I find the campaign interesting because it’s very much like MIT’s “Nerd Pride” slogan, but even more official and widespread. The various ways that American has tried to lay claim to ‘wonk’ strongly resemble the ways that people have tried to define reclaim ‘geek’ and ‘nerd,’ down to claiming that there are many “types” of geeks, and explaining meaning through backronyms like “general electrical engineering knowledge” or “knurd” (for “drunk” backwards). Given that American University is based out of Washington D.C. and attracting many students who are quite interested in being described as “policy wonks” someday, the new campaign is a kind of way to signal that it’s producing a particular local flavor of geek.

The Eagle, AU’s student newspaper, features comments from folks who don’t quite appreciate the connotations of this new label. Inside Higher Ed notes, “While some noted the positive associations with policy experts, many others posted comments about the nerdish associations with the word”—which is true, but not quite the whole story.

One “AU parent and marketing maven” suggests in the Comments to that article that the word has nerdy connotations which might prove problematic. When you tally up the responses between anyone who notes the connection to ‘nerd’ (‘geek’ is never mentioned), however, you don’t see much concern with nerdy connotations at all. “[Wonk] essentially means ‘nerd,’ which is fine,” one student quoted in the article said, expressing more of a complaint with the way the branding campaign was conducted than with the actual results. In other words, the complaints I’m seeing aren’t about students feeling stigmatized or insulted, but about concern that the campaign won’t actually work. (And I think you’re going to see that at any school that spends years and millions of dollars on any branding campaign, no matter what the result.)

I don’t know how effective the campaign will be in getting people to stop asking “Which one?” when students say that they’re going to American University. We now live in a safer environment to brand oneself with a nerdy word, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t work ahead of AU. If this campaign can stretch the connotations of ‘wonk’ to imply that it’s a nerd who tries to affect policy or change, no matter what their expertise, and if AU cements a reputation as “the wonk school,” I could see that being a selling point for many students. I think has MIT promoted the concept of “Nerd Pride” more than “Nerd Pride” could ever elevate MIT, but nobody asks for clarification when you say you’re at MIT—and they left other nerdy words up for grabs.

Cinema Blend offers “5 Reasons Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Failed to Find an Audience,” but its reasoning is somewhat suspect at times, and even the title seems like a misnomer to me. “Scott Pilgrim” is currently the top Trending Topic on Twitter. My friends have been talking about it for weeks; a bunch of us saw a free advance screening, and a bunch more saw it on opening weekend. The blogs I follow regularly have been generally gushing praise. The issue doesn’t really seem to be that it “failed to find an audience,” but that the audience it found wasn’t really big enough to promise the kind of box office take that you’d expect with a $60 million budget. The whole phenomenon feels strangely reminiscent of Snakes on a Plane: Everyone was expecting the hype to equal success, when in fact it might have been only enough to make sure the movie makes a modest profit in the long run.

Cinemablend may be onto something in pointing out that the pop-culture references and gamer culture in-jokes may have been a little esoteric for the cinemagoing populace at large, but I don’t think too much specialized knowledge was really required to “get” the movie. Yes, you’ll appreciate recognizing some Zelda music during one dream sequence, but knowing the music is from Zelda isn’t really necessary. The really esoteric references have been stripped in the adaptation from comic book to movie. (My favorite scene in the entire comic series shows Ramona getting dressed to go out, generally ignoring her boyfriend, while he drones on about a particular X-Men comic in which Wolverine gets crucified.) By focusing more on rock music in the plot and fairly generic 8-bit game imagery in the visual style, the movie tapped into common media tropes that should’ve been recognizable to most American moviegoers, from those who lament that punk is dead to those who actually shop at Hot Topic.

I’ve heard people suggest other reasons for why Scott Pilgrim didn’t do better, like how so many who were dying to see it saw advance screenings at Comic Con and local theaters (such as myself). It’s a fair point, but there’s no way that accounts for the $24 million gap between #5 and #1 on the weekend box office take (or even the $13 million difference between #5 and #2, Eat Pray Love, which I’ve never even seen an ad for).

Besides the possible issues of how accessible this content really is, then, I see a couple other things going on here.

One factor in Scott Pilgrim‘s reception is a backlash against the image of the “hip nerd.” A recent NPR piece on “‘Scott Pilgrim’ versus the Unfortunate Tendency to Review the Audience” gives a hint at how sick some critics (and perhaps, by extension, some moviegoers) are getting of the nerd image:

After referring to the first part of the movie as a “dork-pandering assault,” The Boston Phoenix reviewer goes on to say that Michael Cera’s performance is “irritating” in part because of “the non-stop Pavlovian laugh track provided by the audience at the screening I attended.” (As far as I know, that’s a first: “You made the audience laugh, you irritating actor in a comedy, and that’s what’s wrong with you.”)

The review in the St. Petersburg Times begins, “First of all, I’m not a video gamer. I have discovered more appealing ways to not have a life.”

The New York Observer sniffs that the film is “clearly directed at an audience with generational ADD.”

Here’s one from Philadelphia Weekly: “Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is Fan Service: The Movie, an insular, punishingly alienating experience preaching only to the faithful, devoted hearts of arrested 12-year-old boys. It’s singularly fixated on video games and shallow visions of women as one-dimensional objects to be either obtained or discarded and offers no possible point of entry to anybody over the age of 30.”

I can see how some viewers would get sick of seeing nerdy heroes lately, as that seems to be the bulk of what we’re getting in some genres, and Scott Pilgrim is the most celebratory of the bunch. This trend is reviewed somewhat in “‘Scott Pilgrim’: The End of the Nerd as We Know Him,” in which a Salon writer suggests that the titular character is a “Nerd in Name Only” (or “NINO”). The author was pretty far off in his prediction that Scott Pilgrim would beat The Expendables, but otherwise does a decent job of summarizing how the geek image has been mainstreamed and monetized.

