Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds 1198
PvtVoid writes: "Jeopardy champion Arthur Chu pens a heartfelt takedown of misogyny in nerd culture: 'I’ve heard and seen the stories that those of you who followed the #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter have seen—women getting groped at cons, women getting vicious insults flung at them online, women getting stalked by creeps in college and told they should be "flattered." I’ve heard Elliot Rodger’s voice before. I was expecting his manifesto to be incomprehensible madness—hoping for it to be—but it wasn’t. It’s a standard frustrated angry geeky guy manifesto, except for the part about mass murder. I've heard it from acquaintances, I've heard it from friends. I've heard it come out of my own mouth, in moments of anger and weakness.
What the f*$# is wrong with us? How much longer are we going to be in denial that there's a thing called "rape culture" and we ought to do something about it? ... To paraphrase the great John Oliver, listen up, fellow self-pitying nerd boys — we are not the victims here. We are not the underdogs. We are not the ones who have our ownership over our bodies and our emotions stepped on constantly by other people's entitlement. We're not the ones where one out of six of us will have someone violently attempt to take control of our bodies in our lifetimes.'"
What the f*$# is wrong with us? How much longer are we going to be in denial that there's a thing called "rape culture" and we ought to do something about it? ... To paraphrase the great John Oliver, listen up, fellow self-pitying nerd boys — we are not the victims here. We are not the underdogs. We are not the ones who have our ownership over our bodies and our emotions stepped on constantly by other people's entitlement. We're not the ones where one out of six of us will have someone violently attempt to take control of our bodies in our lifetimes.'"
Re:What the f*$# is wrong with us? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now you're getting somewhere. I've never seen inappropriate or aggressive behavior towards women in any of the geek/nerd groups I've been in. In fact, I'd say most of them would get strong marks for showing full respect for women. That said, I am certain that reports of specific incidents and groups having a pattern of behavior are real. I recall one of the security conventions had a problem, which somehow didn't surprise me, knowing that's a sub-group of geekdom with its own dynamic.
Generally speaking, I have found the bigger problems tend to go with the more macho types though. Yes, occasionally you hear of a problem with a school group other than a sports team, but in the vast majority of cases, groups of men who are aggressive towards women are groups of men who are GENERALLY aggressive. Drug gangs, low grade thugs, etc., are all far worse, unquestionably, than "geeks".
It really sounds to me like there is a concerted effort to apply labels and groupings to what is really just an age old problem.
Now, on the other hand, can we address the reality that men are FAR more likely than women to be victims of violence, physical intimidation, violent crime, and other physical threats such as military hazards and other job-related physical danger?
The problem here is not that anyone is against ending violence against women. It's that we have blown what is effectively a rare occurrence (dude going nuts) being confused with a non-existent pattern of nerd rage, all being whipped into a social media shitstorm to make PC points in the press.
Re:What the f*$# is wrong with us? (Score:5, Interesting)
No one likes hanging around "gross creepy dudes," not even other gross creepy dudes. This guy who Chu is talking about certainly wasn't being "allowed to thrive" by anyone. His own roommates didn't even like him.
Re:What the f*$# is wrong with us? (Score:5, Interesting)
That he had hang ups with women was a product of his brain not being capable of the normal range of human emotions, not because he was an introverted nerd.
Re:Yeah, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Boy, that escalated quickly.
Because this whole discussion is silly. Plenty of nerds are misogynistic jerks. But plenty of non-nerds are as well, and I have seen NO evidence that it is any more common among nerds than among the population in general. In the absence of evidence, associating "nerd culture" with misogynism is just stupid.
Throughout my career, I have worked with many engineers, programmers, and other nerds. My experience is that they are the least misogynistic people I have ever met, and they have mostly been polite, professional, and welcoming to their female co-workers. Have you ever worked with salesmen? Or construction workers? Nerds are saints by comparison.
Re:yet another one of these stories? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most men are rapists if you believe all straight sex is rape. Some people believe that.
Most men could be a rapists if you believe that waking up next to a man who is far uglier than he seemed when you were completely drunk is rape. Some people believe that.
Most men are rapists if you believe that failure to support the radical feminist agenda is tantamount to rape (the reasonable feminist agenda having been achieved a while back - look at pay for women under 35 who've never had a kid - it's higher than similar men now). There are sincere arguments being made at some colleges that formal accusations of rape should not be questionable, that "conviction" (expulsion for the college etc) should follow accusation without any sort of hearing. Because rape culture.
