Kirylin’s Voice

I was pretty excited when I first heard about She’s Such a Geek. Essays written by women who have more than flirted with math, science, engineering, writing, and gaming? I was so there!
In fact, I highly recommend it to my students. It’s that good.

I’ve also started reading the main blog, occasionally following links to an entry written by one of the author’s at her own blog. I have yet to be disappointed.

I’ve been wrestling with my own sense of geek ever since I moved to Washington. Once upon a time, I watched nearly every science fiction television show. I liked playing in the chem lab, even if I hated balancing equations. Despite a bad showing in both algebra and geometry, I did exceptionally well at precalculus and calculus. I’ve always played on any computer I came near…up until I got my own computer. Now I play on my laptop, and play on other computers if I don’t have my laptop handy. I’ve always played any nearby video game I could, even while not owning my own. (The boys fixed this at Christmas when they gave me my much-loved DS Lite.) I take great pride in the fact i was an informal science teacher, and would still drop everything to help kids explore science topics. I love being a math tutor, and laugh at the fact that girls who suffer from the mindset that girls can’t do math are often placed with me to help shake them of that horridly old-fashioned notion. It’s a rare day that goes by where I’m not watching anime, and the fact that I have three unread manga on my shelf scares people.

A lull in my access to gaming and the availability of decent sci-fi shows led me to this feeling that I was completely out of touch with all of it, and in fact had no right to claim any of that life I grew up with. My friends here often respond to something I do or say by simply saying, “Geek.” I fight it. I fight it tooth-and-claw. I really feel like I just can’t claim that at all, like I’m a fake.

She’s Such a Geek has actually changed my mind. Even if I did have that gap in my life experiences, it doesn’t change the fact that I have geek tendencies, that I am a geek. I’ve been slowly trying to make peace with the fact that I actually am a geek. The fact I’m not the same flavor or level of geek as my roommates or friends is immaterial because I am my own weird blend of geek that is still a valid form of geek.

I was a geek. I am a geek. I will forever be a geek. SSAG really helped me understand that.

Where it lost me is in the attempt of many of the essayists to come to terms with both their geekiness and their femininity. In so many cases, there was talk of sex (the act, not gender) was key to making or breaking their careers. At one point, one of the essayists left me asking the same questions I was asking of William Gibson’s Cayce Pollard. Why did I need to know about certian things that are inherent to being a woman simply because of human anatomy and biology? I get the gender issues. I was one of two girls in a gaming group (the best group of people I’ve ever hung with), I was the oddball girl in charge of the Pokemon League and my LARP chapter, but I was also one of the guys…even if the guys knew full well I was a girl. Maybe I just ran into the right groups of male gamers.

Women can do math, science, and technology. Fine. Good. I completely agree with that (because if I didn’t, I’d be a huge hypocrite). Women face old-fashioned, unfounded stereotypes. Yep. True story, and many of us have fought those in our own way. Women either have to completely suppress their sexuality or overwork it to get anywhere in a room full of guys. Um…check your calendars, ladies. While I have had a little too much fun using the fact I’m a girl to get things to happen within a gaming group, I have never needed much more than that to gain whatever power I’ve needed, and I’ve watched groups completely shredded by girls who have either suppressed or overused their sexuality.
It’s going to be hard to gain any sort of equal footing for both genders when the act of sex (both completely present and completely absent) continues to be such a major part of the equation.

Anyway, I’ve gone off on a tangent inspired by one of the last essays in the book. Just go read the book. Make the girls in your life read it. It’s worth it.

(Because I think it’s a bit funny, I’m sitting here watching one of my favorite movies, Contact, simply because I stumbled upon it while trying to find something else entirely. This is my idea of a chick flick!)