Looking into the reporting about the character of George Sodini reveals a dark theme of insecurity toward women, a theme that over time perpetuated a cascade of objectification and in the end a horrifying release. His diaries are laden with an attitude of self-loathing and a violent “desire” to be with women, ultimately turning them into objects for his anger and rage. But the “logic” underlying his “reasoning” (I use quotes here for an obvious purpose) is much more worrisome and should really spark a good deal of retrospection among both men and women as to what our social sexual norms are and how they can ultimately be harmful. Take this excerpt from his blog:
“Just got back from tanning, been doing this for a while. No gym today, my elbow is sore again. I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne - yet 30 million women rejected me - over an 18 or 25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are. A man needs a woman for confidence. He gets a boost on the job, career, with other men, and everywhere else when he knows inside he has someone to spend the night with and who is also a friend.”
It is difficult to break down this particular instance of sexism and extrapolate. Things don't blend neatly into pre-packaged explanations of the world and especially when it comes to extreme cases like this one. But ultimately, this excerpt does bring into relief the sharp corners of many sexual norms that society takes for granted. The first sentence is the culmination of the hyper-real expectation of society that being a “man,” that fulfilling the definition of “masculinity” means working out, looking tan, being a physical god. He channels his inability to “score” with women into bolstering this faux-masculine image, convinced that this (as our culture's image systems have ingrained into men) is the way to get women. The converse to this is that without women, men are somehow “sub-masculine” and thus unworthy of their very being “man.” Underlying his last thoughts of why a “man needs a woman” is a sexual-cultural norm taken to its extreme, that masculinity is nothing without femininity to be objectified by it. These ideas are repeatedly confirmed through daily cultural bombardments: media sources, inter-personal communication, social roles, etc...
I'll leave the rest of the diary for readers to read if they wish as it is extremely grim. But if there's one thing to be taken away, it is that the fundamental definitions of masculinity and femininity that Sodini held are not simply the product of his deranged mind but of a repeated process of enculturation that tragically went too far. Now, I am not somehow “apologizing” for Sodini as some sort of “tragic” individual – no, the man is a monster and it is his agency that pulled the trigger. However, I think this incident should give people pause as to the inadvertently dangerous way assumptions we take for granted inform our decision-making, and the way in which we frame “desirability,” “masculinity,” “femininity,” “relationships,” and “sexuality” matter in a world where we want an end to macro and micro-violence in sexuality.
What brought this issue into a shocking sharp relief for me was the extent to which the “pick-up artist” culture twisted Sodini's view of women. Pandagon provides a run-down of the mentality here, that women are merely pawns to be manipulated by men for their own cynical games and sexual pleasure, because everyone knows that if men don't manipulate women, they'll merely be manipulated by them. In a strange perversion of the “pre-emptive war” paradigm, that “we” must attack “them” so “they” don't attack “us,” on a micro-level, this pick-up-artist strategy/culture is ultimately objectifying and Otherizing. As the Sodini case demonstrated, it is ultimately a violent rejection of empathy in order to avoid being a “Nice Guy” and instead be a power-hungry “Alpha Male.” And this is not some extrapolation of what the pick-up-artist “strategy” appears to be – this is literally what they preach.
Now, I'd like to separate my initial comments about Sodini from the rest of this essay in order to make it clear that I am not conflating his case with that of any other individuals. I will not be trying to compare “him” and his actions with anyone else's. At the beginning, I was not particularly focused on individuals, but on ideas – ideas that shape minds. My goal was to show that ideas matter and that these ideas have violent consequences. Please note that I am not seeking to “compare” anyone to Sodini, but rather search for ways that we can avoid tangling ourselves with sexist assumptions and thus risking their dangerous consequences. I don't see Sodini as some “twisted” victim who, if only he was accepted by women, wouldn't have shot up a dance class. Everyone who rejected him was right to, because he was the kind of guy who would have shot up a dance class.
Yet what made me continue this train of thought is the sad, connecting thread. Ultimately, that thread is “ideology,” if you will, the ideology of the pick-up-mentality and the fetishization of the “alpha male" that hovers at a distance from the "nerd" subculture at the intersection of sexual frustration and personal confidence. The reason this really struck a chord with me now is a recent thread of conversation held between two “nerd icons,” the creators of the popular webcomic Penny Arcade, Gabe (Mike Krahulik) and Tycho (Jerry Holkins). The discussion dealt with “Love Systems,” a 'dating guide' whose owners Tycho labeled “base manipulators” who have “made a cage of language that I can't escape from.” Gabe responded with “Love Systems doesn't seem so bad to me. It's really hard to talk to girls, and this is just helping guys with their confidence. “ This sparked a series of back-and-forths. I particularly liked Tycho's comment that:
I'm fairly certain the purpose of this course is to make you a better predator of women. Check out their offers of "in-field training," as though you were going to hunt antelopes from a jeep in the Goddamned Savannah.