There simple is no "rape culture" in Western civilization by the "physical assault" definition of rape - marrying off girls against their will has been passe for some time now, as has blaming a rape victim for the crime. But there's an entire cultural leadership based on convincing people that they are victims, and so a new definition of "rape' and "rape culture" was needed.
"Rape culture" predominates if you say it includes every man who desires to have sex with a woman who doesn't desire him. So what? How many more thought crimes do we need to invent? It also predominates in some other cultures around the globe still stuck in a medieval mindset, but that's never what the "rape culture" complaint seems to be about.
Re:What the f*$# is wrong with us? (Score:5, Interesting)
"I don't know about you, but there's nothing wrong with me." Precisely. When the poster says "What the f*$# is wrong with us?", and at the same time uses "We" as if to group us all in together, the author is missing the point entirely. "We" are not all guilty of being misogynistic idiots. I'm open to a solid discussion of what "We" meaning all of us in the culture, community, country, or world can do about it, but don't lay this at the feet of "standard frustrated angry geeky guys".
This is like saying that video games cause violence... being a nerd doesn't make us misogynists nor mass murderers. There may be something wrong with you, there may be something wrong with lots of people, and you can bucket those people in lots of ways, but stereotyping any group (nerd, geek, woman, gay, etc. etc.) isn't helping.
Teach tolerance, patience, kindness, and practice those yourself. If you want to lobby for better mental health facilities, I'm right behind you. If you see abuse or stereotyping of any kind online and you want to call people out on it, please do. Start a hashtag, that seems to draw good attention to the topic, although there's a lot of talk about that being too much talking and too little doing. I personally think every bit helps. If you think there's a law that needs to be changed or something doable, speak up and I'm glad to listen and add ideas to craft it.
But don't rant about a problem, and group me in it because I have something (being a geek) loosely in common with someone who went completely batshit as if that makes us (geeks) more culpable than any other group while offering nothing constructive. Even if you have a correlation between misogyny and a cultural group like geeks, you better be damn sure that it's causal rather than just coincidental before accusing the culture, and given high incidents of rape culture in many male-dominated areas, it's very likely that it is NOT causal; at least not to an obvious and naive degree. And, by the way, not all males are misogynists either. It's difficult to not lump everyone in and accuse large groups, but it's important to put blame where it belongs. For the record, Chu's full article is much better than this /. summary at being balanced (surprise), but still many of the same issues exist. Big Bang Theory shouldn't get more scrutiny than Game of Thrones, for example, but it does, clearly, because it supports the author's point. I'm not giving it a pass either, just saying we need to level criticism evenly and appropriately.
"We" are not all the problem. You may be part of it, I don't know. Everyone has to be part of the solution. Some of us are trying to be without vilifying and pushing away those that are less aware.
Re:99 nerds polite to females (Score:4, Interesting)
And the number of assholes is way under 1%.
You may be right. But it's also above 0.1%, which in any decent-sized convention is enough to ensure a few assholes. What's more important is that almost all the times, the assholes' assholey behavior towards women is not challenged by the non-assholes present. They tend to just watch.
I base this on having attended a few conventions with female colleagues and observing how they are treated. There's a sufficiently-high number of misogynists in geek culture and a distressingly-high number of apathetic bystanders to make many tech conventions pretty unwelcoming for women.
Are you sure? (Score:4, Interesting)
"We are not the ones who have our ownership over our bodies and our emotions stepped on constantly by other people's entitlement. We're not the ones where one out of six of us will have someone violently attempt to take control of our bodies in our lifetimes.'"
Are you sure?
I mean: I've never been raped. That's a legitimate fear of many women that I'm unlikely to experience outside the penal system. But I've been shoved into walls. I've been dumped in a trash can (that was when I was 5 years old). I've had notebooks knocked from me, signs put on me, been punched, kicked, had my property vandalized, been ridiculed publicly, shot with a slingshot, hit with a car.... all for having been the different kid. All for having been the nerd.
Will I ever *really* know what it's like to be a woman? No. Will a straght woman know what a homosexual man goes through? Will a white person understand the plight of a black one? Will the Jock understand the Nerd? No. Will an American Christian understand the Muslim, Wiccan, or Athiest? No.
