I
need to admit right up front that I got the inspiration for the title
from an excellent article by Laurie Penney of the British magazine
The New Statesman: “On Nerd Entitlement”. In this piece she
skewers the notion that your average white male nerd is the outcast
of today's society. In fact, according to her thesis, since Silicon
Valley is essentially run by white male nerds and even the biggest
jock is able to name Marvel superheroes, nerdiness is no longer the
social hindrance it once was. Unless of course, you have the added
burdens of everyday sexism and racism thrown into the mix. To Penny,
young women interested in the same nerdy pleasures as their male
counterparts deal with all of these issues at once, while the men get
to revel in a culture that increasingly accepts them. (There's a
whole lot more to her article, where she delves into slut shaming,
the construction of masculinity etc. I'm only going to focus on nerd
culture here but I suggest that you take a look at the whole article,
it's a good read.)
As
someone who considers himself a member of nerd culture, this thesis
was hard to accept at first; especially since I certainly did not
feel part of a privileged male elite culture when dealing with
disdain for my interests in junior school. However, as I grow older
and (hopefully) more thoughtful/mature, this thesis of nerd male
entitlement does hold a lot of water. What hammered all of this home
for me was the 2014“Gamergate” controversy. I'm not going to sum
up Gamergate entirely here, as much as been written online about
this, but essentially it revolved around an amorphous group of online
culture warriors issuing very serious and disturbing online threats
to several women either involved in the gaming industry or cultural
critics focusing on the portrayal of women in video games. For a
group of people, in their own estimation, on the margins of society,
the male nerds involved in Gamergate come across as tribal and
defensive in their attempts to browbeat women out of the industry.
This
brings me to the major point of this article; what's going on with
'nerdiness' right now? Gamergate is not the only manifestation of a
seemingly vicious culture war within geekdom, but it's apparent that
the tendency of nerd culture to form exclusive clubhouses is
increasingly challenged both by the changing makeup of the community
itself and the mainstream success of the culture in recent years.
These are the trends that I'm going to discuss here.
The
'clubhouse' mentality, to my mind, comes from the very beginnings of
what we now know as nerd culture. When speaking to self identified
geeks who grew up in the late 70's and throughout most of the 80's or
90's, one hears stories of their interests being belittled as
childish and stereotypes of their utter social awkwardness being
thrown in their faces. In this sense, forming literal (for example
the stereotypical comic shop that makes no effort to help the
uninitiated customer) or metaphorical (who gets to be called a 'real
nerd') clubhouses has for a long time been a defense mechanism. I'd
say that in some cases this can be a very positive thing as it
provided a safe place where individuals were free to self actualize
and enjoy the media and activities that made them happy. More
recently, with openly nerdy pastimes becoming increasingly celebrated
in mainstream popular culture and a broader demographic entering into
games, comics and other such staples it would seem on the surface
that the clubhouse mentality has no further reason to exist and the
closeted nerds can take their rightful place in society. Instead of
this utopia, we got Gamergate. Still, this backlash shouldn't be so
surprising. As I said above, while there was genuine pain that caused
the clubhouse mentality to form in the first place, within the walls
there was a sense of shared belonging and camaraderie. This means
that many clubhouse 'members' paradoxically feel threatened by the
mainstreaming of nerd culture. All the pain meted out at the hands of
the cool kids hurts all the more when those selfsame cool kids seem
to steal the very things that gave one some peace. As we know, this
narrative does not tell the whole story but it does explain the
reluctance of existing nerd culture to embrace mainstreaming.
However,
Laurie Penney's article also correctly points out that that self
defined nerdy women, although suffering from the same pain of
exclusion, also frequently ended up excluded from the clubhouse.
Unfortunately, much of the recent nerd backlash has taken a decidedly
anti feminist trend; proving that even in disadvantaged groups,
hierarchies exist; especially the enduring falsehood of gender
stratification.
Finally,
we have the issue of misplaced nostalgia. New entrants to any culture
can find themselves accused of not understanding and even destroying
some form of essential goodness and this sentiment is easily seen in
today's fandom. This kind of elitism among geeks is rampant; a good
example of which was the widespread panning of the latest Ninja
Turtles movie, as if a pretty
mediocre 80's cartoon is too perfect to reboot in any fashion. In
addition to a feeling of cherished clubhouses under threat and some
truly despicable anti feminist ranting, misplaced nostalgia is the
third major trend I see in the evolving nerd culture of 2015.
In spite of all this negativity, backlash and showcases of the dark
side of humanity through Gamergate; I do see a bright future for nerd
culture overall. The very broadening of the base which has provoked
these backlashes can only be a good thing, as any culture tends to be
enriched when it's horizons are expanded. What's more, the
mainstreaming of this culture offers opportunities for formerly
disparaged and disadvantaged young people, both men and women, to
have their interests respected by society at large. This can only be
a positive thing; if the participants in Gamergate had not felt a
need to be so defensive, would we have seen such a backlash? Now, in
all fairness, this specific event was not strictly related to gamers
and has a lot to do with sexism and online harassment. However, a
nerd culture that is welcoming and open can go a long way to reducing
these instances where traditional masculinity rears it's ugly head..
When everyone has the opportunity to express their interests in
reading, gaming, writing speculative fiction, fandom etc, we have the
opportunity to change the very nature of gender roles and what it
means to express oneself within them.
Recently, here in Edmonton I had the opportunity to attend Mini Spec:
basically a series of talks on nerd related topics that serves as a
opening event to one of the conventions held in the city. The event
took place at a comic shop, traditionally one of the physical
'clubhouses' guarded by young male nerds. However, this was not your
average comic shop. The two owners performed one of the keynote
speeches and the topic was their efforts to open up to and welcome
the changes in the culture and provide a space for self expression
free from angry backlash. They also mentioned other spaces in the
province of Alberta doing the same thing. Of course, these efforts
are just limited to Western Canada but many mainstream news outlets,
such as the Guardian, also have drawn attention to the fact that the
recent San Diego Comic Con saw near gender parity among attendees and
some watchers of the culture argue that fandom as a whole may be
majority female within a decade or so.
The whole point of this post is not to diminish the negative effects
of Gamergate and online harassment in general. Rather, it's an
attempt to come to grips with why such backlashes are happening and
point out through a few examples that overall, geek culture is
heading in a very positive direction and it's expansion and
acceptance into the mainstream can have positive effects on society
as a whole because of an expanded space for personal self expression.
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