The Fandom Rant, Part II
Jan. 23rd, 2005 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorSeveral months ago, I posted an entry about fandom and why I thought sf/fantasy/anime/roleplaying geekery could be a good and life-enhancing thing. I think, though, that that was only half the rant. I've noticed that when people make fun of geeks, I tend to bridle and fuss and be annoyed. Now, I think of myself as having the confidence and sense of humor to be able to laugh at myself when I'm doing something silly (you should have seen me flopping around in the three-foot blizzard snow-drifts today)(wow, that was fun), so I wasn't sure why exactly I have so little sense of humor about this.
Back in the 30s and 40s and 50s (and, to a certain extent, 60s and 70s and 80s), gay people gathered together in bars or at parties, because the only thing they really had to do was to hook up for sex and perhaps to find some company with whom they didn't have to lie. According to books from the time (The Well of Loneliness, The Charioteer, Maurice, etc), these gatherings tended to have a certain ghastly cheer-- the coming together of miserable, guilt-ridden, depressed, sometimes suicidal people to try to have a good time (and some casual sex). According to these books also, there was a real not-quite-hierarchy of exactly how queer one seemed to be. Taking guys (because it's easier to just do one sex), you'd start off with men who didn't sleep with men at all, just wanted to-- but at least they could reassure themselves that they were behaving like decent, upstanding people, even if they knew they were sick degenerates inside. Then you had men who did sleep with other men (often the protagonists of the books), but at least they were butch-- they weren't some of those sissy queens-- so they could keep their dignity and their pride. Then you'd have people who really flamed, and everyone despised them for being annoying drama queens whom you couldn't take out in public, and who couldn't really handle "real life," -- but there sometimes seemed to be a little wistfulness that other people couldn't be as "free."
I see certain parallels with this and geekdom. Because I have known that feeling-- that, "yes, I like science-fiction and all-- but I'm not like those people-- I'm not one of those people who..." fill in the blank. "Dresses up in costumes" or "goes to conventions" or "goes boffing on the lawn" or "inserts random Japanese phrases into their speech." Or even "thinks that vampires are real" or "has fallen in love with a fictional character" or "can't talk about anything but this one comic book series" or "never wears anything except old gaming t-shirts." Or "is thirty years old and lives in his parents' basement and has never had a date and has a collection of Star Trek uniforms." There's even a chart out there of levels of geek-- starting with people who watch a little Futurama or work for Microsoft, I think, and going all the way down to "people who run discussion forums about writing angst-ridden fan fiction in which they sleep with Captain Kirk and both of them are ocelots." The idea, I think, is that everyone can find their place in the chart, and make fun of everyone who falls lower than they, because they may be geeks, but they're not losers.
And I don't see a difference, between that attitude and the one that gay people had before Stonewall. The idea seems to be that there's a prototypical Geek (or Fairy), and to be that person would be a fate worse than death. So people reassure themselves that they're not actually that far gone-- in part by pointing out all the things about their lives that aren't that ("Look at me! I have a full, rich sex life, and I have an interesting job, and I dress neatly and kinda trendily, so I can't be one of those people!"), and in part by making fun of the people who fall "lower" than they do on the geek chart. It strikes me as being internalized self-hatred, plain and simple. "Society," "mainstream people," don't approve, and we hear that message-- "This is not okay"-- often enough to believe it. But we can't deny that, well, we really like Douglas Adams. So we find someone who's clearly more outside the norm than we are, and we point it out and laugh. Because we can draw a line-- "I am acceptable; they are not."
Now, queers eventually had Stonewall, and then the Gay Liberation movement, and we've managed to cram it down the throats of many, many people that actually, gay is okay. I don't think you find many of the really self-hating queers in the young generations-- and so I think that most of us don't despise people who are obvious about their gayness. I don't know anyone my age who really objects to drag queens or very butch lesbians, because most of the people I know who are gay don't see that there's anything wrong with being obviously gay-- because there's nothing wrong with gayness in itself. And anybody who says there is is being a hateful bigot, and we don't listen to them.
I'd like to see geeks do the same thing. It's true that, as I've said before, some geeks have appalling social skills. So did some queens (not drag queens, just folks who were ever-so-gay, darling), back in the day. So do some of any group you care to name. I think that geeks are seen as having worse social skills than other groups in part because we are, often, smarter than average. That means both that a) we find things interesting which other people find incomprehensible, and b) we're a threat (it's always nice to think that there's something horribly wrong with people who are more athletic than you, richer than you, more famous than you, etc). I don't think that the social skills of all geeks are so appalling. It's just that, like with queers, those who have enough social savvy to do so can go underground-- into the closet-- and don't talk about their geekish interests to people who don't share them. They're just as much geeks as anyone else-- they're just less visible.
So I suppose the reason I don't like to see people mock geeks-- especially when the mockers are geeks themselves-- is that I see it as internalized self-hatred, an unwillingness to see their geekdom as something which is perfectly fine and should be socially acceptable. It's not that I don't agree that there are geeks who are very, very lacking in social skills-- there are. There are queers who are totally lacking in social skills, too-- I dated one of them, come to think of it. But she didn't make me squirm the way that really geekish geeks seem to make some people squirm. Because yes, she was very enthusiastic about the whole gay thing, but... well, I was gay myself, and I quite liked it, so I could understand the passion there. I feel it myself, I just don't talk about it as much.