That said, calling Scott a “NINO” (“Nerd in Name Only”) kind of misses the point of what we mean when we call ourselves nerds, but in the author’s defense, his appears to be an outsider perspective. The truth of the matter is that the pop culture image of the nerd is finally catching up to the self-image of the nerd, now that arch-geeks like Edgar Wright are at the helm of blockbuster movies. We the dorks are starting to realize, as a culture, that we are kind of neat. The self-image of the nerdy adult may include gentle, humorous, and honest self-deprecation, but it doesn’t preclude dating. It sees creative talents, like being in a kick-ass band, as part of being a nerd, not mutually exclusive with it. Its sees understanding of truly esoteric pop culture references as markers of authenticity, a shout-out to fellow nerds who know that what we are now is influenced by what we were as kids.

Calling Scott Pilgrim “dork-pandering” is unkind, but not entirely inaccurate. At least Judd Apatow’s movies have the sense to show their lovable losers getting knocked around, insulted, and embarrassed. None have the gall to introduce the protagonist with a label reading, “Rating: Awesome.” To a viewer or critic who isn’t ready to stop dismissing dorks as losers, I can see how a movie that shows geeks how we see ourselves would seem ridiculous.

I don’t think, though, that Scott Pilgrim‘s disappointing performance can be blamed only on “nerd disdain.” This leads me to the second factor I’d like to suggest. Remember how many times you watched The Phantom Menace before you realized it wasn’t as awesome as you thought? Well, Scott Pilgrim is no Episode I, but it did have some pretty major flaws.

I know I am inviting some serious flaming on this one. Don’t get me wrong: I really enjoyed the movie. It was fun, and it was funny. I laughed several times, mostly at lines I remembered from the comic book. But let’s be frank: The basic plot—boy meets girl, boy fights enemies to be with girl—was generic. And, perhaps most problematic, the pacing was extremely rushed. Hollywood movies have a very codified sense of pacing that audiences have come to expect. (Watch The Mutant Chronicles sometime for an example of a movie that ignores this at its own peril.) When the reviewer cited in that blockquote above notes that it was made for those with “generational ADD,” I think that’s a critique of the transitions as much as the audience. The movie jumps from scene to scene with reckless abandon, featuring a non-stop energy that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. If the filmmakers hadn’t been so concerned with being true to the comic, there’s no way there would have been a full seven evil exes. There just wasn’t time for them all.

I wonder whether the movie dropped the ball attracting those nerds who weren’t already reading the comic and plugged into the hype surrounding this. If you weren’t already looking forward to it, but still belonged to the hip/nerdy potential target market, I think the best that could be said of the movie was summed up in that Salon piece mentioned above: “The film is empty-headed and utterly devoid of drama, yet aesthetically elating.” That was my own main disappointment with the movie, though not really a surprising one to me: It was fun, but emotionally and thematically vapid compared to the comic book.

This may be a bad thing for the movie, but it’s at least somewhat heartening when you think about the development of traditionally geeky media more generally. The reason I love that scene with Scott babbling on about an X-Men comic to Ramona is because it feels awkwardly, painfully real and familiar. It’s a piece of the drama of their relationship, something that goes beyond the generic “defeat the baddies, get the girl” plot. The Scott Pilgrim movie had to focus on “boss fights” to reach the end, while the Scott Pilgrim comics had a lot more wiggle room to explore the experience of being a directionless twenty-something trying to figure out how friendships and relationships are supposed to work.

I think that point is a major part of what’s missing from so many of the cultural critiques about the ascendency of the nerd to the “pop culture overlord,” in the words of that Salon piece. Yes, “geek chic” has a great deal to do with marketers and content producers finally realizing that geeks represent an audience eager to spend money on media. But it’s also important to note that this also represents a sort of ascendency of traditionally geeky media to something more complex, more sophisticated, more—well, adult.

It’s delightful to hear Zelda music in a dream sequence and to see foes burst into coinage when defeated on the big screen. Blockbusters can’t always sail on mere delight. We all know it’ll make a killing in DVD sales, but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is not the sign of the Revenge of the Nerds that so many thought was foretold. At the end of the day, though, at least we can reassure ourselves that it was a much better adaptation than LXG.

In other words, people really, really want to know what the difference is between geeks and nerds.

Recently, I noticed that Wikihow cited this post in its guide on “How to Tell the Difference Between Nerds and Geeks.” The point of my “Geeks vs. Nerds” post, however, was to argue that there is not a difference—or at least no one, true, universally agreed-upon difference. The point of that post was to catalog some of the many different ways that people define ‘geek’ and ‘nerd,’ and the distinctions between them, illustrating that these terms evolve in meaning from place to place, day to day, person to person. Many people insist that there is a difference, and for them personally, perhaps there is—but no guide will ever adequately tell you what is the right thing to call another person, as the Wikihow article itself wisely cautions by the end.

In defining what these terms are supposed to mean, people frequently refer back to their origins. The first recorded usage of ‘nerd’ dates back to Dr. Seuss’s 1954 If I Ran the Zoo, appearing shortly thereafter in journalism as synonymous with “a drip.” A lot of people trace ‘geek’ back to the term applied to circus performers who bit the heads off live animals, but the Oxford English Dictionary notes that it goes back much further to refer to a “foolish” person, potentially even appearing in an early form in Shakespeare’s writing.

The problem with leaning on etymology, however, is that meanings change over time. Most non-geeks do not remember the circus-related connotations of the word, and most self-professed geeks don’t even seem to realize that the word goes back even further. It’s interesting to trace where these words started, but what they mean today is much more easily traced to recent events: movies about high school and college, colorful figures of the electronic frontier, and memories of our own childhood.

