So it’s taken me a week or so to decide how to respond to the less-than-positive review of She’s Such A Geek in the San Francisco Chronicle that I found via a Google News search a week or so back. It was clear to me then that the reviewer doesn’t get the book, but I wanted to understand exactly how.
The reviewer seems to be bothered that she can’t figure out the audience for the book:
Is it women—people—like me, users of technology who love their camera phones, Wi-Fi connections and “Battlestar Galactica,” but whose eyes glaze over at terms like Bose-Einstein condensate, sysadmin and RSS? Or is it women—people—unlike me, who are in an elite scientific stratum, be it biotech research or video game development, and are the choir to which these writers are preaching?
But this is setting up a false dichotomy. The first group of people is basically mainstream middle-class America, who get to enjoy the fruits of consumer technology that have been made so user-friendly that they require no particular technical expertise to operate. And science fiction shows on television are nothing new—I remember the first “Battlestar Galactica” from network TV over 25 years ago. In other words, this is not a very restrictive group.
The second group is called “an elite scientific stratum” and “the choir to which these writers are preaching.” Well, yes, that may be true as far as it goes—I’m certainly part of that club!—but the reviewer neglects to consider that there may be a whole continuum between the mainstream culture that likes its gadgets and the high priestesses of geekery. There may be girls who like science or technology or games or fantasy who feel a lot of pressure to hide those interests, and the book could show them that they’re not weird (or maybe we are weird, but at least they’re not alone in those interests). It could show them that being a female geek isn’t as simple as just having geeky interests, that some parts of society feel threatened by these differences.
The book could also be for female geeks’ partners or parents or siblings or teachers or anyone who wants to make the bit of effort that it takes to understand what it’s like to see the world through a couple dozen pairs of eyes that might have different perspectives on the world, having transgressed so many opposing cultural forces to get to where they wanted to be. Of course not all of the essays will be equally eloquent—this is a book of female geeks, not all of whom are professional journalists and writers—but they all speak truths about how gender has impacted their experiences in realms that many people—and particularly women—never venture into.
The reviewer objects to the use of lingo in many of the essays, saying that it threw her out of the story, and she ends on this note:
But why keep it a secret? If this book is meant to open the eyes and hearts of non-female geeks to female geeks, don’t shut them out with an overload of techie talk.
But you know, isn’t that part of what makes us geeks? That we made the effort to learn the ins and outs of arcane subjects, and that we delight in mastering this, and now we’re sharing that delight with you? Don’t you hear that delight in our stories?
I mean, how are we supposed to describe what it’s like being in a technical world if we’re not supposed to use technical terms? That’s how we talk in our lives, and we’re giving you the privilege of peeking into this world through our eyes. But if you’re a reader who has never felt misunderstood by your peers, never felt the need to disappear into a fantasy world, never was drawn to science for its sheer beauty (or because it made a hell of a lot more sense than people and their mind games do), or has never tried to decipher garbled instructions for downloaded shareware, then very likely She’s Such a Geek will not speak to you.
But for everyone else who wants a snapshot of the culture of women in male-dominated fields in the early years of the 21st century, our book is documentary evidence. I hope that in another generation our culture will be so conversant in science and so tech-savvy that it will seem positively quaint that we even published a book about anything so banal as women being geeks.
Obviously this reviewer did not get “it.” It seems to me that one of the points of the book (which I’m enjoying immensely) is to urge women not to dismiss science and techie stuff as “too hard,” like Barbie, just because it has big words you may not understand at first. Every field, from finance to literary criticism, has its own jargon, and to dismiss science simply on the basis of its nomenclature (look it up, people) is willful ignorance. And it gives women a reputation as intellectual lightweights in the sciences. If you want equality and parity, be serious. Make an effort. And don’t sell yourselves short.
Sadly, I think a lot of this reviewer’s response was plain anti-intellectualism, which is rampant here in the US.
Actually, I thought this was a really positive review, with just one quibble. And ideally, we hope the book will appeal to all women who are interested in science, technology, geeky culture or “other nerdy stuff.” I was sad that the jargon put the reviewer off, but it didn’t seem as though it kept her from enjoying the book. I’ve heard this same complaint from only one other person so far. Annalee and I definitely made a conscious decision to keep all the relevant jargon in the book, and there wasn’t really any *irrelevant* jargon to begin with.
I think that’s one of the aspects of geek culture — both male and female — that puts off some non-geeks. We basically had a choice between being true to geek culture, or turning off some people.
But anyway, I didn’t think it was a bad review. If that’s the most negative write-up the book gets, we’re in awesome shape. In particular, if someone might have been interested in the book but hadn’t heard of it, they would probably be motivated to buy it after reading that review. Someone who would never have bought the book anyway probably still wouldn’t after reading that review. Which means the reviewer did her job well.
