Hey, everyone, it’s been a while! I have been dealing with assorted Brain Issues, and I’ll probably be flaky as shit for a while because sometimes even remembering to eat is difficult and writing a post is damn near impossible. But when I can I’ll post.
That said! Today I have Thoughts on Geeks, prompted by this post by brilliant fantasy author Nick Mamatas, which I mostly just link because it is the trollziest thing ever and I fully expect the comments to feud with each other for days over it. (Side note: if you like Beat poetry or Lovecraft, and you haven’t read Move Under Ground, do so. It’s available for free online! </plug>)
First off: I agree with Nick that being a geek is not an axis of oppression. You can make even less of an argument for it than you can for kinkiness or veganism, neither of which is probably an axis of oppression either. Geeks do not have a wage gap. Geeks do not experience noticeably worse life outcomes. No one has ever been fired from their job for being openly geeky. You do not have to hide your pony figurines and Marvel comics for fear of being arrested. No one has been murdered for being a geek.
However, just because geekiness is not an oppression, does not mean that anti-geek sentiment is not a product of the kyriarchy at all. Specifically, anti-geek sentiment is related to both ableism and sexism.
Ableism is the simplest. Look, when someone wants to insult a geek, what’s the first word they always fucking reach for? “Aspie.”
Look, many (perhaps most) geeks are neurotypical, the same way that most people are neurotypical. However, we have a fairly substantial concentration of people with certain neurodivergences– most notably, social phobia and the autism spectrum. So when people try to insult geeks… well, a whole lot of times, they end up insulting us for being socially phobic and autistic. Hell, I’ve been called autistic loads of times, apparently because every socially awkward and obsessive geek secretly has Asperger’s, no matter how badly they fit the criteria.
This is multiple levels of fucked. First of all, social phobia and autism are not insults. Social phobia is, if it causes distress, an illness; the autism spectrum is simply a somewhat uncommon (although stigmatized) form of ordinary human variation. Neither of them makes one a bad person or in any way worthy of being used as an insult. Second, it’s simply bizarre to equate “neurotypical geek” with “neurodivergent”: it trivializes disability, it spreads misinformation about what these neurodivergences actually looks like, and it’s simply idiotic. Finally, using these conditions as insults is not only ableist as fuck but also encourages stigma against them.
But anti-geek sentiment can also be really fucking sexist. I mean, think about the negative stereotype of a geeky dude: he lives in his mom’s basement, he can’t get laid, and he’s a man-child. So… he has failed at being a success the way real men are supposed to be, he’s not sexually successful the way men are supposed to be, and he’s failed to “man up” and be a real man. (Gender studies students of the future! Someone should write a thesis about why “woman up” is not a concept.)
The anti-geek-girl sentiment is a little harder to catalog, mostly because people who hate geeks haven’t caught up with the times and still mostly think that geek girls don’t exist. (Yeah, fuck you.) But let’s see here… they’re fat, they’re ugly, they write creepy porn, and they can’t find real love and so escape into fanfic. So they’ve failed at performing for the male gaze, they’re openly sexual AND not performing for the male gaze, and they’ve failed at finding Twoo Wuv the way women are supposed to.
Geeks in general are not very good at performing our assigned genders (although many individual geeks are femme or butch as fuck); it’s anyone’s guess why, although I think the primary culprits are “but wearing makeup/playing sports takes away from vitally important reading/science/Magic time!”, “well, the normal people don’t like me, guess I’ll be a geek” and “but adhering to those gender roles is what those people do.” So of course that’s a cause of anti-geek insults. (It’s interesting to note that, while geeks tend to be less good at their genders, they aren’t particularly feminine either– it’s relatively rare that someone says “geeks are all fags/dykes,” outside of 4Chan, which uses ‘fag’ as punctuation.)
Finally, a lot of times anti-geek thoughts are just silly. Why do you care if someone spends all their free time talking about video games or inventing imaginary languages or writing rage comics, if it makes them happy and doesn’t hurt anyone any? Honestly, this whole “you must be doing something important or it is worthless!” thought process needs to die a hot fiery death. Joy is enough of a justification.