I’ve enjoyed collecting and posting all various definitions and distinctions between these terms, but I think I’m calling it quits now. “Geeks vs. Nerds” will stand unedited from now on (barring some happening far too exciting and relevant to pass up). In the end, I think the final word on this issue goes to the webcomic responsible for my third most trafficked post, xkcd. In the meantime, I’ll echo the aforementioned Wikihow article’s advice: “Aim to assume nothing and to treat all fellow human beings with equal respect, whatever label they’re self-applying or you’re tempted to apply.” I’d further caution my fellow self-proclaimed geeks and nerds not to get too offended when people call you by your less preferred term as an adult. Whether the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth or we’re seeing the Revenge of the Nerds, neither of these terms needs to be an insult if we don’t take them as such.

I’m a nerd. Not the “I was pretty popular in high school, but I loved those ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies” faux-geek, but the real-deal-Holyfield “I’ve seen every episode of ‘Stargate SG-1,’ and I openly dislike the taste of beer” Duke of Nerds.

I’m nearsighted, have terrible hair and get creepily good grades for comparatively little effort. Attractive girls still (kind of) make me nervous. I’m pretty sure my inner monologue is unabridged insanity.

I am, as my former kindergarten teacher put it, an “independent thinker.”

I’m fascinated by this concept of the “faux-geek.” The same concept comes up quite a bit in the material I come across in my research (such as in the analysis of the “fake nerd” in Ben Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People). And, for obvious reasons, it’s something I have to address in my own writing.

The “nerd army” article quoted above doesn’t explicitly define what divides a real geek from a faux-geek, but it does offer some characteristics that the author considers self-evidently authentic: The real geek can’t achieve or actively dislikes that which is considered popular, mainstream, or adult (beer, ability to talk to the opposite sex); s/he embraces that which is denigrated (Stargate SG-1, good grades which are apparently “creepy”); and s/he sees some (undefined) connection between these characteristics and being “an independent thinker.” It’s clear that this author believes that the difference between the real geek and the fake has something to do with rejecting and/or being rejected by others according to certain cultural norms, but I’m not sure how some of these conditions (like “terrible hair” and nervousness around attractive women) might be connected to intellectualism and free thinking.

I’m curious, then, how people reading this blog might (or might not) draw the line between real geeks and faux-geeks. Certainly there are people who affect a trendy, nerdy image but wouldn’t call themselves nerds—but are people who actually call themselves geeks who you’d have to disagree with? If so, how can you tell that difference between the real and the fake? Even if you don’t make such clear judgment calls, do you find yourself acting differently around some geeks than you would around others? Personally, I’m more interested in keeping track of other people’s definitions than in declaring any one definition to be “right,” so I welcome any and all to chime in here—even if you’ve already put in your two cents on the subject of defining geeks vs. nerds.

In that discussion, Jordan commented that he doesn’t see geeks harassing jocks online as much as he sees them harassing women, and Aenna noted that geeks’ harassment of jocks seems to be mostly in the form of weak, homophobic insults. I’ve actually noticed much more pervasive, vitriolic, and even creatively involved responses, though. I wanted to make note of a couple examples and invite others to chime in with their own thoughts on the matter as well. I sat on this post for several days as I worked on other things, but now, with the release of Joss Whedon’s geeky supervillain musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, it seemed like a particularly timely issue.

Let’s start, then, with the first example of resentment toward jocks I’d like to offer: the poster art for MC Chris’s “Revenge of the Nerd Tour.” It’s a particularly visceral visual example of how “jocks” are constructed as the natural enemy of “nerds.” I suppose this poster could have featured the nerd atop a pile of popular kids’ corpses, including cheerleaders, but I think that the disproportionately male, nerd audience it targets has more angry resentment stored up for athletic men. This image is fairly representative of the stage persona MC Chris projected when I saw him perform in 2005, where he called for nerds to rise up against the oppressive jocks.

The second example I’d like to offer comes from the “Pitch Your Game Idea” panel at PAX 2006. One of the most popular entries was for a “jock simulator,” marketed as the best sports game ever, but secretly designed to help high school athletes build their skills at bagging groceries for their future careers. The first four minutes of gameplay are a football game representing each year of high school, but then players begin the grocery-bagging game, and finally witness “the cute chicks they used to date go off to date those they made fun of.”

In this example, we get a glimpse at how gamers feel threatened by athletes and sports fans becoming a target demographic for the medium they considered their own (also touched upon in this Slashdot thread I stumbled upon after a moment of googling). I found this interesting because it moves the notion of sexual fitness away from hypermasculine/physical norms, emphasizing professional/financial success. Of course, women don’t make out any better in this deal, still treated as “chicks” and trophies to be won.

Granted, neither of these examples (or the insults in that linked Slashdot piece) is of interpersonal interaction between geeks and athletes or sports fans. Geek-on-jock interactions in the adult world are a bit harder to stumble upon than interactions between sexist geeks and beleaguered women, but I’d argue that has more to do with where people are likely to share real or virtual space than with the relative intensity or pervasiveness of the hostility toward either group. The best example of somewhat more direct geek-on-jock interaction that I could find offhand is in the interactions with “Rodney” in the comments following Tango‘s “geek chic” story from awhile back. Rodney wonders why “strange” geeks are getting all the love, while “normal” guys are left out in the cold. Another commenter replies:

Yo Rodney, that’s the point…you just don’t get it…while you are spending your time lifting weights, fixing your hair, and applying too much cologne, smarter people are trying to cure diseases and make the world a better place…if you are such a great guy why dont you help these geeks you work with, be more fashionable etc? maybe they will help you realize that when you are 70 years old and all you can talk about is your old sports stats and how buff you used to be, your wife will be looking for her ear plugs or worse a pistol to end her misery.

