Revenge of the Female Nerds September 30, 2007 Jill This is awesome: And muchas gracias to evil fizz, AJ, and Thomas for sending this on. It makes me especially happy that three people thought of Feministe when they read it.
I dunno, I kinda have mixed feelings myself. After all, the female character didn’t say anything, the conversation was limited between the two male characters. And it took a man to get the message across. It seemed as if the female character was nothing but a robot that was programed to “train” the offending male character not to be a sexist creep.
Or it’s an entirely appropriate case of a guy taking responsibility for policing another guy’s sexism and confronting him about it. It’s not my job to teach men not to be sexist assholes. Either way, I’ve long loved xkcd. Geek humor rules.
I know it can be really annoying when someone says things like “try not to let it bother you.” But woman who are harassed on the Internet might take some comfort in contemplating that 95% of the sexist assholes out there are also pathetic losers who would mess their pants if a woman in the real world said boo to them.
portia is right, tabernama. As was stated by Tracey at Unapologetically Female, Civil rights activism is not centered around making marginalized people more “normal”; it is about making society more fair, accepting, and accessible. It is the oppressor that needs reforming, and NOT the oppressed. It’s just not the black person’s job to go against racism and the woman’s job to go against sexism, to bear the full burden.
tabernama Also I think that they guy in the hat is the writing, who is male venting his frustrations. I love XKCD, but that is a whole nother matter.
Upon further review, I find that the protagonist male in this strip seems to only dislike the idea that his dating pool has been reduced by the sexist asshole, and is not as concerned with the sexism in itself as he should be. Disappointing, XKCD
Aerik: I dunno, I read the “I like nerdy girls” bit as the author having a genuine fondness for nerdy girls (who are after all frequently stigmatized for their nerdiness) and wanting them to be comfortable on the net. Plus, the “you are being an asshole. You are not being ironic. You are not cracking everybody up” bit really needed to be said and did have a certain amount of righteous anger behind it, I think.
Sorry everyone, I was assuming that the woman who was harassed had complained about it but she was ignored, therefore it was up to the man with the hat to speak on her behalf. But I now realize that the comic didn’t really touch that, so my objection was irrelevant.
As a long time fan of XKCD and geeky girl myself, his work is refreshingly inclusive. While his female characters are often romantic interests, they have their own ideas and opinions. His comics don’t devolve along sexist lines. I think that it _is_ important that men police their own. And high time it is done in a way that the guy does the nagging and the girl is holding the massive firepower 🙂
I liked the comic itself, for all the flaws it may have — there are people for whom even this is radically new, and something is better than nothing when it comes to breaking into their minds, eh? I like the discussion on the forums less, seeing as only one person out of the forty-odd comments (when I checked it last, two days ago) made the comment that she was not a girl, she was a woman. And there was more than one comment to the effect of “women shouldn’t expect special privileges on the internet, everyone gets harassed”, as well as “men get called bitches and whores too”. I would go back and snag quotes, but reading it the first time put a serious dent in my composure, and I just don’t want to read it again. There is still a long way to go…
I’m with most of the commenters on this one (plus I like xkcd, and am biased.) It’s just a little story about a dude calling out some asshole dude on his misogyny. He’s not positing dude’s agency as the very definition of feminism and the most important element of its success, he’s just saying that this brand of sexism is stupid, annoying, and not funny, and he wishes he could track down individual asshats and make them stop. I like.