Comments on: More Komedy Korner: “Damn you and your patriarchy!”

By: subgrrl8

subgrrl8 — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 10:11:47 +0000

I’m down with Metamanda’s point.

I live with my partner, and he’s a geek. He works with computers for a living! He games- frequently! He also likes to bowl, brews his own beer, makes a mean dinner/breakfast, is way more anal retentive about washing floors than I am, and always ALWAYS a hit at parties. He’s feminist, he’s anti-Bush, he’s down with our possibly emigrating sometime soon to fairer political climes. He’s caring, he’s sensitive, he’s generous, he’s sexy- he has a big belly and a bigger laugh. He’s my bear, my boo, my Mr. Sexypants, and my best friend- all in one geeky geeky package.

I’ve met women and men in all alternative lifestyles that were/are misogynistic, don’t ever question their privilege, and kowtow to the patriarchy. Arrogant assholes? You betcha! But- precisely *because* of their hobbies? Nope. Wrong answer.

I am not a geek, I don’t think. I am going to school to be a hair dresser, and I’ve been struggling with that myself because as a feminist I’m anti-the-fashion-industry. But I’ve also been giving friends haircuts for a long time now, and I’ve found it rewarding to give someone a fantastic new ‘do. It also uses my creativity, which office jobs certainly don’t- I’m one-a-those-there Art Major in college types (Magna cum Laude even).

But we get along way better than I’ve ever gotten along with anyone, and for that, I love my geek. (Tangent: I hate that the “geek women” shirts are always along the lines of “I love my geek!” rather than “I know the HTML!” Women are geeks too! I work with many of them- at a local ISP. How I got into being a Guardian Of Teh Internets is another long story.)

By: Twiss

Twiss — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:53:43 +0000

Having actually made it all the way through the long and winding road of this thread, with its many switchbacks, and trying to avoid the uneasy feeling that all this categorizing hints strongly of retaliatory stereotyping, I can only add a couple of quotations re feminine roles in patriarchy:

“You won’t let me hold the door open for you? I’ll slam it on your hand!!” Flo Kennedy defining chivalry.

“You know I can’t come unless you play dead!” Man astride woman in Playboy cartoon.

By: The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker

The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:56:38 +0000

Good point, H. Funny, I was just musing about this the other day. I’ve been involved with “Alpha” and “Beta” male types (by our society’s standards) and it’s actually the betas that get so bent out of shape about women needing to act like the sub for them. The REAL “Alphas” in my life couldn’t give a shit because they knew they’d already won the pecker contest and had nothing to prove.

By: Mad Love to the Squares in My Social Circle « Hedonistic Pleasureseeker

Mad Love to the Squares in My Social Circle « Hedonistic Pleasureseeker — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:25:51 +0000

[...] Twisty’s A Geeks Story, inspired by the thread on her previous More Komedy Korner: Damn You and Your Patriarchy! post, embiggened my own geeky spirit: It is an asset, not to mention a joy and a relief, to be unencumbered by social skills. What are they, after all, but a set of arbitrarily-conceived customs meant to sort people into classes, the more conveniently to be dominated by those whose mastery of the arbitrary customs is superior? Iâ€™m sure I need not point out to you, O my fellow blamers, that the stability of patriarchy as a system of social control relies on the mass assimilation of these customs. Customs are the currency of culture; the more you absorb, the greater your rewards. But closer examination reveals them to be nothing but taboos and commandments designed to restrict human conduct to a finite set of ritualized mannerisms constrained by foul ideals of deference, appeasement, and conformity. [...]

By: H

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:59:37 +0000

Why are we surprised that geek men can be sexist/misogynist/unbelievably fucking tiresome? They’re men, not bloody kittens. They’re also men who have for the most part spent their entire adolescences at the bottom on the male pecking order, leading many of them to develop compensatory and grandiose ideas of self that don’t stand the presence of any sharp, puncturing thing; like the mind of a clear-thinking female who doesn’t act, speak or dress like a ninny in order to win their approval.

