"Once my CS friends realized I wasn't a "true geek", I wasn't invited to most of their hangouts - D&D nights, sci-fi screenings, or gaming nights. Eventually, I just wasn't invited to anything at all. I was sad, but busied myself with extracurriculars."
I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl! If you just walk across campus you will be aggressively flagged down and invited to all sorts of things. If you are on Facebook, you will be shamelessly spammed with invites to all sorts of events. I just can't picture someone getting shunned from even an IEEE meeting or hardcore hackathon because they are "not a true geek".
I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all.
She then goes on to say that she bought vintage gaming t-shirts and worked on some video games and afterwards, all the geeks were "cool" with her again. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here other than this seems totally unbelievable.
> I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl!
Alright, I'm a dude, but I think I can say a few things on this. Here's my biases: I train for and play sports for fun, I've never played D&D, I don't watch or read sci-fi, and I don't really play video games (and if I do, they're sports games).
In my college CS department, I was definitely not invited to anything that any of the other students were doing. I'm not saying I wanted to be, but probably greater than 90% of my CS classmates were in the D&D sci-fi crowd.
I think you underestimate the intimidation factor; I truly don't think that I was mean or overbearing to them, and we worked together just fine on projects, but we all kind of believed implicitly that we belonged to different speheres.
I suspect that a similar dynamic is often at work when women interact with that kind of group.
(edited to add: except the Jordanians! I forgot, we had a small group of Jordanians in the group that I got along with great, they taught me to smoke houkah and we watched soccer together. They weren't involved with the CS kids either.)
It's kind of eerie to read this. What you've described is exactly how the nerds felt in your high school.
When they got to college, they found a social group that would accept them without them having to pretend to like the things they don't care about. Apparently that's a bad thing.
It is only a bad thing when they become exclusive about it. And that is bad for all the same reasons that the way they were treated in high school is bad.
Speaking personally I grew up without a TV, get motion sick if I play first person shooters, and don't like sushi. Despite being a stereotypical geek in many ways I can't count the times when I've felt excluded by the fact that I don't know Monty Python inside out, have avoided most games produced in the last 15 years, and don't want to eat at certain restaurants.
I can only imagine how much worse it can be if I didn't catch and appreciate other geek references.
who said that's a bad thing? All I tried to say is that it's possible to both be actively looking for members and simultaneously rejecting them at the same time; possibly without even realizing it. So even when you think you're being inclusive, you might be exhibiting in-group behavior that's offputting to others.
I suspect that often girls in CS are effected by this.
If you read me as implying judgement, I apologize, I did not intend that.
(Also, your implication that I was not a nerd and/or cool in high school is way off. But that's cool.)
I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all.
People who aren't into geek things often display contempt of them, viewing rpgs and sci-fi as immature and weird. My guess is that she didn't even see that she giving off a "listen dorks, don't invite me to play pretend wizard with you" vibe. Because my experience is that geeks are enthusiastically inclusive.
I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl! If you just walk across campus you will be aggressively flagged down and invited to all sorts of things. If you are on Facebook, you will be shamelessly spammed with invites to all sorts of events. I just can't picture someone getting shunned from even an IEEE meeting or hardcore hackathon because they are "not a true geek".
I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all.
She then goes on to say that she bought vintage gaming t-shirts and worked on some video games and afterwards, all the geeks were "cool" with her again. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here other than this seems totally unbelievable.