I’m a fake geek guy.

I’ve now been to about twen­ty con­ven­tions. One com­ic book con­ven­tion, lots of gam­ing con­ven­tions, an ani­me con­ven­tion, a SF/F con­ven­tion with house­hold name writ­ers, and a cou­ple of con­ven­tions that defied cat­e­go­riza­tion.

I’ve sat with geeks of every stripe. Star Wars fans. Trekkies. Brown­coats. Role play­ers. LARPers. Cos­play­ers. SCAers. Com­ic book lovers. Gamers. Even peo­ple who love civ­il war strat­e­gy games enough that that’s basi­cal­ly WHAT THEY DO every Sat­ur­day night.

I’ve watched con­ver­sa­tions rage around me about whether DC or Mar­vel heroes would win in a fight or if the Enter­prise could defeat a Super Star Destroy­er. My own Face­book was the site of a 250+ com­ment thread on whether or not Darth Vad­er by him­self could win against a Star Destroy­er tak­en over by an Alien queen with a two-week head start. I’ve seen friend­ships strain over the word­ing of a +1 strike bonus for an elf using a long­bow while hang­ing by its knees from a tree. (“It does­n’t say long­bow! There’s no way you can use a long­bow upside down like that.” “It says bow. The long­bow is a bow!” “It’s just a +1.” “Then don’t make a big deal about it.”) I’ve seen peo­ple talk­ing about the mer­its of sword types in dif­fer­ent mil­i­tary the­aters, and I’ve seen a con­ver­sa­tion about whether a samu­rai or a medieval knight would win in a fight that I hon­est­ly thought was going to end in a live, to-the-death, demon­stra­tion. There’s even a group out there still say­ing “frell” instead of “gor­ram” or “frack.”

And here’s the deep dark truth. I smile and nod a lot.

I mean, I smile and nod a LOT.

I like most geek things, but I don’t like them enough to delve into the obses­sion that is a bit of a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the sub­cul­ture. I watch the main movies or read the main books and call it a day. I can’t quote Game of Thrones. (“You know noth­ing about snow, Jon?” Right? The char­ac­ter is deal­ing with snow for the first time because win­ter has­n’t come yet? That’s right, isn’t it?) I’ve only read the first two Dres­den books. (This seems kind of misog­y­nis­tic. You SURE it gets “way bet­ter”? doing air quotes with my fin­gers) I don’t know the exten­sive back­sto­ries of every Avenger (Iron Man is an alco­holic, right?) I don’t have a defin­i­tive vit­ri­olic opin­ion on Dis­ney’s gut­ting of the Star Wars extend­ed uni­verse because I don’t know it. (The Old Repub­lic was cool… most­ly… right?) I’ve seen the X‑Men movies, but I don’t real­ly read com­ic books. (There was a new time­line for a while, or some­thing?) I’m vague­ly aware that Super­man died a few years back. (Oh, that was in that one YouTube… with Eli­jah Woods!)

~whis­pers~ I haven’t even seen Doc­tor Who past about mid-Matt Smith.

By now, you’ve prob­a­bly real­ized the shock­ing, hor­ri­fy­ing truth. Frankly put, I am a FAKE GEEK GUY.

I admit it. I like geek stuff, but I don’t love geek stuff. Not the way most geeks do. Not like the fan­doms. I’m an inter­lop­er on the geek scene. I’ve seen the movies, but I don’t know the canon. I am not a “true” fan.

All those things about not real­ly lov­ing the source mate­r­i­al and “just watch­ing the movies” or only read­ing the one book that every­one has read… that—all of that—applies to me.

