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Mar. 29th, 2015 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingtycoonToday we were talking about the shape & flavors of nerdiness in our lives. Youngster A's friends are going over that precipice into full on adolescence & she's feeling a little alienated, we talked about what that means with heavy nerd-talk annotations. We're nerds together and her nerdy friend is getting interested in stuff that's interesting to preteen girls. A's only kinda allowed to participate. Her ma's way more overprotective than me, but I'm probably more snobbish than her ma. Hence, she's not allowed to go the Rocky Horror midnight showing. Because... Because of my distaste for middlebrow. Anyhow! I was going into the talk about what it was like for me to come up nerdy and what it'll be like for her.
In my generation - I remember girls being scornful of videogames, no idea if they liked them or not, the girls I knew - but there was a strong vibe that they wouldn't play them, lest they be outre & gross or masculine or something, it was a pariah's activity and in Suburban Middle School only the reckless or oblivious engaged in pariah activities. Similarly - D&D & Comic Books - these were the interests of the extremely alienated or extremely antisocial or the extremely indifferent. So, if you couldn't follow social cues you'd get into that stuff.
In Suburban High School, I noticed that the girls I knew were still big nerds, like me, but that their attention & interest was focused not on the canonical geek (...ugh...) activities & interests, but on bands, music and fashion. I put it together that there were flavors of nerdiness. And then in college, to be cooler with girls I got into fashion & band nerdery. But! Also! I was talking about this with Agatha, and I remembered that in 1992 I lived with the japanese people - who were very weird and fun and really different than anyone I'd ever known. We bought a Super Nintendo and then altered it to play Famicom games, you did this by burning out a couple of plastic posts by melting them with a cigarette. Then you could play all the japanese horse-racing simulators. Well, horse-race gambling simulations. I played a lot of Super Mario and my roommates said: "Otaku!" I asked them what it meant, they said: "Video Game Madness." So... I was Otaku before Otaku was slightly less distasteful!
I tell A about the changes I've observed in these realms - in what's between her generation and mine - I see that there have been broadenings of these hobbies - not just to include people of all the gender varieties - but of all different statuses.
I mean - In my wednesday group we've had a few transgendered people come & go, all the shades of sexuality & so on. If you asked me where the divide lies, I'd say it lies in the same place as for everyone else in the Hobby - class, Blue Collar vs. Professional - the College educated gamer and the High School educated gamer are the divergents haughtiness vs. a different kind of haughtiness.
Not that there isn't the sexism and so on - but shoot, it's not close to what it's been. I feel some confidence for A, that as she gets older it won't be shameful for her to like the things she likes, that she won't be alienated because of her interests & that likewise, she won't be shunned by members of the existing social group - well, no more than anyone else (every sodality having it's own hazing/induction).
But then...
Probably she's gonna be hitting the puberty, probably soon - and the shape of her other relationships with the adolescent-becoming girls in her clan - well...
So yeah, I feel unarmed and helpless as the gunfight approaches. I didn't even bring a knife.
In my generation - I remember girls being scornful of videogames, no idea if they liked them or not, the girls I knew - but there was a strong vibe that they wouldn't play them, lest they be outre & gross or masculine or something, it was a pariah's activity and in Suburban Middle School only the reckless or oblivious engaged in pariah activities. Similarly - D&D & Comic Books - these were the interests of the extremely alienated or extremely antisocial or the extremely indifferent. So, if you couldn't follow social cues you'd get into that stuff.
In Suburban High School, I noticed that the girls I knew were still big nerds, like me, but that their attention & interest was focused not on the canonical geek (...ugh...) activities & interests, but on bands, music and fashion. I put it together that there were flavors of nerdiness. And then in college, to be cooler with girls I got into fashion & band nerdery. But! Also! I was talking about this with Agatha, and I remembered that in 1992 I lived with the japanese people - who were very weird and fun and really different than anyone I'd ever known. We bought a Super Nintendo and then altered it to play Famicom games, you did this by burning out a couple of plastic posts by melting them with a cigarette. Then you could play all the japanese horse-racing simulators. Well, horse-race gambling simulations. I played a lot of Super Mario and my roommates said: "Otaku!" I asked them what it meant, they said: "Video Game Madness." So... I was Otaku before Otaku was slightly less distasteful!
I tell A about the changes I've observed in these realms - in what's between her generation and mine - I see that there have been broadenings of these hobbies - not just to include people of all the gender varieties - but of all different statuses.
I mean - In my wednesday group we've had a few transgendered people come & go, all the shades of sexuality & so on. If you asked me where the divide lies, I'd say it lies in the same place as for everyone else in the Hobby - class, Blue Collar vs. Professional - the College educated gamer and the High School educated gamer are the divergents haughtiness vs. a different kind of haughtiness.
Not that there isn't the sexism and so on - but shoot, it's not close to what it's been. I feel some confidence for A, that as she gets older it won't be shameful for her to like the things she likes, that she won't be alienated because of her interests & that likewise, she won't be shunned by members of the existing social group - well, no more than anyone else (every sodality having it's own hazing/induction).
But then...
Probably she's gonna be hitting the puberty, probably soon - and the shape of her other relationships with the adolescent-becoming girls in her clan - well...
So yeah, I feel unarmed and helpless as the gunfight approaches. I didn't even bring a knife.
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Date: 2015-03-30 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-30 01:18 pm (UTC)- Grant
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Date: 2015-03-30 01:51 pm (UTC)Now it seems like the hard part is approaching - it's been clear skies & easy living up to now. So... so much feelings. I'm terrible at those.
boys...
Date: 2015-04-03 04:37 pm (UTC)There's a burden to pass on such wisdom from father to son, even when you find the rules to be laughable. You still want your kid to be able to play the game, even transcend it and rework the order of things.
But for girls? I think you're on the right path. They say that having an involved father, a guy they know will always love them, make time for them, can make a world of difference. She's got that. A lucky kid.
Re: boys...
Date: 2015-04-04 01:22 pm (UTC)For example - I think I got a letter grade of improvement for taking cookies to the school for the Parent Teacher conference - I mean, that's a 12 hour day for those teachers - are they gonna be all - we hate cookies? No. No they were not.