by Jeff Bartlett
The time has come to wrap up the Minority in Geek project that Aine Lauren and I started a year ago. When we started, the project was called Misogyny in Geek and we wanted to target issues related to sexism in geek culture. Then every geek website on the internet got in on the game. We decided that if DC Geeks was going to be the community we wanted, it couldn't follow sites. It had to blaze trails. And sadly, geek culture wasn't only alienating women.
Our change in focus was fortuitous, because what a year it has been. The Supreme Court handed down a landmark gay rights ruling in United States v. Windsor, striking down Section 3 of DOMA; George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin; and geek fare like Iron Man 3 and Pacific Rim made subversive efforts to redefine the role of women in pop-culture. While the stories have not always been positive, this has been a year for the history books with regard to America's evolving attitudes towards minorities.
Before getting into the meat of our topic, I would like to say I am very proud of this project. I actually contributed very little to it. Lauren, Aine, and I thought we would need to write an article each per month, but we were flooded with guest authors dying to take the topic on. We've had articles on sexism directed at cosplayers, the “fake geek girl” phenomenon, being a furry, being the token black friend, and being transgendered. The talent that came forward to contribute has been humbling, and we are deeply thankful. But for all of the amazing articles we posted, I am glad that this project is ending. I am not sure I want to read another article on the topic for a long, long time.
So why am I done with this project? Well, first, it is important to understand what we achieved. What tied most of our articles together is that they were written by minorities explaining what it was like being part of their minority within a geek minority. They explained why being the internet’s perpetual punching bag, why being identified as a "token," why being accused of being inauthentic hurts and diminishes them as individuals. After reading these stories month after month after month, it is apparent that geek culture as a whole has a real problem with minorities. And that, to me, is shocking. But that does not make it any less true.
I remember a moment that really opened my eyes to the world and to the privilege I enjoy within it. In college, I was speaking to my wife (then girlfriend) who told me that every time she walked to the bus station, she passed a group of men that catcalled her. This blew my mind. I had never seen men catcall anybody.
Catcalling seemed like an absurd historical artifact. It was lampooned in 1950's Warner Brothers cartoons, for crying out loud. I stared at her, mouth agape, unable to believe that happened. Then her roommate confirmed it, and said the same thing happens to her. It turns out it is was a common, near daily occurrence for all the women I knew who walked anywhere, and had been since adolescence. Seriously. Grabbing your junk and screaming at women “hey baby, how about you ride my love python?!” Who does that? It’s so… pathetic. And, as all my female friends told me, the reason I was so stunned is that, for whatever reason, the catcallers never do it when a man is around. Knowing this made the world suddenly a darker place. The idea that most people are inherently good became that much harder to hold onto.
The time has come to wrap up the Minority in Geek project that Aine Lauren and I started a year ago. When we started, the project was called Misogyny in Geek and we wanted to target issues related to sexism in geek culture. Then every geek website on the internet got in on the game. We decided that if DC Geeks was going to be the community we wanted, it couldn't follow sites. It had to blaze trails. And sadly, geek culture wasn't only alienating women.
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| From the Tumblr, Cosplays with Color, Pro Bodybuilder Robin Johnson Jr. as Supes |
Our change in focus was fortuitous, because what a year it has been. The Supreme Court handed down a landmark gay rights ruling in United States v. Windsor, striking down Section 3 of DOMA; George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin; and geek fare like Iron Man 3 and Pacific Rim made subversive efforts to redefine the role of women in pop-culture. While the stories have not always been positive, this has been a year for the history books with regard to America's evolving attitudes towards minorities.
Before getting into the meat of our topic, I would like to say I am very proud of this project. I actually contributed very little to it. Lauren, Aine, and I thought we would need to write an article each per month, but we were flooded with guest authors dying to take the topic on. We've had articles on sexism directed at cosplayers, the “fake geek girl” phenomenon, being a furry, being the token black friend, and being transgendered. The talent that came forward to contribute has been humbling, and we are deeply thankful. But for all of the amazing articles we posted, I am glad that this project is ending. I am not sure I want to read another article on the topic for a long, long time.