But here are some things that have nev­er hap­pened to me: I have nev­er been quizzed about who Data’s evil broth­er is to prove I like Star Trek enough to be wor­thy of my posi­tion in line for the mid­night show­ing of First Con­tact. (Oh! Oh! That one I know.) I have nev­er had to jus­ti­fy my place in a sneak pre­view line to see Spi­der-Man II by know­ing who took up the man­tle of Spi­der-Man after Peter Park­er’s death. (Peter Park­er dies? Real­ly? That’s so sad!) I have nev­er had to explain who Nightwing is in order to par­tic­i­pate in a con­ver­sa­tion about Bat­man. (Nightwing is like… Robin on steroids, right?) I have nev­er been asked how bat­tle med­i­ta­tion works in order to voice my opin­ion that Enter­prise shields would prob­a­bly make a fight with Star Wars tech­nol­o­gy one-sided. (Bat­tle med­i­ta­tion is some­thing that was in that Jedi role-play­ing video game, was­n’t it?) I have nev­er had to beat every­body in the room (twice) at Mario Kart to prove I liked video games. I have nev­er had my gen­der “hon­orar­i­ly” changed by hav­ing enough geek inter­ests to be accept­ed (“you’re one of the guys now”). No one has ever insist­ed I tell them the dif­fer­ence between a tank and DPS in an MMORPG before allow­ing me to dis­cuss raid­ing Molten Core. (I still haven’t seen Molten Core.) I have nev­er been dis­missed as a fak­er at a pre­quel screen­ing because I did­n’t know which admi­ral came out of light speed too close to the plan­et’s sur­face in The Empire Strikes Back. (I know this one, but only because in the days before Net­flix, we had these things called VCRs, and I watched my very worn Christ­mas-present copies of the Star Wars movies like 250+ times when noth­ing else was on TV.) I have nev­er been quizzed about Armor Class in order to get past some­one who was block­ing my path to the back of a game store where my friends were wait­ing at the tables. I have nev­er been told I’m not a real fan. I have nev­er been shamed for com­ing to a con­ven­tion despite my lack of eso­teric knowl­edge. I have nev­er been shamed because my ridonku­lous­ly cute out­fit was turn­ing heads, and that some­how made me not inter­est­ed in the game I was play­ing. And I have nev­er, ever, EVER, EVER been invit­ed to leave a fan­dom because I did­n’t like [what­ev­er it was] enough.

Every one of the things I have list­ed, I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed.

Hap­pen to women.

That’s not elit­ism. That’s sex­ism.

Rank, bla­tant, “no girls allowed,” “women-should-stay-at-home-and-watch-their-soaps-while-I-go-do-geek-stuff,” fla­grant, shame­less sex­ism.

Elit­ism is arro­gant. It’s obnox­ious. It makes peo­ple look like pompous, pre­ten­tious, smug ass­holes who deserve to die alone. And so, every­thing about the “fake geek” move­ment needs to be called out, ridiculed, peed on, fed bel­ladon­na, hit over the head with a shov­el, cut into pieces, dunked in boil­ing sul­fu­ric acid, and the sludge remain­ing buried in the back­yard behind the chem­i­cal shed where the rabid bad­gers live. (You get to com­plain that your fan­dom is trag­i­cal­ly mis­un­der­stood, or be a rag­ing ass­hole to peo­ple who are just start­ing to be curi­ous about it. Pick one.) So it’s kind of telling that the best thing peo­ple can claim when they’re spew­ing their “fake geek girl” bull­shit is that they’re being elit­ist fuc­knoo­dles.

But real elit­ism, for all its haughty, con­ceit­ed snob­bery, is at least egal­i­tar­i­an and uni­ver­sal­ly applied. Real elit­ism is haughty dill­ho­lerif­ic bull­shit that… despite all oth­er ass­waf­fle bull­shit, at least sees no gen­der.

Spoil­er: the “fake geek girl” move­ment isn’t actu­al­ly about elit­ism at all. Elit­ism is just the osten­si­ble mask it wears to have a some­what social­ly accept­able face. (“Oh, it’s just about how much we love this thing! We don’t want peo­ple who don’t real­ly love it muck­ing up our squee!”) Every­one knows sex­ism is bad, but being a jerk about your fan­dom is… sort of okay. So, elit­ism becomes the misog­y­ny-adja­cent issue seized upon for plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty.

Except for the fact that every sin­gle man­i­festo or online rant or blovi­at­ing geek or shit­crum­pet call­ing out a woman… Every sin­gle one of them who blus­ters about how how FGG’s don’t “love or appre­ci­ate [what­ev­er] enough” or “aren’t real fans” or “don’t real­ly know what they are talk­ing about” or “should­n’t be cos­play­ing” or “don’t have the right to be geek­ing out” betrays their sex­ism when they they fail to deliv­er the exact same bull­shit (with equal fer­vor and fre­quen­cy) to men.