Agh! I hate it when people call geeks autistic! Not just because it’s using our condition as an insult and communicating that it’s bad to be us, but because it perpetuates this idiotic stereotype that autistics all behave the same way! I’m a musician, actor, activist and organizer for multiple social movements, outdoorsman, and my degree is in environmental studies, not computer science, and everyone assumes that I can’t be an Aspie- so much so that when I disclose it, to try to explain it, people tell me I’m lying, because God forbid an Aspie should prefer giving a soliloquy… Read more »
“No one has ever been fired from their job for being openly geeky.” Uh, I have 🙂 Multiple times. Geekism and sexism intersect in interesting and surprising ways. I’m a geek girl and I’ve had trouble at mainstream type of jobs (except when i was a bookseller) and when I can get “geeky” jobs (computers or creative jobs) or jobs where I don’t interact with the public, it’s fine. But my geekiness and serious demeanor definitely read differently to people on account of my gender whereas I’ve seen the same things be acceptable in men. If you’re in retail and… Read more »
@btff44: Okay, thanks.
@Not Me: Well, that sure is a fucked-up thing to do, but I’m not sure if a single fucked-up act in itself can prove somebody had a psychiatric condition. Like, I guess it could happen too if you’re completely off your head on drugs or something.
Monk is obsessive compulsive. It’s the basis of the show.
There is one other historical diagnosis that makes complete sense: Howard Hughes was most definitely Obsessive Compulsive.
…Also, sane people don’t cut off their left earlobe to give as a gift to a prostitute.
What about Ernest Hemingway? It’s extremely likely that he had clinical depression.
The point does stand, though, that aside from a very few exceptional examples, you really can’t diagnose anyone from afar or through history.
@bttf44: How do we know that about van Gogh? You really made me curious there.
He’s written letters to his brother, Theo, about his condition – which he termed as “madness”. In one particular letter, he indicated that “madness” is an illness like any other.
*socially awkward kind of nerd.
Hi, I’m de-lurking to say that I’ve definitely heard aspie or sperglord to described nerds and “sperging out” to describe their behavior. For example, a coworker came to my house and cornered (literally) a female guest of mine and was talking at her about the RPG system he was currently playing. I was outside putting things on the grill and didn’t notice until a friend came up and told me that this guy was “being a creepy sperglord” inside. I’ve also heard it applied to people who just talk too much about their nerdy hobby without any scary boundary-breaking behavior.… Read more »
Absolutely agreed. A student of mine once claimed that Stalin “certainly” suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. I gave him a C, but promised to give him an A if he could demonstrate that he had a psychology degree and a time machine.
Dvarghundpossen: that’s essentially the idea behind the Indigo Children phenomenon: these kids aren’t acting up because they have ADD, they’re actually the next step of evolution!
The problem is that a lot of the Indigo criteria are so vague that at some point it could apply to any kid.
I think the only historical figure to really be known to have a neuropsychiactric or psychiatric condition is Vincent Van Gogh. Anyway, if we start diagnosing historical figures with various disorders – what’s to stop people from diagnosing their favourite celebrities with disorders, even if said celebrity never mentioned having any such disorder in interviews?
I think we maybe do tend to romanticize certain conditions, a little too much.
I think historical diagnoses are ridiculous. If it was possible to accurately diagnose people with neuropsychiatric or psychiatric conditions just by reading about them and perhaps see them appear on some old TV shows, well, we wouldn’t need all those tests and stuff. Psychiatrists would be able to diagnose their patients by just having them sit down in a chair and tell the shrink a little about themselves, if diagnosing were that easy. I realize it’s usually a well-meant attempt to make people feel better about themselves, like, “there’s nothing wrong with having ADD, Mozart had ADD!” or “there’s nothing… Read more »
“Autism comes with an intense focus difficult to achieve for those without that condition. ”
I think it’s statements like that that lead to the “people with Aspergers are GENIUSES” thing. Intense focus is generally a trait associated with the popular image of high intelligence.
It also doesn’t help that the recent wave of historical Aspergers’ diagnoses (starting with Andy Warhol, I think) has tended to focus on the high achieving.
@Hugh Tipping,
You’re twenty? […]
Then yes, perhaps it is a generational thing.
