The Plight of the Bitter Nerd

[davidgillon]

I clearly missed out on the first round of the Scott Aaronson debate - an MIT professor who argued in an online discussion of the position of women in STEM that as a shy, nerdy guy he was not privileged, and that feminism made him feel like a monster, and did this in response to a woman talking about her experience of being raped by a shy, nerdy guy *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* - but a friend just pointed me at a good analysis of what Aaronson was trying to say, and how he went so wrong, that may interest people here: The plight of the bitter nerd: Why so many awkward, shy guys end up hating feminism

Laurie Penny (who has already written about this general issue when she pointed out the need for male nerds to make the uncomfortable recognition that their position in society isn't as their fondly imagined parallel to the Star Wars Rebel Alliance, but that they're actually an arm of the Empire) also has a good analysis of this in her article On Nerd Entitlement, in fact she pretty much nails the argument with her sub-title: 'White male nerds need to recognise that other people had traumatic upbringings, too - and that's different from structural oppression'. She examines where Aaronson is coming from (white male nerd who had an appalling time at school), compares it to her own lived experience (white female nerd who had an appalling time at school), and then rips him to shreds for trying to claim male nerds aren't part of the structural problem, particularly for women in STEM, by showing that yes, in fact we clearly are. And I love the fact that she goes on to tear apart his bewailing the fact that boys/men like him would do better if marriages were still being arranged by elders within the shtetl as happened for earlier generations of men in his family, by pointing out that his ancestral 'better' was only achieved by the ancestral subjugation of earlier generations of women in her family and others, within the demands of seeing the young men had the best chances, enabled at the cost of the hopes, and even ultimately lives, of young women like her.

It's this kind of *headdesk* -worthy idiocy from male nerds that makes me so glad I became disabled, as that transition/revelation/Damascene conversion gave me a much better appreciation of how, even as the proverbial shy, nerdy guy, my life had been privileged until that point (and still is) by the fact I'm also a straight white, middle-class male. While I wouldn't wish disability on Aaronson, it sounds like he needs a similarly revelatory experience if he truly thinks his experiences as a nerd equate to a woman's experience of being raped

Comments

[davidgillon]

(Struggled with the cut function here, so apologies if I failed with trigger warnings - I've been into the HTML and it looks right now, but DW is only showing me the full text so I'm not sure if the cuts are working or not)

[syntaxofthings]

*claps* That analysis is powerful.

[cosmolinguist]

I liked my husband's response to what both Aaronson and Penny had said. I think there's a lot of nuance here that we ignore at our peril -- Aaronson's follow-up indicates that he understands now that privilege is a magic word he has to use in order to keep people from yelling him and that, while possibly true, isn't the robust understanding of social injustice that all the people yelling at him want -- and I think Andrew covers more of it than I've seen elsewhere.

[hilarita]

Some of the structural factors didn't make that much sense to me until I found out about intersectionality. Mind, in many ways I benefit from several bits of structural privilege myself. And I didn't really 'get' that women are still structurally oppressed until I (in no particular order):
- learned about microaggressions, and realised that most of the ones I'd experienced were rooted in misogyny.
- started to want to move into positions of authority in a technical sector
- spent 6 months on long-term sick leave because of my disability and massive structural disablism.

[jesse_the_k]

Yes.

You say Interestingly microaggressions and the damage they do (though they used another term which escapes me right now) were one of the things covered in the CBT module of my recent pain management course. I've spent several sessions too many trying to teach my therapist what microagressions are. I would adore a reference if available. The concept of "microaggression" is exceptionally useful. That some aspects of my impairments make me specifically less capable of handling them is frustrating.

Fortunately I encountered "intersectionality" and "cross-disability coalition" while I was still identifying as nondisabled; those ideas certainly made my view of the world more acute. On the other hand, it provided more options for anger. And on another toe, I could look for wisdom for living with that anger from a range of cultures that handle incessant oppression.