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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythago" data-source="post: 6205422" data-attributes="member: 3019">Yup. That's the point of the "fake geek girl" nonsense - the assumption that women can't really be geeks and/or must have some ulterior motive for involving themselves in geekdom, such as undeservedly absorbing praise from lonely neckbeards.While I appreciate that you're trying to give folks the benefit of the doubt, I respectfully disagree that this is a workable solution, particularly given the actual experiences of women on the receiving end of the Fake Girl Geek nonsense.First, the analogy of 'hazing' is inapt. Hazing is what happens when people who are in a particular group have the power to admit or deny entry to that group, and impose some hurdles on all new members - which they, themselves, went through when they were new - to make sure the applicant is worthy and membership is "earned". Geekdom isn't a group with a limited membership, where more experienced geeks all had to get quizzed on Dr. Who knowledge or THACO tables to be allowed to call themselves geeks, and now have the right to require the same of others. More, the idea of an exclusive Studio 54-type of club is pretty much anathema to the whole idea of geekery. (That point, along with an excellent takedown of the concept of Geekier Than Thou, was done much more cleverly than I could <a href="http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/07/26/who-gets-to-be-a-geek-anyone-who-wants-to-be/" target="_blank">here</a>.)The nature of the community aside, the point of this Fake Geek Girl harassment isn't to test and include. It's to exclude. She's not really a geek; she's pretending to be a geek, and must be exposed for the fraud she is! And how do we know she's a geek? Why, because she's a girl, or at least a girl who doesn't fit the stereotype of what an actual Geek Girl is like, presuming that the self-appointed Champion of Geekery admits such could exist.(By the way, this is why it's sexism even if it were hazing; because women are assumed to be newbies merely by virtue of the fact that they are women.)So, no, trying to out-geek is not a solution. For starters, it's utterly useless to someone who is a geek, but whose experience/familiarity/obsession doesn't match the Self-Appointed Champion's. You or I would probably not even blink at the idea of an 18-year-old who has been gaming since she was old enough to pick up a dice bag calling herself a "gaming geek", but she isn't going to "out-geek" the guy three times her age who cut his teeth on the original Traveler. And the Self-Appointed Champion, the type of person who really thinks there is a problem with Fake Geek Girls, is not likely to be the sort of person to graciously admit defeat and declare he's been outgunned, as opposed to, say, continuing to be hostile, or finding some other "reason" the Girl in question is truly a Fake Geek.And going right back to the subject of the thread: There's a more important reason, though, that "just out-geek 'em" is not a solution. It's that the Fake Geek Girl Inquisition is the problem. When a community has a culture in which it's accepted, or at worst tolerated, to assume that women don't belong and have to prove their right to participate to anyone who feels like making it an issue? When participating in one's beloved hobby with others means having to deal with being treated as a malicious "fake" because one has the temerity to have boobs? That is a problem, whether or not any individual woman is able to run the trivia gauntlet.I suspect at this point you may be bursting to tell me that the guys who pull this BS are a minority; and that is probably true. But even a minority of badly-behaving people can poison a group, especially if the group seems to ignore or tolerate their behavior or treat it as something one just has to deal with, shrug.</blockquote>

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