there's our catastrophe

haakev2:

if you don’t have political bumper stickers on your bike you can’t complain

haakev2:

pussy-strut replied to your chat: actual literal meeting notes

newsboy caps are like the fedoras of anarchists

^^^

(via pussy-strut)

so: nerds and how I hate them (or at least hate Nerd Culture) and why. I hate recounting specific events in my personal life, but I hate being pass-ag and vague worse, and the thing I hate the most is not blurting out what I’m thinking to the entire internet, so let’s roll out some necessary context. 

you know Teen Movie Script 3B where the teen girl realises the cool people are dickheads, stops trying to fit in with them, and accepts her true home with the geeks and her new geek boyfriend who’s loved her all along?  ditching the plastics for the mathletes and then HAPPINESS, ACCEPTANCE. 

can we make the opposite movie?  because my high school life got so much better when I got frozen out by my douchey misogynist male nerdy friends (after I started dating someone in their social network and standing up for “vacuous sluts”, i.e. became impossible to parse as an honorary dude) and began prioritising my (already present) friendships with a bunch of popular, pretty, fashionable girls, most of whom went on to go to some form of art school and become well connected in various hip social networks.  these friendships were really supportive and good for me in a time when I was pretty fucked up (not because of social drama but for other reasons).  the interesting thing is that these girls were whip-smart as well as anything else, and also hung out with nerds to start off with in our early teens, but got sick of being constantly harassed and objectified and patronised by nerd boys.  later, when I was eighteen and nineteen, they came with me to feminist events that I wanted to go to and told me they were proud of me when I started organising that shit and supported me in a million other ways, instead of, say, challenging me to give valid, current, and rigorously documented examples of “real” sexism.  I still see these women sometimes.  some I’m still friends with and some I’ve grown apart from, but they’re all awesome. 

girls can be awful to each other but I eventually made peace with almost all the girls in my year, even girls who were very different to me.  and I didn’t consider myself a feminist per se, it wasn’t some kind of big project, it just happened.  this thing that all girls are always involved in complex psychological status anxiety warfare with one another and boys are bewildered on the sidelines is arrant nonsense.

if you were to say “ourcatastrophe is it possible you only felt comfortable in this social circle because you were at that time thin, fashionable, and basically conventionally attractive?” I would have to concede that I don’t know but I’d add that there was more body diversity and general acceptance of difference than you might think.  but if you were to say “ourcatastrophe you are conflating issues, it’s not that you ditched the nerds, it’s that you started learning to prioritise friendships with women” then I would respond: you miss the point, which is that nerd culture is bro-centric as hell, and even if this was not your personal experience you have to admit it is certainly not inherently pro-lady.

what I’m trying to say here is that I am an inherently nerdy (i.e. obsessive, withdrawn, arrogant, science-fiction-loving) girl who found liberation not through embracing that but through expanding my interests and being amenable to changing myself and learning to respect people with different priorities and lifestyles and personal style.  to not condemn cool things as vacuous or not my concern but to withhold judgement and give it a go.   I think that’s actually, fortunately, a very common experience, just one that’s rarely represented well.  I didn’t lose any part of myself through relaxing my intellectual superiority complex and rigidly puritanical sense of authenticity and I doubt that anyone ever will. 

I’m really afraid of the Nerdfighters thing and haven’t been able to parse why

well, I’ve never heard of them before but I checked out their site just then and there are a couple of things I personally find offputting:

a) they make a virtue of a certain flippancy and shallowness of analysis that I think is pretty inappropriate.  e.g. “Nerdfighters are about stupid beautiful projects and making each other laugh and think with t-shirts and pocket protectors and rants about the situation in Pakistan which sucks right now”.  

b) where they do take things seriously, their political analysis sucks.  their discourse tends to consist of “this is irrational, let’s be reasonable and moderate”.  while I’m for paying attention to good plans, hard facts, and empirical reality, this is not a political program in itself.  if the facts were all that mattered, we would not have the problems we’re having.  you need to acknowledge the power play and rational motives behind seemingly “irrational” behaviour.  not getting this is characteristic arrogant white brogressive behaviour.  which leads me to:

c) the header image is of two white dudes with glasses, which in the context of nerdiness typically being understood and presented as a kind of hyper-whiteness and failed masculinity is pretty annoying and indicative of a failure to consider issues of race and gender. 

d) their whole site is based on in-jokes.  they seem to have a problem with elitism and exclusionary behaviour but don’t understand why, which indicates a lack of self-awareness around what being a geek or nerd actually is (a defensive subcultural affiliation based at least partly on identifying your social exclusion as a natural extension of your peers’ failure to get your intelligence), and lack of that kind of self-knowledge usually means your project is kind of doomed from the start. 

e) they’re really annoying and their sense of humour is terrible.  this maaaaaaaaaaaay be a subjective thing. 

you guys, I completely loathe “geek culture”

not because I think people shouldn’t show enthusiasm for the things they enjoy or should have cooler interests or whatever but because I find it alienating on many levels

this is a thing

a lot of people feel this way

if you have a problem with that then get out

likeability

leonineantiheroine:

So I know it’s only a TV show and am not using this example of popular culture to like make a connection between it and real life but apparently the next Australian episode of New Girl with the ‘adorkable’ Zooey Deschanel as Jess is significant because Jess finds out someone doesn’t like her. WHY IS THIS ACTUALLY A PROBLEM AND A POINT OF CONFLICT IN A TV SHOW? LIKE SERIOUSLY ARE THERE ACTUALLY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHOM EVERYONE LIKES*? WHY DON’T WE REALISE THAT WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIPS TO EACH OTHER AND IT MIGHT NOT BE ABOUT LIKEABILITY PER SE? ISN’T IT FUNNY HOW WOMEN HAVE TO BE MORE LIKEABLE BUT THE MOST LIKEABLE PERSON (IN AUSTRALIA) IS A BIG MOUTH, STRAIGHT WHITE MALE WHO CRACKS JOKES AND IS REALLY LAIDBACK DUDE AND WHO IS NOT FAT (MAYBE)?

*Yes I know there are a few of these but I make it a point not to like them and people who think this is an admirable quality—I don’t like them either.

I find this post highly likeable