Amid the humor, I began to realize that this is the kind of feminist conversation that I rarely see so vividly in “nerd” circles. Given the outcome, I think it is a conversation that we need to have MORE of within this subculture, but rarely give it a second thought because it is so tangential or seemingly irrelevant. Now, I would label myself as a man, as a feminist and as a nerd. The last two are rarely spoken of in the same sentence, but the stereotype of a “nerd” as a fundamentally asexual being, concerned more with videogames, comics, fantasy novels and the like is at its core a silencing one. As a community that is stereotypically predominantly male, we need to have a mature conversation about sub-cultural assumptions that sometimes get taken for granted. I am not going to say “all nerds are like X,” but sexual and relationship insecurity is pervasive within our subculture and we have to understand what assumptions go unstated in order to find constructive rather than destructive solutions.
The problem I think lies at the intersection of self-perpetuating, broad-sweeping, overly-general, norms of sexuality and social role. I found Gabe's last message particularly intelligently stated:
“I'm a little worried that guys reading the site might take our discussion here as some sort of endorsement and I want to make sure that isn't the case. While some of their advice is probably fine I think the majority of it is really sleazy. Again, I can't blame guys for seeking out help. All joking aside though, I just want to make it clear that I don't think the seduction community is the place to go. I understand how badly you want to believe that there is a system out there that if you can simply master will resolve your problems. Sadly I don't think that's the case and if there is such a system, it certainly isn't this one.”
Honestly, I really empathized with Gabe's story and struggle with anxiety. The socially-awkward social-outcast role is to some extent a part of the nerd identity. This manifests itself early in the clusterfuck of high school social politics and begins to run into the omnipresent force of puberty. While every individual begins to develop sexually, only certain “sexual” roles are permitted within the confines of the school culture. The “popular kids,” the “jocks” are the ones to have their “top-of-the-pack” masculinity confirmed while girls at that level are expected to assume the roles of “stupid,” “submissive,” and “self-absorbed” in order to fulfill what it means to be “feminine.” Those with alternate conceptions of sexuality are immediately consigned to be “beta male.” This constant reinforcement of what sexual relations are, of “how a man should act” and how “a woman should act” ingrain these assumptions into our minds, making it seem like, rather than a social construct, our sexual relations are immutable facts. This is ultimately the reasoning behind these “seduction systems,” that the “game” is an absolute fact of life and that only by playing it can one be a true “alpha male.”
Note that I speak in broad generalizations here particularly because that is how culture is transmitted. Everyone knows that “actual” high school is much more nuanced than that, but our culture communicates with this seemingly universal symbology of social role and clique. The stereotypes themselves become levels of analysis as we begin to use them to explain the world around us. No, High School is not like living through a John Hughes movie every single day, but the categories people place themselves and others in are still highly relevant.
So starting with the “beginning” of socio-sexual categorization, the high school (because honestly, that's where these “Breakfast Club” roles begin being defined), we see patterns being developed. Unfortunately, at the core, there is a tainted, distorted view of sexuality as domination, as manipulation as a game of antagonism rather than unity, cooperation and harmony. What we must avoid is playing into this game of “accepting the subjective world we see as fact” and trying to play the game as is regardless of the assumptions that we perpetuate. For those nerds seeking to ditch their “beta male” status and become dickish, aggressive “alphas” (as though we're somehow wolves fighting each other over mates), I urge a deep self-examination. At the point where one takes the mentality of “playing the game” to get women, one symbolically destroys “women” as persons and individuals and replaces them with caricaturized objects of self-satisfaction.