That’s pretty harsh stuff. You might infer that Rodney identified himself as a sports fan, athlete, or jock. But actually, according to Rodney’s follow-up, he’s not a sports fanatic at all. Rather, it was the other commenter who who assigned certain stereotypes to Rodney based on his default construction for the “enemy of the geek.”

Reflecting on these examples, however, I wonder whether it was worth introducing this topic in a direct comparison with misogynistic geeks’ treatment of women. I have imagined them as related phenomena—in both cases, a way for some geeks to construct a nemesis and bolster their own ego in the face of feelings of inadequacy. However, I expect that these sorts of resentment would manifest differently, given the fairly different ways in which these groups are constructed as enemies or outsiders. Sexist and misogynistic behavior online is part of a larger system of mistrust and hostility toward women throughout our culture; there’s a much broader precedent for it than for hostility toward hypermasculine males, a traditionally culturally dominant group.

Moreover, as I noted in recent comments, I haven’t seen any research indicating that young, male geeks are particularly picked on and excluded by girls more so than by boys; more likely the opposite, actually. Given this point, sexist geeks’ hostility toward women seems more a way of channeling feelings of bitterness and resentment toward a target that is already subject to widespread cultural denigration (and therefore perhaps easier to justify or claim dominance over in their imagination). There’s plenty of evidence, on the other hand, that boys training to be hypermasculine males specifically target geeks for physical and verbal harassment. Of course, having been the victim of harassment and oppression doesn’t make it okay to stereotype or discriminate against (those whom one imagines to represent) one’s former oppressors in adulthood. Nevertheless, we can point to persecution in childhood by dominant males as a component behind jock-hate—I get the sense it’s uncommon or non-existent among geeks who weren’t picked on—whereas I wouldn’t claim that it is rejection by women that fuels geek misogyny.

Reflecting on this distinction leads me to wonder how these forms of resentment might manifest themselves and be expressed differently. If geek fashion is any indication, for example, women might be constructed as the trophies of male geek power, whereas jocks are constructed as having too much power. I might not have used that first shirt (“Press and hold X to pick up”) as an example if only there had been a male or unisex size created for it. I wouldn’t argue that the design is inherently offensive—as some commenters point out, there are some contexts where it might be considered acceptable to wear, and others where it would not—but I think it represents a broader trend in how we construct women. Among geeks, and perhaps generally in our culture, outspoken misogyny seems somewhat rare and contained, but subtler forms of sexism and reinforcement of traditional gender roles remain exceptionally easy to find because they’re still considered widely inoffensive. Jock resentment, on the other hand, seems outrageous and overt when I see it.

This point finally brings us to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the aforementioned supervillain musical. Joss Whedon (of Buffy and Firefly fame) created this miniseries of web-video shorts during the writers’ strike. It is not an example of outrageous jock resentment, but a story about it. All three parts are available online for free until the end of the day today (and for a small price on iTunes thereafter), so go check it out before I start throwing out spoilers in the next couple paragraphs.

As some have pointed out already, Dr. Horrible presents a comedic (but ultimately tragic) allegory of the tension between geek and jock. The expected audience is pretty clear: The front page of the site even has an ad for related gear sold through J!NX, the same geek fashion retailer linked to above. In the series, Neil Patrick Harris plays the intelligent, idealistic, and generally gentle-natured supervillain, who hopes to rule the world in order to fix it, and refuses to do battle around children or to kill his foes. Nathan Fillion plays the dumb, cruel, and arrogant Captain Hammer, who promises to sleep with the woman Dr. Horrible has a crush on just to make him uncomfortable. This propels Dr. Horrible to plot to kill Captain Hammer. It doesn’t work as planned, but he does gain admittance to the Evil League of Evil, finding acceptance among a fringe group and even gaining a degree of mainstream popularity, while Captain Hammer ends up weeping on a psychiatrist’s couch—but all at the expense of the ideals and the person that meant the most to the Doctor.

I have to applaud Joss and company on this one. It’s hilarious, professionally daring, and a joy to listen to. Much to my own surprise, though, the moral of the story wasn’t just that the underdog beats the jerk in the end. In this age of “geek chic,” where a pitch for a “jock simulator” leads a room of nerds to erupt in applause, this message may be one the target audience desperately needs to hear.

At Sciencewoman, for example, Alice Pawly describes the article as “problematic”:

I’m glad women feel like they can dress how they want, look “girly” and all. … I just challenge that now women are experiencing a simple choice for how to display themselves, and that they just happen to choose to do so in hegemonically feminine ways.

And over at Salon, Catherine Price expresses her own mixed feelings:

My confusion … stems from the fact that the Nerd Girls video makes it seem like sexual appeal is a necessary component to being part of their group. …

[P]erhaps the Nerd Girls aren’t as all about their sexuality as the video makes it seem. I certainly hope that’s the case — ideally, we’d convey to young women that they shouldn’t be afraid to be into science even if they aren’t holding down part-time modeling gigs, and that there’s more than one definition of what it means to be “hot.”

The commenters on those posts seem divided on how much of a problem it is that the nerd girls promote “hegemonic femininity.” And, as Catherine notes, it’s hard to say how much of this is actually relevant to the group.

Gizmodo, meanwhile, doesn’t offer much editorializing. Its (mostly male) commenters, on the other hand, occasionally offer some friendly or critical notes, but mostly either hostile or blatantly sexist interpretations, from what I saw:

Ferg1 at 11:06 PM on 06/15/08
no thank you

smcallah at 11:10 PM on 06/15/08
I don’t like when people try to act like a nerd. Because god damn it, I was born a nerd, and I went through school in the 80′s as a nerd, not a great time to do so.

So I get uppity when someone who appears to have never gone through middle and high school being considered a nerd suddenly wants to say she’s a nerd.