Of course, not all male geeks are misogynists and not all misogynists are male geeks. But there’s a lot of crossover, as nearly all misogynists are men. They live on the same planet and consume the same sexist shit and patriachal crap about femininity as any other man and many of them, despite their much-vaunted intellects, don’t have the insight or educations to be able to dissect or challenge those ideas and of course, have no motivation for doing so.

By: Bird

Bird — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:40:34 +0000

If he thought for a minute that you were smarter AND better-looking AND more successful than him, he would not want to be this with you.

Hmmm. Well, sometimes they do think you are smarter than them and they still want you. Then they beat you up. Or at least the alcoholic artist who said I was “so creative!” did. Some guys don’t mind if you’re smarter as long as they can still give you a black eye. I’m not the only smart woman I know who’s had this happen to her, either.

Now, why do smart women let abuse like that happen to them? If I figure that out, I’ll let you know.

By: sojourness

sojourness — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 12:45:46 +0000

Hey – I’ve nominated you for a Thinking Blogger Award. It’s here:

http://sojourness.blogspot.com/2007/03/yay.html

By: edith

edith — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 07:02:26 +0000

Smart men like smart women — to a point. What is that point? That point when these men think, deep down, that the women they’re dating are SMARTER. So chin up. If you’re in a great, loving relationship with a smart man, chances are, he believes he is smarter than you. Deeeep down. Or fine, “as smart as.” If he thought for a minute that you were smarter AND better-looking AND more successful than him, he would not want to be this with you. I have yet to find an exception to this. If you think you’re living it, maybe you are, but you’re probably not.

By: Tally Cola

Tally Cola — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 05:18:10 +0000

I thought nerds exceeded in all studies, while geeks only exceeded in a few…

(Assuming, of course, that nobody matures beyond their high school years!)

By: octopod

octopod — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:09:05 +0000

So my cultural context is a bit weird; I’m at a very small, insular, and high-profile sci-tech school. People who come here have been particularly winnowed out of the general populace for being really smart, unconventional thinkers, so no-one except the *real* standouts ever gets anyone else saying “Wow, you’re smart”, and asking about the details of someone’s research — and asking intelligent questions about them, even if it’s outside your field! — are pretty much par for the course. This, as one might assume, plays hell with all the dynamics described in this post, ’cause you don’t date a classmate unless you like smart fuckers and no-one I know here is willing to dumb themselves down for anyone or anything; really, we’re probably all too much dependent upon our own cleverness for an identity to do that.
Myself, now, I have to admit that I’ve got Old-Fashioned Gentleman tendencies, and am frequently a sucker for that sort of childish befuddlement at the ways of the world — this is why I have tended to date math majors, who are so often absolutely *adorable* in their confusion. This, however, is somewhat different, both because of the all-nerd cultural context and because of my sex. This has drawn confusion from previous lovers who said things like “With you I feel like I’m in a same-sex relationship” and “I can’t help thinking this works because we both like girls” (both the previous quoted being male, at least in the technical sense).
On the other hand, I’ve heard from guys here who *won’t* date within the community (making it easier for the rest of us — there’s a gender imbalance here due to it being a science school), and there are quips floating around about this being somewhere that “the men are men and the women are too”, and suchlike. I’ve found, however, that a lot of people here sensibly reject the gender binary, like the bright folks they are. But yeah, there are some dudes here with whom I’d never even consider making it because of their attitudes about gender — however, same dudes AFAIK don’t even see me as a woman, which is actually pretty OK because I don’t either, most of the time. This whole gender binary — bah. Also such types are generally turned off by my general air of butchness, I hear, as well as the fact that I’ve never hooked up with a guy whom I didn’t think I could beat in an unfair fight.
My current adorable nerdy love-interest appears to be my brain double, which is occasionally spooky but generally awesome, and there’s definitely something to be said for a relationship that *starts* because of how well you can communicate. He’s also way more “feminine” than I am, by any account, which works nicely with my OFG-ness. We’ll see how this works out, but he seems remarkably free of patriarchal bullshit even as Techers go, and conscious of that which he hasn’t gotten rid of. I’m trying to avoid the “not-my-Nigel” syndrome here, but in this case I actually think I’m being intellectually honest about it. It’s been two months. I guess we’ll see.