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gwydionWhy do I link so many things about unwelcoming elements of Geek Culture?
Ironically, the only place I've been queer bashed (verbally) in person was in a Geeks only supposedly safe gaming space, but it was for something I'm not. It startled me so much that for once I had trouble framing a response. Why? Oh, I've had to fight both verbally and physically all my life. I grew up dealing with all sorts of verbal and sexual aggression. I spent most of my sexual peak serious about martial arts and people just generally didn't mess with me because they intuited that I would break bones if people pushed me too far. I didn't have to fight often for real, but when someone came for me, I fought back hard and with no holds barred. This willingness to defend myself with all I had meant most people had the sense not to try me, if that made sense. I hated long and hard and used that when called upon to defend myself, my hatred so cold and hard there was nothing in my face and no mercy at all for the people trying to do me physical harm. I would rather run, but if cornered, I was a scary fuck.
The slurs of my childhood were oddly enough not orientation based, though I heard such applied to others. Names like "Ugly" and "Chewbacca" rolled off my back. I had no respect for those flinging them and I was perfectly aware that the culture outside was different than that inside the bounds of the school where I was imprisoned. I knew that outside, the standard of beauty was different, so I saw beauty and ugliness as things relative to culture and not inherent, so labels referencing my looks meant nothing.
When I was old enough to date, they tried to stick me into different boxes, different archetypes. This all looked like culturally relative to me, and being an alien anthropologist at heart, I simply rejected the labels and associated archetypes. I went about being myself without shame. Those who saw the beauty in my unbowed head followed me and those who kept trying to put me in what they thought to be my place, I rejected utterly as not worth my time. Continued harassment on their part won them public put downs with my wickedly sharp tongue. When physically attacked, I fought back the way I always had, with everything I had.
Labels like "slut" meant nothing to me as I was not ashamed of my sexuality and those flinging them were invariably those I considered unworthy of tumbling. It was obvious to me that I was seeing sour grapes from the sexually frustrated, and their assholery was not winning them any fucks not only from me, but from others watching them trying to shame me.
And so I went on, choosing who I chose, alone or in pairs, or now and then small groups.
Somehow, I made it to my thirties without once being attacked for my queerness, but only for my appearance and my agency. I was loved or hated by a surprisingly large number of people, being flamboyant and having a strong personality. Somehow, no one ever thought to apply an orientation based slur to me through all that. Accuse me inaccurately of bestiality? Sure. Attack me for looking different, being different, refusing to fit in my box, for saying "no?" Sure. Not once was I called the thing I was called that time at a certain Con. I'd had people try to push me out of Geek space before, either denying me the right to play or in fury after I beat their ass at a strat game. I'd never had them try to do it in this particular way.
I reported it to the organizer and the man in question was bounced from the Con and banned for life as that sort of thing was completely unacceptable to the Organizer (who is a straight white cis-man but all around hoopy frood). It infuriates me that this sort of thing is acceptable at other Cons and in other Geek spaces. It infuriates me when it’s racist. It infuriates me when it’s sexist. It infuriates me when it’s ableist. It infuriates me when it’s homophobic or transphobic or any other sort of phobic. I don’t care that it’s not aimed at me.
We are all Geeks. We’ve all been bullied and hassled at some point by someone with more power in one realm or another. We should be better than this. We should have each other’s backs instead of excluding each other. The people we should be excluding are the ones being dicks, the ones trying to suck the fun out of Geek spaces for everyone else, the ones pissing in the pool instead of trying to be decent to each other. The pool pissers want to push the women and the POC and the QUILTBAG folks out by making the atmosphere hostile to everyone who isn’t a racist misogynist ‘phobe.
It’s us or it’s them, folks. Who would you rather hang out with, a bunch of privilege soaked bullying douchebags endlessly quizzing people to make them prove they have the right to be there who fling around homophobic and racial insults, or you know, the rest of us? Because it’s one or the other really. We let the assholes chase away the decent people, our culture will die.
We need to take our damned culture back. Bullies take silence for consent. We need to get each other's backs. We need to say something if we see or hear something. We need to intervene if someone is being creepy, or racist, or quizzing people, or generally being a jerk. We need to decide as a culture that this shit shall not stand. We need to push back on the privileged bullshit and take our spaces back.
