azurelunatic | Posting from bed again: gender, neurodiversity: mine.

Posting from bed again: gender, neurodiversity: mine.

Don't mind me: I'm just having a little bit of an epiphany that what I had thought for years were gender problems are actually neurodiversity problems.

See, I had falling into the trap of thinking that the particular flavors of neurodiversity on the Aspie+ spectrum and neurotypical were all the neurodiversity there was.

Not sure what label fits me, but aspie is not it. I can see it from my porch on a clear day if the Bering Strait cooperates, but that's not where I live. Despite knowing for years that my mental wiring is straight-up sideways to lots of mainstream, since I don't fit Aspie, I had to be neurotypical, right?

Past several weeks, I have been amusing myself by saying that if you want to put me with my peers, sort by geek first, then sort by gender.

Then kaberett said something about the Dreamwidth volunteer cohort valuing all kinds of neurodiversity in general, and theirs in particular. And that clicked something in my head. Maybe I'm not just so far from normal that it takes all my acting skills to pretend to get along in majority neurotypical society while being an introvert -- maybe actually "my brain is different" means some non- neurotypical action.

This label. It might apply to me.

I read the jargon file at age 15 and discovered my people. I have met enough geekfolk to know that geek brains are all different too.

Most of the gender problems I have seem to be related to modern western femme not embracing geek very happily.

I am sure I have more thoughts but I'm falling asleep.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There is ordinary. And then there is a whole nother bunch of stuff that is everyone else.

I don't fit any of the neurovariant patterns I've seen described, exactly. I'm my own datacluster of traits, which happen not to be much like the neurotypical set. I'm cool with that.

♥

Always happy to talk about this stuff more.

It was immensely helpful!

I've been "lunatic" for a while, but even after taking that as part of my name, it's still stung when the occasional person whose goodwill I don't necessarily trust dismisses my complexity and talents as being crazy. No. The crazy is the depression, the executive dysfunction, the unhelpful menstrual mood swings, the agoraphobia, and all the little things that were survival once upon a time but don't actually help anymore. They should not be feared, they should be acknowledged, treated, and worked with. The fact that my viewpoint on the world is similar to a five-space mathematician? That's me, motherfuckers, and it's awesome.

I'm dyslexic, and I'm not even neurotypical for that insofar as my symptomatology is atypical type 3. [I read ok, writing is another matter.] Of course my brain is wired differently, in so many ways... I'm geeky, ambidextrous [although right-handed by habit], introvert, non-stereotypical male, etc etc... aspie however isn't one of them. [although I have traits in that direction too, just not enough to count.]

In as many ways as it's possible to be neurotypical, there's just as many atypical variants. What sort of atypical you are can be a mixed batch of random.

and yeah, geek doesn't map well to 'normal' stereotypes of either gender.

Oh lord. Somehow in the process of learning to read English before I was 2 (nobody taught me, I just can't ever remember not reading although I remember some adults being really freaked out that I could) I missed the dyslexic problems with reading in my first language, but I didn't learn to write legibly until I was 10 and I didn't learn to write WELL until I studied calligraphy in college. Then I went to graduate school and that was the end of my pretty handwriting.

I reverse numbers all the time and arithmetic operations (addition/subtraction--I have an Excel sheet because I can't be trusted to balance my own budget), not to mention kanji (the results of which can be freaking hilarious). I read somewhere that dyslexics aren't supposed to mix up Chinese characters, but I don't actually think that is true given my talent for doing so.

I claimed the label aneurotypical awhile ago because I'm borderline for like half a dozen things but not actually quiiiiite there. And then there's the dyscalculia. Oh, and the being a writer. (...there are other people in my head. Distressingly, sometimes they talk directly to me.)

I can pass for neurotypical relatively easily, but yeah. It's not just the flavours of autism that can have your brain not work the same at all.

Yesyesyes. I have a bunch of posts/rants in the back of my head about a bunch of these things.

1) It is very frustrating to me that folks on the AS coined "neurotypical" to mean "not on the AS spectrum" because I am not on the AS spectrum but I'm not neurotypical either. The need for a term meaning "not on the AS spectrum" is critical, but, man, this one is problematic.

2) "Geek" and "nerd" are massively gendered constructs, but not in the way most people seem to think. To be a geek or a nerd is to be gender non-conforming -- it too is a sort of genderqueerness and I have the research to back that up. And as someone at the intersection of geek and woman, let me testify: my life attests to vastly less antiwoman prejudice from my fellow geeks than antigeek prejudice from my fellow women.

I have no sense of the history of AS activism, and I am not on the AS spectrum, but there is a word for "not autistic or on the spectrum": allistic. So I'm not sure when "non-neurotypical" came only to mean "the opposite of allistic," But I find it relatively easy (although slightly inconvenient) to specify that I am allistic, but non-neurotypical.

