I have been a geek or nerd or whatever you want to call it
for 36 years. I am only 35. How does this work? My mom is a geek who and comic
nerd. She always has been (yay for the comics mom kept and passed on from her
earliest days of collecting!). She saw Star Wars while she was still pregnant with
me so I could go, then took me back when I was two weeks old so I could tell
everyone later that I saw Star Wars in theater. As soon as I could walk, we
would go to Circle K and she would always scrape together the money to buy me
Indiana Jones and Star Wars comics, then I would sit on her lap and she would
read them to me. No matter what else happened – I had my comics. My Christmases
and birthdays passed with Star Wars, GI
Joe and Transformers. Needless to say, all my friends were boys.
By the time I was 14 I was working in a comic book store. In
the era before the internet I memorized the Overstreet Price Guide and Wizard
hot list like religious texts. I started building my comic collection and soon
I was putting in the Diamond distribution orders for my shop. My mom, the
owners wife and I were the only women I saw come in to get comics.
When I was 19 I started going to Comic Con International. At
that time, when you said Comic Con, it ONLY meant San Diego. It was also a
comic book convention. Celebrities came, but the roamed the floor like everyone
else. I saw a few more women there, but the year I first went there was a
survey. The ratio of men to women? 30 to 1. Things have changed. I stopped
collecting comics actively a while ago, but now talking to friends and looking
at convention pictures it is getting to be more and more of an even split.
Now, I am a gamer. At my table we have 2-4 women in any of
our regular groups. I see other women at game shops all the time, and mothers
buying game stuff for their little girls. We are building our own geek girl
army!
And men’s reaction has changed. When I moved back to Phoenix
from Portland where I was running my comic shop I needed a place to get my fix.
At that time, I was spending $50-100+ dollars a week on comics. Back then, they
were $1 each roughly. I knew my comic books up and down and sideways. But, the
first time I walked into Atomic Comics (wearing a X-Men t-shirt) the manager
said “The Barbie Comics are in the corner, sweetie”. I called him an asshole
and challenged him to a game of comic trivia. He lost in the first round. I
left without a purchase and didn’t come back for years, until that guy was
gone.
When I first married, one of my husband’s friends said women
shouldn’t play. They’re no longer friends. Another guy joined our group and
made comments about female gamers not understanding. He was gently excused from
the group as well.
BUT…. For every guy that feels women are not ‘proper geeks’
there are at least 1000 that would walk through the fires of hell to get you a
character sheet or comic book. I have met more kind, loving, generous men being
a geek than I can count. My gamer guys will drive over to my house at midnight,
we have all raced to a friend’s house when it caught fire, we’ve all been there
for each other. They’re great guys. The girls in my group are awesome, too, but
just wanted to give a shout out to all the great gamer men.
I think no matter what type of group it is, the in group (in
this case men who game)will always have a tiny minority that don’t like the
rise of the minority (women). But, there are lots of guys who are quite happy
about it. If you date a gamer chick she is less likely to eye with suspicion
the bills from the game store, but she might borrow your new dice. Just be
warned.
The geek community is changing. There are more women. There
are advantages all around with that, and most guys see it. For the very few
that don’t, it’s ok. Westboro Baptists are always looking for new people to
hang with. ;>
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