There are a lot of cultures of violence; not just the one against women. There are a lot of cultures that dehumanize, not just the one that dehumanizes women. The talking heads on this subject take an unjustified position of universal and unique persecution. Men should look at women as people, while simultaniously the talking head saying it doesn't look at men as people.
And as to this narccissitic murderer. I've no doubt he was masogynist, but it's wrong to say that he was the product of that culture. I've seen this guy before. He's the two kids at Columbine. He's the postal worker that went after his bosses. He suffers from narccissism and a feeling of persecution (which may have at least some level of truth) and blames others for his misfortune. In Columbine it was jocks. With many, it's their boss or neighbor. For this kid it was women (among others: He also lashes out at a lack of friends. IIRC: The majority of his victims were male).
So yes: There's a real problem with a culture in the US that dehumanizes women. It's real. It's bad. It needs to be fixed. It is, however, not unique; and it is not the reason for this particular murder spree.
Re:yet another one of these stories? (Score:2, Interesting)
The lifetime rate of same-sex lesbian rape is 1 in 3 while hetero rape of women is 1 in 6. The Gender of Sexuality, Rutter and Schwartz.
When strength is no longer a factor, women are bigger rapists than men.
Re:That's not a proof of a widespread anything... (Score:5, Interesting)
And those comments show why the "for the children" crowd is full of brain dead thugs. If the topic of pedophiles even comes up, they react with violence and mindless persecution. Look at how it's suggested that pedophiles--even those who have raped no one--should be murdered. They don't even know what a pedophile is.
There are few groups more terrifying than the "for the children" crowd, who will sacrifice everyone's fundamental liberties, demonize mere thoughts, and murder innocents if they think it will protect some children.
Re:What the f*$# is wrong with us? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't buy for a second that men are more likely to be the victims of violence, intimidation and other physical threats
Try looking into it. Crime stats don't lie. Unless of course you think women are getting beaten and just don't talk about it... Ever.
That women are more worried about being violently attacked does not mean they are more likely to be violently attacked. In fact this cultural belief that women have to be constantly worried about violence even though they are far less likely to be violently attacked might be why some people come to the notion that feminine qualities include worrying and weakness.
You going on about how "all women have to worry about it" is the problem. Fuck you and your gender stereotypes. Men have far more to worry about getting mugged and murdered than women do. Do I think that all men have to fear? Hell no. Being afraid of incredibly unlikely events is nothing but learned helplessness.
More than 1% of men are violent to women? Fuck you even more for that. Right now there are 300 000 men beating women in the United States I'm sure.
50 years ago you would have been right in there with the hang all darkies group. Same bullshit paranoia and made up reasons. Same sense of superiority.
Don't just blame the guy (Score:5, Interesting)
This results in a common, perverse situation. Women say they want men to respect their wishes. Nice guys (most geeks are nice guys) listen to this, and leave the woman alone after they ask her out and she tells them no. Jerks and abusive guys however don't. They persist in bugging a woman they like who's told them no, and somehow their strategy has a higher success rate at starting a relationship than the geek strategy of respect and listening to what the woman says she wants. Of the married couples I've asked, a clear majority started off with the woman disliking the man and being annoyed at his attentions, before he "won her over" and she fell for him.
So we have a fundamental disconnect between how men are told they should behave, and the behavior which actually works. Consequently a lot of they guys who try to be nice to and respectful of women and treat them as they say they want to be treated, end up being frustrated by "their inability" to enter a relationship. It's not at all surprising that some of them snap and leap to the extreme opposite of their previous strategy (from respecting women to misogyny).
(As a side note, I suspect this is why a significant fraction of women are in abusive relationships. Many women spurn the nice guys who wouldn't abuse her, who give up when she tells them she's not interested. The guys who would abuse her do not respect her wishes and persist, eventually winning her over, and she ends up in an abusive relationship. Look at women who seem to jump from one abusive relationship to another, and I think you'll find someone who puts too much emphasis on the man's persistence as an indicator of how much he likes her. That is probably the perfect filter for eliminating all but the most abusive guys who have zero respect the woman's wishes.)
