and i also concede that if someone called me “boy” in a belittling sense (reminiscent of what bigots used to/maybe still do call blacks) it would not be empowering or enjoyable.

so i’ll try to call females women and i’ll try not to bristle at whatever people call me and we’ll hope for a more tolerant & accepting society together?

(sorry, i love the happy endings…)

I also think belittling terms (like girl) often carry much more weight and insult when they’re directly tied to inequalities of power, and their application helps reinscribe those. It is, at this point, inarguable that many, many arenas of geek and gamer culture alienate, ridicule, and devalue women. When the term “girl” is deployed by insiders of those cultures to refer to women, it’s impossible to separate from those systemic inequalities. And, while everyone is welcome to identify as they choose, and if boy is the hat you want to wear, wear it proudly, I feel I am more than entitled to bristle at the way I am labeled.

Finally, “Lucky Wander Boy,” one of the best novels about video gaming has “boy” in the title; although the title refers to a fictitious video game that is at the heart of the narrative, it’s clear from the story that boy could readily be applied to the main character, who is plodding away through an extended adolescence that, among other things, involves having very, very dysfunctional relationships with the women around him and obsessing over the game that lends the book its title.

it seems to me labels have the ability to polarize, and additionally it seems to me that like many things in life, this can be for good or for bad. you can choose to make something great of it as an in-group “we geek grrls are powerful!” or make fun of it as a marginalized minority “girl gamerz are no good at XYZ”. i think that positive voices are stronger than negative ones. if the positive voice has a message, which i think it does (and i don’t think the self-professed message by the geek girl community is typically about the pinup aesthetic). basically, i have hope.

i definitely see your point about the disparity between the terms girls and guys, but i’d argue that the opposite of guys is actually gals, which feels pretty slimy to me. but i don’t think that every maligned term can’t have a certain power if you stride proudly out there and use it powerfully. look at “gay” – i’d say the community took it, owned it, made it powerful and built further community on it and it’s hardly an insult these days.

in the meantime, i’ll just stay a happy go lucky boy, and remain unconcerned about perceptions. and hope to find a geek girl to spend the rest of my life with.

And, my intention isn’t to browbeat guys generally. I’m identifying a specific behavior that is a problem; if you aren’t engaging in that behavior, then you’re not really who I’m talking about.

If “Geek Girl” isn’t directly intended to degrade women, the problem is so much of gamer culture and geek culture is directly intended to degrade women, or has the effect of degrading women that it is almost impossible to separate it out from that context. Further, intent isn’t magical, just because someone doesn’t mean for something to be hurtful or alienating or sexualizing doesn’t mean that it isn’t. We’re all embedded in a culture with some pretty big tensions around gender (and race, and sexuality, etc.). For better or worse, sometimes we, as individuals, act in ways that contribute to inequalities along those tensions, or reflect those tensions in ways that are potentially harmful.

I’d also hope you have enough esteem that these simple names do nothing to impact your femininity and “power” as it were. You can let other people label all they want, it isn’t until you let those words actually shape who you are or how you perceive yourself that you hand over power to such a silly thing.

I won’t argue that the geek culture, being heavy in games and technology is primarily dominated by men. Along with the recent adoption of consoles and more adult oriented titles, drawing in a larger (worse) crowd of average men from how it used to be. 15 years ago, I was an outcast for gaming, and now it is common place to have any binge drinking frat douche on an XBox. D=

I think as a whole, we have had a very unhealthy shift with the larger mainstreaming of the culture. I wouldn’t browbeat guys as a broad category as that is hardly fair to the many decent and thoughtful gentlemen who are active in the geekdom. But I do see the problem you are addressing. You just want respect, as anyone that is decent (regardless of gender) should rightly deserve.

I’d like to extend the olive branch, I’ll gladly indiscriminately frag you along with any n00bz in some Quake 2 death match. =D