Hello_Newman at 12:06 AM
It’s just a normal picture of young women casually dressed and not a photo shoot. Cut them some slack, I think we’re too used to booth babes dressed to the nines, this is what nerds look like. I’m sure if it was a story about women who go out to night clubs they’d look a lot hotter, but it’s not.

cubensis at 01:43 AM
I’d hit #2, #6 and #7.

I put the link there in case the post goes back online, but at last check, the post was deleted. I like being able to refer back to comments for research, though, so it’s a good thing I was able to find it in my Safari cache and print a PDF of the basic text and images, sans CSS formatting. (Thanks, Retrospective!)

I can see why some people are wary of the Nerd Girls’ approach; the reaction among many Gizmodo commenters is a neat demonstration of how some nerdy men will respond to sexualized nerds (especially with the veil of anonymity). And, of course, there’s the danger that the ladies who don’t have self-esteem about their looks will fear that majoring in engineering will compound their social woes.

That said, from the perspective of social psychology research, promoting female nerds as possessing feminine sexuality may actually be an effective (if not ethically unproblematic) means of shifting nerd stereotypes. According to some research (which I hope I can be forgiven for not digging up right now), stereotypes are linked in our minds. Someone who believes that young black men are criminals, for example, would also be likely to believe that such men are natural athletes, have good rhythm, etc. If you present such a person with an example completely atypical of their mental construction of the group—e.g., a young black man who is shy, unathletic, and good with computers—that person will conclude that your example is an exception to the rule. If you only tweak the stereotype slightly, however, such as by presenting said person with a young black man who is into basketball, freestyle rapping, and studying medicine, you have a better chance of getting a prejudiced person to reconsider the belief that young black men are criminals.

One actual example of this strategy, if I remember correctly from my Social Psych class a few years back, involved an ad campaign for women’s soccer which promoted the women as both athletic and sexy. This is basically what the Nerd Girls are (purported to be) going for. This takes on an added sense of urgency, perhaps, considering that the “unsexy” stereotype may actually be part of what steers girls and women away from studying engineering in the first place. That’s one of David Anderegg’s biggest concerns in Nerds: Who they are and why we need more of them. Adolescents and post-adolescents are especially concerned about seeming sexually desirable, and this plays a role in the career choices they’re considering around the same time.

I hope I covered my back enough by acknowledging how problematic this strategy is, if that’s really how the Nerd Girls are promoting themselves. I suppose it raises the question, then, of which stereotype demands greater resistance from a group of female engineers: the idea that women should be attractive according to traditional norms of femininity, or the idea that nerds can’t be women? I’d like to think that any one person can resist both of these in her own life if she so chooses, but that is different from making a unified, public statement to gradually prod a stereotype into a slightly more acceptable direction.

Perhaps, though, going for “nerds are sexy” is overshooting a bit. The nerd stereotype is still bad enough in the eyes of many that asserting that “nerds are attractive” really doesn’t take much more than pointing out: “Look, we bathe regularly (and we’re getting much better at noticing that your eyes glaze over when we start talking about Battlestar Galactica).”

If a television show turned cultural phenomenon spawns diehard fans who recite dialogue by heart, wear costumes inspired by the show and buy all the tie-in products, are these devotees nerds? If the show in question is Star Trek, The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the answer is certainly yes. But what if we’re talking about Sex and the City?

Mark Medley, a reporter writing for the National Post, asked me this question a couple weeks ago. Now, it kicks off an article titled “Female Trekkies.” (Another version, sans my brief quote, made it to the Victoria Times Colonist under the title “Sex and the City Fans. Geek or Chic?”)

This may sound a bit confusing to people who aren’t familiar with Sex and the City and its devoted fan following. For some fans, being a SATC fan goes beyond catching up on the show every week: It means buying the outfits featured on the show, and being thrilled to catch the movie premier now that the show’s off the air. Sound familiar, browncoats? Some fans of geeky media may surely think so, such as comics writer/novelist/blogger Jamie S. Rich, who describes (in a link via Chris) a screening of the new Sex and the City movie:

Really, it was like I was at a comic book convention, but one for chicks. Though, I don’t think it’s fair if I show up for the Hulk screening covered in green make-up I’ll get called a geek and going to see Sex and the City in fake couture is somehow not geeky. You can’t even make a claim that having boobs is what makes it different, because I know a lot of comic book guys (and sports fan guys) with bigger boobs than any of the actresses in the movie (well, except Jennifer Hudson). Nerds in any other underwear are just as nerdy.

I’m sure there are some around here, too, who would argue that ‘geek’ is now a broad enough term to apply to just about any fervent interest, especially when applied to pop culture in this way. That take on the concept of ‘geek’ lends it a little legitimacy, when you think about it—how could ‘geek’ be a bad thing when just about everybody is a geek nowadays?

That said, when Mark Medley asked me whether I thought SATC fans were geeks, I told him no. Or, rather, I told him that my research prioritizes what people tell me over what I think personally, and I suspect that these fans (a) wouldn’t call themselves geeks and (b) wouldn’t be considered geeks by most of those who do consider themselves as such.

Annalee Newitz, io9 and She’s Such a Geek! co-editor, was quoted as denying this geek definition flat-out:

Women who follow Sex and the City are not geeks. … They are doing what soap opera fans have always done: obsessively reading about their stories, and buying related consumer items. Are women who read Vogue geeks? Are women who know every detail about Sephora cosmetics geeks? No. You can’t expand the term ‘geek’ to mean anyone who is interested in something without draining the term of all meaning.

And one especially enthusiastic SATC fan quoted in the article kind of backs this up, distancing herself and fellow fans from this label:

I don’t think there’s anything nerdy or geeky about Sex and the City. … I think it’s more of a diva, glamour [thing]. I guess that’s more what I’d consider myself.

