I am continually astonished by men who claim that the mere existence of women is political and "forcing social justice into fiction." I've been a geek girl since I was three years old and obsessed with Doctor Who, My Little Pony, and Vincent Price. – SMcGI grew up in a very small town in a rural farming community. Across the street from my house was a corn or bean field, depending on the crop rotation that year. Mice in the walls every fall when they harvested. My consolidated high school was around 400 students, the population of my hometown at the time was 550. Small.
When Star Wars came out, our older brother took me and my little brother to see it. The boys in my class were really into the action figures and toys and stuff. I remember enjoying the movie, but I didn't have any of the toys. I played with some of those boys, and was fine being Leia (the lone important female character), and don't remember missing having lightsaber battles since she never got one. The girls in my class, my friends, and the neighbor girls who were a year ahead of me in school weren't interested in it, though, and I drifted between the boys who played Star Wars and the girls who dressed Barbies and rollerskated.
I remember the Community Center playing movies in the summer, old black and white monster movies like The Deadly Mantis, and insisting I be allowed to go see them. I remember Channel 3 having an Early Show program at 3pm that showed movies, and they had theme weeks, and I'd rush home from school to watch when there were Godzilla or Universal monster movies on that week. I don't remember any of my friends doing that with me.
I watched Wonder Woman, The Six-Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Charlie's Angels, and The Incredible Hulk on TV when I could if there wasn't something else more interesting for my parents to watch. There was no shortage of heroic figures in my media consumption. I didn't have the toys to show it, though. (I honestly don't remember asking for dolls for WW, BW or the Angels, and I don't know that I would have received them. Not only did I grow up rural, I grew up working class – strictly blue collar. There might not've been extra money floating around for those toys even if I had wanted them.)
My first comic books other than the Archie digests from the grocery store were from a box I found at a garage sale and begged for. (And still have.) Among them were some Bugs Bunny titles, Spider-Man issues, and a couple of Where Monsters Dwell issues (Marie Severin cover art). They weren't mint when I talked her into letting me have them, and after kid-me read and reread them, they certainly aren't mint now, but I love them and they are awesome. But this, too, was a solitary thing. I have no recollection of sharing my joy of this with my other friends.
I was in 6th grade when I discovered Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. By then, I had already devoured the Trixie Belden mysteries. None of my friends seemed particularly interested in either series. (I'm still a little afraid to watch DuVernay's movie; the book was important enough to me that if the movie doesn't hold up to my girlish expectations it would be crushing... even though everyone says she did an amazing job.)
This is a long and winding way of saying my experience with female geekdom as a child was relatively painless. I was isolated and had no way to know what I was missing, outside of the toys I could see and didn't have. It was a little lonely and sometimes hurtful, but for the most part I think I was comfortable in my solitude.
Fast forward to adulthood. I managed to find another solitude-appreciating nerd in college, he's a bit more extroverted than I am, but we manage okay. I guess since I tend to avoid a lot of the social situations that could lead to my rejection, I haven't had many of the same "fake geek" bullshit experiences so many of my sisters have. The little RPGing I have done was done with a tight group of friends. When I played WoW, I was gamed with friends or alone because I didn't want to deal with the a-holes I knew were out there. Probably the worst I have experienced is the assumption that the action figures I'm buying are for a boyfriend/husband and not for me. That may be due to the fact that I carefully curated my experience to minimize exposure, knowing what lurked in the shadows; I made conscious decisions to limit myself to maximize personal enjoyment. (AND I SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO DO THAT! We're clear on that right? Women everywhere have to avoid things they enjoy because men are openly hostile or harassingly "welcome.")
I don't want to take away from the lived experiences of the women I have seen getting harassed in real time online. Women driven from the internet, from Twitter, from gaming, whatever, because male geekdom found their mere presence unholy. The fact that my wounds are superficial in comparison, doesn't mean I deny the deeper wounds of others. (On the contrary, it makes me want to fight for them, protectively.)
Am I less of a geek because I have been unwilling to hang myself up as a target? No one who knows me would call me timid, but I don't enjoy being the butt of anyone's jokes (being the girl between two brothers will cure you of that right-quick). I just want to enjoy the media that makes me happy without people telling me I shouldn't like those things now, when I have all along, even if they're not telling me directly. Because honestly, when people are shitty to one of my sisters, that means they've been shitty to me. I always seem to be arriving too late to the scene to prevent it from happening, and maybe it's too big to "prevent" anyway – perhaps triage is all I can provide – but I'll be damned if it happens in my presence.
We don't have to earn our place to be here. We don't owe anyone anything. There are no dues to be paid, no entrance exams. And we've got
