The Art of Darkness

Nothing to Prove

July 25th, 2013 by Cobwebs

A thing that occasionally bubbles up in various fannish circles–gaming, SF, fantasy, and comics amongst them–is the infuriating argument that women who claim to enjoy that fandom are posers. That we’re (at best) only shallowly familiar with the fannish thing or (at worst) simply pretending to be fans in order to wear revealing costumes. Dork Tower encapsulates that mindset here and here, and Scalzi has a couple of the most marvelous takedowns here and here.

Girl band The Doubleclicks has released a song addressing the issue, and the video is just splendid:

You can buy the song on Bandcamp (or get the whole album). They’ve also started a Tumblr for submissions that didn’t make it into the video and are expanding the project by asking people to submit their stories.

Awesome.

Posted in Whatever | 4 Comments »

4 Responses

  1. Pixel Pixie Says:

    I had to deal with this attitude a lot in grad school. It was tough being the only female in the graduate computer science department. I wish I could say they all grow out of it, but a lot don’t. :(

  2. xJane Says:

    “Geekquality.” I love it. I hang out with mostly female nerds (or really progressive dudes), so I haven’t seen a lot of this, but a friend recently posted a link to the fact that Bubblegum Crunchybatch was going to be at (SD) ComiCon and he said, “Suddenly thousands of fan girls want to know how to get a Comic Con ticket.” which just pissed me the fuck off. (I called him on it and he didn’t say anything.) I grew up going to Star Trek conventions and speaking Klingon. Don’t tell me how to be a geek.

  3. xJane Says:

    (I came here to actually say that I was really depressed by the signs (but heartened by some, as well) but got side-tracked…)

  4. Sisifo Says:

    This. Is. Awesome. When some of my husband’s younger friends found out I play a certain mmorpg game and that the X-box is technically mine, they were impressed. One of them said, “Whoa. I want a wife like yours.” I love finding the guys that are all for us being right there next to them, geeking out over stuff. We’re fully capable of enjoying things just as much as they are. Why is it so hard for some of them to understand that?

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