And they do not.

I’ve been a fake geek for about 40 years now. Even in high school, I could­n’t keep up with the arcane geek­ery of the geek squad I played Dun­geons and Drag­ons behind the B build­ing lock­ers with. But as a very fake geek who has lit­er­al­ly nev­er been quizzed, shamed, or gatekept, I can attest to the fact that they. do. NOT.

[Might there be one or two dudes out there beyond my anec­do­tal obser­va­tions who have been giv­en such quizzes. Cer­tain­ly. Are SOME geeks sim­ply frus­trat­ed that their interests—once the sub­ject of ridicule—are now main­stream? Sure­ly. But the pres­ence of a few out­liers does not in any way deval­ue the fact that this is a pre­dom­i­nant­ly gen­dered phe­nom­e­non.]

These sex­ist buttstrudels don’t care about their fan­dom. (I mean, they might, but that’s not what this is real­ly about, and if they real­ly cared, they’d want more new blood and fans, not few­er.) What they care about is keep­ing the club boys-only. If a woman is bang­ing one of the guys, she might be able to get by with­out this shit with THAT PARTICULAR GUY, but how DARE she have geek interests.(And the irony here—for which a whole oth­er arti­cle could be written—is that the way this com­mu­ni­ty objec­ti­fies, crit­i­cizes, and scru­ti­nizes women—yes, par­tic­u­lar­ly includ­ing the entire “fake geek girl” trope—drives many away from things they would oth­er­wise love to be a part of.*) If these dudes cared about their fan­dom, they would­n’t stand as gate­keep­ers to puri­ty only when it comes to one gen­der while let­ting the oth­er’s blun­ders pass with­out com­ment.

It’s fine to be a girl as long as you’re one of the guys. Oh, and by the way, we won’t be test­ing the guys.

If you only give your incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult vot­ing lit­er­a­cy tests to blacks, but not whites, that makes you a total fuck­ing racist, and when we look back on Jim Crow his­to­ry, we can see that par­tic­u­lar for­est for the trees with­out ever being fooled that it was real­ly about crit­i­cal think­ing skills. (Though these days there’s a whole new round of “How dare you call us racist—this is about X” plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty when it comes to vot­er sup­pres­sion.) So, let’s not be obtuse because this is hap­pen­ing in real time and a few peo­ple have dis­cov­ered how to couch their misog­y­ny in some kind of halfway relat­able, wank­trum­pet-but-at-least-not-big­ot­ed fuck­wadery instead of the bla­tant sex­ist kind.

Geeks are get­ting a pass on unbe­liev­ably misog­y­nis­tic behav­ior, because we can maybe kind of imag­ine a world where obses­sive geeks obsess a lit­tle too much about their fan­dom, and they tend to be bul­lied in school. We tend to only call out their ridicu­lous elit­ism and leave the pur­ple ele­phant alone. But they are as sex­ist as the rest of the world, and they just found a ver­sion that fits into their sub­cul­ture. And geeks who would nev­er behave this way are look­ing the oth­er way when it hap­pens.

Sim­ply put, ignor­ing this makes the entire fan­dom com­plic­it in the sys­tem that is only over­ly loy­al and purist when it comes to women, and it’s time we called this misog­y­ny out for what it is. We’re doing a grave dis­ser­vice to the rep­u­ta­tions of our fan­doms and our­selves by not Nazgul scream­ing at this shit­wanker behav­ior in the stark­est terms pos­si­ble. The rea­son geek cul­ture is being labeled as a den of misog­y­ny is that the shoe fits, and let­ting sex­ism slide is the moral equiv­a­lent of ask­ing to see the wing tips.

If you only give your ass­hole, elis­tist, geek cross-exam­i­na­tions, quizzes, and “prove you’re one of us” tests to women, you’re not just an elit­ist pis­s­rock­et, you’re a sex­ist bag of dicks too. And if we don’t check it when we see it hap­pen­ing, then we’re smil­ing and nod­ding at rep­re­hen­si­ble misog­y­nist ass­holes and let­ting them go right on rep­re­hen­si­bly misog­y­nist­ing.