Leslie Simon

I am so conflicted about this book! In a general way, it's really empowering; in others, it contains a lot of one-sided pop culture drivel that encourages book-, music-, tech-, etc.-snobbery that kind of makes me want to barf (I worked at independent record stores for seven years--I know what I'm talking about). I think that's usually the downfall of any critique of pop culture phenomena, and I usually approach the stuff with caution. It usually leaves me agreeing with some of the highlights, majorly disagreeing with others, and bemoaning glaringly obvious omissions of people or trends that deserve to be highlighted. That just seems to be the fate of any endeavor of this kind. I was just so looking forward to a little more open-mindedness (not to mention diversity) in a book entitled, Geek Girls Unite. So this is my advice to you, dear Geek Girl: Be all the geek you can be--no matter what any book says.… (altro)

Geek culture has had, historically, an element of ostracization that remains within the community to this very day. We make people jump through hoops to prove to us that they are a real geek, and if they falter along the way, it's proof that they don't belong in our little treehouse club. This elitism and rigid testing is not a particularly shocking aspect of the community. Feelings of elitism over those outside of our "clan" was a way of dealing with bullying, mockery, and other slights against those who spent their days learning Klingon and memorizing Battlestar Galatica episode titles. It made those in the community feel "special" rather than just "different".

The people who should be most familiar with this aspect of geek culture community are its women. We still have a long way to go before women aren't getting their necks breathed down in comic book shops, or microanalyzed to make sure that they're "real nerds" in what was traditionally a male-dominated sphere.

So why did we write a book that only further draws the lines between a supposed "us" and "them"? A book full of blinding girl-hate? One that claims to be for "everyone" but fails to consider those who aren't straight or white?

This book is uncomfortably focused on the differences between real girl nerds and "fakers" - or, worse yet, those who aren't invested in geek culture the same way we are. Page after page, there are nail-bitingly irritating and childish insults about people who like Justin Beiber (showing the book's age, I guess), Twilight fans, reality TV watchers, and apparently, women who have the audacity to be pretty and not geeks. Anything that's mainstream is automatically bad (even though many of the geeky interests listed in this book are mainstream themselves - which doesn't make them bad, of course, but makes the author seem like a hypocrite). These insults aren't funny. They don't make me feel like I'm collecting to female geek culture at large. It just kind of feels like I'm kicking sand in the face of people who dare to have interests not "geeky" enough. And that shouldn't be what female geek culture is about. That doesn't even touch the tip of the iceberg when it comes the amount of anti-girl comments Leslie Simons has sprinkled on the pages - it seems like no one can go unscathed, except her idolized, almost godlike description of geek women. The fact that I found this in my library's feminism section saddens me. What saddens me even more is the idea of a young girl picking this up and thinking that this is what girl geek culture is about - putting down others.

**Those are my major complaints. I do have one minor one that's bugging me a bit, because I almost feel like it's a little too touchy of me. But I feel like it's worth mentioning regardless.

This book is weirdly heterosexualized, and almost insistently so. Every chapter ends with a description of the geek girl's "perfect guy". The descriptions of each could be easily replaced with more gender neutral wording. As someone who isn't entirely interested in men, it gets a little grating to read, chapter after chapter, that "every geek girl dreams of x man". I mean, I don't think this is exactly an unreasonable complaint - if you're going to acknowledge that female geeks come in all sorts of different shapes, styles, backgrounds, and your book is specifically supposed to address that, shouldn't sexuality be, like, part of the basic 101 of "differences"?

I also find it hilarious that they mentioned Tegan and Sara in the music section without so much as mentioning their standing in the LGBTQ community, which is almost inseparable from them as musicians. How straight can you be?… (altro)

It was at this quote, I quit reading this book:

"Patti Smith, on the other hand, was not one of the lookers, but her overwhelming stage presence and protagonist musical style made her utterly captivating, endlessly powerful, and oddly attractive". (pg 96)

FUCK. OFF.

There is nothing "unifying" in the author's tone about geek women and fandom. Which is a shame, because she's nabbed a fantastic title and written a shit book. I feel like this would only be a title worth reading for someone who wanted to pose as a geek. It's like she wiki'd and wrote all the talking points of geekdom.

I do hope that someone does one day write a proper book on women and fandoms though. Shame this wasn't the one.… (altro)