Re:Yeah, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
His video is out of context from his larger "body of work" (including his other videos, other postings, and "manifesto"). I don't think anybody is saying that his video didn't contain primarily hatred towards women. It did. And the rest of his material also contained a substantial portion. I think that if you look past that, at the rest of what this kid said motivated him, it was his overall feeling of alienation and rejection - by everyone. He was overly-concerned with sexual conquest, as a benchmark of his self-worth. And that came out as misogyny, and the targeting of women.
But over a year ago, he wrote that he was going to START his killing spree, at his apartment, on his male room-mates. He also wanted to murder his little brother.
These were the people he felt most hurt by, because they didn't meet some expectation he had of "acceptance".
(and that expectation was what's wildly out of line here. It changes from someone just talking with him, to being treated as some god or supreme ruler with a secret underground breeding facility for women - - I don't care what is in our horrible "rape culture" - this is simply a screaming red-flag of extreme psychosis.)
I think this whole misogyny discussion is a mis-classification of where he directed his hate.
He didn't direct his hate against women (exclusively). He directed his hate against all people who were having a better life than him. And his definition of "better-life" changes as you go; from simply being accepted as a human being to, like his teenage black friend, who was getting sex (with "white women") at age 13. At some point, someone told him that if he wasn't getting laid, he wasn't "okay" - and he seriously took that to heart.
Re:#notallgeekyguys (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatsisname didn't want to "kill all women". He wanted to kill all of the Alpha Phi girls.
Alas, when he went out to get his revenge, they ignored him, and he didn't manage to kill even one of them. Instead he was reduced to spraying a crowd of people walking near their Sorority House, killing two women who were NOT Alpha Phi's.
Pathetic. If you're going to go to the trouble of putting your master-plan for revenge and world domination online, at least make sure you can carry it out first.
Yes, by the by, I'm making fun of whatsisname. He apparently thought he was awesome, but underappreciated. He wasn't awesome, and it looks like the ladies appreciated him exactly as much as they should have (not at all).
Re:What the f*$# is wrong with us? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the astonishing thing about this. I read some of Elliot Rodger's book, and he was obviously an extremely disturbed man, who had a severe case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and also had other psychiatric disorders besides. At various points, he considered lashing out violently against society for the "injustice" he suffered when he did not win the powerball $400m lottery, which he felt he had been certain to win, and was entitled to.
He was crazy. He had a whole team of shrinks working on him, since he was age 8, to no avail. For much of his life he went to psychologists every single day, to no avail. He was crazy.
Yet so many people on the internet will find the moral or political lesson in it. For example: this massacre just goes to show how depraved Hollywood culture is (the editorial at the Washington Post said this). Or, it just demonstrates what's really wrong in American culture (approximately a third of the comments on scribd said this). Or, it just shows how the country has become too conservative, or too liberal. Or, it's a classic example of postmodern leftism run amok ('"ELLIOT RODGERS: PSYCHO SPEWING POSTMODERNIST CRAP" [blogspot.com]). Or, this is just another example of geek culture, even though Elliot Rodger obviously was not a geek, and spent much of his free time shopping for expensive Armani clothing.
The very silliest of these claims, was the contention that it shows what's wrong with geek culture. Elliot Rodgers was obviously not a geek. Quite the opposite, he had utter contempt for geeks. He considered them as not "alpha" males, and therefore beneath contempt, and he says so repeatedly in his "manifesto". The very first people he killed were his geeky roommates, whom he stabbed to death for precisely that reason. Claiming that Rodgers was inspired by geek culture is the most absurd of the moral lessons being drawn, and is even less serious than claiming he was inspired by postmodern leftism.
But it doesn't matter Elliot Rodgers was obviously not a geek. Even so, his massacre will still serve for Arthur Chu's moral indictment. The massacre can still be used as an indictment of geek culture, despite the obvious lack of any real connection between geek culture and Rodger's acts.
Re:#notallgeekyguys (Score:5, Interesting)
Most women probably do, though there are handful of misandrist dingbats out there. It would be useful for women who are not misandrist dingbats to disassociate themselves from that group. You don't get points for making prejudiced statements about Group X and then saying "Oh, I know not all members of Group X are like that."
And men know that rape is wrong, except for a vile handful of predators who are not going to change because of some internet discussion. It would be useful for men who are not vile predators to disassociate themselves from that group.
