The Big Phallus Theory: The Big Bang Theory, Nerd Culture, and Women

(While I tried to avoid them, you may find some SPOILERS for The Big Bang Theory in this post.)

 

One of my favorite sitcoms is The Big Bang Theory. While the show is not always strong on plot and rarely portrays life in academia accurately, its likeable characters and nearly unending stream of insider gags for nerds make it an entertaining means of spending half an hour. I love Leonard, the everyman. I enjoy Sheldon’s elevated dialogue. And I can both sympathize with and laugh at Howard and Raj’s awkwardness. I also appreciate that it features a smart, sensible heroine, Penny, who isn’t afraid to assert herself and can talk back to the guys.

What I can’t stand is that, like most of nerd culture and the wider culture, the show often reeks of sexism. Some of it, like Howard’s frequent lewd comments that reduce women to sex objects, I can ignore. Indeed, if I restricted myself only to popular culture that presents women as nothing less than fully realized human beings, I’d probably never be able to watch another movie or television show again. I’ve become so used to explicit sexism, in the form of derogatory comments about women, in my media diet that, I confess, I often recognize it and then choose to ignore it. It’s one of the patriarchal bargains I make as a feminist and a woman living in a culture that recognizes my gender’s worth only in so far as it meets certain standards of sexiness, attractiveness, and compliance. What does bother me about the show that I haven’t been able to ignore so easily is the implicit sexism in the lack of female nerd characters.

Seriously, where are the women nerds? I see them everywhere in real life. They attend conventions, they go to the movies, they cosplay, they talk about Star Wars and Star Trek  and play Skyrim and Dungeons & Dragons. They consist of the majority of people that I know and I’d say nearly all of my female friends are nerds. I know women who can code websites, quote Lord of the Rings, act out scenes from Doctor Who, recite the noble gases and their atomic weights, and kick your ass in Call of Duty. Why are these women not represented, or even acknowledged, in The Big Bang Theory? I’m not even asking why they aren’t main characters–though a show about four female nerdy friends would be awesome and so much more entertaining than Sex and the City–so much as I’m wondering why, in the show’s universe, they don’t even seem to exist.

Well, one might point out, what about Amy and Bernadette? Perhaps, in the strictest sense of the term “nerd,” someone who is brilliantly smart and obsessives over even the tiniest minutiae of something, Amy and Bernadette are nerds. They’re both smart, they’re both biologists, and they both have Ph.D.s. To give credit where credit is due, just a few decades ago it would have been unthinkable to have not one, but two women characters in the S.T.E.M. fields on a television show. However, Amy and Bernadette are still ultimately defined in the show by their relationships with their male significant others. They are judged, and often found wanting, by their ability or inability to meet cultural standards of attractiveness, and they do no participate in what has come to be the domains of nerd culture–things like comic books, science fiction shows and movies, and video games. There are no women regularly featured in the show who enjoy these pursuits, even though such women exist in real life.

In real life, however, nerd culture often has just as much, if not more, of a problem with sexism than The Big Bang Theory does. While The Big Bang Theory ignores nerd women and pretends that they don’t exist, real life nerd culture can be downright hostile toward women attempting to claim the identity of “nerd.”  Whether its people accusing women of only pretending to be nerds in order to hook up with guys or creating the “Idiot Nerd Girl” meme that I’ve attempted to reclaim in this post, a lot of guys seem to want women out of their conventions, their role playing games, and their Internet spaces. But why? The most obvious answer is sexism, but it would be too simple to leave it at that, so I’m going to dig a little deeper.

Though the cultural perception of nerds is changing, it is still largely a negative one, as evidenced by the male main characters on The Big Bang Theory. All of them, in some way, have failed to live up to to our culture’s unrealistic and burdensome ideals of masculinity. None of them are physically strong. Neither are they particularly attractive. They know little of sports. They aren’t charismatic or suave or charming. They aren’t physically or emotionally tough. They prefer the comforts of their apartments to the outdoors. Nerdy men are, as the show and the wider culture seem to suggest, not masculine. The show has frequently paired short, wimpy Leonard with Penny’s tall, dark and handsome beaus to make this point. Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj could often be better described as “feminine” than masculine. There is, however, one group that is lower than nerds on the social hierarchy: women. Whatever male nerds are, they are still more masculine (and thus higher on the hierarchy of patriarchal culture) than women. But when women start entering nerd spaces–and demanding an equal right to be there and be recognized as nerds–they challenge the modicum of masculinity that nerd culture has been able to salvage for itself. They also challenge the perception of women, within both nerd culture and the wider culture, as nothing more than accessories that convey masculinity, and thus worth, on a man. (Think about how, when Howard was first dating Bernadette, he worried that she wasn’t good-looking enough. An attractive girl conveys to society that there is something “manly” or “masculine” about the man she is dating, thus increasing his worth in the eyes of patriarchal culture.)

