The Fake Geek Girl

[Psychosplodge]

Does such a thing even exist?
I've never heard the term and then in about last three days or so I've seen a couple of dozen posts on various social media feeds such as the following example.
[URL="http://thingssheloves.tumblr.com/post/35787514995/comicsalliance-geek-masculinity-and-the-myth-of"][/URL]

Geek Masculinity and the Myth of the Fake Geek Girl

By Rachel Edidin

I’ve been thinking about fake geek girls—or, more, the tenacity with which the geek community has latched on to the bugbear of the fake geek girl. Even in a community with a reputation as argumentative, the intensity and volume of the vitriol directed at the fake geek girl is unprecedented. It’s flat-out weird.

So, what makes the fake geek girl such a threatening spectre? What, exactly, does she threaten?

Seriously, have I been walking around with my eyes shut or is it just another fanboi elitism?

[Wildeybeast]

[URL="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2012/11/nerds-stop-hating-women-please"]This seems relevant here.[/URL]

[Psychosplodge]

That'll probably what's caused the upsurge in posts till I've noticed some.

But do they actually exist? Not geek girls I know they exist, but fake geek girls? *shrug*

[Kirsten]

I don't know what that is

[Wildeybeast]

And just found [URL="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2012/11/fake-nerd-girls-whores-and-sexism"]this[/URL] follow up article.

[Psychosplodge]

I don't know what that is

?

And just found [URL="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2012/11/fake-nerd-girls-whores-and-sexism"]this[/URL] follow up article.

I remember the Felicia Day booth babe incident, I suppose that could fall under this, but I never realised there was a perception of supposed fake geek girls existing.

[Wildeybeast]

Only in the head of hateful misogynists who see nerdom as their refuge from all the women in life who have rejected them because of their hateful misogyny. I knew the internet was filled with some pretty vile people (Warseer being a good example) but the stuff [URL="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/internet/2012/07/what-online-harassment-looks"]this[/URL] woman had to put up with genuinely shocked me. Check out the link to her blog to see more. I despair of the human race at times.

[Nabterayl]

I don't think you've been walking around with your eyes shut. And I agree with this quote from Wildey's article: "But I have never, actually, in the flesh, met a “fake” geek girl. Or guy."

I also agree with, and identify with, this quote:

Too many nerds have basically internalised the stereotype of themselves as ugly, friendless losers and decided that anyone who doesn't fit that stereotype – particularly women – is a "fake geek", taking advantage of the fact that being a geek is now "cool".

I'm 31, and didn't truly buy that women could like me until I was 23. This despite a whole-hearted faith in Jesus, incredibly loving and supportive parents, a (very pretty) younger sister who thought I walked on water, a lot of friends in middle high school, and the good opinion of pretty much everyone else at school who wasn't my friend. I think I had a lot more advantages than most people in the self-esteem department, and I was still convinced that women would not, could not, like me. I say women because that was my own primary experience, but I think my experience would have been much the same had I also believed that men would not, could not, like me.

So ... I venture to believe that I speak for a lot of nerds when I say that our geekhood, and/or nerdhood, was not just running to something we thought was full of excellence. It was also running away from a world that didn't like us - in my case, even though that world was largely of my own making. The love of beauty and excellence that is at the heart of geekdom was, for me, inextricably bound up with the belief in my own unlovability that fueled that love.

I think it is a genuine crisis of identity to have that challenged. I think a lot of geeks have the same experience I did, that our geekhood truly is experienced as inextricable from a bedrock belief in our own unlovability, as particularly exemplified by our bedrock belief that no woman will ever love us - and thus, by definition, no woman will ever appreciate, let alone enter into, let alone share, the geeky realms where we find so much beauty and excellence to be inspired by. So we have to decide: although we experience the two as inseparable, are they? Can they be separated? Can I discard this belief in my own unlovability without damaging my geeky ardor for beauty and excellence?

We love being geeks, maybe more than anything, and if we decide that being a geek means that no woman will ever appreciate, let alone enter into, let alone share, the sacred realms where we exercise our geekhood - well, what do we do when a woman appears whose presence, let alone behavior, seems to disprove that notion? At some point, anybody with a geek experience like mine has to face this crisis to grow up. Branding the interloper a "fake geek girl" is what happens when we face that crisis and fail, when the two strands of our geekhood stay bound together.

I can name six women - some geeks, some not - who were that woman for me. It took six friends just being women who loved me before I could untwine those two parts of my geekhood and bid the one farewell. Six friends who loved me, over a period of eight years, before I had my first girlfriend. I think I was incredibly fortunate as geeks go, and it was a long, hard process for me. My heart breaks for the people who believe in the "fake geek girl," because I think I know where in their hearts that chimera comes from - and I know how hard it is to let that part of your heart go.

[Build]

I think the closest to this subject that I've seen has to be when you have a "geek girl" posing with a something that looks vaguely like it might be related to chemistry, or possibly nicked from the local school science lab and then strike a semi raunchy pose (usually accompanied with obligatory duck face) and then caption underneath something along the lines of:

Me in teh lab doin experiments and stuf LOL!!!!1 =^__________^=

A part of me dies every time I see something like this because some stupid hipster has decided she's edgy or just plain gets and understands science in all its complexities because she watches the big bang theory. A similar sort of thing crops up else where like the gamer girl fad and even war gamer girl fad (though the later is very rare at best).

I also loath (and I cannot stress this enough) people who talk about being put off something because of a single bad experience.

If you like something enough to be interested in it, you will stick with it and deal with the problems that surround it. Want a better example take the gym girl as an example, she comes in, does 10 minutes of a very nonchalant run/jog/crab scuttle on the treadmill, before doing a million and one leg abductor/adductor reps with the lightest weight possible. She typically wears enough make up to rival the average party clown and then leaves having broken no sweat and moans about how some of the boys "look at her".

A proper gym girl (and I'm very happy to say my gym has one) comes in, knuckles down, gets on with what she's doing, does deadlifts, clean and jerks, presses etc and will shout and talk down any greasy little bicep boy that gets in her way or hogs the machines.

She wins, they leave her alone.

The same applies to gaming I have a friend in Cambridge, if she gets trouble from anyone in store, she makes them suffer for it and they quickly leave her alone, especially as the starers tend to be "more afraid of you than you are of them".

Maybe I'm just getting cranky in my old age, maybe it's the curry talking (it was good), maybe I shouldn't be on the internet on a friday night when I can't be arsed to do anything else or maybe people should moan less (oh the hypocrisy!) and do more.


Bleh!...I've got to go and get something to eat.

[lattd]

I have met some people who say they love big bang theory, cos of the geeks and then asked them about some of the geeky jokes made on it and they are like what? Thats pretty annoying.