Dear Fellow Geeks,

No one is hurting you when they wear superhero t-shirts without memorizing every title the character has appeared in. They’re expressing enthusiasm—novice enthusiasm, but enthusiasm nonetheless—for something you care deeply about and have done your damnedest to evangelize. That they don’t have the same degree of geek cred does nothing to diminish yours.

When you go after people for being less die-hard than you, you become the same people who marginalized you for being geeky. I understand how frustrating it is to see someone represent a culture in which you’re deeply invested and think, “I could have done that SO much better,” or “He or she does not fucking speak for me.” I understand this as a geek, and as a far-left liberal American, and oh, boy, do I understand it as a queer woman in geek culture.

You know what is goddamn EXHAUSTING? Caring about something, and working your ass off to get good at it, and then never getting to engage with other enthusiasts (or, often, professionals) because EVERY GODDAMN CONVERSATION has to start with you jumping through hoops to prove you’re the real deal, because unless you can juggle three cover variants while reciting the clone saga backwards in French, your tits disqualify you from any subjects more advanced than “Condescending Comments about Vertigo 101.”

When you choose to validate your own identity by denigrating and otherwise marginalizing others, you are doing irreparable damage the community you’re claiming to defend. I don’t care how hard your life has been, or how miserable middle school was for you or how many times you got called names for your comic-book collection. You are an asshole. Remember kindergarten? Throwing sand means losing sandbox privileges. You’re out of the club.

There is no Idiot Nerd Boy meme.

I hate the Idiot Nerd Girl meme. I hate it for much the same reason Feminspire writer Jessica Bagnall hates it: the entrenched geek misogyny that informs its pretty pink face. I hate it because it’s a convenient distillation of everything I hate about the “fake geek girl” strawman. I hate it because it vilifies enthusiasm. I hate it because, as a member of the geek community and a geek-industry professional, and especially as a feminist geek, I nurture a deep and abiding dislike for gatekeepers.

At the same time, though, geek culture is a haven for guys who can't or don't want to fall in step with the set of cultural trappings and priorities of traditional manhood in America. At least in theory, geek culture fosters a more cerebral and less violent model of masculinity, supported by a complementary range of alternative values. But the social cost of that alternative model--chosen or imposed--is high, and it's often extorted violently--socially or physically. The fringe is a scary place to live, and it leaves you raw and defensive, eager to create your own approximation of a center. Instead of rejecting the rigid duality of the culture they're nominally breaking from, geek communities intensify it, distilled through the defensive bitterness that comes with marginalization. And so masculinity is policed incredibly aggressively in geek communities, as much as in any locker room or frat house.

Q: How would you want people to remember you 100 years later?

A: It’s odd. I do not want people to remember me. BUT I want people to keep reading and discovering my books and comics and poems and so on. Honestly, I kind of like the idea of being semi-forgotten, so that each person who stumbles across something I’ve written, and likes it, can think of me as their own private discovery — this obscure 20th/21st century author, who no-one else in their school, pod, zone or L5 colony has ever heard of. But they have. And then if they meet someone else who has, they will know they have found a kindred soul.

That’s what I’d like.

For so many introverted people, geek culture was not only a way to find each other, but a safe place for the socially trodden upon to continually congregate. Now that safe place and source of community is being diluted and shared with the masses, many of whom are rather unkind to the stereotypical geek. Look, people who just like CGI action flicks are NOT the same thing as people who read monthly Marvel titles. These groups are suddenly expected to share the same cultural space, and are going to feel ousted from the domain they've been supporting for decades.

Doctor Who has become a hip new media phenomenon. Young women are going "squeee!" over the Doctor as someone to crush on. They likely do not have knowledge of Roger Delgado as the Master, sure, but that's not the point. Moreso, the relationship is with something completely different. Someone who likes modern Doctor Who is probably a fan of Firefly and Buffy. I, as a classic fan of Doctor Who, gravitate towards the audio plays, Blake's 7, etc. To find someone who likes Doctor Who is an easy task these days, and means very little similarly to what it did when I was young.

I don't begrudge people for enjoying this new show, but it's hip now, and different. That awkward dork that I was in my youth would not have found comfort and camaraderie in it's fan base.

What I'm worried about is that there's an expectation that that's what 'real geeks' want and that some girls are not necessarily wanting to be like that, but being pressured into trying to look like that.