Since bringing my copy of She’s Such A Geek to work, I’ve been continuously asked to define the differences between geek, nerd and dork.
One fellow labmate insists vigorously that she’s not a geek because she’s too aware of pop culture and too busy filling the persona of the devil-on-your-shoulder. (Frankly, I don’t see a conflict between this and geekery at all).
Where do you draw the lines between nerd and geek? Are they one and the same?
Several days ago on this blog Ellen Spertus suggested several subversive gifts for girls, and several commenters offered other good ideas as well.
I’d like to add a few more suggestions:
Fun, molecularly-inspired jewelry and clothing can be found at Made With Molecules. What becomes a female geek better than a pair of estrogen earrings?
I’m neither an astronomer nor a biologist, but I can’t decide whether Bathsheba Grossman’s science crystal of the large scale model of the universe or DNA polymerase is cooler. If you can’t make up your mind yet, just buy a couple of DNA keychains as stocking stuffers and get a Julia set as a birthday present.
Since I’m actually more of a nerd than a geek (I tried to be a true geek, I really did, but I had to come out of the closet and admit that I actually prefer stories to physics equations), I really enjoy books that blend science with amazing stories and captivating artwork. One wonderful book that I’ve seen is A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World’s Extinct Animals, full of gorgeous illustrations and brief stories about animals that once roamed the earth but are no more. Not the cheeriest thought, of course, but are we not doomed to repeat the mistakes if we do not read the cautionary tales? On a cheerier note, though, the same author-illustrator team published another book of esoterica about the animal world that lives today: Astonishing Animals: Extraordinary Creatures and the Fascinating Worlds They Inhabit. I’ve not seen this book myself, but it sounds delightful, and even with a bit of of a challenge: they’ve made up one of the creatures, and try to guess which one!
That last topic reminds me of the monkey-picked tea that we gave as a gift once from a British purveyor of exotic foodstuffs called Edible. Gifts here would not be for the picky eater, unless she’s Wednesday Addams.
And for Christmas next July: SF Bay Area author Wendy Lichtman has written a story for children in which the female protagonist uses math to solve a mystery, Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra. I’ve not read it myself, but my writing group instructor who is a protege of Lichtman says that she totally got into the story despite being math-phobic. Maybe this can be our way of roping girls into the female geek lifestyle….
For the past three weeks, I’ve been going through a lot of emotional upheavals. I’m in the verge of a break up with a man I’ve been with since high school, I’m being rejected by the girls I’ve started an anime club with this year and on top of that, I’m in the middle of Fall finals.
I’ve been questioning who I am because of all this. However, despite the fact that I’ve been feeling like utter crap lately, I’ve found my solstice in my geekiness. I felt like this was the only thing that hasn’t changed about me and the only thing that hasn’t been questioned. I just received my copy of the book and it really reminded me of this. I’m still the geeky gamer girl and I’m so happy to read about other women who are just as geeky, if not more.
So, I’ve been immersing myself into gaming as a means of empowerment. I just beat the first boss in the game, Okami, for the Playstation 2 and I felt so much better because I just overcame a challenge. Beating small challenges made tackling much bigger ones more comfortable, like writing a 12 page paper or dealing with a break up. When bigger challenges become too much, I go back to my games. I’ve come to see this as my geeky therapy- letting out frustrations on demons in Okami, I think, is better than taking the anger out on another person or a good piece of furniture.
My geekiness has kept me afloat through some rough times. Now, I really want to work harder to make my geekiness the best it can be—mastering my games and becoming a successful web designer. I’m even thinking of starting a female gamers club on campus or at least, finding a group of girl gamers around UCLA to play with. Hopefully, somewhere in this process, I can reaffirm who I am and not feel so beaten down.
Does anyone else have a form of geeky therapy?
An article printed last year in The Observer (London) recently surfaced on a UK scifi blog. The author, who seems to think that science fiction is comprised entirely of Star Trek and Star Wars, says there are more male than female SF fans because men like “order” and science fiction is orderly:
The appeal of the sci fi system to the ordinary fan lies not just in its orderliness, but in its finiteness. You can watch every single episode of Star Trek and learn everything there is to know about it. You can contain an entire universe in lists and DVDs. The kind of universe that is knowable by heart is much less threatening than the real universe outside, off screen, full of unpredictability and disorder.
It is my contention that the reassurance offered by a system of order, internal coherence, completability and collectability – a universe that can be put in alphabetical order – is particularly appealing to men . . .
Whether by social conditioning or nature women seem better able to adjust in adulthood to the irksome imperfection of the universe . . . I can only speak for my own gender, and I can reveal that men are mostly dragged kicking and screaming into grown-upness. They never give up the secret hope that complexity will go away and leave them alone. They take refuge in trivia because facts, nice orderly facts, are psychological balm to the friction burns inflicted by contact with real life.
There’s the old chestnut that men hate being grown-ups, but somehow women don’t mind it. Then there’s the extreme misunderstanding of science fiction itself, a genre which is full of ambiguity, plotholes, infinite complexity, and disorder. What’s amusing is that this guy is really talking about world-building, a practice more often associated with fantasy than science fiction. And fantasy is a genre full of extremely successful female authors.