I suspect it's an internet thing, not a Thing of Great Thingness. I have zero problems getting across my ADD to pshrinks and teachers who are focused on learning variances. Getting it across to a regular counselor/psychologist or generic teacher... markedly less successful. Autism activists are sometimes very clued in, but there's a definite subgroup where autism is their first encounter with atypical neurological stuff and that group seems to really get freaked by me.

But then, I can pretty cheerfully freak out almost any activist :P. ADD, SAD, family history of alcoholism, physical abuse, sexual abuse, suicide, panic disorders, multiple attempted bipolar diagnoses on family members etc etc etc. My family history reads like a textbook fictionalization.

Thank you very much for turning me on to that term! Much happy googling is ensuing.

*pricks up ears* I would be very very interested indeed to hear more about geek as genderqueerness. I know you have far more posts you want to write than time to write them, and what some random person happens to be interested in is in no way a useful prioritization strategy. So I'm just being gratuitously enthusiastic at you here.

Actually, knowing people are interested is definitely motivating. It's just that I know that particular topic is going to be incendiary, which means I have to do a particularly thorough job writing it and prepare a time window to deal with it once posted.

But here's the summary:

Cast your memory back to the 80s: then the words "nerd" and "geek" were unambiguously pejorative, and described males who had a certain constellation of traits. Those traits included (1) interest in activities coded by that society as the prerogatives of males -- math, science, intellectual games, computers -- and (2) disinterest or lack of ability in domains considered necessary for adequate performance of hegemonic patriarchal masculinity: physical strength, stature and build, sexual attractiveness and prowess, social conformity, aggression, dominance, etc. "Nerd" and "geek" were epithets indicating the necessarily male object of the insult was not performing masculinity adequately. They were terms that policed male performance of hegemonic masculinity.

(Note that these insults existed in parallel to many homophobic slurs which also indicate inadequate performance of hegemonic masculinity, but those expressly homophobic slurs were (are) applied to males who take an interest in activities coded as feminine.)

The opposite of "nerd" and "geek" was "a real man". "Nerd" and "geek" were specific ways of failing to be "real men": they failed to take sufficient interest in the things that signaled masculinity, such as sports and women.

These terms were insults for males who refused/failed to conform to gender norms.

That's why even today "nerd" and "geek" default to male -- not because females are not assumed to participate in the male-coded activities which we now characterize "nerds" and "geeks" (gaming, STEM, etc), but because applying an insult the premise of which is that the recipient is being insufficiently manly doesn't make sense on females.

When a woman (or girl) identifies as a geek, she's saying she's transgressing gender norms by expressing certain "unfeminine" interests. When a man (or boy) identifies as a geek, he's saying he's transgressing gender norms by failing/refusing to express certain "masculine" interests. Or at least that has been the case until quite recently.

Geek and nerd are terms that are moving towards positive definitions, away from the older definition, such that the females' sense of the term is becoming predominant. Men increasingly identify as "geeks" and "nerds" to indicate a positive association with certain subcultures, and making an identity out of their interests in "geeky" things; the insult side of of the terms, the sense they indicate failure in physical activity or sexual activity, are being distanced.

But the issue is still there, simmering below the surface. The terms "geek" and "nerd" represent how a lot of men and boys resisted the patriarchy in their own lives, and took a whole lot of crap for it, including physical violence and sexual assault.

ETA: And even if there are now many, male and female, who are reclaiming "geek" and "nerd", even if the terms aren't so quick to outsiders' tongues as pejoratives, the concept is still there. Media coverage of SF cons still tends to ignore or erase the presence of women -- or treat them as remarkable exceptions. That's because our presence at SF cons f's up their narrative, which is that these guys are geeks. Geeks are, definitionally, men who can't get women. If a con is half full of women -- to say nothing of a lot of little kids running around calling the bearded gamer dudes "Daddy" -- that violates the subtext they came to impose.

Edited 2013-05-13 05:25 (UTC)

Many thanks for this summary. It seems to fit together a bunch of stuff that I've been trying to think about and not quite making anything coherent out of it. Among other things it makes sense of the ridiculous arguments that seem to keep flaring up about "fake geek girls". But yes, I can quite see why this would be incendiary as a top-level post. Really rich in concepts I find extremely useful, though, so I'm most grateful that you expanded that short paragraph from your previous comment.

None of this is stuff I didn't know, but I hadn't ever put it together like this. This sheds light, for me, on the anti-woman sentiment coming from both men and women that has driven me absolutely batshit in the geek community -- it's anti-woman but specifically it is anti-femininity.

Which, given that historically geek and nerd were coded hard as male and what women did identify themselves as geek were choosing to transgress gender norms by expressing interest in 'unfeminine' activities and often by eschewing 'feminine' activities, makes sense. Femininity and geek are subtextually supposed to be exclusive of each other. And you can transgress the lines, but you're not supposed to blur them.

It doesn't make me any happier about it nor any more likely to put up with it. But it is significantly more comprehensible.