I think there is a place for women in nerd culture, and I’m sure that women will continue to attend cons, play video games, and go to special screenings of Star Wars. Just as women have fought, and are still fighting, for their right to inhabit the biology labs and physics departments where Bernadette and Amy have managed to reside, I suspect that women will continue to exist in nerd spaces and gradually gain acceptance there. I also suspect that, as nerd culture continues to grow within the mainstream, the stereotype of nerd men as less than masculine will diminish.

However, just because the stereotype of nerds as feminine may disappear does not mean that sexism within nerd culture will necessarily end. Though I would be very glad to see our culture expand its definitions of masculinity beyond its currently narrow confines, I suspect that this will do very little to challenge the standards of beauty to which women, even nerdy women, are held, both inside and outside of nerd culture. Maleness, I still sadly suspect, will still be privileged within nerd culture, in part because nerd culture is inherently exclusionary. To be a nerd, it helps to be male. It also helps to be white, cisgender, and educated. I suspect being able-bodied helps too, though I have seen a broader spectrum of ability represented in nerd culture than I have in mainstream culture. It is required that one be at least middle class, as I doubt the working class has the time and money that are necessary to indulge in nerdy pursuits. Gaming systems can be incredibly expensive, as are books, DVDs, and high-speed Internet connections. One must also have the leisure time to master the games and fantasy worlds present in nerd media. Sadly, in many ways, nerds are often primarily defined by what they consume.

I would like to think that nerd culture is smart enough to look at its own privilege and try to include a wider range of people. After all, many of us nerds define ourselves by our inability to fit in, our difference from mainstream society, and our stories of bullying and rejection. Perhaps we could use those experiences to sympathize with those whom society bullies and rejects. Until more nerds are willing to make this effort and look beyond their own privilege, however, I suspect that nerd culture will largely remain another old boys club.

Synergia: What is Creative Writing? Part 2

Part 1 appears here.

I flopped onto the red, paisley hotel bedspread and opened my laptop. “Thank god, free wi-fi!” I muttered. The hotel in Washington, D.C., had not provided free  Internet connection. My friend Erinne, Dr. Smith, I, and assorted other students and professors from the English department had been there for the past four days at the Associated Writing Programs conference (AWP), one of the biggest and most prestigious conferences in the creative writing field. Now I was itching to check Facebook and my email.

We’d been held up in Baltimore because of a snowstorm and couldn’t fly back to Detroit until the following morning. So we’d found a hotel—paid for by Dr. Smith’s English department credit card—and were getting ready for dinner, which Dr. Smith and her partner, another professor, had offered to buy. I was planning to enjoy as much of the free food and accomodations as I could before returning to campus, where I would find myself touching up final papers and studying for exams. At least, I thought, I have my capstone out of the way.

“Hey, our grades for our capstones are up!” my friend, Erinne, said, looking up at me from her spot on the other bed, where she sat with her laptop. I watched her scroll for a moment before her face broke into a grin. “Hey! I got an A!”

“Nice! You were great, though. You deserve it,” I said as I waited for my email to load. At the top of my inbox, starred and marked “important,” was an email from our capstone advisor with the subject line “Final Grades.” I eagarly clicked on it.

Dear Em, I wanted to mention this to you in an email so it didn’t surprise you when you read the attached comments from your graders…

What? What’s that? That didn’t sound good. That didn’t sound like the comments I usually got on papers. I was a straight-A student. I didn’t get comments like that!

…I wanted to let you know that I don’t think Dr. Smith meant her comments in a hurtful or negative way. I think she was only making an observation about your creative work and your presentation….

Hurtful or negative? What did that mean, “hurtful or negative”? What did Dr. Smith say?

…It was a pleasure having you in the class and you did a fine job on your project and presentation…

I skimmed the rest of the email and then downloaded the attachment. I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t breath. What did Dr. Smith say?! I’d always thought Dr. Smith had liked me and my writing. Why would her comments be so ambiguous that they could be construed as hurtful or negative?  I didn’t have to wonder long. The attachment opened and I bit my lip as I read Dr. Smith’s comments.

I believe that, in her heart, Em is not truly a creative writer. I think she is a theorist and an activist who uses her writing to draw attention to issues of social justice.

Not truly a creative writer? Not truly a creative writer?! Since when were creative writers not allowed to write about social issues? I scrolled down the attachment to see what my grade was, but a part of me already knew: seventeen points out of twenty, an eighty-five percent, a solid B.