(I am assuming all present are familiar with and will not fall into the fallacy of the extended analogy, and will not think I am saying that misandrist statements are comparable to rape.)
Women, if you want to end the phenomenon of men saying "Not all men are misogynist," don't make statements that imply all men are misogynist.
Men, if you want to end the phenomenon of women saying "All men are misogynist," don't make statements that imply you are misogynist.
All, if you don't want people to respond defensively, don't makes statements that imply you are attacking them.
Re:#notallgeekyguys (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a conversation that's long overdue, and it needs to happen.
Uh, not. It's one of the most pointless and unnecessary conversations ever. No, I mean it. Hear me out.
It's not because the problem doesn't exist. It's because everyone who you actually can have an actual conversation with is already on your side. None of the people who are willing to engage in a dialog have a substantially different opinion. It's the assholes that don't do discussions, rational considerations and conversations with people outside their peer group that are your problem.
You're preaching to the choir, and in doing so, turning it against you. People dislike being held responsible for things they themselves hate, you know?
Re:#notallgeekyguys (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does every single discussion about women in tech immediately result in a bunch of denials, followed by pats on the back (upvotes) as dudes congratulate other dudes on how much of a not-problem there is?
Because we are sick and tired of being blamed for crap we hate ourselves.
Of all the men I know and for whom I know their personal opinion on the matter, not one of them is the male chauvinist pig that feminists try to label us all as. The typical man by my experience likes women, generally enjoys it when they're sexy and beautiful, while at the same time appreciating them as human beings and treasuring intelligence, empathy and other mental traits.
None of these men wants to take away womens right to vote, or decide for themselves who to marry, or to take any job they want, or to earn a proper wage defined by their performance and qualification. None of these men sees women as inferior in any way.
However, we are all so fucking tired of the labels and blaming going on in feminist circles, and the inability to speak out against it without being branded even worse immediately, that many men I know have taken to the defense you take when other options aren't easily available: Ridicule, sarcasm - humor in general.
That's how and why I joke with some of my friends that women belong into the kitchen and the kitchen into the cellar and (the joke goes on a bit, but it doesn't translate well into english as it's a play on words). Or why we laugh about chauvinist jokes. Or why we sometimes behave in the exact way the feminists hate all male chauvinist pigs for, in an innocent way (i.e. it stays purely verbal and within the group).
Because that's how human beings react to unjust blame. Call me a chauvinist and depending on my mood I might answer things like "so true my man, oppressing women worked for 10,000 years and as soon as we stopped doing it - bam - two giant world wars." -- which to any even slightly intelligent human being is immediately recognizable as a joke, but to extremists with an agenda, things such as humor apparently don't exist.
And the same is true of the other push-backs you see. Different forms of basically saying "stop lumping me in with those assholes you stupid piece of shit", just in a more indirect way because geeks don't say things like that to your face.
Women are treated equally to men in tech? Really? Really?
It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. The more you run around with a "treat me equal you assholes" sign, the less you'll get it.
It's also because you want others to solve your problems for you. If you feel inferior, that's your problem, not mine. If you think you are verbally abused - do you even have one fucking clue what many male geeks went through in school? When you're complaining about a dirty joke to someone who has been bullied for a decade of his life, the fact that he's an introvert and insecure is the only reason he's not laughing straight in your face.
The world is a cruel place, accept it. Nobody here is perfect, and when you encounter enough human beings in your life, a considerable portion of them will be a) assholes, b) on a bad day, c) misunderstood or d) just as bitter about the world as you are.
If you want to make the world a better place - great! Maybe you should start with not blaming people who have been on the receiving end of a lot of that themselves. They could be your allies. As soon as you stop treating them like shit.
Re:As Jim Morrison said... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a little difficult, but speaking as an introvert myself, it's not that hard, I just have to do it in limited doses to avoid overtaxing myself. I've had no trouble going on social outings, using dating websites, etc. I even managed to get married. But I certainly never managed to bed loads of women in my younger years like other men could.
I think it's more that just "putting yourself out there". There's various social cues that the successful men innately understand, which introverted men just plain don't. So we come off as "awkward", and don't understand why successful men can walk up to pretty women, strike up a conversation, and take her home to bed, and when the introverts try the exact same thing, they get nowhere (or worse, denigrated as "creepy").