Why men love SF [via SciFi.UK.com]
I’ve had Valerie D’Orazio’s blog Occasional Superheroine in my blog folder as a live bookmark for the past few months. Unfortunately, the RSS feed hasn’t worked in ages, so I totally missed the fact that she had erased all the previous blog entries and replaced it with a new, extremely revealing, story of her life in comics. An incredibly difficult life, judging from the account in her blog.
The main shocker in D’Orazio’s online memoir is the fact that the rape, and later murder, of longstanding DC Comics character Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis came not from the needs of a groundbreaking story, but rather from the DC editorial honchos sitting down and saying “we need a rape” to boost sales. There’s a lot of stuff you can excuse on the basis of good storytelling, but the picture changes when it’s clearly just a publicity stunt. On the other hand, D’Orazio’s blog is being discussed in the comics blogosphere as an indictment of the way the male-dominated comics industry treats female employees. Having read the entire thing, from bottom to top, I didn’t really see a clearcut indictment, partly because the details (and order) of events isn’t always very clear. She does, however, offer a pretty grim view of the world of male comic book writers, editors and fans. Definitely worth reading, although it will probably leave you as depressed as it left me.
Rejoice! The Seventh Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction & Fantasy Fans is online now. In a nutshell, it’s just a link to all the awesome feminist posts that people have been making about SF, fantasy and other speculative genres over the past month. Including posts on Batman, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, manga, yaoi, video games and plain old books too. Check it out!
As the proud aunt of 6 nieces (and 3 nephews), ranging in age from 7 to 11 and in attitude from tomboy to girly, I devote much thought to picking out presents, especially at this time of year. Some of my recent ideas:
Something I’ve considered but haven’t given is the Hary Potter Nimbus 2000 electronic broomstick, whose pulsing vibrations make it very popular with teenage girls but not with the anti-feminist group Concerned Women for America. Maybe when they’re older.
I’d welcome reader suggestions of other gifts to foster my nieces’ education and empowerment.
This blog is the perfect place for me to share this with you. I am probably the only person in the world who has a bra made from a voltmeter-ammeter panel.
Last year I was walking through the Castro neighborhood near where I live in San Francisco when I came upon an estate sale. Many of the belongings I found inside the house leaned toward the campy animal print ilk, but on the mantelpiece were three metallic brassiere sculptures. The mechanical one with propellers on the nipples was already spoken for, but to my delight I was able to take away this electrically-themed beauty for a hundred bucks.
Too bad the artist didn’t sign her (or his) work. Most guests to our house notice and comment on it, though, so it clearly makes a statement!
Does anyone else have girl-geek-themed artwork or artifacts? Or imagery that confounds received notions in our culture about how girls and women are supposed to relate to science, technology, and other geeky fields? Please share!
A new study by Oxygen Media shows that men and women have similar habits when it comes to shopping for technology. But the study ascribes some fairly stereotypical reasons for why women spend so much money on technology. Women are using tech to — you guessed it — stay “connected” to their friends and loved ones. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
The study, aptly titled Girls Gone Wired, presents some insights into the way women react with technology — including their buying habits. According to Karen Ramspacher, vice president of research at Oxygen, men and women are more alike than different when it comes to technology. But they have different motivations that spur the use of various technology devices. While men are often attracted to technology for technology’s sake, women see technology as a means to an end. It’s the function of the devices they crave, not necessarily the fun. While a greater percentage of men use technology for fun pursuits — such as listening to music and watching videos, women are more likely to shop online, edit digital pictures and access health services online.
It seems pretty obvious that Ramspacher is imposing her own reading on the study’s findings, especially when she says at one point that women use Digital Video Recorders — but they only use them to watch shows that they will discuss with their friends. Women aren’t allowed to like technology because it’s cool, everything has to be communal. Extra dumbosity points for categorizing women tech consumers using terms like “Techs in the City,” “Techcessorizers” and “Mrs. Doubtwires.”
It’s a daily morning ritual between First Cup of Coffee and Brushing Teeth: Check Livejournal Friends List. When habits get thrown off-kilter, a kind of disconnect develops. It’s like an older pair of glasses you keep around as your spare. When you put them on, they still bring everything into focus, but you get a little dizzy trying to adjust.
Livejournal is down (or running extremely sluggish) at the moment, and the void it left in my life is tremendous. Where will I read my RSS feeds? Where will I find the latest fanfics? Where will I complain about my NaNoWriMo wordcount? What will I do while my main social network is missing?
Users flee to other networks in the interim. We have our usernames reserved on GreatestJournal and JournalFen and even Vox, and you know what? It’s not the same. The vibes of online community and discussion and yes, even the flame wars and the wank don’t feel right on these other sites. And that’s because the communities and the friendships were forged on LiveJournal. The people and the source code might be the same, but not the URL. For some, that’s enough to make any other site a shallow knockoff of the original.
Users complain about LiveJournal “selling out,” and yet when crashes occur, we miss it. Livejournal is not only a major social network; it’s a measure of Intarwebs Zeitgeist, of what’s on the minds of thousands of people at a particular time. Load up a random community’s friends page and take a snapshot of the thoughts and lives of dozens. Ultimately, it’s voyeurism. Unfortunately, I’m addicted. And desperately waiting until those guard monkeys report no problems.