To many students, this news would be a relief. To me, it was devestating. For three and a half years I’d cultivated my GPA of four-point-oh like a rare rosebush. I’d monitored it constantly, ensuring that it always received just the right amount of care and work. I pruned out imperfections before they festered into problems and prided myself on its beauty and perfection. It was my everything, my best thing. It defined me. And now, like a rot that sank deep into the root, this one missing point had ruined everything. Sure, my GPA was still good, but it was no longer perfect, and for three and half years, perfection had been all that mattered to me.

“That bitch!” I snarled, loudly enough for Erinne to hear. Even though I was still in shock, I wanted some sympathy.

“Huh?” Erinne asked, taking out her earphones.

“That bitch, Smith! She said about my capstone that I’m not a real creative writer!”

Erinne narrowed her eyes. “That’s crazy! Your presentation was so good!”

“Thanks,” I spat. “God, I hate her!”

Erinne nodded.

“And I got a B!”

“Really? But your presentation was better than mine.”

“My GPA is ruined!”

Erinne sighed. “Wow, that sucks. But we’re graduating in a few months, anyway. It’s really not going to matter in the long run.”

“I just…I can’t believe she did that!”

Erinne shrugged and put one of her earphones back in. “Just remember, soon it won’t matter.”

Erinne seemed uninterested in commiserating with me further, so I planned to spend the rest of the evening sulking privately.

However, my self-pity was quickly interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Hey, guys! It’s Alex!” a friend of Erinne’s and mine called. “Dr. Smith and the rest of us are ready to go to dinner. You coming?”

Erinne took out her earphones and hopped off her bed. “You coming?”

I sighed.

“It’s free,” Erinne reminded me.

“I guess…”

* * *

What is creative writing? To a roommate who was a brilliant writer but who claimed she was  uncreative, I used to say that all writing is creative. And in a way, it is. All writing, from the worst fan-fiction story to Shakespeare’s masterpieces is creative in the sense that it is choosing words and putting them in an order that has never before been formed. From there, these sentences are arranged in a way in which they are unlikely to ever be arranged again. In the sense that all writing is forming something new, all writing is creative.

There is also, I would argue, a creativity in critical and analytical writing, particularly in the fields of poststructuralism and deconstruction, fields that I learned to love from my old professor, Dr. Smith. Say what you want about Derrida. He’s esoteric, dense, reflexive, and performative. But he is also creative. No one wrote theory like Derrida, and those that have tried it since usually just end up copying him instead of forging new ground. Derrida was a theorist, yes, but there’s also something poetic about his theory. He was—dare I say it!—a creative writer.

There is also, again I would argue, an element of social justice in many creative works in the so-called “canon.” Toni Morrison is praised for her rich characters and lyrical prose, but her stories also often center around the plight of African-American girls growing up in a culture that snubs their beauty and their minds. Is Toni Morrison a creative writer? You’d be hard-pressed to find a critic who’d say she isn’t. Is she an activist for social justice? Of course! She’s been very open, both in her novels and her public speeches, about her fight against racism. Does categorizing her as one—an author or an activist—negate the other? Of course not!

I often find myself drawn to writers who straddle the line, if there is any line to begin with, between social critics and creative writers. David Sedaris might make his readers laugh out loud, but he also subtly draws our attention to the U.S.’s class pretentions and cultural insensitivity. Judith “Jack” Halberstam, a professor of cultural studies who has written many books about the intersections between homophobia and capitalism, writes in a critical style that has been described as “playful,” but which I find poetic. Ani DiFranco plays guitar and sings lyrics about gender and class inequalities. The creativity, for this diverse array of people, is in how they compose their message through well-placed words and well-formed sentences. The subject matter, at worst, certainly does not detract from the superior writing. At best, it enhances the writing, allowing the writing itself to perform the message of the text. The reader isn’t merely told the message through a direct statement—“homophobia is bad”—or through the actions of a main character—Sedaris goes to France and doesn’t find the stereotypes he expected. The writing itself becomes an element of the message. (Ani DiFranco places her message within the legacy of a folk tradition, which her musical style and lyrics reflect.)

This isn’t an idea that I came up with myself. I actually learned it in my four years as an undergraduate creative writing major at a small, Midwestern university. I idolized my creative writing professors, and in doing so, I not only absorbed their wisdom regarding the craft of writing but also their social and political awareness. They wrote poems and novels and short stories, but they also read Foucault and were just as likely to talk about power and the panopticon in class as they were punctuation. They loved writing and words but they also had a sense of responsibility to the broader culture of which they were a part. One of my professors wrote creative nonfiction pieces about the impoverished American Indian reservation where he’d previously taught. Another professor was very open about her role in exposing a serial date rapist after a number of her female students had come to her for guidance and compassion after being assaulted. These were people who’s teaching I loved, whose creative works I respected, and whose social awareness I wanted to emmulate. I didn’t see any conflict between their creative writing and their activism.

