Letters to the Editor
alarajrogers
Published Letters: 441 Editor's Choice: 86
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Ths kind of thing drives me nuts
[Read the article: "Beauty and the Geek" finds Aphrodite's inner Athena]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am a female geek. Although I was physically attractive when I was younger (and lighter), I had no interest in my own looks and mostly considered them a liability. I slouched around in turtlenecks and jeans, grew my hair out and then barely bothered to brush it, did not wear makeup, and in general projected "I do not give a damn about being attractive." I was also fairly socially inept, tended to speak in a staccato monotone, looked at the floor all the time, and overlooked social niceties. Although I wasn't shy in the sense of fearing other people's opinions, I did not think I had any hope of attracting a man I was interested in, so I spent all my time hanging out with men as friends. I studied sociobiology, watched and read science fiction, and built computers in my spare time.
Where are people like me on shows like this?
We D&D-playing, comic-book-reading, sci-fi-loving, socially-inept-or-shy-or-just-a-jerk, brainy-but-without-people-smarts, women are out there. Not in the numbers of the men, obviously, but we exist, and shows like this seem to say we don't. And you know, we would like to date sexy men, not the equally inept guys we hang out with as friends, just like they would prefer to date cheerleaders (though they'll fall back on hitting on us when they're desperate.) This Beauty-and-the-Beast scenario pretty much exactly describes my crush on a gorgeous blond guy in college (who was also smart, in fact he tutored my roommate at one point, but the point is he wasn't smart like a *geek*. He had people skills, I didn't.) So why are all the people-skill-people on this show women and the I'm-too-smart-to-understand-people people men? Is it that no one wants to look at women who don't dress up nice and can't handle the way people are supposed to play in dating scenarios, or is it that no one believes men would go for them under any circumstances?
(BTW, I'm married now, so I have no axe to grind about whether I get dates *now* or not. My point isn't to say poor poor pitiful me, but to say that geeky women who want and can't get tradtionally attractive men do exist, and the gender stereotyping in this show, like the gender stereotyping in pretty much every humorous treatment of geeks I've ever seen, seems to deny the existence of people like me.)
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Harassment is not entirely in the eye of the beholder
[Read the article: Harassment U.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Being given the finger is not sexual harassment. Although the literal meaning is "fuck you", "fuck you" doesn't mean "I want to fuck you" but "You are an asshole." It's mostly used from men to men. Thus, not sexual.
Overhearing a dirty joke is not sexual harassment. Overhearing a dirty joke told about *you*, specifically, is.
"You look really nice in that sweater" isn't sexual harassment. "Those pants just make me want to rip 'em off" probably is, unless a guy you're actually having regular sex with says it, in which case it's probably just annoying.
While it's certainly true that PC can run wild, and it's even more true that it does so on college campuses, it's really not that hard to distinguish between sexual harassment and harmless (or annoying but legal) behavior. Sexual harassment is specifically intended to intimidate a person because of their sex, to reduce them to being seen as a sex object in an inappropriate context (your boyfriend talking about your great breasts while you're in bed is not inappropriate, your professor talking about them in class is), or to make sexual overtures to them which are either inappropriate because of a power dynamic (professor/student) or which are persistent enough to reach the level of harassment (guy asking you for a date, not harassment; guy in your face demanding that you go on a date with him, or asking you over and over and over again and getting belligerent about it, harassment.)