* Nothing to Prove - Geek Girls & The Doubleclicks:
Ironically, the only place I've been queer bashed (verbally) in person was in a Geeks only supposedly safe gaming space, but it was for something I'm not. It startled me so much that for once I had trouble framing a response. Why? Oh, I've had to fight both verbally and physically all my life. I grew up dealing with all sorts of verbal and sexual aggression. I spent most of my sexual peak serious about martial arts and people just generally didn't mess with me because they intuited that I would break bones if people pushed me too far. I didn't have to fight often for real, but when someone came for me, I fought back hard and with no holds barred. This willingness to defend myself with all I had meant most people had the sense not to try me, if that made sense. I hated long and hard and used that when called upon to defend myself, my hatred so cold and hard there was nothing in my face and no mercy at all for the people trying to do me physical harm. I would rather run, but if cornered, I was a scary fuck.
The slurs of my childhood were oddly enough not orientation based, though I heard such applied to others. Names like "Ugly" and "Chewbacca" rolled off my back. I had no respect for those flinging them and I was perfectly aware that the culture outside was different than that inside the bounds of the school where I was imprisoned. I knew that outside, the standard of beauty was different, so I saw beauty and ugliness as things relative to culture and not inherent, so labels referencing my looks meant nothing.
When I was old enough to date, they tried to stick me into different boxes, different archetypes. This all looked like culturally relative to me, and being an alien anthropologist at heart, I simply rejected the labels and associated archetypes. I went about being myself without shame. Those who saw the beauty in my unbowed head followed me and those who kept trying to put me in what they thought to be my place, I rejected utterly as not worth my time. Continued harassment on their part won them public put downs with my wickedly sharp tongue. When physically attacked, I fought back the way I always had, with everything I had.
Labels like "slut" meant nothing to me as I was not ashamed of my sexuality and those flinging them were invariably those I considered unworthy of tumbling. It was obvious to me that I was seeing sour grapes from the sexually frustrated, and their assholery was not winning them any fucks not only from me, but from others watching them trying to shame me.
And so I went on, choosing who I chose, alone or in pairs, or now and then small groups.
Somehow, I made it to my thirties without once being attacked for my queerness, but only for my appearance and my agency. I was loved or hated by a surprisingly large number of people, being flamboyant and having a strong personality. Somehow, no one ever thought to apply an orientation based slur to me through all that. Accuse me inaccurately of bestiality? Sure. Attack me for looking different, being different, refusing to fit in my box, for saying "no?" Sure. Not once was I called the thing I was called that time at a certain Con. I'd had people try to push me out of Geek space before, either denying me the right to play or in fury after I beat their ass at a strat game. I'd never had them try to do it in this particular way.
I reported it to the organizer and the man in question was bounced from the Con and banned for life as that sort of thing was completely unacceptable to the Organizer (who is a straight white cis-man but all around hoopy frood). It infuriates me that this sort of thing is acceptable at other Cons and in other Geek spaces. It infuriates me when it’s racist. It infuriates me when it’s sexist. It infuriates me when it’s ableist. It infuriates me when it’s homophobic or transphobic or any other sort of phobic. I don’t care that it’s not aimed at me.
We are all Geeks. We’ve all been bullied and hassled at some point by someone with more power in one realm or another. We should be better than this. We should have each other’s backs instead of excluding each other. The people we should be excluding are the ones being dicks, the ones trying to suck the fun out of Geek spaces for everyone else, the ones pissing in the pool instead of trying to be decent to each other. The pool pissers want to push the women and the POC and the QUILTBAG folks out by making the atmosphere hostile to everyone who isn’t a racist misogynist ‘phobe.
It’s us or it’s them, folks. Who would you rather hang out with, a bunch of privilege soaked bullying douchebags endlessly quizzing people to make them prove they have the right to be there who fling around homophobic and racial insults, or you know, the rest of us? Because it’s one or the other really. We let the assholes chase away the decent people, our culture will die.
We need to take our damned culture back. Bullies take silence for consent. We need to get each other's backs. We need to say something if we see or hear something. We need to intervene if someone is being creepy, or racist, or quizzing people, or generally being a jerk. We need to decide as a culture that this shit shall not stand. We need to push back on the privileged bullshit and take our spaces back.
* Nothing to Prove - Geek Girls & The Doubleclicks:
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-08 11:31 am (UTC)I also think, as we've said before about inclusive conventions there's a real problem with the foundation of geek culture. Comics, computer games, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, urban fantasy - the media that underpins Geek Culture is among the most erased and generally awful productions for marginalised people out there. And, because Geek culture definitely has a strong sense of "how dare you insult my precious" arising from societal contempt of the genres, it is very hard to have any kind of constructive criticism of this material.
This has to contribute to a geek culture that is hostile and exclusionary to marginalised people - because the foundations of this culture is hostile and exclusionary.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-09 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-09 11:45 am (UTC)