Honestly, I still don’t.

The third and final installment of this piece appears here.

The American Psycho Still Walks Among Us

“The city is at war./Playtime for the young and rich!/Ignore me if you see me,/’cause I just don’t give a shit./The city is at war./Bless the young and rich/with designer drugs and designer friends.”–Cobra Starship, “The City is at War”

I just finished reading Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho for a class, and I found myself shocked at how timely it seemed, despite its being so firmly situated in the late 1980s. Give Pat Bateman an iPhone and he’d fit right in today on Wall Street.

The plot of the book (SPOILERS!) follows the life of Patrick Bateman, an executive on Wall Street who makes millions of dollars, despite the fact that he doesn’t actually do anything at the office besides reading Sports Illustrated. His friends often remark that his family has enough money that he doesn’t even really need to work. Much of his life revolves around going to expensive nightclubs, scoring cocaine, and torturing and murdering women whom he takes back to his apartment. He also gruesomely kills the occasional dog or rat for good measure. Another of his targets are co-workers whom he envies and the homeless. Anyone not lucky enough to be white, male, and rich, really.

While the book has been denounced by many as nothing more than meaningless violence and shock value, I think there is a point buried under all the guts and gore. At the end of the novel, after the reader has witnessed the horrendous acts Bateman has committed, he still has not been found guilty or even suspected of any of the murders he’s committed. How, any reader with even a shred of conscience asks, could this happen? As Bateman jokes with his friends, such as they are, at a New Year’s Eve party, the news on TV discusses the Iran-Contra Affair, and someone wonders how Reagan ever got away with it.

How did Reagan get away with the Iran-Contra Affair? How did Bateman get away with his murders? They were white, rich men. Their money, power, and connections ensure that they will not have to face the consequences of their actions. Such people are privileged in our society. So privileged, in fact, that they can get away with murder.

There’s a broad field of sociology called Conflict Theory, which seems to be applicable to American Psycho. The gist of it is this: In every society, there are those who Have and those who Have Not. Usually, what the Haves actually possess is material resources, and this gives them power over those who Have Not. (Think about it. Does Bateman want for anything? He has a sumptuous apartment, more food than he could ever eat and often doesn’t. Meanwhile, the homeless that he passes on the street regularly have nothing and are grateful for even a few cents.) Those who Have resources, by virtue of their having, control the power in society. So, they set up the society in such a way that they can retain their power and easy access to resources at the expense of the Have Nots. While we might not think of it in such blunt terms, according to Conflict Theory, in order for Bateman and those like him to have all of their luxuries, someone else has to go without, perhaps even die, from lack of resources. While Ellis’s portrayal of a spoiled rich man literally killing (and sometimes eating) the poor or those who just happen to be less privileged in some way (women, animals, children, etc.) might seem like an extreme metaphor, in terms of Conflict Theory, it’s quite apt.

Now let’s look at today. What, exactly, has changed since Pat Bateman’s time? Not much. The music and other pop culture references might be different, but the story is essentially the same. To the super-rich and super-powerful, the rest of us are interchangeable and we don’t matter so much. A small percent of the people hold the majority of the resources and the power, leaving the rest of the people to muddle through without employment, healthcare, or the heaps of money it takes to influence governmental policy.

If any of my descriptions sound familiar, it’s because I’m referencing the language used by the Occupy Wall Street movement. While the media has, generally, been confused by Occupy Wall Street (OWS), I think the movement makes a pretty bold statement about what the state of the U.S. is today. People don’t have jobs but they still have debt. We’re in a recession with no hope of getting out of it. The middle class is shrinking. People are feeling disheartened, hopeless, and confused. Where is that American dream that we were promised?

This confusion cuts across race, ethnicity, gender, age (to some extent) and party lines. There are people at Occupy Wall Street of all political persuasions. But they all want one thing–they want a voice in their government that doesn’t depend on millions of dollars and lobbyists. They want a chance at getting a job again. Is this so much to ask? While I don’t know if their actions will accomplish these goals, I think that the point of this protest isn’t so much to reach an end goal as it is to sustain an idea–the idea that the majority of people in this country need to be recognized even though we aren’t lucky enough to be Wall Street billionaires.

The ’80s have come and gone, but Pat Bateman, it seems, is still roaming around the country while wrapped in the protection that his privilege gives him. Occupy Wall Street, as far as I can tell, is a movement that is attempting to call attention to his presence  and give the average American a way to combat unchecked corporate power. As far as I’m concerned, the Pat Batemans of the U.S. have been getting away with their actions for far too long. The 99% needs to be heard.