Arthur Chu explains how there are angry nerds who have built careers on casting themselves as victims.
This is a guest post by Arthur Chu, an actor, comedian, sometime culture blogger and 11-time Jeopardy! champion.
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It’s a truism that the most openly vicious practitioners of any brand of oppression tend not to be the people at the very top level of privilege, but those in the second-to-last row, desperate for someone at the very bottom that they can feel better than.
And when it comes to gender, the men who make up that bottommost row of the male power pyramid are called “nerds,” and the culture they’ve created is what we call “nerd culture.”
I mean, what is a nerd in the classic sense? He’s a guy who’s either too fat or too skinny, but definitely not athletic. He’s often hyperintelligent, but sometimes the opposite (Martin Prince and Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons are arguably both archetypes of “nerds”), but mainly what he is is awkward and weak, lacking confidence, charisma, and command of the room.
He is, in other words, a man who fails at being a man.
Race comes into it too, as well as sexuality and class. After a lot of thinking, I’ve decided our use of “nerd” essentially comes from looking for a word to describe what it’s like to be a straight white dude who isn’t poor and yet, still has a life that kinda sucks. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, straight white middle-class dudes who are “nerds” are people who’ve been negatively judged on the content of their character.
But—not to diminish what LGBT nerds and nerds of color have gone through—gender seems to me the primary issue here. The endless mockery—internal and external— of guys who might be wealthy and brilliant, but can’t get laid. The endless resentment of girls who disdain “Nice Guys.” The narrative of “getting the girl” as validation. The instinctive, knee-jerk resistance to ever letting women into “our” spaces as equals.
All of these are woven into the DNA of “nerd culture,” such as it is. And as the world evolves and more and more women try to change the definition of “nerd” to something they can participate in, the backlash is getting frighteningly extreme.
It’s time for “nerds” to admit the things that make us “nerdy”—social exclusion, unusual interests, atypical learning development—don’t erase the privileges we also have. That LGBTQ people, people of color, and, yes, women are all vulnerable to those things—and have to deal with a pile of other issues as well.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned this year it’s that people get way more defensive of their privilege when they get to cast it as oppression. Angry nerds have built careers, epic narratives, a whole identity on being victims.
And they’re not giving it up without a fight.
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Originally appeared at Ravishly
Read more stories from Ravishly’s special Conversation series on men and feminism here. Have your own perspective to add? Email [email protected].
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Photo: Flickr/Official GDC
For those not in the know, Chu is a tireless anti gamergate activist with ties to Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu and Jon McIntosh as well as the GNAA. Check out his twitter sometime. Very informative.
No thanks. I think I’ll decline.
” Angry nerds have built careers, epic narratives, a whole identity on being victims.”
Oh, god, irony….
Arthur, as a 64-year-old man who didn’t start posting on the Internet until 2009, I’m not exactly well-informed about the culture of your generation. I certainly don’t know a great deal about the online youth subcultures that have developed in the last two decades, especially concerning the “nerd” controversies you address. However, despite my ignorance, I still have a few observations to make. You draw heavily on negative stereotypes. Your assertion that a nerd is a man who fails at being a man is nothing less than rank bigotry on your part. None of us is perfect (including those whom… Read more »
I will agree with you that an individual who comes from a background of abuse is NOT entitled to abuse others or otherwise be a jerk. Well that would require that the writer recognizes that someone came from a background of abuse and he seems pretty intent on denying it as hard as he can. It’s time for “nerds” to admit the things that make us “nerdy”—social exclusion, unusual interests, atypical learning development—don’t erase the privileges we also have. That LGBTQ people, people of color, and, yes, women are all vulnerable to those things—and have to deal with a pile… Read more »
To say that all nerds have privileges is a bit of a stretch. Some obviously have had a harder time than others. (By the way, when I was a teenager, I wasn’t a nerd. I’m obviously sympathetic to them, but I did not deserve the HONOR of being labeled as one because I didn’t apply myself academically.) Dizzy (below) has all but indicated that Arthur is just a troll, which would mean that we’ve wasted our time posting in this thread. Whether he’s a troll or not, he’s just a jerk who obviously has nothing positive to contribute and actually… Read more »
I will agree with you that an individual who comes from a background of abuse is NOT entitled to abuse others or otherwise be a jerk.
Agreed.
People who have been victimized should not let their victimization define their lives.
Agreed.
And also, they should not let other people define the depth of their victimization.
Declaring war on the nerds now are we? So the full male power pyramid is in play. I would advise building bridges, but as they say…whatever. Just be careful what you wish for. Most of the hackers of the world are probably nerds. And we know how much damage they can do now don’t we?