Nerds and Feminism: Feminists Behaving Badly

We are two weeks into the new year, and feminists have begun the year in true form by going after the most oppressive of all men: nerds.

Granted, feminists engaged in a great deal of nerd-bashing last summer with the fallout from GamerGate. The current round, however, has a different cause.

Scott Aaronson, a scientist and blogger, wrote a comment describing his fear of approaching women as a young man:

I spent my formative years—basically, from the age of 12 until my mid-20s—feeling not “entitled,” not “privileged,” but terrified. I was terrified that one of my female classmates would somehow find out that I sexually desired her, and that the instant she did, I would be scorned, laughed at, called a creep and a weirdo, maybe even expelled from school or sent to prison. And furthermore, that the people who did these things to me would somehow be morally right to do them—even if I couldn’t understand how.

Aaronson’s fear came from feminism, specifically the feminist notion that all interactions between men and women contain a power differential that men use to exploit women. Aaronson tried to conform to feminist demands, yet it only made the situation worse, to the point that he contemplated suicide.

One would think such revelations would prompt sympathy, but one would be wrong. What followed was a digital pile-on by feminists on most of the prominent feminist and leftist blogs. All made the same argument: Aaronson is an entitled, privileged idiot. He responded to those comments, noting that feminists were only showing why his fear was justified. As he noted:

I took the most dramatic, almost self-immolating step I could to get people to see me as I was, rather than according to some preexisting mental template of a “privileged, entitled, elite male scientist.”  And many responded by pressing down the template all the more firmly, twisting my words until they fit, and then congratulating each other for their bravery in doing so.

Here, of course, these twitterers (and redditors and facebookers) inadvertently helped make my argument for me.  Does anyone still not understand the sort of paralyzing fear that I endured as a teenager, that millions of other nerds endure, and that I tried to explain in the comment—the fear that civilized people will condemn you as soon as they find out who you really are (even if the truth seems far from uncommonly bad), that your only escape is to hide or lie?

Yet even this response prompted nothing but criticism from feminists, and the pile-on continues. For example, Harris O’Malley wrote two articles about Aaronson, because apparently one malicious punch to the gut was not good enough. O’Malley starts his second blow in earnest:

This idea – that nerds and geeks are unfairly maligned, that we’re the low-man on the social totem pole and we’re misunderstood, slandered and persecuted(!) – is a common one. We’re the underdog! We’ve been bullied, picked-on and insulted, how can we have privilege?!

This is a common feminist retort. The intent is obvious: as a man, nothing bad can ever truly happen to you. Your life is easy. O’Malley demonstrates this argument by making the bulk of his vitriolic rant against nerds about how horrible women have it. Bad things happen to women, and those things never to men (except when they do), ergo… vis a vis… concordantly… men are privileged.

O’Malley attempts to weasel out of this:

One of the most common responses men have to discussions about privilege – especially when being asked to acknowledge their privilege – is to deny it exists. “My life hasn’t been easy,” they may say. “Look at all the ways my life hasn’t been fair! Look at all the ways I’ve been screwed over!” And let’s be fair: they’re not wrong. Yes, men, even straight, white men, get dealt shitty hands in life. They may be poor. They may be sick or handicapped. Their entire life may well be one long series of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. The gods themselves may very well seem to have singled them out to be the eternal buttmonkey, doomed to suffer for other the amusement of the uncaring cosmos.

I feel a “but” coming on:

But here’s where privilege kicks in: as bad as things may be, how much worse would they be if he were gay? If he were trans? If he he were an ethnic minority?

If he was a woman?

Because, as we all know, no one has it as bad as women. It is much better to be a gay man, transgender, or an ethnic minority than female. The least that will happen to the former three groups is that people will sympathetically attempt to:

In contrast, women will be “harassed, stalked, threatened, chased from their homes and even SWATted over opinions about video games,” which never happens to men.

All this victim-shaming does is remind nerds that what happened to them really was not that bad. It could be “worse,” as if possessing a X-chromosome, dark skin, or a sexual preference for members of the same sex makes bullying, discrimination, and hatred hurt more.

O’Malley also attempted the “I’m one of you” ploy:

Don’t get me wrong: I’m beyond sympathetic to my geeky brethren. I’ve written before about growing up with the same fears, self-limiting beliefs and identity problems that come with being a pasty, awkward ball of anxieties.

Again, I feel a “but” coming on:

But the problem is that we’re not the underdog; we just keep telling ourselves that we are.

For the record, “but” is a term of negation. One uses it to show that the preceding clause is not entirely true. So what O’Malley actually states is that he is not that sympathetic to geeks. In truth, he thinks the problems they face are all in their heads:

The stories we tell ourselves shape how we see the world, and the idea that nerds and geeks are weak, powerless and socially undesirable ends up blinding us not only to our true position in the world, but the effects of our own behavior. When you tell yourself that you’re the hero for long enough, you tend to not see when you’re acting like the villain.

Batman, do you have something you would like to share?
Not only did O’Malley misquote the line (the correct line is, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.), but he followed it up with this:

Now let’s be clear: I’m not calling geeks the bad guy.

