November15
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. While I continue to write in my journal regularly, I’ve not been good about getting it online as of late. I’ve had A LOT going through my head over the last few weeks and I need to just purge it out there so I can move on. We all need a good purging and moving on it seems.
I am a geek. I am also a nerd. A dork. A mom. A cancer patient. I am silly. I am smart. I am creative. I have blue eyes. I love wearing lipstick and painting my nails but I have no clue what blush is for. I’m pale, like albino gone wrong pale. I love to read. I love to knit. I love to create. I love cosplay. I love my geek community. All of these things, among hundreds of others, are parts of who I am. What makes me, me.
And I am sad. I am tired. I am frustrated. I am sick to death of all of the hatred out there. It has gotten to the point that I’m starting to see people I respected and admired in a whole different light. A light that I don’t like.
I am also a hypocrite.
I am a hypocrite because I am sick of seeing flaming hate blogposts and giant soapbox blogposts and calls of lynching blogposts. And yet I write a blogpost about it. But mine won’t contain hatred. And I am not on a soapbox. No pointing fingers. No sense of righteousness. Just a plea.
A plea for it all to stop.
One of the best feelings is when you say “well, (insert book/movie/super hero/you name it here) is my favorite.” And another person squees “MINE TOO!” It’s that little spark that creates a bond. When geek finds geek. That’s the stuff that BFFs are made of. I see it with my girls all of the time. Lilest’s first day of Kindergarten she wanted a PB & Banana sandwich cut out like a Millennium Falcon for lunch. When I asked her if she was sure, she replied “that is how I will know who is going to be my friend. If they know what it is, we’re BFFs.”
Since that moment, they’ve both encountered guys and girls that have called them weird for loving Star Wars. There were some rough moments, but they didn’t let it change them. They’ve gotten flack for declaring Twilight silly and offering forth Buffy as “a much better interpretation of a human and vampire love story.” But, they still stand by it. They are only 7 and 8 though and it’s going to get rougher and rougher out there for them.
Especially if they see the adults in the geek community fighting and divided. We are better than this. I’ve seen it. I have seen the incredible things we can accomplish when we work together. When we cheer each other on and support each other. When we don’t shun each other and throw steaming balls of hatred over a disagreement.
We are all human and won’t see eye to eye all the time. That’s normal. But, it’s how we handle the fact that we disagree that matters. If someone doesn’t believe you are a “real geek,” oh well. Their opinion doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t make you any less you. There is no litmus test. There is no one person that has the right to declare that. When you start screaming back and throwing out names and “cred,” you end up sounding just as douchey.
Yes, geek girls do exist. Arguing otherwise at this point is completely and utterly ridiculous. Yes, some of them are gorgeous. Yes, some of them love to wear make up and get dressed up all of the time. Guess what? Some of us aren’t. Some of us are merely average, normal gals that sometimes get all dressed up and sometimes love to rock our geek t’s and jeans. And we’re not any less geeky for that either. Nor are we less awesome. Nor do we love our gorgeous geek sisters any less.
There IS NO STANDARD. Just like there is no one way to geek, there is no one way to look like a geek. And gals, this goes for guys too. Our fellow geek guys are amazing and a ton of them support the Hell out of us. Are we sticking up for them? Not all of them are booty photo snapping, geek girl hating misogynists.
I’ve thought a lot about it, and the ramifications of saying this (and well everything this post contains) and I decided to just get it all out. Backlash be damned. I don’t even expect many to read this.
But, I think it really needs to be said- WE HAVE BECOME OUR OWN WORST BULLIES.
I have seen it over and over. Someone says/blogs/tweets/comments something that someone is hurt/upset by. Instead of handling it like an adult and saying “hey, that hurts” or “hey, that’s not right” and countering it, a whole new blog post is written, followed by “hey look at this person said this to me” is tweeted. Then swarm of people rush to defense and go after the culprit. I am ALL FOR supporting and backing up our friends and our community. The moment we hate mob up after someone though, we are doing it wrong. We are NO BETTER. Yes, disagree. Clearly make your case. But I am seeing one incident after one incident turn into giant snowball of hatred. I’ve seen post after post pop up to cash in on the momentum of the snowball. Who is really winning? NO ONE IS.
I would like to see us all go back to the way things were. To spend FAR LESS ENERGY ON THE NEGATIVE and START APPLYING ALL THAT ENERGY ON THE POSITIVE.
Instead of writing a retort about “poser cosplayers,” let’s write posts on all the positive things cosplayers have done. I know some AMAZING men and women that volunteer their time and cosplay talents to do so much good. Instead of writing a retort about “poser geek girls” let’s write posts about all the awesome geek girls and guys out there and they projects they are working on.
Forget trolls, don’t feed the negative. If you absolutely have to, give it a giant fucking bowl of positive.
Pretty please, let’s let go of all this negativity and get back to the love. I’ll totally share my Millennium Falcon PB & Banana Sandwich with you. Well, unless you have a peanut allergy. That would be bad. <3