I’m twenty-three, and I agree with Mori: I’ve never heard “Aspie” used to insult a nerd/geek. The word to insult a geek is “geek”. “Aspie” wouldn’t make it worse, it’d make it better, because it gives them an “excuse”, and decent people don’t make fun of others’ medical problems. Hence why so many flock to the label.
@ monkey: “I hope I haven’t offended you or anyone else with Aperger’s.” Did I miss something? What did you say that I might be offended by? “Are you offended when someone uses Asperger’s as an excuse for their behavior?” Depends on the behavior. Sometimes people make mistakes because they don’t know any better, and it’s often the case for us aspies. On the other hand, I think any aspie would know that going around shooting people with guns is not socially acceptable. “I have OCD, and while I laugh off most media distortions about OCD, I *do* get annoyed… Read more »
@monkey:
It’s an attribute of being a jerk.
Note also that all of those are unconfirmed. Assange seems more like a narcissist, IMO. The other two seem more expressive than I’d expect from most aspies.
Look at the body language in interviews of confirmed cases like Vernon Smith and Temple Grandin. Body language is noticeably absent or completely off.
I saw myself on video a few years ago. Blank expression, no gesticulation, monotone voice. It was creepy, I looked and sounded like some kind of robot.
Daelyte: I hope I haven’t offended you or anyone else with Aperger’s.
Are you offended when someone uses Asperger’s as an excuse for their behavior? I have OCD, and while I laugh off most media distortions about OCD, I *do* get annoyed when people blame medication for various bad behaviors.
I feel I should point out two things about my last post. As far as I know, none of the people I mentioned has actually been diagnosed with Aspeger’s except through the media.
At least some of the people touted as having Aspergers (Bill. Gates, Zuckerberg, Assange$ appear to have very large egos. Is that really an attribute of Aspeger’s? Or is it an attribute of, well, being a jerk?
Right now, there’s a trial going on here in Sweden against Peter Mangs, a man charged with three murders and twelve attempted murders (he was shooting his victims from some distance). He denies everything, but the evidence seems pretty good. For instance, they’ve traced the bullets of some victims to his gun, and the last attempted victim ran up to him and got a good look at his face from a very short distance, thus being able to identify him. One victim was robbed, and later on this victim’s house keys and the same amount of money as was missing… Read more »
Nice of you to assume I’m vanilla simply because I disagree with you. I suppose all the sex I have that results in bruises and welts is just very enthusiastic vanilla, then?
I’m with you on the rest of the article, but kinky people do face real and serious oppression on the basis of their orientation. It’s not the same thing as sexism or ablism or whatever else, but it still screws up people’s lives in serious ways. For instance: In many countries its still perfectly legal to fire someone if it comes to light that they’re involved in BDSM, particularly if they’re a professional like a lawyer or an accountant or if they work in any capacity with children or in the field of medicine. The assumption that bdsm practitioners are… Read more »
The worst, of course, are the narcissists and other bullies who self-diagnose with aspergers as an excuse to act boorishly. When it comes to autism spectrum disorders, “no empathy” should be read as “not a mind reader”, rather than “no compassion”. Any aspie who acts like a jerk and doesn’t express remorse when called on it, deserves the same treatment as anyone else. I think this is perhaps the biggest contributor to the poor public perception of Asperger’s and autism spectrum disorders in general. Get enough people throwing around the “I have assburgers(sic) that means if you call me out… Read more »
I’ll start with autism, and keep the geek pride comments for a separate post. “I’ve heard “aspie” and “autistic” (as in “stop being so autistic!” or “god, what are you, autistic?”) used as insults.” I’ve seen “autistic” used as an insult, but not “aspie”. I especially hate “stop being so autistic”, as if I had a choice in the matter. “I think this post could benefit from addressing the tendency among some groups of geeks to view being on the autism spectrum as something positive, thus leading to a lot of self-diagnosis that, IMV, borders on appropriation.” From what I’ve… Read more »
“frankly, not every geek or queer person can be financially successful/become famous.”
That’s just the thing. It doesn’t always work out that the victims become financially successful, while their tormentors end up struggling – as nice as it would be. Sadly, it sometimes is the tormentors who end up being financially successful – while their victims are the ones struggling. Or, perhaps, both are struggling – or, maybe, both are successful. Any outcome is possible.