UnPretty

So I wrote a rant on twitter, and the thing about twitter is that it is not actually that great for complex feelings and shit. Compressing my thoughts into 140 chars at a time probably makes me snappier but I always feel like I left shit out so HERE IS SOME ELABORATION AND RAMBLING AND ALSO GIFS TO BREAK UP THE MONOTONY.

Basically, I do not give a fuck about arguing whether or not all nerd girls are “just doing it for attention”. Because I want to focus on this bizarre notion that a chick who posts a picture of herself half-dressed in a pile of comics can’t actually like those comics. In fact, here is my favorite example of this shitty attitude.

What the shit about that first panel tells you she’s never been the girl in the second? In fact, if you reverse it, you’ll get pretty much a timeline of me posting pictures of myself on the internet. Spend hours and hours forgetting to do anything but play video games (and getting them to work, I would assume, since she seems to be using an Xbox controller with a wireless PC adapter to play Zelda on an emulator~) only to realize how horrifying I look after. I have been sitting on my ass all day, I feel fat and my clothes aren’t helping, I look like a heaping pile of asses covered in poop. I feel bad about myself, because society has told me that this is not what a woman should be.

What’s the fastest way to get rid of that feeling? The fastest way to stop feeling like a failure in the eyes of the world? Doll yourself up, maybe dye your hair red (I go with blue personally), and post a picture of yourself looking tip-top on the internet. Like it or not, for most people, the fastest way to stop feeling ugly (and therefore useless! Thanks, patriarchy!) is for people to tell you you’re pretty. Chances are, though, that you are not the prettiest girl on the internet. Therefore, the best way to get the people whose approval you crave to notice you is to throw that controller into the picture (or that comic, or that DVD, or that whateverthefuck nerd accessory).

What I hate just as much is when other women complain about this sort of thing. It’s this specific variation on One Of The Good Ones, that scenario where a woman finds that she would rather give tacit approval to misogyny than deal with the censure of her male peers. I know all about being One Of The Good Ones, because I did that shit for years, and I look back on that time with horror. Years of making jokes about how I belonged in the kitchen, and haha steak and a blowjob day sure is a hilarious concept, feel free to love me fellas because I’m never going to challenge you or make you feel bad about being a shithead. I do not blame women for doing this. That doesn’t change the fact that making proclamations about what other women are and are not allowed to get offended about is some bullshit.

This specific variation – or maybe evolution? – of One Of The Good Ones is similar in tone to “I walked to school uphill both ways.” I spent years putting up with the misogyny of nerds and now so should you. I spent weeks researching every aspect of my hobbies in case a man questioned my credentials, and you should have to do the same. I tried not to draw attention to myself so I would not be censured, so why can’t you?

All this goes hand in hand with the bizarre nerd elitism that says thinking something is cool means you should be able to teach a class on it. Let’s take a hypothetical, casually nerdy lady. She is in college, and reasonably attractive, and she likes a lot of stuff. Sometimes at her friend’s house she plays first person shooters, and because it’s multiplayer she has a lot of fun even though she doesn’t pay much attention to the plot and her aim is horrible. She saw a couple of episodes of Cowboy Bebop on Adult Swim once, and she thought it was pretty cool, although she’s too busy with classes and extracurriculars to have time to watch more often. One day this hypothetical young women is at the mall, and she spots a necklace with a logo from the game she plays with friends, and a shirt that’s pretty cool looking from that show she saw a couple times. She buys them! Because why the fuck wouldn’t she. They are clothes, they look pretty rad, she gives no fucks.

What happens when a nerd dude runs into this young woman, wearing her anime shirt and her video game necklace? If he is a normal fucking human being, he’ll compliment her choice of attire and maybe start up a conversation. If he is a huge asshole, he will be suspicious of her “credentials” and try to give her a fucking pop quiz because she wore a shirt. She can’t tell you the names of all the dudes shooting at each other in that video game? FAKE. She doesn’t know Ed’s full name? POSER. She makes a self-deprecating comment about being “such a nerd”? HIJACKING MY CULTURE HOW DARE YOU.

Did you ever fucking consider that to a normal person, watching even one cartoon as an adult and playing any kind of a shooter makes you a fucking nerd? It’s one thing to respond with a joke about “man if you’re a nerd what the fuck am I, I must be a nerd singularity” but to suddenly decide THIS WOMAN IS LYING TO ME is ridiculous. From her perspective, she is a nerd, because she does more nerdy things than other people of her acquaintance. She is probably unaware of the depths to which a person can obsess about how in one frame of one episode this guy looks like he might make out with this other guy, or the potential economic situation within a children’s cartoon. Perhaps her friendly gaming sessions and occasional animus are gateway drugs, and soon she’ll be writing fanfiction about what happens when Doctor Hooves and Sherlock Hooves team up to save Equestria from objectivist deep sea divers. Perhaps she’ll continue to casually enjoy some things and still be nerdier than her other friends. In the end, it is none of your fucking business. Nothing is being taken from you. If other people like the things that you like, you can still like them!

99% of these women you are demonizing do not have the bizarre ulterior motives you are assigning to them. What the fuck leads people to believe that feral women are roaming conventions, disguising themselves in Zelda shirts and 8-bit hairbows so that they can sneak up on unsuspecting nerd males and steal their precious bodily fluids? We get it, dudes. If she says she likes nerds and doesn’t want to fuck the world’s grognardiest basement-dweller, she must have been lying. You totally have nothing in common with these insecure women who use the internet to feel better about themselves. You were a nerd before it was cool. You liked Mario before he sold out. IN CONCLUSION

hussiedancinginplacesheshouldnt:

TG: im gonna make myself a cup of coffee and get primed to listen to you saying a lot of stuff like that
TG: do you want s oh shit whats that
TG: what is this and why is it dancing

Oh my god this is great

and thank you so much

submission from librarianofhate

carcinotoreador:

Hōmusutakku

A young Bishi stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man’s Tanjobi! (or birthday for you gaijins) Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a sugoi name! 

What will the name of this young Aisoku be?