Escher Girls

Just a quick update about the “Idiot Nerd Girl” meme

Here’s a couple more pieces about it:

http://www.themarysue.com/geek-girl-meme/2/

http://feminspire.com/idiot-nerd-girl-has-a-posse-taking-back-the-meme/

The second one is by Rachel (my friend :D), the one who started this, and you should read it for her reasons behind opposing the meme. (Also, because she said nobody was going to read it there, and I’m evil so I’m linking it here)

I dislike this idea that we should be wondering if women (usually based on appearance) are “really” geeks. Besides that it’s a sexist idea, it also leads to making spaces unwelcome to women, forcing women to constantly prove their “credentials”, making our participation in geek stuff not about fun but about constant proving that we belong, that we know more, and for some people, even that’s never enough, because there’s always an excuse why our success doesn’t count.

I remember when my guy friend got me into City of Heroes way back when, and I played constantly, and in a year I had 5 level 50s, and his response (he didn’t even have one, but he didn’t play as much as me) was “that’s because you’re a girl and everybody gives you things.” Which a) wasn’t true and b) he wouldn’t know since we never played together, but he assumed based on my gender and that I had been successful, clearly it’s not because I’m a good player, or I spend a lot of time in the game, it’s because I’m a girl and guys are giving me things. (To be fair to him, he apologized to me later.)

http://www.quickmeme.com/user/ami_angelwings/

And in the interests of shameless self promotion, those are my submissions before I got bored :D