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For the past little while, I've been thinking about Geeks.
Not the people who bite the heads off of chickens for a living.
I've been thinking about male geeks and female geeks.
And socialisation.
See.
A while back, Idioglossia posted something about an anthology of Geek-Girl essays about, well, about being a Geek-Girl. According to their guide-lines, I didn't qualify because (A) I'm not a computers/engineering/sciences Geek (I'm a religions/anthropology/mythology/Humana-Geek, which I guess is too girly. ;-) and
(B) I'm not a gamer and I don't read (many) comic books.
But: The vast ammount of people I hang out with are Geeks of one sort or another, as defined by the above paramiters.
As such, this is coming from a geekish, but not geek-y (?) girl, one who is familiar with geekity (Geeknicitude?) but who is not, necessarily, fully immersed therein. (Although after that sentence, one has to wonder... ;-)
Anyway.
What's been on my mind is this:
Girl Geeks are still Girls. Boy Geeks are still Boys.
Therfore, no mater how... into hard-sciences or gaming, or what-ever a given geek-girl is, she's still got girl-socializaion coursing through her brain on every level imaginable (that's the neat/incidious thing about cultural norms: They get everywhere. :-)
See, what I've noticed is that when I get a room full of my geek-girl friends together, we talk about, well, just about everything. Books, movies, gender roles, ear-rings, magic, cookings, decore, comics, theories about how the world works... Everything.
When I get a room full of my geek-girl and geek-boy friends together, we talk about gaming (table-top, board-games, LARPs, onlines, etc) and possibly anime and/or movies with lots of special effects. We do talk about other stuff, but it's harder to get onto those other topics.
And, basically, I got to wondering why this is.
And I thought: What do girls learn (read: get socialized to do) that boys (as far as I know) don't learn?
Girls are the keepers of culture and family. (Meaning that, about a two years from now, if not less, it will suddenly become my fault if Paul doesn't send a birthday card to his dad, or what-have-you, and that I'll be the one that Paul's Mom is calling about what-all's going on for Holiday X).
Girls are also taught from an early age to be polite in a social situation -- which, of course, requires knowing what "polite in a social situation" is (probably something we learn when we're finding out how to keep track of fourteen brand-new-relatives' birthdays... ;-)
So... Despite probably being just as socially out-cast as the geek-boys, the geek-girls are getting more social-situation "training" just by virtue of the fact that they're girls.
So they know that not everyone wants to hear about how LARP went the other night, in great detail, over the course of an hour. Certainly when "everyone" includes members of the obviously-non-geek population.
Which may (or may not -- I have no idea) be why my girls-only get-togethers involve more topics of conversation.
Any thoughts? From the Geeky-as-Heck population who might know this better than I? :-)
Also: On a different, but closely related topic: Has anyone noticed a tendency in the geeky (and gothy and pagany) sub-culture for people to want to be seen as both the Most Accurate/Knowledgeable and the Most Victimized of All? Just something that turns up every now and then.
What do you all think? :-)
- Nam'ara,
- Amazon. :-)
Not the people who bite the heads off of chickens for a living.
I've been thinking about male geeks and female geeks.
And socialisation.
See.
A while back, Idioglossia posted something about an anthology of Geek-Girl essays about, well, about being a Geek-Girl. According to their guide-lines, I didn't qualify because (A) I'm not a computers/engineering/sciences Geek (I'm a religions/anthropology/mythology/Humana-Geek, which I guess is too girly. ;-) and
(B) I'm not a gamer and I don't read (many) comic books.
But: The vast ammount of people I hang out with are Geeks of one sort or another, as defined by the above paramiters.
As such, this is coming from a geekish, but not geek-y (?) girl, one who is familiar with geekity (Geeknicitude?) but who is not, necessarily, fully immersed therein. (Although after that sentence, one has to wonder... ;-)
Anyway.
What's been on my mind is this:
Girl Geeks are still Girls. Boy Geeks are still Boys.
Therfore, no mater how... into hard-sciences or gaming, or what-ever a given geek-girl is, she's still got girl-socializaion coursing through her brain on every level imaginable (that's the neat/incidious thing about cultural norms: They get everywhere. :-)
See, what I've noticed is that when I get a room full of my geek-girl friends together, we talk about, well, just about everything. Books, movies, gender roles, ear-rings, magic, cookings, decore, comics, theories about how the world works... Everything.
When I get a room full of my geek-girl and geek-boy friends together, we talk about gaming (table-top, board-games, LARPs, onlines, etc) and possibly anime and/or movies with lots of special effects. We do talk about other stuff, but it's harder to get onto those other topics.
And, basically, I got to wondering why this is.
And I thought: What do girls learn (read: get socialized to do) that boys (as far as I know) don't learn?
Girls are the keepers of culture and family. (Meaning that, about a two years from now, if not less, it will suddenly become my fault if Paul doesn't send a birthday card to his dad, or what-have-you, and that I'll be the one that Paul's Mom is calling about what-all's going on for Holiday X).
Girls are also taught from an early age to be polite in a social situation -- which, of course, requires knowing what "polite in a social situation" is (probably something we learn when we're finding out how to keep track of fourteen brand-new-relatives' birthdays... ;-)
So... Despite probably being just as socially out-cast as the geek-boys, the geek-girls are getting more social-situation "training" just by virtue of the fact that they're girls.
So they know that not everyone wants to hear about how LARP went the other night, in great detail, over the course of an hour. Certainly when "everyone" includes members of the obviously-non-geek population.
Which may (or may not -- I have no idea) be why my girls-only get-togethers involve more topics of conversation.
Any thoughts? From the Geeky-as-Heck population who might know this better than I? :-)
Also: On a different, but closely related topic: Has anyone noticed a tendency in the geeky (and gothy and pagany) sub-culture for people to want to be seen as both the Most Accurate/Knowledgeable and the Most Victimized of All? Just something that turns up every now and then.
What do you all think? :-)
- Nam'ara,
- Amazon. :-)
