[Kael]

I'm inclined to agree with the Mary Sue entry as far as how any individual's claims of geekdom should be handled. I can understand where the first one is coming from, even if I disagree with it. On some level, it feels condescending, even insulting, for marketers to assume that I'll be more interested in a product if it is somehow associated with hot women. However, since sometime in high school I've known that, first, I'm an outlier in their target demographic, and that for most of said demographic this tactic actually works, and second, that this is probably more insulting to the women involved, both those used as merchandising aides and those interested in the product but bombarded by male-targeted advertising every step of the way.

It was pretty much inevitable that this sort of approach to marketing in general would become dominant in geek-culture, as games, comics, and reincarnations of cult-classic shows and movies became more and more mainstream. My dislike for this in geek culture, however, is not separate from my dislike for it in any other circumstance.

As far as the backlash against these "fake" geek girls, I see it as two features of geek culture that have come to a head here. The first is common to most any sub-culture, which is simply the "I was doing it before it was cool" attitude. I was big into D&D during the 4e transition, which stirred up a big shit-storm composed primarily of this, and it was that colossal explosion of butthurt, anonymity-shielded internet flame wars, and undirected nerdrage that finally got me to move past D&D and discover how very, very much more there is in the world of tabletop rpgs.

The second is just "girls can't be geeks," which IMO isn't any different than any of the other bullshit misogynistic crap out there, like "girls can't be into guns" or "girls aren't tech-savvy," and isn't likely to change any faster than the rest of it does.

So, you have a sub-culture that is commonly misogynistic to some degree suddenly enjoying mainstream success, with all the misogynistic 'oh look a pretty lady' advertising that comes with that success, then of course there are going to be at least a few women who are actually pretending to be into geek stuff, and plenty more who at least appear to be.

But, as I said, I agree with the second blog link that the best way to deal with it is simply to take someone's word for it when they say they're a geek. Especially since a common way the first factor manifests is "geek cred," and how losing it, for things like not being into as many things as someone else in the group, or only being familiar with the latest incarnation of whatever franchise, can make it easier to push someone into the poseur box where all kinds of maltreatment suddenly becomes acceptable, especially (unfortunately) if they're female.

I try to watch myself on this one, and not mock or dismiss fellow geeks who aren't familiar with, say, the old Might & Magic games, or someone who thinks the Dark Messiah title that Ubisoft put out after acquiring the rights was better (though this one usually takes a Herculean effort of will and self-restraint). Because it's Okay to be into Battlestar Galactica but not Portal, or tabletop rpgs but not The Avengers, to steal the examples from the blog, and if one of my friends or game groups takes it further than well-intentioned and well-received jokes I will tell them to STFU*.

*I'm fortunate in my current circles, however, and have only had to do this once, to a rude SOB whose wife tried to game with him for a while but gave up because of his constant derision and verbal abuse. We told him that wouldn't fly at our games, and we had to stop inviting him because he wouldn't lay off. To no one's great surprise they were divorced shortly after we stopped inviting him.