Going back to the Penny Arcade discussion, Tycho made a post a bit later with a message from a close “nerd” friend who had worked on these sorts of systems as a way for nerds to relate better to women. He states:
Mike noted that if it's guys "hunting women from the back of a jeep" he's not behind that. What does he (or you) think guys are doing every single time they go out to a bar or club? As my mother has noted during the times I wore a hair shirt about my job, Love Systems didn't invent the act of guys going out and trying to find girls to have sex with. We just gave guys the tools to do it effectively without boring girls. Our course lets guys make their own calls. For my part, I try to explain the ethical ramifications of hollow sexual interactions, and I try to emphasize the role that developing personal standards for the people with whom you surround yourself has in developing standards for yourself... But if a guy takes away scummy lessons, I am not there to change him. At my last bootcamp, though, there was a gentleman who had an MFA and poetry and ran a non-profit. I just don't see him as the sleazy guy at the bar with his chest hair poking out, you know? But he had just left a divorce, has two daughters he loves very much, and he wants to know how to interface with the modern world of dating. Mike happened to meet Kara in line at Star Wars. Romances spark at events like PAX and Comic Con. And some people-- most people-- are content to live day to day and luck into chemistry and attraction. But every guy has seen a girl who has taken his breath away, or been on a date that didn't end with a comic strip proposing marriage to her through his alter ego, a date where the girl decided, inexplicably, that she just wanted to be friends.
….
Our kind, the nerds, are the worst of the lot, man! How many girls did YOU have at your gaming table? They are thin on the ground in my weekly d20 modern group and in my XBox Live Friends list, and I don't think I'm overreaching with my anecdotal evidence when I say my experience is not abnormal. I'm sure we both have compelling reasons for WHY girls might steer clear of our favorite hobby, but the simple reality is that gaming, even when there are comparitively a LOT of girls, is still going to see WAY more men than women. It doesn't grant us the same male/female socialization tools that say, sports does.
This angle of reasoning, perpetuates the same flawed perspective of women as strange, fickle, random creatures that are so alien and unknown that we must dominate them to understand them. To say that women are “inexplicably” going to just want to be “friends” is to homogenize not only women but also sexuality. The underlying assumption is that the “friendship” means nothing, that “sexual intercourse” is the only fulfilling form of companionship that a man can have. It's an ultimately dangerous assumption in that it robs women of any agency in defining what a meaningful relationship is. It locks us into one way of looking at “love” and forbids us from exploring other possibilities.
In the end, let's pay attention to what the implications of our “means” are and if the “end” is really what we think it is. It's time to be aware of what our assumptions mean for other people.
We can't let an understandable desire for more confidence let us accept unacceptably violent characterizations of women just for the sake of feeling better about ourselves. It's a destructive way of viewing the world that ultimately does us more harm than good. Sure, it's easier to feel better about one's social skills if one accepts the belief that all women are stupid, manipulative and manipulated objects, but what kind of world is that? There is no dignity there.
I don't think it's necessarily “the world socializes us, we are merely pawns of broader society,” but rather “we choose to socialize ourselves; we choose to ingrain certain ideologies, the things we don't know we know, by our actions.” It is clear that our “realities” will be difficult to change. I know well enough that we can't magically fiat away social attitudes and the gender gap at the D&D table is indicative of the way our sub-culture has been socialized into the broader mainstream culture. At the beginning, we can start by problematizing the assumptions that go into the way society defines sexuality and human relationships.
Mainstream culture will always be stupid culture, but that doesn't mean we have to fall into the trap of playing by its rules. Nerdiness in it's socially awkward, but intellectual and analytical while still kind, endearing and intimate form is an alternate conception of sexuality that flies in direct contrast to the dehumanized “mating” so common to the traditional masculine/feminine binary. It's something to be embraced rather than disdained. We may play games, but we should know enough not to play this game. Game Over. It's time to reject appeals to that faux-masculinity and instead re-define masculinity in our own terms, on our own grounds. Nerdy doesn't have to mean not-sexy and women don't just have to be objects to be fawned and lusted for.
End Note: This was somewhat of a scattered, stream-of-consciousness piece because I found myself discussing two drastically different phenomena to a large extent unrelated except by the common “feminist” tie. Honestly, it seems somewhat strange and erratic, but I think has some relevant points.
Missing from this piece is the issue of GLBT identities and how they relate to the nerd community, another extremely relevant topic, but one that I have noticed has gained quite a bit of traction recently.
I am not trying to make accusations that the nerd community somehow “hates women” - I am however noting that we are missing an opportunity to introduce a new way of thinking about relationships that rejects superficiality. Perhaps the opening is a little too strong and tangential, but its connection to what the "pick-up-artist" mentality can inadvertently justify in the long run is something to consider.