So what’s the big difference here? My quote that made it to the article suggests:

Being identified as a geek, or identifying oneself as a geek, kind of signals an understanding that you are or you know that you should be feeling embarrassed about what it is that you’re interested in. … And I doubt that…Sex and the City fans are really particularly embarrassed about their great interest in the show.

This isn’t a complete explanation, of course, but a reporter can only fit so much of my lengthy ramblings into one article. I thought it might be worth it to expand upon this a bit here, though.

In this context, I think that the big difference between a geeky fan interest and a not-geeky fan interest is how much the interest conforms to broadly understood norms of gender and maturity. It’s tempting to say that geeky/nerdy interests are more “intellectual” or based around obsession over “data,” but really, that wouldn’t count out SATC fans or even most sports fans. (Some geeks may be surprised by the breadth of statistics and history known to the average sports fan.) The only dimensions we’re talking about here are depth of enthusiasm and an interest in costuming (or fashion, if you prefer). Sports fans, too, will similarly “dress up” (in jerseys and/or face paint) for major fan events.

No, what we’re seeing here is that some interests are characterized as geeky and some are not, regardless of the specific behaviors or level of excitement involved. Sports represent a traditionally masculine interest, celebrating competition, aggression, and physical prowess. And, arguably, this is all connected to adult interests of strength and (to put it bluntly) suitability for mating. At the same time, being a SATC fan represents a sort of acceptably feminine interest in a feminist age. Even the SATC fan’s comment quoted above resists the “geek” label in favor of “glamor” or “diva,” a clearly gender-coded understanding. What’s particularly interesting to me about SATC is the way that it updates these feminine interests for a feminist culture. The characters aren’t the image of the female consumer constructed in a lot of old television and advertising, dedicated to swooning over heartthrobs, living for husband and family, and spending frivolously. They may be just as interested in relationships and shopping, but they’re sexually open, and successful career women in their own right.

Geeky pursuits don’t really fit anywhere in this paradigm of age- and gender-appropriate interests. To the world at large, they seem primarily aligned with childish boys, not adult men or women. Comics, games, and sci-fi represent escapist fantasy, a rejection of the hypermasculine, and not quite aligned with the traditionally feminine. The war paint of a sports fan somehow seems more manly and acceptable than the war paint of a LARPer. And in comparison, the fashionable dress and four-inch heels of the SATC fan is practically unassailable as an acceptably adult and gender-appropriate “costume.”

Of course, I’ve never claimed it was my job to arbitrate who is a geek and who isn’t. I pay attention to how others decide that for themselves and for one another. Sex and the City fans, now’s your chance to let your geek flag fly and stomp on my own observations, if you’re so inclined. So far, though, I’ve had the impression that geekiness is defined as much by how the world looks at what interests us as by how deeply we get involved with those interests.

Now, to address the those comments, I’d like to focus on a claim Jordan made:

I would argue that Female involvement gets special explanation because geek culture has been extremely misogynistic.

I would argue that this is a bit too broad of a generalization—would I say that even half of the geeks I’ve met in person were sexist?—but it is not inaccurate.

All the actual behavior we’d think of as misogynistic or sexist in geek culture has almost exclusively been visible to me on the internet (or described by others in certain small, isolated contexts full of nerds, such as at certain conventions and CS departments). Not that there aren’t woman-hating dorks wandering around the streets or at the cons I’ve attended—just that certain anonymous or isolated social contexts make people feel they can let this side of themselves show.

So, yes, there is a sexist and misogynistic side to geek culture which is unfortunately quite common in some circles. Saying that women get mistreated because geek culture is misogynistic, however, is somewhat tautological. Let’s take that a step further: Why have so many geeks been so hostile to women?

In the post from yesterday, I guessed at why there are more male than female geeks, and I think we can similarly hazard some guesses as to why many male geeks are misogynistic. Basically I think this comes down to feeling rejected and threatened by women—either personally/romantically/sexually or in terms of professional and cultural identity—and trying to cut women down to feel better about themselves. Some geeks have indeed turned to coding or gaming or whatever to prove their worth as men, according greater worth to geeky knowledge than to traditional indexes of masculinity; contemplating women excelling in these fields raises questions about how masculine they really are.

Others may feel resentful about rejection, which gets guys (like in one of the above-linked posts) claiming that the exclusiveness of computer culture is no worse than “stupid fashinista culture.” They are resentful over feeling personally rejected, and frame their exclusiveness and rudeness as a response to women as a stereotyped “other.” On the other hand, some are just desperate and socially inept, and may sincerely think that harassing women online might yield some kind of personal or sexual interaction.

As for the specific example of misogyny among gamers and sexism in the gaming industry, further explanations abound. Perhaps the most compelling relate to the historical gender makeup of the industry, which was born of earlier-established, male-dominated academic and professional cultures. You see this playing out in both design and marketing (meant to titillate boys).

Based on my own experiences, I don’t see “geek culture,” broadly speaking, as misogynistic. Actually, I see it kind of torn between two mindsets: one, a sexist mindset built on isolation from women and the freedom of anonymity, and the other, an open-minded and welcoming mindset built on a rejection of “mainstream” norms and self-conscious (even self-congratulatory) embrace of the intellect and social progress. This duality was hinted at by a keynote speaker at ROFLCon, who pointed out that “Internet culture can be very sexist, homophobic and racist,” but also allowed that this could be directed by netizens themselves: “If this is the culture we’re building as internet nerds, lets have it be something we’re proud of.”

I think it’s fairly easy to guess at how the sexist side of geek culture developed. I wonder how the more open-minded side has developed, and what could be done to spread that.

