Sexy and I Know It
Every now and then I read a piece so ridiculous, so obviously stupid that upon reading said piece I’m torn between incredulity and laughter. An example of such a piece can be found here (1). I’d encourage everyone to read the piece but to surmise, the author seems to imply that ‘geek culture’ has a history of excluding women. I’ve got so many issues with this view I hardly know where to begin but I guess I’ll start with its most laughable assumption which is that Steve Jobs is or was viewed as sexy.
The author suggests that “These days entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are portrayed not only as rich and powerful but somehow sexy, with their most geekish characteristics - the very traits that once might have marked them as slightly apart from the traditional gender roles - now reinterpreted as emblematic of masculine dominance”.
This view that Steve Jobs was viewed as sexy during his life is easily debunked by the total absence of his appearance on any of the “most sexy man’ lists that are regularly published by trash mags everywhere. Mark Zuckerberg you could perhaps make a case for although the absence of Bill Gates, who is arguably more ‘geeky’ than either of them, from the ‘sexy man’ lists disproves the idea that I.T. geeks have magically become sexy.
Ashton Kutcher and Michael Fassbender on the other hand, yeah, those guys are sexy. They are on many lists. This is where the author is confused because Hollywood, through a number of movies, has done its very best to make Steve Jobs appear sexy in order to sell more movies. Steve Jobs himself was never sexy. I’m not sure how the author has confused to two. I’m actually embarrassed for him.
Only slightly less silly than the idea that ‘geeks’ are sexy is the idea that geek culture has somehow excluded women. I started to play detailed board games which recreate historical conflicts (war-gaming) when I was twelve. I started roleplaying shortly after. I used to play laser tag competitively. I could go on and on. My geek credentials are solid.
I’ve always been into sport and I have a good set of shoulders so unlike many other men with similar interests I’ve usually had a girlfriend. I learnt very early on to never – ever mention any of my geek interests on a first, second, third, fourth or twenty second date. I married a geek. She’s awesome.
The idea that geeks have somehow excluded women from geek culture is just farcical. In my detailed experience relatively few women are interested in the pursuits which characterise geek culture. When women are present the overriding emotion of most geeks is betwixt awestruck and awkward. Geeks would love to have more female geeks to geek out with. The online comments to the piece overwhelmingly agreed with this view.
Cranking up the stupid dial to maximum once more at the beginning of the article the author suggests that the first computers were actually clerks who were known as computers. These ‘computers’ manually worked out ballistic tables with desk calculators. I’m not sure that everything which shares the same name can be easily compared. With this in mind I’d like to express my utter relief that computer science has moved beyond the need to employ small furry rodents to manipulate the cursor on our LCD screens.
Returning to the more serious what gets me most fired up about this piece is that somewhere in here the author actually has a point. Unfortunately this point is quickly piled under a mountain of useless, baseless bunk. For reasons unknown women are underrepresented in computer science and the representation of women has fluctuated significantly over the past thirty years.
The University of British Columbia conducted a 2002 study which examined the reasons around the low percentage of female information technology students (2). The study observed that males and females viewed computers very differently. It suggested that institutions needed to tailer workshops to both male and female students in order to address the gender balance gap.
Who’d of thought the education providers would have some part to play? Not Brendon Keogh a videogame critic whose completely unsourced word spew was the ‘fascinating’ essay which inspired the insipid offering by Jeff Sparrow which this piece criticises (3).
Robert Mitchel has also published some work on the issue (4). Mitchel examined the number of computer science degrees earned by female students over a thirty year period. When talking about the relatively low number of female graduates he notes that “If social pressures and cultural attitudes were to blame, one would think the numbers would have been consistently low. On the other hand, if social attitudes had changed for the better over the last four decades, one would expect to see a gradual improvement over time.”
The oscillation of the numbers over time clearly disproves unsubstantiated assumptions such as the marketing of computers in the 1980’s and the like being the source of relatively fewer female graduates. This is what often happens when the focus is on statistics instead of pandering to a half supposed thought bubble.
And pander we shouldn’t. It’s in everyone’s best interests to close the gender gap in computer studies. Just as it’s everyone’s best interests for gender equality in the workplace and gender equality when raising our children. What we don’t need is academics bullying, and that’s exactly what I’d describe it as, a cultural group which struggles more than most to be accepted but is all too often just pilloried.
(2) http://www.webcitation.org/67YOr88gp
(3) https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-218/feature-brendan-keogh/