I was thinking about this article again, and the problem boils down to this:
Even feminists use the epistemic and hermeneutical framework of the society in which they are embedded and share still 99%+ of its values.
Nerds have little power and are thus easy to shame. Because feminists (as well as all women and men) are so similar to everyone else just by nature of participating in a society, the objects of most of their attractions and those who can inflict the most real harm on them are the societally-approved powerful jock types.
Therefore attacking them would be dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Much easier and safer to attack those who can’t and won’t really fight back much, and whom they are extremely repulsed by in principle and practice. So when a nerd approaches someone like Amanda Marcotte, she’s absolutely revolted and interprets it as an affront to feminism. However, if a physically-fit jock type exhibits the very same behavior (or worse) even if she turned him down, she’d be flattered (secretly or openly).
This isn’t some feminist flaw, though it is hypocritical. It’s just a human reaction to the powerful that nearly everyone has.
(And no GamerGaters aren’t mostly nerds, but rather part of the FPS gaming subculture, many of whom are actual jocks or jock wannabes and who share far more in common with them in all ways.)
The whole “nerd” v “jock” dichotomy (like in ’80s movies) never made sense in my actual life as a teen, perhaps because of where I went to school and the people I grew up with. The “nerds” were never unpopular for being “nerds”, it was always something else on top of it, like being poor or not white or fat or ugly or some combo. I didn’t understand, and for the most part, do not understand social rules, and it was mostly teachers, not peers, who had problems with me being too visibly “book smart”. My peers ignored me, for the most part. Nobody was getting stuffed into lockers or dis-invited from parties for acing a test or breaking a curve. Also I didn’t grow up around girls who were ugly and brainy. There were beautiful and brainy or just average and brainy, or just average (relative to the larger population). Even in middle school, my actual (male) bullies were winning national science fairs. Of course, the kid lived in this beautiful mansion in the middle of the city.
Where I grew up, there was very much a dichotomy between the jocks vs. nerds and the rich vs. the poor, nearly as strongly as in some high school movies from that era (in some ways, stronger).
I was both a nerd, poor and not very attractive particularly during middle and early high school (I had terrible hair, usually unwashed, a big nose and very bad clothes and was getting beat up all the time so I was bruised and bloody half the time). You can imagine what kind of situation that left me in.
Later on, I improved. I didn’t become a jock (to be a real jock in my high school, you had to be on the football team, period) but I joined the tennis team. I dressed better. I had pretty damn epic hair during my junior and senior year. I would’ve never have been permitted to join the football team though because I wasn’t from the right family and was a nerd, even though I was pretty good at that too.
But the dichotomy never went away, even if it lessened as I got older and I civilized myself.
And things really did improve markedly. I was not a great tennis player, but was a “star player” on the academic team. We won — against all odds — some academic team tournament for all of North Florida.
The win was announced with our names over the intercom in the morning in my senior year, and the people in the classroom I was sitting in started clapping spontaneously because I was there. I thought it was a joke at first. I really did. Almost no one in my life had ever clapped for anything I’d ever done. My family was indifferent. My peers had typically hated me actively.
I had to look around three times to believe it. I was actually far more shocked and numb to it than if someone had just made me fun of me because it was so unexpected (even though I knew my standing had improved beyond measure) but when you’ve been abused a hell of a lot it’s hard to get out of that mindset.
So that’s a mini-story about my high school life, mostly completely tangential but something I was thinking about anyway.
About that academic team win, it really was against all odds I have to add. We weren’t the underdogs, we were the amoebae the underdogs were taking a dump on.
When we won, no one clapped, but we were so stunned we didn’t even really notice. Everyone just sat there silently in the entire auditorium because it was so unexpected and unparalleled — we went up against schools that always won, who were 100 times larger than our school, and that had never not won.
A bunch of redneck hayseeds from a tiny town many in the area hadn’t even heard of doing that — shit, we were just as bowled over as everyone else. One of the strangest moments of my life, gazing out at a silent and astonished auditorium and being just as astounded as everyone else. I didn’t even know what to do. I just stood up and sat down.