For the love of…
O’Malley stated, “When you tell yourself that you’re the hero for long enough, you tend to not see when you’re acting like the villain.” I will set aside the obvious irony of that statement coming from someone who spent two long-winded articles bashing nerds. The quoted statement implies that if you are a nerd who considers himself a good guy, then you are actually a villain.

Yet I feel another “but” coming on:

But by mythologizing the nerd as downtrodden and powerless, we end up not seeing how we treat others badly… acting, ironically enough, in much the same way that the jocks and bullies act towards us.

You know, I do not think this works well with my interruptions, so I will list the whole quote in sequence:

The stories we tell ourselves shape how we see the world, and the idea that nerds and geeks are weak, powerless and socially undesirable ends up blinding us not only to our true position in the world, but the effects of our own behavior. When you tell yourself that you’re the hero for long enough, you tend to not see when you’re acting like the villain.

Now let’s be clear: I’m not calling geeks the bad guy. But by mythologizing the nerd as downtrodden and powerless, we end up not seeing how we treat others badly… acting, ironically enough, in much the same way that the jocks and bullies act towards us.

I am most impressed. That is a double negation. O’Malley accuses nerds of making up their negative experiences and claims they are villains, then claims they are not villains, and then immediately reclaims they are. It is rare to see that kind of quality double speak out of politics. Again, I am most impressed

O’Malley is not done. He not only wanta nerds to know that nothing bad really happens to them and that other groups (but really only women) have it worse, but that nerds are now the popular ones:

Frankly, the nerds have won. Nerd culture is culture, period. Of the top 50 highest-grossing movies of all time only one of them – Titanic – isn’t a cartoon or geek property. Guardians of the Galaxy was the highest grossing movie of the year. The Avengers: Age of Ultron  and Star Wars: The Force Awakens are 2015’s most anticipated blockbusters. TV Guide’s list of the most popular shows in America include Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, The Originals, Sleepy Hollow, Reign and Arrow. Every Barnes and Noble is stuffed to the gills with Doctor Who toys, calendars and plushies. Video games have gone from being the province of “basement dwelling man-children” to something everyone does – the jocks are playing as much Call of Duty, Destiny and NFL 2015 as the geeks and everybody and their goddamn dogs are playing Angry Birds, Bejewelled and Candy Crush Saga. Our entire lives – from work to friendships to romance – take place online now. Joss Whedon is in charge of one of the most ambitious and profitable movie franchises of all time; Elon Musk is positioning himself as a real life Tony Stark; Bill Gates dominated our computers; Steve Jobs redefined how we consume music, television and put the Internet in all of our pockets; Bill Nye the Science Guy is on Dancing With the Stars; Neil deGrasse Tyson is a goddamn rock star, and Mark Zuckerberg knows when you masturbate  controls your social life.

You mean like how everyone listens to hip hop and R&B, loves black athletes, adopted the black communities fashion style and slang, enjoys their food, copies their hairstyles and physical mannerism, and elected a mixed race president twice? Surely if all those things happened there is no way black people could still face racism, right? It must be over because look at how much people accept them and their culture, right?

It is as if O’Malley has no concept of popular culture and fads. That these nerdy things hit pop culture does not mean everyone accepts them. It means they are in for the moment. The kid wearing the lens-less nerd glasses is chic. The kid wearing the nerd glasses to actually correct his vision will be mocked. Yes, you can wear your Avengers T-shirt, but if you talk about the comic, people will hate you. You can see Lord of the Rings dozens of times, but if you quote Elvish, people will think you suck. You can like Neil deGrasse Tyson, but if you have a nerdgasm about physics like Tyson occasionally does, people will call you gay.

There is a limit to what is acceptable, and the limit is being a genuine fan. If you like nerdy things because you find them genuinely interesting, you are, have been, and will always be considered a loser. Want proof? Read O’Malley’s articles.

He ends with this:

Whenever I write on anything touching on feminist issues or critiquing geek culture, I get people demanding to know why I’m attacking men and/or nerds. And the reason is simple: I love nerds. I love geek culture. I want to see it grow, I want to see it thrive and I want to watch it become the amazing force of creativity and culture and community that I know it can be. And it’s because I love it that I tend to be so damn hard on it.  We can be so much better than we are if we’re only willing to recognize and address our own shitty beliefs and behaviors.

I will drop the sarcasm for a moment to say I find it incredibly counterproductive to tell a someone who has been repeatedly bullied that it is all in his head and that he is not really a victim. The antipathy is understandable given the ideology driving this argument, yet I cannot fathom anyone could be so blind as to not realize how harmful and hateful such statements are. Likewise, I fail to see the value of shaming bullied nerds into silence by playing the “women have it worse” game.

I realize O’Malley’s article is not intended for nerds or geeks. Yet some of them are going to read it, and I hope they have enough self-worth to not allow this kind of vitriolic victim-shaming to make them think they are bad people because their interests or for talking about their negative experiences.

They are not.