buffer-overrun

I’ve been thinking about and trying to have some sympathy for the most infuriating parts of boy nerd culture – the idea that they are being persecuted by women, that they are somehow owed a girlfriend or at least sex, and that girls can only ever be fake nerds.

I recently read a David Auerbach piece about #Gamergate moderates, and after a lot of eye rolling, I had to admit that I do understand the frustration of having your subculture (i.e. teen gamers, not Reddit trolls) get misrepresented by the mainstream media, which has become a constantly churning circus of name calling and belittling.  Also read this ten-year old piece on the experience of being a boy nerd in high school.

So, I’ve been thinking about the teenage years for geek girls vs geek boys. I had a terrible time in middle school; I was constantly being picked on by the popular kids and adult advice to “just ignore them” was so useless as to seem negligent if not actually malicious.

But by the time I was 14, I was, like a lot of girls, in that physical grey area where I looked like a young adult instead of teen. For me it was because I was 5'10", but I know that girls with large breasts had a similar problem. Looking older allowed me to have a whole other set of interactions were people talked to me (and flirted with me) as though I were an adult.  And only in retrospect did I realize how messed up that was.  There were about 3 years where I was navigating older men’s advances before I figured out how to masturbate.  But I was just happy to not be treated like a kid.

And I think that boy nerds are jealous of the way that girl nerds can escape the humiliation and isolation of being a capital-N Nerd a lot earlier than boys can, without realizing how problematic it is to be thrown into the adult world when you are still at heart a nerdy kid.  And I think the same thing happens to a lot of gay male teens as well.