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semi-expatriation
Aug. 21st, 2005 09:56 amSo Dragoncon is coming up soon, and that's gotten me to thinking. (For those not in the geek-know, it's a big SF/comic/TV/movie/game geekfest in Atlanta.) It used to be that I looked forward with great anticipation at the collection of gaming, comic and general SF/fantasy subcultural immersion. I've been going for years (I think I only missed one, even back when it was Atlanta Comics Con), but more and more over time, it's been unsettling and alienating, and I think I've finally gotten a handle on why.
Back when I was a hard core geek, it had to do with escape, if not actually full scale retreat from conventional reality. Feeling weak, powerless, conflicted and forbidden, I sought outs through heroic (or not so heroic) identification, and threw myself into the subculture with great, if not complete, abandon (gendery stuff could not be spoken). I was a classic stereotype of a gamer; I would spend countless hours creating and improving worlds and characters, but would do nothing to improve the conventional world or my place in it. I was such a whore to the machinery of escapism that I even ended up writing some supplements, and came close to becoming a cog in the works.
But somewhere along the way, I started slowly making changes to my thinking about my place in the world, and that led to small beginnings of actual change. Without the overt need to belong, troubling things began to get harder and harder to ignore, particularly as the con grew in size and popularity. In short, it's that geek culture, particularly as embodied ad D*con, is painfully, proudly and unrepentantly sexist and essentialist.
The gaze is in full force; nowhere else have I seen old, pudgy and socially inept "men" (quotation marks because I haven't checked, and don't intend to) command the attention of scantily clad young women without money changing hands. Every Saturday and Sunday night, it's a parade of "girl" flesh for the devouring gaze of geek "men" and their cameras. Add in the contests (Dawn look alike, pirate girl-only booty, Ms Klingon), the welcoming of girl-girl performative bisexuality, and the situation becomes almost unbearable to me. In very, very rare cases (some band members), only those with (overt) T&A are prepared for and expecting the gaze (and in the few cases of pretty band members sans the above, heterosexuality is loudly and often proclaimed).
Obviously, my positionality makes this problematic, but I tend to think that it was something that I was aware of but actively ignored for years. I don't think it's just because it affects me that I am troubled. It disturbs me to watch people I know willingly partake in social interactions that in any other context they would find troubling, if not outright offensive, to consider or be considered others as object for approval or dismissal, and along very traditionally sexist lines.
I hate unequal privilege in everyday life, but for some reason, I find it all the more infuriating when it is embodied in socially inept middle aged couch/game potatos. I suppose I would expect those who are underprivileged in the general cultural world to be more sensitive to power inequity, not to recreate it more unequally but still along the conventional lines. Geek patriarchy pisses me off way more than general (save for Bush Co. and cohorts, though I suspect their ilk would be quite at home at D*con). But, I go to see friends, which makes me silently complicit, and part of the problem.
Just, ick.
Back when I was a hard core geek, it had to do with escape, if not actually full scale retreat from conventional reality. Feeling weak, powerless, conflicted and forbidden, I sought outs through heroic (or not so heroic) identification, and threw myself into the subculture with great, if not complete, abandon (gendery stuff could not be spoken). I was a classic stereotype of a gamer; I would spend countless hours creating and improving worlds and characters, but would do nothing to improve the conventional world or my place in it. I was such a whore to the machinery of escapism that I even ended up writing some supplements, and came close to becoming a cog in the works.
But somewhere along the way, I started slowly making changes to my thinking about my place in the world, and that led to small beginnings of actual change. Without the overt need to belong, troubling things began to get harder and harder to ignore, particularly as the con grew in size and popularity. In short, it's that geek culture, particularly as embodied ad D*con, is painfully, proudly and unrepentantly sexist and essentialist.
The gaze is in full force; nowhere else have I seen old, pudgy and socially inept "men" (quotation marks because I haven't checked, and don't intend to) command the attention of scantily clad young women without money changing hands. Every Saturday and Sunday night, it's a parade of "girl" flesh for the devouring gaze of geek "men" and their cameras. Add in the contests (Dawn look alike, pirate girl-only booty, Ms Klingon), the welcoming of girl-girl performative bisexuality, and the situation becomes almost unbearable to me. In very, very rare cases (some band members), only those with (overt) T&A are prepared for and expecting the gaze (and in the few cases of pretty band members sans the above, heterosexuality is loudly and often proclaimed).
Obviously, my positionality makes this problematic, but I tend to think that it was something that I was aware of but actively ignored for years. I don't think it's just because it affects me that I am troubled. It disturbs me to watch people I know willingly partake in social interactions that in any other context they would find troubling, if not outright offensive, to consider or be considered others as object for approval or dismissal, and along very traditionally sexist lines.
I hate unequal privilege in everyday life, but for some reason, I find it all the more infuriating when it is embodied in socially inept middle aged couch/game potatos. I suppose I would expect those who are underprivileged in the general cultural world to be more sensitive to power inequity, not to recreate it more unequally but still along the conventional lines. Geek patriarchy pisses me off way more than general (save for Bush Co. and cohorts, though I suspect their ilk would be quite at home at D*con). But, I go to see friends, which makes me silently complicit, and part of the problem.
Just, ick.