I agree with Charlie — I thought this was a mixed review that was basically positive. It did irk me that the author thought “HTML” was too technical for ordinary readers, but maybe she’s right. Whatever.
When we were in the editing stages of the book, we talked with our editor about the technical language and debated whether it should be less technical or not. In the end, Charlie and I prevailed on Seal to retain the technical language, though we did throw in a lot of parenthetical definitions of uncommon terms. We’re really glad that Seal stuck by us and let us be as geeky as we wanted to be!
One reason we fought to keep some of the essays technical was because we were sick of books that cast women as non-technical. As Kristin points out, we are geeks and this is what it’s like to be us. If we can inspire more women to be openly geeky, then I think we’ve done our jobs.
Thanks for educating me—maybe I’m just too close to the book. I just want everyone to love it. Is that so much to ask?
I think the reviewer was right to address that point. I bought your book for one of my friends, who is the brilliant MIT sort of geek, because I knew she was in your intended audience. I haven’t bought it for myself yet because I am acutely aware that I might not be the right kind of clever.
I am that horrible woman who simply does not “get” math and my grasp of the hard sciences is extremely tenuous. I don’t brag about it as a mark of femininity, rather I find it sad and somewhat embarrassing, and reading this blog regularly reminds me that I am letting my side down. I don’t know what brought about the disconnect, but it is there, it is profound, and I haven’t been able to overcome it yet.
However, I am adept with my computer, I love tech gadgets, and I can discuss science fiction minutiae endlessly. I consider myself a geek, but maybe not by your standards. I’m a little relieved to know that someone else had a similar hesitation.
Hi Nina, it’s certainly not our intent to make anyone feel guilty or inadequate! And it certainly sounds like you’re our kind of geek. Our book really isn’t that intimidating or technical, and it doesn’t stigmatize anyone as “not geeky enough.” It just occasionally has people using terms like “sysadmin” without defining them. But we were careful to make sure all the jargon is clear in the context, and not just gratuitous. I hope your friend enjoys it!
Nina, I appreciate your honesty. You should know first of all that I’m someone who feels like I’m “letting my side down,” too. I have a Ph.D. in physics and I’m not using it in the standard “in the lab” way that I thought I would be doing when I started graduate school. I didn’t end up becoming a physics professor and female role model like once upon a time I wanted to be. My essay is about examining what happened to make me fall out of love with that path and sort out all of the baggage relating to that, including the possibility that math and science was perhaps forced upon me as a direction that wasn’t really authentic to me.
Know that half of the essays in this book have to do with gaming, science fiction, and fantasy. And those writers for the most part are not hardcore scientists. Morgan Romine majored in anthropology. Quinn Norton is a journalist. Devin Grayson majored in English. And there are more. You have plenty of company in this book! I’m not a gamer or science fiction geek myself, and I encountered just as much unfamiliar material in their essays as they may have in mine or the other scientists’ pieces. I mean, I didn’t write up the Q & A after the Jan. 25 readings because most of it related to sci-fi stories that I haven’t read and shows that I’ve never watched on TV, so I didn’t know what the heck was going on! I’m an outsider there!
As for the review, I just thought that picking up a few new words of technical terminology shouldn’t be this insurmountable barrier for a reader curious to peek into this world. To refer to the reviewer’s first quote, so maybe you don’t need to know or care what a Bose-Einstein condensate is—you’ll never encounter one on the street, trust me—but if you’re reading blogs, you likely already know what RSS is. And since you’re adept with your computer, you are probably dealing with “sysadmin” issues all the time. The openness to at least engage with some of the geek’s vocabulary is all that is required.
And please don’t feel like you are letting your side down re the math and science. (Believe me, it’s not like the life of a scientist is all that it’s cracked up to be from the outside.) Do what does motivate you and be a proud and happy female geek in the world. And keep reading and contributing to the dialogue here!
A central issue here seems to be whether one’s geekery manifests itself into one’s career — or more specifically, one’s career as a woman in a post-2nd-wave feminist society.
A lot of women think they don’t “count” as geeks because they are not in geeky careers — the irony being, of course, that geekery is so often introspective, private, and not socially-driven. Young women don’t play D&D to ascend into careers as scientists. They play it because they’re geeks. Some geeks are also scientists.
I think the review was positive but misguided, chiefly by the reviewer’s lack of understanding that a fierce curiosity is central to geekdom. It was anti-intellectual, and correspondingly it placed more value in material tech than brain tech — phone cameras, wifi, and the space channel? Everyone has those! Geekdom is a way of thinking, not a way of spending! I wonder if consumers of the first polaroids, cordless phones, and the like were so bold.
Yeah, Delire has it exactly about the material tech! Merely using Wifi or a camera phone does not make one a geek. Figuring out how to hack the camera phone in order to make it control the Wifi—now that’s somewhere that most people don’t dare to venture! That’s a geek! (Not my path, incidentally, but as Delire said, there are many paths to geekdom.)