This is the epitome of the geek to girl relationship. Girls are never geeks. Geeks are weird and dress funny. This pattern never deviates and those who tell you otherwise are delusional and trying to subvert the natural order of things. (image from Beauty and the Geek)A few days a go, the lovely Kelly Lux pointed me to this blog post by a VP of Marketing working in the wonderful male dominated industry known as “tech.”
Leslie Sobon decided she would give some advice to women about how to land a geek guy, because, (surprise, surprise!) geeky guys are actually really interesting and cool and fun to talk to! Now, this concept is something I’ve talked about myself over at Jerk Magazine: Blessed are the Nerds, Because They are Damn Sexy!
Yet although Sobon and I are addressing the same topic, she does it in an incredibly patronizing and sexist way, as pointed out by a guest blogger at GeekFeminism: “The bottom line is that Leslie Sobon’s writing is lazy and it reinforces gender and subculture stereotypes. Remembering that Sobon was writing for the least common denominator of a mythical female softens the blow somewhat, should she have been sixteen and posting to her tumblr blog. As an article directed at a general adult audience on the official blog of a publicly traded technology company, however, it is inexcusable.”
Her entire post is fantastic and I couldn’t have come up with a better response to the whole thing. She brings in a lot of nuances about being a geek and gender identity that are worth reading, from the idea that geeks are definitely not the answer to every girl’s relationship problem and why don’t guys ever seem to want to date the geeky girl. Seriously, read it. It’s good.
And as much as I disagree with Sobon and every sexist, antiquated sentiment underlying her post, and do agree with the blogger at GeekFeminist, I wonder, on a social media level, if this controversy isn’t good for Sobon. In fact, if she wasn’t so controversial, it wouldn’t have reached my attention at all and I wouldn’t have looked up the products she shills on each and every blog post.
After all, the woman has supporters and you can find them if you read the comments (though I’m pretty sure any negative comments are spirited away by the moderator gods at AMD). The bad press and appropriately visceral reaction to her has gained her some supporters. Good for her. I guess she really has figured out how to be a troll.