So why am I done with this project? Well, first, it is important to understand what we achieved. What tied most of our articles together is that they were written by minorities explaining what it was like being part of their minority within a geek minority. They explained why being the internet’s perpetual punching bag, why being identified as a "token," why being accused of being inauthentic hurts and diminishes them as individuals. After reading these stories month after month after month, it is apparent that geek culture as a whole has a real problem with minorities. And that, to me, is shocking. But that does not make it any less true.
I remember a moment that really opened my eyes to the world and to the privilege I enjoy within it. In college, I was speaking to my wife (then girlfriend) who told me that every time she walked to the bus station, she passed a group of men that catcalled her. This blew my mind. I had never seen men catcall anybody.
Catcalling seemed like an absurd historical artifact. It was lampooned in 1950's Warner Brothers cartoons, for crying out loud. I stared at her, mouth agape, unable to believe that happened. Then her roommate confirmed it, and said the same thing happens to her. It turns out it is was a common, near daily occurrence for all the women I knew who walked anywhere, and had been since adolescence. Seriously. Grabbing your junk and screaming at women “hey baby, how about you ride my love python?!” Who does that? It’s so… pathetic. And, as all my female friends told me, the reason I was so stunned is that, for whatever reason, the catcallers never do it when a man is around. Knowing this made the world suddenly a darker place. The idea that most people are inherently good became that much harder to hold onto.
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| Copyright Warner Brothers. Wolf by Tex Avery |
The Minority in Geek project is a steady dose of the same lesson. When I grew up, I was living with my father who served in the US State Department. I grew up living abroad. I moved every three years, which meant no long term friendships. It also meant that I was a pretty lonely and isolated kid — perpetually a cultural, racial, and language outsider. Geek interests were tremendously important. Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons helped me make tight (if small) groups of friends with whom I could socialize on a regular basis.
The pluralist utopian vision of TV shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation helped give me a frame of reference for experiencing the countries I was living in: not as frightening places hostile to Americans, but as rich, deep cultures. My life exploring them was recast as a grand adventure. Geek was a place where everyone was welcome, no matter race, creed, national origin, gender, sexuality, what have you. Geek culture was the Star Trek utopia in our real world. Coming to find that it is anything but has been heartbreaking.
To paraphrase Wil Wheaton, I understand geek culture to be pretty simple. It’s not what you love, it is how you love it. All you should need to create geek community is to say “You love this? I love this too! Let’s love this together!” But Minority in Geek has taught me that this simply is not the case. I've spent some time rolling it about in my head, trying to understand why all of the sudden, starting around 2012, my beloved community had become so intolerant of others.
Have the bullies of old made their way into our world now that geeks are no longer the put-upon minority that had, historically, been predisposed to compassion after our experience with prejudice? Or have we always been like this? Have we (the white males that appear to be the majority of geek culture) only been waiting to take out our frustration on a subgroup that was more vulnerable than ourselves?
Have the bullies of old made their way into our world now that geeks are no longer the put-upon minority that had, historically, been predisposed to compassion after our experience with prejudice? Or have we always been like this? Have we (the white males that appear to be the majority of geek culture) only been waiting to take out our frustration on a subgroup that was more vulnerable than ourselves?
The answer, of course, is neither of the above. Because the
phenomenon is not new. Last month I read
this blog post over at Popehat (a law blog by gamer nerds), and I read this:
“Disproportionate anger at discussions of the topic of harassment — seems particularly pronounced when people discuss bad behavior within the wide spectrum of what I'll call ‘geek culture’ — science fiction, computer gaming, pen-and-paper gaming. For some time I've talked about the thoroughly creepy undercurrents in that culture. I've observed them for decades. I remember going to gaming conventions as a teen in the early 1980s and seeing how some men, seemingly freed from manners by the context, openly leered and touched [and] made comments that should have gotten them kicked in the nuts. I vividly remember a tournament pen-and-paper game (maybe Paranoia?) in which players' comments to the one woman got increasingly ugly until she pushed her chair away and left, leaving the remaining men to complain bitterly that she was a bitch with no sense of humor.”Believe it or not, this made me feel better. Because while it means that I have been naive in my ignorance of the phenomenon, it is not new. It has been with us for as long as we have been a hobby. What is new is that we are talking about it. The trolls can no longer hide safely in the shadows of their victims’ shame and discomfort.
