ladybusiness | (Reply)

From:

Theory: geek sexism may actually be quite intense because of anxiety male geeks may feel at not fulfilling traditional ideas about masculinity. Does that sound sort of like what you were going for?

Yes, and I definitely think you're on to something here, Jodie. I mean, I have no data to back this up, but this is the general impression I have: not only from my MA research project but from the world in general. I really wish that rejecting traditional masculinity always led to anti-sexism, but as MRAs so clearly exemplify sometimes what happens is the exact opposite.

Anyway, I really hope I didn't make my exchange with my friend sound accusatory, because that wasn't the case at all. It was a good conversation to have - I'm glad I got the opportunity to explore these ideas more, and I completely understand how my brief write up left room for misunderstandings. I only worry because, well, you know me :P

One thing that makes this topic really difficult to discuss is that pretty much all of us who care about sexism have been trained to be a little bit suspicious of discussions veering in the direction of "what about teh menz?!!1", simply because historically they have. As bell hooks points out, until very recently discussions of how hegemonic masculinity harms boys were dominated by people who didn't align themselves with feminism and approached the topic from a zero-sum game perspective, so it's hard not to flinch a little bit when you start seeing someone go in that direction - who knows where they'll end up. But she also says that this is the exact reason why it's so important to add more and more feminist voices to these debates (I love her so hard).