{"id":29537,"date":"2016-04-15T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T05:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29537"},"modified":"2016-04-05T10:14:44","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T14:14:44","slug":"qotd-nerd-shaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/04\/15\/qotd-nerd-shaming\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Nerd-shaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some people say the female version of the problem is men\u2019s fault, and call the behavior involve slut-shaming. I take this very seriously and try not to slut-shame or tolerate those who do.<\/p>\n

But the male version of the problem is nerd-shaming or creep-shaming or whatever, and I don\u2019t feel like most women, especially most feminist women, take it nearly as seriously as I try to take their problems. If anything, many actively make it worse. This is exactly those cartoons above and the feminists spreading them. Nerds are told that if they want to date girls, that makes them disgusting toxic blubberous monsters who are a walking offense to womankind.<\/p>\n

This is maybe not the most<\/em> reasonable interpretation of modern sexual mores, but neither is \u201cany women who has sex before marriage is a slut and no one will ever value her.\u201d Feminists are eagle-eyed at spotting the way seemingly innocuous messages in culture can accidentally reinforce the latter, but continue to insist that there\u2019s no possible way that shouting the former from the rooftops could possibly lead to anyone believing or internalizing it.<\/p>\n

Talking about \u201centitled nerds\u201d is the Hot New Internet Feminism thing these days. Here\u2019s The Entitlement And Misogyny Of Nerd Culture<\/a>. Here\u2019s Sex, Nerds, Entitlement, and Rape<\/a>. Here\u2019s Is Nerd Culture Filled With Entitled Crybabies?<\/a> There\u2019s On Male Entitlement: Geeks, Creeps, and Sex<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And now, apparently, the New Statesman<\/em>, realizing that it\u2019s almost 2015 and it has yet to claim a share of the exciting nerd entitlement action, has On Nerd Entitlement<\/a> by Laurie Penny.<\/p>\n

And this is more than a little weird, because the actual<\/em> nerds I know in real life tend to be more like Scott Aaronson, who is spending less time feeling entitled to sex, and more time asking his doctor if there\u2019s any way to get him castrated because his sexual desire might possibly offend a woman. Or more like me, who got asked out by a very pretty girl in middle school and ran away terrified because he knew nobody could actually like him and it was obviously some kind of nasty trick.<\/p>\n

So given that real-life nerds are like this, and given that they\u2019re sitting around being terrified that they\u2019re disgusting toxic monsters whose wish to have sex is an offense against womenkind, what do you think happens when they hear from every news source in the world that they are entitled?<\/em><\/p>\n

What happens is they think \u201cOh God! There was that one time when I looked at a woman and almost thought about asking her out! That means I must be feeling entitled to sex! I had temporarily forgotten that as a toxic monster I must never show any sexuality to anybody! Oh God oh God I\u2019m even worse than I thought!\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, this is not the most rational thing in the world. But I maintain it\u2019s no less rational than, say, women who won\u2019t leave their abusive husband because he\u2019s convinced them they don\u2019t deserve anything better than what they get. Gender is weird. Self-loathing is easy to inculcate and encourage, even unintentionally. Heck, we\u2019ve already identified this market failure of people preferring to castrate themselves rather than ask ten people on a date, something weird<\/em> has got to explain it.<\/p>\n

When feminists say that the market failure for young women is caused by slut-shaming, I stop slut-shaming, and so do most other decent people.<\/p>\n

When men say that the market failure for young men is caused by nerd-shaming, feminists write dozens of very popular articles called things like \u201cOn Nerd Entitlement\u201d.<\/p>\n

The reason that my better nature thinks that it\u2019s irrelevant whether or not Penny\u2019s experience growing up was better or worse than Aaronson\u2019s: when someone tells you that something you are doing is making their life miserable, you don\u2019t lecture them about how your life is worse, even if it\u2019s true. You STOP DOING IT.<\/p>\n

Scott Alexander, “Untitled”, Star Slate Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2015-01-01.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people say the female version of the problem is men\u2019s fault, and call the behavior involve slut-shaming. I take this very seriously and try not to slut-shame or tolerate those who do. But the male version of the problem is nerd-shaming or creep-shaming or whatever, and I don\u2019t feel like most women, especially most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,41,13],"tags":[987,254,139,255],"class_list":["post-29537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-feminism","tag-gender","tag-psychology","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Gp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29538,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29537\/revisions\/29538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}