I'm repeating myself, so I'll stop. But the point is-- geek is okay, I think. I don't think there will ever be a "Geek Liberation Movement," because I don't think we're really suffering that much real persecution and discrimination. But I would like to see people take a lesson from the queers, and try to develop some pride in their geekdom. Having passion and seriousness is always harder than cynicism-- but it feels so much better.
--R
Back in the 30s and 40s and 50s (and, to a certain extent, 60s and 70s and 80s), gay people gathered together in bars or at parties, because the only thing they really had to do was to hook up for sex and perhaps to find some company with whom they didn't have to lie. According to books from the time (The Well of Loneliness, The Charioteer, Maurice, etc), these gatherings tended to have a certain ghastly cheer-- the coming together of miserable, guilt-ridden, depressed, sometimes suicidal people to try to have a good time (and some casual sex). According to these books also, there was a real not-quite-hierarchy of exactly how queer one seemed to be. Taking guys (because it's easier to just do one sex), you'd start off with men who didn't sleep with men at all, just wanted to-- but at least they could reassure themselves that they were behaving like decent, upstanding people, even if they knew they were sick degenerates inside. Then you had men who did sleep with other men (often the protagonists of the books), but at least they were butch-- they weren't some of those sissy queens-- so they could keep their dignity and their pride. Then you'd have people who really flamed, and everyone despised them for being annoying drama queens whom you couldn't take out in public, and who couldn't really handle "real life," -- but there sometimes seemed to be a little wistfulness that other people couldn't be as "free."
I see certain parallels with this and geekdom. Because I have known that feeling-- that, "yes, I like science-fiction and all-- but I'm not like those people-- I'm not one of those people who..." fill in the blank. "Dresses up in costumes" or "goes to conventions" or "goes boffing on the lawn" or "inserts random Japanese phrases into their speech." Or even "thinks that vampires are real" or "has fallen in love with a fictional character" or "can't talk about anything but this one comic book series" or "never wears anything except old gaming t-shirts." Or "is thirty years old and lives in his parents' basement and has never had a date and has a collection of Star Trek uniforms." There's even a chart out there of levels of geek-- starting with people who watch a little Futurama or work for Microsoft, I think, and going all the way down to "people who run discussion forums about writing angst-ridden fan fiction in which they sleep with Captain Kirk and both of them are ocelots." The idea, I think, is that everyone can find their place in the chart, and make fun of everyone who falls lower than they, because they may be geeks, but they're not losers.
And I don't see a difference, between that attitude and the one that gay people had before Stonewall. The idea seems to be that there's a prototypical Geek (or Fairy), and to be that person would be a fate worse than death. So people reassure themselves that they're not actually that far gone-- in part by pointing out all the things about their lives that aren't that ("Look at me! I have a full, rich sex life, and I have an interesting job, and I dress neatly and kinda trendily, so I can't be one of those people!"), and in part by making fun of the people who fall "lower" than they do on the geek chart. It strikes me as being internalized self-hatred, plain and simple. "Society," "mainstream people," don't approve, and we hear that message-- "This is not okay"-- often enough to believe it. But we can't deny that, well, we really like Douglas Adams. So we find someone who's clearly more outside the norm than we are, and we point it out and laugh. Because we can draw a line-- "I am acceptable; they are not."
Now, queers eventually had Stonewall, and then the Gay Liberation movement, and we've managed to cram it down the throats of many, many people that actually, gay is okay. I don't think you find many of the really self-hating queers in the young generations-- and so I think that most of us don't despise people who are obvious about their gayness. I don't know anyone my age who really objects to drag queens or very butch lesbians, because most of the people I know who are gay don't see that there's anything wrong with being obviously gay-- because there's nothing wrong with gayness in itself. And anybody who says there is is being a hateful bigot, and we don't listen to them.
I'd like to see geeks do the same thing. It's true that, as I've said before, some geeks have appalling social skills. So did some queens (not drag queens, just folks who were ever-so-gay, darling), back in the day. So do some of any group you care to name. I think that geeks are seen as having worse social skills than other groups in part because we are, often, smarter than average. That means both that a) we find things interesting which other people find incomprehensible, and b) we're a threat (it's always nice to think that there's something horribly wrong with people who are more athletic than you, richer than you, more famous than you, etc). I don't think that the social skills of all geeks are so appalling. It's just that, like with queers, those who have enough social savvy to do so can go underground-- into the closet-- and don't talk about their geekish interests to people who don't share them. They're just as much geeks as anyone else-- they're just less visible.
So I suppose the reason I don't like to see people mock geeks-- especially when the mockers are geeks themselves-- is that I see it as internalized self-hatred, an unwillingness to see their geekdom as something which is perfectly fine and should be socially acceptable. It's not that I don't agree that there are geeks who are very, very lacking in social skills-- there are. There are queers who are totally lacking in social skills, too-- I dated one of them, come to think of it. But she didn't make me squirm the way that really geekish geeks seem to make some people squirm. Because yes, she was very enthusiastic about the whole gay thing, but... well, I was gay myself, and I quite liked it, so I could understand the passion there. I feel it myself, I just don't talk about it as much.
I'm repeating myself, so I'll stop. But the point is-- geek is okay, I think. I don't think there will ever be a "Geek Liberation Movement," because I don't think we're really suffering that much real persecution and discrimination. But I would like to see people take a lesson from the queers, and try to develop some pride in their geekdom. Having passion and seriousness is always harder than cynicism-- but it feels so much better.
--R
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Date: 2005-01-24 04:31 am (UTC)i started to write a longer reply about what i meant by this, but i realized it was getting quite long and off-topic, so i decided to make it into an entry of its own, which can be viewed here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/q10/136550.html).