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| The Darkness - Legend. Also, not real. |
This leads us
into the blog’s title, and my final thoughts on this project. The “banality of
evil” is term used to conceptualize a broad concept in moral philosophy and
social psychology for application in political science. As defined by Hannah
Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem,
the crux of the theory is that the great evils in history, such as the
holocaust, were not the acts of fanatics or sociopaths but instead of ordinary
people like you and me who accept the premise of their state and therefore participate
in the atrocities with the view that their actions are normal.
Applying the same idea to geek culture, and even mainstream culture, it is not Evil people who grope women who cosplay, call people names like “fag,” or “cunt,” or “nigger” in online gaming, or beat up on transgendered individuals as “tranny freaks." They do it because their behaviors are so commonplace and so tolerated that the actions are assumed to be normal. Therefore, they do not see their actions as deviant.
Most people are not moral thinkers and so take their cues regarding right and wrong from context. But when forced to grapple what they have done, they often realize, with sickening guilt, the terribleness of their choices. The value of the Minority in Geek series is not that it offered solutions to our social problems, but that, while it may make us uncomfortable to read these stories, they make abundantly clear that these behaviors are no longer acceptable. By raising the consciousness, we begin to shift what our community defines as acceptable behavior. As these new attitudes filter through geek culture, the people who engage in bad behaviors will become rarer and rarer, until they all but disappear.
Applying the same idea to geek culture, and even mainstream culture, it is not Evil people who grope women who cosplay, call people names like “fag,” or “cunt,” or “nigger” in online gaming, or beat up on transgendered individuals as “tranny freaks." They do it because their behaviors are so commonplace and so tolerated that the actions are assumed to be normal. Therefore, they do not see their actions as deviant.
Most people are not moral thinkers and so take their cues regarding right and wrong from context. But when forced to grapple what they have done, they often realize, with sickening guilt, the terribleness of their choices. The value of the Minority in Geek series is not that it offered solutions to our social problems, but that, while it may make us uncomfortable to read these stories, they make abundantly clear that these behaviors are no longer acceptable. By raising the consciousness, we begin to shift what our community defines as acceptable behavior. As these new attitudes filter through geek culture, the people who engage in bad behaviors will become rarer and rarer, until they all but disappear.
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| George Saunders - Damon Winter/The New York Times |
So what are my
thoughts on going forward? Only this. I have made mistakes too. I have made
women uncomfortable. I have been too handsy. I have jokingly referred to my
minority friends as “token” or “my nigga.” Even typing this words is difficult,
and makes my face flush. Because they bring me great shame. George Saunders wrote “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” This resonates
with me. I know that when the day finally comes that I stand face to face with
my own mortality, my regrets will not consist of roads not taken, jobs turned down,
adventures missed. What will eat at me, and they all still eat at me, will be my failures of kindness.
Saunders went on to say he regretted the moments “ when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” So as we lay this series to rest I charge you with the following: As you go out into the world, be not mild. Whether you are at a convention, or a restaurant, or a friend’s house, and you witness one person putting down another for anything other but the content of their character, speak up. You don’t need to be confrontational, you don’t need to start a fight. It can be as simple as saying “hey man, that’s not cool.” All you have to do to make a better world is change what we accept as normal. What we call human nature is often little more than human habit.
Saunders went on to say he regretted the moments “ when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” So as we lay this series to rest I charge you with the following: As you go out into the world, be not mild. Whether you are at a convention, or a restaurant, or a friend’s house, and you witness one person putting down another for anything other but the content of their character, speak up. You don’t need to be confrontational, you don’t need to start a fight. It can be as simple as saying “hey man, that’s not cool.” All you have to do to make a better world is change what we accept as normal. What we call human nature is often little more than human habit.
