Appropriation

The geeky/nerdy blogsphere is at each others’ throats again.  Once again lamentations about appropriation of the scene has targeted women.

This shit blew up over the last day or so, just as it did last time.  Nerds are intently tuned in to our scene through social media and are hyper-sensitive over what is ours, or of us.  If someone posts something noteworthy, newsworthy, or just plain stupid, everyone knows.  From twitter to blog to link aggregator to podcasts, it makes the rounds.

Just like the last shitstorm in a shot glass I read about, this one brought out the cries of, “misogyny!”  Defended as attempted screeds against posers and outsiders; both source posts targeted women.  The subject matter of the most recent was cosplayers who are attention seekers, not true nerds.  The majority of cosplayers seem to be women. 

Take a moment to do a quick Google image search on cosplay (be sure to have SafeSearch turned on if you’re at work).  You won’t find many pictures of men.  Though my own experiences at cons are not extensive, and rather anecdotal, I can’t recall ever seeing a man dressed as Naughty Hermione (though I did see an excellent Darth Maul eating a frozen yogurt in front of the Marriott at Dragon*Con a couple of years ago).  So, critiques of attention seeking cosplayers will likely be aimed at women.

You can argue about whether or not the aim of the rants was misogyny or not, and it seems to be by the way they were worded and presented, but there’s something fundamentally wrong about the whining here.  These dorks are angry about something else, not women, and I think I can put my finger on it.

“The street finds its own uses for things.”

When William Gibson wrote this he was referring the use of technology beyond its original purpose.  The aphorism holds true beyond electronics.  Anything can be appropriated and repurposed for the user’s benefit.

So, we see a couple of guys ranting on the internet about these apparent huge miscarriages of justice:  people who may not be nerds have come into our sandbox, but have chosen to play their own games while here instead of playing our games by our rules. 

Deal with it.  Stop acting like children.