Gate-Rape

As I’ve noted before, I’m not really involved in the Realms of Geek, realms like gaming, role-playing and comic booking. These are realms I watch from a distance because I’m interested in how women function in them. One thing that particularly fascinates me is geek gate-keeping, that is self-professed geeky dudes, scoring–mostly women–on how truly geeky they are. There’s even a blog documenting this nonsense. (Spoiler alert: If you’re at all attractive, you’re probably not a real geek.)

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen of “Portlandia” hardly strike me as spokespeople for MRA-inspired idiocy, so it shocked the hell out of me when I saw a short sketch from their show which showed a girl talking to man about being such a “nerd” because she’s into gaming and comic books (it’s implied that this is, like, such a lie, people). The sketch then moves on to inform us that attractive women who see a geeky film are not nerds, then shows us a sampling of Authentic Kung Fu Grip in Their Original Packaging Nerds ™. They are all, oddly enough, dorky-looking white guys. Wow. Slow clap, Portlandia, slow clap. You really kept that gate. You kept it gooooood.

Let me share two letters of the alphabet with you, Keepers of the Gate: A.) I will make sweet love to Andrew Breitbart’s still-ragey corpse if women are–with any frequency–crowning themselves with the sweaty, well-palmed coveted Crown of Geek just because they play Angry Birds or see some comic book movie. (Yes, this is an actual complaint of gate-keepers.) B.) Let’s say there are women doing this. Why do you care? Why do you care? Seriously, WHY DO YOU CARE? Why don’t you just roll your eyes and move on? That you would get so screechy and hysterical tells me that your geeky pursuits aren’t keeping you fulfilled. Now ask yourself this: If you’re not fulfilled, is that really the fault of some silly, random chick who name-checks Angry Birds?