It’s no great secret that most of the pursuits thought of as “geeky” see greater participation among males than among females. Certain pursuits have traditionally been coded as “for boys” or “for girls,” so a large part of this may just be what parents think they’re supposed to expose their kids to. Another major factor may simply be that young boys get labeled as geeks and nerds (and bullied for it) much more frequently than young girls, setting one gender up for geekdom at a younger age on average. And, of course, there’s marketing bias, with video games, comic books, and science-fiction actively targeting male audiences, featuring men with super powers, for those who feel powerless.

These are cultural trends, not necessarily any reflection that geeky interests are naturally more interesting or involving for boys or men. Women can potentially get the same things out of media, technology, and popular culture that men get out of these things. Nevertheless, when girls and women are interested in things like computers or science-fiction, it’s often taken as worthy of special mention. Decidedly geeky activities that see higher female involvement—such as writing fan fiction—don’t seem to nudge popular perception of how the geek image is gendered, perhaps in part because they remain widely unknown outside hardcore fannish circles.

When essayists and reporters do take the time to specifically point out female involvement in geeky subcultures, it is often to make one or both of a couple assertions:

1. Women like geeky stuff you might have associated only with men.
2. Men might get one thing from geeky pursuits, but women get another thing.

The upshot of either assertion may be an implied question: Are female geeks unusual for their gender, or unusual within their subculture?

Consider, for example, a New York Times article from a couple months back, “Geek chic: Not just for guys.” This article implies that we should be surprised that teenage girls are more active in making homepages on the web than boys of the same age, but points out that boys are more likely to post videos of themselves at YouTube. In short: Making websites, which we thought was “geeky,” turns out to fill some need for women than men don’t as often feel the need to fill.

Another article on PopMatters (via Church)—“Move over alpha geeks, here come the fangrrls!”—seeks to highlight female participation at sci-fi fan conventions. It’s written and photographed by a couple women “working on a book together about women in male-dominated subcultures.” Echoing (and citing) Henry Jenkins’s Textual Poachers, it discusses what women get out of fanfic and fandom in general, at one point juxtaposing it with a guy who attends conventions alone just to acquire more collectibles. This, like the previous article, sort of suggests that female geeks are a special breed of geek, bringing some female sensibility with them into a male-dominated world.

The piece that really got me thinking about writing this post was by Suzanne “Zuska” Franks, who writes: “Women who love technology require an explanation; men who love technology are just being masculine.” (She’s building on some comments and observations made by others, as noted in her post.) She offers some tips for those who would interview female scientists and engineers, such as, “Are you planning on describing me as (A) not what you’d expect, (B) surprisingly pretty, (C) a rarity, or (D) all of the above?” and “Will you also explain how technology has unsexed me? (A) Yes, (B) Yes, while simultaneously infantilizing you, you ‘geeky super-normal enthusiastic girl’!” This touches upon the other angle of female geekdom, the question of whether being geeky marks women as unfeminine.

I rarely see articles which completely avoid the implication that there is something unusual about being both female and a geek. This is why I was so impressed with the “nerdcraft” article I linked to awhile back. It could have been pitched as “women bring femininity to geekdom,” but rather just presented tech- and game-oriented crafting as a new turn in crafting.

It is fair, of course, to point out that women have a different experience from men within geek culture. After all, the relative lack of women in geek cultures—and, more to the point, the frequent lack of experience with interacting with women, among many geek men—means that women end up being the objects of disproportionate attention or exclusion. Examples of this are unfortunately quite easy to find, but I’ll offer a new one now that just came to my attention.

Feministing has a heavily-commented post up about the “Open Source Boob Project” (link via Jordan). This was a sort of game initiated by male nerds at ConFusion, a science-fiction convention. There’s some dispute about what this “project” entailed (see the comments), but suffice to say, it involved men (for the most part) touching the breasts of consenting women (for the most part) at the con, a sort of exercise in cutting through social taboos in order to just get to do what some people wanted to do.

I’ll leave aside the rightness or wrongness of this particular event, as there’s a lot of disagreement (indicated in the comments) about what really went on with this—who knew it was going on, what the likelihood was that people could be made to feel pressured, etc. Rather, I’d like to note a couple excerpts from the conversation that follows about how women can be made to feel unwelcome in male-dominated geek culture. One commenter, musing on this event and how it fits into geek culture more generally, wrote:

I’m a total geek myself, and the world I have to play in really does make me sad. It’s hard to find a good video game that has female characters I can respect and really want to play, it’s hard to find a series where the main female cast isn’t told to wear push-up bras, and I really hate it when I play Massive Multiplayer Online Games and get hit on when people find out the girl behind the female character is actually a girl (and I don’t even want to get into what they say about guys who play female characters).

I definitely get that whole devalued feeling a lot, and this particular proposition isn’t helping at all. I do think conventions are a place where people generally feel like they can lose the rules for a few days; I mean, you’re 25, wearing a full-body costume, and people won’t make fun of you for it (better yet, you get prizes for good work). Surrounded by people who have a like-mind, you feel a little less shy about approaching someone, because hey, you know that cute guy over there will actually be impressed instead of laughing when you tell him how many comic books you own.

Hm, but it doesn’t make this ok. What I guess I’m trying to explain is how people who normally seem nice would suddenly come up with a bullshit idea like this, and how people who normally have more sense to “just say no” would fall into this trap. I never had a date in high school, and I’m pretty sure if I didn’t have anyone to back me up, I would’ve said yes at that point in my life too. College has helped a lot with that, but even I can’t get past the fact that my opinion about Halo 3 just isn’t as valued at these places as a lot of men’s.

I thought this was an interesting and evocative example of one person’s experience as a female geek. I also thought, though, that it was really interesting that there was no implication that what she’s getting out of geekdom is somehow different from what men are getting out of geekdom. Actually, parts of her experience probably sound pretty familiar to male geeks, such as feeling embarrassed about revealing one’s interests around cute people the same age, and being easily abused out of desire for acceptance.

