Frozen Donkey Wheel2 said:
Um. The jungle of sarcasm here is a bit difficult to decipher, but I I'm almost positive I see what you did there. And if the "petty little tit" link is supposed to showing some sexist asshole you described....I think you should read the article much more carefully. Or, at all.
Now, before every single woman reading this explodes, let me disambiguate a bit. I absolutely do not believe that every girl who attends conventions and likes "Doctor Who" is pretending to be a geek.
What I'm talking about is the girls who have no interest or history in gaming taking nearly naked photos of themselves with game controllers draped all over their body just to play at being a "model." I get sick of wannabes who couldn't make it as car show eye candy slapping on a Batman shirt and strutting around comic book conventions instead.
See? Pretty simple. Not all girls at "geek conventions" are attention seeking posers, not even most of them. He just has a problem with the ones who ARE.
I don't see the problem here.
Yes, but he also says:
I call these girls "6 of 9". They have a superpower: In the real world, they're beauty-obsessed, frustrated wannabe models who can't get work.
They decide to put on a "hot" costume, parade around a group of boys notorious for being outcasts that don't get attention from girls, and feel like a celebrity. They're a "6" in the "real world", but when they put on a Batman shirt and head to the local fandom convention du jour, they instantly become a "9".
They're poachers.
No amount of him blatantly trying to wriggle his point of view around to make it sound good will make up for this. He's just attacked some women for going out of their way to look attractive in the same paragraph as he's insulting their appearance. He's acting insulted that women are doing their best to look good and aiming for a group that they feel (correctly or not) has lower standards, while doing his best to demolish their self esteem. Can you see the problem there?
I'm just saying, it's a pretty shitty attitude when you feel that you can repeatedly insult someone just because you
imagine that they have the wrong motives.
Here, look at this:
However, you "6 of 9s" out there? You're just gross. There's an entire contingent of guys in geekdom who absolutely love you, because inside, they're 13 year old boys who like to objectify women and see them as nothing more than butts and a pair of boobs to be leered at. Have fun with them, and don't be shocked when they send you XBox Live messages with ASCII penises.
"6 of 9s" is such an impossibly misogynistic term I can't even get my head around it. He's insulting women for daring to attempt to appear more attractive than he believes they are. I mean fucking hell, talk about giving people self-image issues! "Think you're attractive just because other people act like you're attractive when you make an effort to look good? Well you're
not! You're just a 6, and don't you dare dream of being any higher than the level I've designated you at!".
It's just... Even if you agree that there are women who purposefully dress up for conventions in order to get attention (which I doubt anyway; for money, yes, for attention, no) even though they don't care about nerdy stuff, why does that give you the right to mock their appearance?
I know I keep rambling back and forth here, but I just stare at that article and it seems to drip misogyny, despite (and partly
because) of how frequently he dips into phrases like "it's not
all women" and "some of my best friends are women".