Nerds and Male Privilege
I'm not sure why the author of this article somehow thinks that geeks deny the existence of sexism in geek culture.  The reality is that it's widely known and accepted.  If the author wants to find something to rail against, he should have chosen the fact that <i>everybody knows, but nobody cares</i>.<p>I'm not going to defend the treatment of women in geek culture, as much of it is indefensible.  but it seems that few people bring up one of the most important factors in its existence, one which has nothing at all to do with objectification.  It has more to do with envy, anger, and an amazing ability to hold a grudge.<p>Many HN readers are from a younger generation than myself.  Many of you grew up always equating geek with "cool", and have no conception of what it would be like to be treated as nearly subhuman for liking computers.  Some of us, however, remember the torment, the humiliation, the violence, the scorn and the ostracism of finding science, electronics, and computers fascinating.  There was, indeed, such a time.  Many nerds who endured poor treatment at the hands of their peers developed deep emotional traumas that, to this day, exist to some extent or another.  One of these traumas is borne of the experience of being not merely rejected, but openly mocked by girls during the most critical time in a young man's life when he is supposed to develop his sense of social status and sexuality.  Frustration and humiliation is quick to turn to anger, and from anger, a deep rooted misogyny.<p>The result of this kind of upbringing is often a socially stunted man who, despite all his powers of logic and reason, finds it difficult to reason away the anger that he knows shouldn't be there, but is.  He witnesses sexism and mistreatment of women around him, but he lacks the empathy required to say or do anything about it.<p>This concludes my armchair psychologist's analysis of <i>one possible dimension</i> of a hypothesis of why many of my generation permits geek culture to allow rampant sexism.<p>Caveats:  I have no data or training in psychology to suggest this is at all a significant factor.  But I am quite familiar with the phenomenon, and I know several other nerds who experience the same thing.    I mention it only because it seems the zeitgeist is that men don't even see the sexism.  I posit that many do see it, but it doesn't matter to (a good portion of) them.  And that a possible cause of this in geek culture specifically is latent adolescent anger at women.