Another commenter’s note similarly indicated shared experiences behind how women and men come to identify as geeks:

If Tech-Dudes come away from high school feeling stigmatized, devalued and socially awkward—can you then imagine how most geeky girls feel? We aren’t even considered normative in our social niche of choice!

Despite this situation, female geeks aren’t necessarily considered the most authentically nerdy of all nerds. Rather, we often see the appeals of geek culture described in masculine terms, especially by academics. Guys get good at video games or hacking to satisfy their sense of competition, to gain a sense of mastery to compensate for lack of success in sports and dating. Guys read superhero comics to fantasize about what it would be like to be strong, compensating for their own lack of athleticism in reality. Geeks are now cool because computers skills translate into dollars, and so geeky guys can now compete in a widely-accepted domain of masculine power.

Let’s consider, though, that women might get most of the same things out of geeky pursuits that men get out of them. Does that mean that such “masculine” appeals as competition, mastery, and economic power appeal to some women as much as they do to men? Or does it perhaps mean that the usual “masculine” appeals that get flung around don’t make as big a deal as we think, that both men and women are finding more meaning and value elsewhere in geek culture?

The answer may be, of course, some blend of these. I think it’s safe to say that there’s variety among female geeks just as there is among male geeks. You’ll find some geeks who feel different from other women because they’re more like “one of the guys”; you’ll find others who conceptualize being a “girl geek” (or “geek grrrl”) as distinctly different from being a “geek”; and you’ll find others yet who identify as somewhere in between on this spectrum.

The interviews I’ve conducted with women leaned more toward the first of these, with several comments about those who felt like “just one of the guys” and “grew up a tomboy.” I must admit, though, that this might be an artifact of who was willing to follow up with a random male stranger looking to interview con-goers. Having a web page offers a less pressuring environment, so I’d like to encourage any of you reading to speak up, anonymously or otherwise. One of the most frequent questions I receive is some variant on “Can girls be geeks too?” I have my own set of answers, but I’d sure like to bolster them with yours.

I hadn’t realized this was a wide enough phenomenon to warrant a whole article, but I suppose Doree’s not necessarily the only one covering this angle. Over at Bootleg (in another article from Church!), Trevor Seigler writes of the “Revenge of the Jocks,” suggesting that nerds actually have a lot in common with athletes. I think there’s some conflation here between athletes and sports fans (including the fantasy footballers and statistics junkies Trevor seems to allude to), so not everyone might agree with the opening claim that “every nerd is just a frustrated athlete.”

Nevertheless, the idea is floating around that geeks have moved on to the final frontier of cultural dominance, the one realm once thought denied to us. I suppose that when you’ve got a fit nerd writing books about nerddom (as with Ben Nugent, author of the upcoming American Nerd: The Story of My People, quoted in the Observer article), that may popularize the notion that the nerd of the 21st century can be just as ripped as the jocks.

When I first read that article, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. To some extent, I’m still not. I wonder how much of it is a manufactured phenomenon to make a story (but I mean this with no personal offense to the author—as a kind of reflex, I wonder about that for most “lifestyle” or “culture” magazine articles I read). Still, there’s enough going on between the lines of those people quoted here that it actually reminds me somewhat of my own interviews and research. At the heart of it, it’s really about how the recent mainstream acceptability of geekiness puts some nerds in a position where they feel self-conscious about conforming to certain mainstream standards. They want to fit in, but they don’t want to give up what made them geeky.

This can present conflicts. One woman quoted in the article recalls of a guy she dated: “I was shocked when his shirt came off to reveal washboard abs. I think it was sort of a response to being a total fucking geek in high school and getting picked on a lot.” By the same token, a novelist was quoted as commenting over email that “glam nerds” have “appropriated everything we real nerds ever had, but they look good too. Classic imperialism.” I suppose this implies that to be a real nerd, according to some, you can’t just give up what got you picked on in high school.

The author of the article similarly notes:

The only way for the buff nerd to participate publicly in physical fitness is in some sort of vaguely ironic organized sports effort, like the weekly football game in Prospect Park played by an assortment of Brooklyn literary types. Also acceptable: kickball, dodgeball (particularly at free McCarren Pool indie rock concerts), croquet, pétanque, bocce, ping-pong, four-square or potato sack races. But to take any of these games too seriously is to reveal one’s latent competitiveness, which is seemingly at odds with the values of this cohort; those are jock values!

In the end, this isn’t really flying with some of the commenters. Some just offer terse words of disapproval about the article overall, though one takes the time to elaborate:

So, in summation: Status concious douchebags judge others to be status concious douchebags, want to look like those they judge to be status concious douchebags, but don’t want to look like that type of douchebag, so they create lame meta-justifications for engaging in said douchtivity. As a book-reading,225 bencher(thats right-open pride!), I strap on my +12 armor of hypocrisy, climb one of the tallest towrs in the city, cry, “DOUUCHHEE!!!”,and fling my body from the heights. Great C’thulhu rises from the ocean, the stars go out, and all chant Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

This response seems sincere enough to me, but somehow I suspect that the unabashed bodybuilder/Lovecraftian behind it may be uncommon in his open embrace of both of these worlds.

I think the long and the short of this is that people—geeks and non-geeks alike—are still struggling with the question of whether we’re talking about a culture that is to be admired or derided. Anything that we can apply to this culture that makes it fit with our existing notions of acceptability helps make this inner struggle feel easier to manage. So, okay, geeks are getting buff—maybe it’s cool to be a geek after all. Of course, that’s still probably the exception rather than the rule. But the newsworthiness of a headline like “Americans question their right to judge others” remains dubious.