'Fake Geek Girls' Paranoia Is About Male Insecurity, Not Female Duplicity - 0 views
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I wonder if the identity-policing and insularity is simply a caducous part of geek culture, or whether it's not a more integral organ. As long as geek identity is constructed through knowledge—as long as it is essentially defined by who knows the most about a particular collection of purchaseable cultural commodities—then it seems to me that its borders are always going to demand policing. Which means that, given geekdoms' relationship to masculinity and femininity, a lot of that policing is going to be gendered and misogynist.
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"I'm not saying that people shouldn't love the art they love. But I am suggesting that the mean-spiritedness of geek culture-a mean-spiritedness that is often, but by no means always, directed at women-is not an accident. A culture that values knowledge and access above all things is going to be a culture dedicated to hierarchy and to power-to defining who is in and who is out. Such defining involves, and is meant to involve, a good deal of antagonism, score-settling, back-biting, and cruelty. There's not much point in defining yourself as the knower if you cannot define others as those who do not know."