terribly designed, awful games. I concede to his masochism.)
My issues have always been with the thoughtless consumerism and the obsession with in-jokes/memes to the exclusion of original ideas,
OMFG YES. Part of why I’ve fallen out of the culture is I can’t fucking AFFORD IT. Buying a comic book is something that requires a fair amount of thought, on my budget; there is exactly ONE series that I trust to buy without reading it first, so don’t even get me STARTED on games or tabletop! And you always need to have the newest gizmo, the newest book, the newest EVERYTHING. Read ALL the books, see ALL the movies, buy ALL the merchandise. It seems to be less about enjoyment and more about showing off all your crap.
RE: MaudeLL
Roberta Williams will always hold a special place in my heart. Because of her, we never, EVER as small children got the idea that games were for boys.
RE: SredniVashtar
is anyone else not too fond of the idea of even legit ‘safe spaces’ for actually, in-real-life oppressed groups?
*raises hand* I’m not. In my experience, they’re only ‘safe’ for a very narrow segment of people, and everyone else gets the exact same shit as everywhere. It’s been a while, but I got thrown out of an LGBT ‘safe space’ chat for being multi, so I am incredibly cynical. My reaction to, “we have a safe space,” is, “Oh, you mean safe FOR YOU.”
So far, my best luck in actually being treated decently is here, among carefully picked friends, and, oddly, anarchist volunteer circles. There are plenty of anarchist assholes in the world, but the ones I encountered took not being an asshole very seriously.
My scene is competitive collectible cards and/or minis games, mostly. This means I’m pretty casual about video games, while being really hardcore about some tabletop games. Right now I’m geeking out on Android Netrunner and Solforge, with Star Wars: LCG a distant third (but I’m still listening to weekly podcasts about it… pretty sure that’s being hardcore lol). I literally don’t have the time to play over half the “Must Play” videogames in a given year. Somehow my geek creds remain unchallenged (as long as I remain in the bi man closet).
This scene is weird. Travelling to meet the tiny handful of hardcores at every tournament means you make some friends, but the heavy male presence tends to morph this into Bro territory. It’s a lot less problematic now because a lot of really respected women (cis and trans*) are involved at high levels in games like Magic… though there’s plenty of backlash in the semi-pro community, the pros themselves are (with exceptions) decent. In a way it’s because it’s a very meritocratic culture. It does mean though that often, the casual women players don’t get the same recognition. It’s fine if you’re winning championships and you’re a woman, but if you suck it just means all women suck, you know?+
Also I’ve remained closeted mostly in that sector because I’m not comfortable due to the prevalence of road trips and sharing tiny hotel rooms with many early/mid 20s men, which tends to result in a lot of performative ultra-heterosexuality/ultra-masculinity to defuse what I gather is potentially “threatening” social situations where cis hetero male status is constantly being challenged. Seeing your friends in underwear is a common occurence and I’m guessing it’s threatening to certain people’s heterosexual identity. I’ve tried breaking the wall between my family/activist persona and my gamer persona over the years, but I must say that I’m not sure how many people would invite me to crash over with them if my orientation was not a thinly veiled secret (in fact, many of them might know, but be fine with it as long as I don’t “flaunt” it, whatever that means).
By the way, anyone able to recommend a nice, laid-back GuildWars2 guild?
I rarely play, but it’s looking like I’m going to have to bail out of my existing guild due to another SJ failure/blowup/blowout.
Speaking of myst… Are there any other games out there like it for the pc? I love the myst series and I’m probably on my tenth pass through the game. I’d like another game to play that’s similar.
RE: pillowinhell
Zork: Nemesis. It was made really soon after Myst, has very similar gameplay and visuals, but it’s less aggravating than I remember Myst being. (Though head’s up, I’m not even halfway through the game, so for all I know it could get a lot worse.) So far I’m enjoying, so give it a shot, if you can find it!
Was it this one?
YES. YES I HAVE.
I’ve actually met so many of them that when I went off to college I quickly gave up trying to replace my old geek group. There’s a pokemon club nearby that I’ve been putting off checking out for the past three years because I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed again.
I really miss back when I was surrounded by geeks because the vast majority of geeky people I’ve met have been amazing and funny and nice, but about 1 in 10 guys (I once actually did the math for this, and that’s the number I got) are either really territorial or sexually aggressive or both.
Sometimes it hits me how weird and wrong it is that I actively avoid people interested in the same things as me.
RE: augochlorella
are either really territorial or sexually aggressive or both.
Huh. Funny. That’s pretty much the same reaction I got from men when they first found out about my existence. It was all like, “YOU CAN NOT BE A MAN YOU HAVE TITS HURRRRR,” all the while frantically trying to outbutch me. It got old fast.
I don’t think they count anything as “real gaming” unless it’s viciously competitive. You don’t get e-peen playing co-op.
Ah, but again, co-op games only don’t count if it’s a girl playing them. Anyway everyone was friggin’ obsessed with Team Fortress 2: Mann vs. Machine.
My podcast roster features a Basic D&D podcast (Save Or Die), a 2E podcast (Thaco’s Hammer), a 2E actual play (Hammers of the Duchy) and, until recently, a Labyrinth Lord actual play (The Delvers).
The Delvers stopped updating because of a family emergency. I hope they get more eps out someday, but family’s way more important.
I love how they imply that it’s only women that look down and berate gamers, comic book fans, and other circles of geekdom, when it’s predominately insecure, hyper-masculine, fantasy-football playing men who are doing the berating.
It’s kind of funny (albiet a bit sad, in a Godfather Part II sort of way) to see all these male nerds and gamers I knew in high school becoming the thing they hated after they graduated. Douchey, insecure, obnoxious hairy dudes who formed their own circles of self-proclaimed superstars and weekend Übermenschs… kinda like the letter shirt wearing athletes did in their high schools, eh?
(Disclaimer: Not implying that all jocks are bad folks, or all men in geek culture are a bunch of stooges)
the safe spaces women feel entitled to – their own websites, their blogs, community rooms they might rent for the evening for gatherings, etc.
the safe spaces men feel entitled to – entire fucking entertainment industries.
If having a geek card or being a fake geek were a thing, then a person should get an automatic suspension for trying to card Shaenon.
I know, right? I’m queen of the geeks.
At Comic-Con this year, the nerd shirt got positive comments like “Nice shirt!” and “Go nerds!” Everywhere else, it’s been this weirdly aggressive, defensive reaction: “Are you really?” “How are you a nerd, huh?” “Prove it.” Usually delivered out of the blue by a complete stranger, so I end up staring in confusion for a minute before realizing they’re talking about my T-shirt.