Maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't the acceptance of females within the geek culture be something for us to celebrate rather than shun? I remember being a young geek lad who went to a local convention of yore and have distinct memories of the mass majority of attendees being sweaty, smelly guys. The very few females that would show up were either A.) Were dragged there by their boyfriends or B.) Sales / booth girls who usually had no interest whatsoever in anything geek related and were only there for the paycheck.
The thought that there may be an awesome percentage of girls who shared in my passions was simply a pipe dream. That was a good twenty years ago. Fast forward to today and we have a whole plethora of females enjoying Star Wars, RPG's and video games, etc, etc. They get it! They get us! They are us! So what's the problem? Why is there such a need to attack them when they are on-line gaming with us or attending conventions? Do we really need to argue their "geek cred"? Do we even need to waste time and energy on their "geek cred"?
With a big push from the counter culture and more acceptance for differences in people, our geek culture has, dare I say it, become popular and it's own "In Crowd". Maybe more like "In the Know Crowd", but you get my drift. So, I can see where there can be some leeriness to some cases involving cons and geek girls with model good looks and why some people might be under the impression that their interests may be in question. I guess I just don't waste the energy to question in the first place.
As I said before, I used to live in a world where there was a small percentage of girls, let alone, very attractive girls, who would never lower themselves to even glance at a page in a comic book. And if there were such girls, they kept to the shadows for fear of ridicule. I lived in the times when all of the cute cheerleaders would avoid any interest of geek culture. Now we are inundated with beautiful girls attending cons in all manor of cosplay. And yes, some of those outfits are arguably risque. And yes, some of those girls make a career out of those costumes. But, do we really have to treat this as being so suspect? The whole "You're a cute girl and you're just trying to glom off of the popularity of the genres" mentality has to take a back seat to "The more the merrier!" mentality. Who's not getting this?
What's even far more disturbing is the downright sociopathic sexual assault tactics that are taking place at the cons. Just because a girl is dressed like Poison Ivy is not in anyway an open invitation to grab and grope their privets. It's the same mentality as "Well, she was asking for it by being dressed that way." which has proven time and time again to be Neanderthalic (That's not a word? I don't care!).
And of course this whole trolling females while they are gaming on line with other players has gone from general sexist insults to threats of violence and sexual assault. WHAT THE FRELL IS GOING ON?!?!? Has today's yuppie generation allowed reality television to baby sit and bring up a generation of sociopaths?
I've heard of two cases where female gamers have stood up to these twits and posted smart rebuttals on YouTube only to have their on-line accounts hacked and their families' lives threatened by the trolls. One of the girls doesn't even stay at her own home due to fear of harm.
We as male geeks need to step up to the plate and show females that they are not only welcome within the geek culture, they are as much a part of it as we are. We have an opportunity to show that we are better people than the bullies of old. But as I see it, we're blowing it big time.
'Nuff said.
And, yes, the season of spooks cometh. Stay tuned for coverage!
Stay vertical!
Zangz.
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