This comment makes me remember http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20355-my-fair-physicist-feminine-math-science-role-models-do-not-motivate-girls and then think about some of the goals I set for myself in 6th grade.

I had noticed that I did not fit in with the standards of femininity set by my schoolmates. I was determined to fix that. I had some things to work on, some benchmarks to meet so I could know I was feminine enough.

The project failed miserably. I found approaching or maintaining that level of performative femininity exhausting and boring, and I went back to being myself. I was much happier being myself.

As a female geek, I am mostly exempt from the standards of appearance set for a professional woman. I have not yet, and I hope to never experience, the sort of dress code creep where arrival of people who enjoy investing time in their appearance means that everyone else is expected to invest additional time in theirs, but it's a thing that does happen. The thought terrifies me.

And then there's the immensely toxic atmosphere when the young single generation of geek men get fed/embrace the following damaging concepts:

1) Men are alpha, beta, or omega
2) Only alpha men are worthwhile
3) A man can prove his worth by having sex (with a woman)

Okay, this is important: that is the standard message of hegemonic masculinity, and nothing about it is specific to geek men. That conception of masculinity and the rules of masculine performance and virtue is pretty much universal bedrock to Western civilization (at least) for the last 2000+ years. It is what all men are reacting to, one way or another.

And men have a variety of reactions, of course, including "You know what? Patriarchy is bullshit", however nobody gets to escape the pervasive and vast cultural message that judgment by a woman as sexually acceptable is a crucial measure of worth for men.

This norm is so pervasive, and so ubiquitous, and so relentless, it makes the media's drumbeat of body size policing for women look like a passing mention.

4) Women, in general and in specific, owe sex to men

I think this is untrue, because if it were true, we'd have a rape culture that looks significantly different from the one we've got. For one thing, if men felt women owed them sex, they wouldn't try to buy it with gifts, sympathy, cash, etc. We do not try to buy things we think are ours by right. The entire puzzle-box mentality about sex[*] -- "there is something I can do, if I can just figure it out, to get women to dispense sex" -- is actually incompatible with the belief that women owe men sex. It's an example of the lengths men go to try to figure out how to get women to owe them sex.

[* I actually think the puzzle-box mentality isn't about sex. But that's its own post.]

So we have guys who are looking to establish that they're worthwhile, afraid they're not

Yeah. And there are a bunch of ways guys can respond to that. Such as,

and angry with women who they'd like to have sex with but the sex isn't happening

Well, when you're told since you were a boy that your worth as a human being is indicated by women being willing to have sex with you, a failure to get sex from women means you're a failure as a man and a human being. Some men blame women for holding their self-esteem hostage. The whole point of Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly -- one of the foundational books of the mythopoetic men's movement -- was about getting over that idea. (Book not recommended for casual reading, much failiness.)

And then there's the thing where these dudes tend to define "women" as "women who I am sexually attracted to" and get peeved when women they consider below their standards have the gall to flirt with them.

Women do the exact same thing. This is not at all dude thing. Another topic worthy of its own post.

This is cool. My not-quite-neurotypicality-that-I-don't-think-is-Aspie and my gender stuff have some intersections too.

"Neurotypical" apparently scans in my head like "normal" does.

Which is to say, there is no such thing as a plural definition of "normal": one person's "normal" is another person's "um, that's fucking weird". This is why I tend to use the phrase "normal people" either with scare quotes around "normal", or with deep sarcasm.

So apparently this means, to me, every person's "a/neurotypical" is unique unto themselves, and a plural definition fits only in the broadest of senses.

While I understand what you mean, some people's "normal" makes it a lot harder for them to interact socially than other people's "normal" does, and there's a lot of privilege that comes with that. I can sometimes fake the expected kind of "normal" but my G-d is it exhausting, to the point where people mistake me for an introvert when in point of fact I need people around, I just get very tired of pretending.

I wasn't trying to discount that; my "normal" includes being severely deaf/HoH in a very audio-centric world, and that's really exhausting, too, some days.

I meant something like... Their "normal" is not your "normal" and it sucks that anyone has to pretend otherwise? If that makes sense?

Sometimes I don't word well. :(

Fair enough :) Sometimes we all don't word well, I appreciate the clarification :)

*laughs* I got the HFA (High-functioning Autism) label as a kid precisely BECAUSE I was neither "normal" nor aspie and the schools were worried about me. As an adult it's faded away under the diagnoses of Borderline Personality Disorder and the barrage of other diagnoses I have (if you're curious, ask, I'm not shy), and my amazing psychiatrists have reassured me that while not neurotypical, I'm functioning (enough) with assistance and guardianship, and that's all that matters in their professional opinion.

Heh, now I may take this conversation over to my shrink on Wednesday when I have my next hour. Azzie, do you mind?

Go for it <3

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Posting from bed again: gender, neurodiversity: mine.

Yes...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Icon is relevant

Re: Icon is relevant