To a fellow blogger and his cause (once more with feeling)

Dear Joe Peacock.

You recently wrote a blog post at CNN.com called Booth Babes Need Not Apply. It is a piece that accuses women of both acting like real geak girls even though they are actually fake, and ruining all the nice things by poaching men at cons. I'd really rather not recite the whole thing, since it's right there behind that link to read for all that are interested. Although a lot of people have already responded to this particular text, I think there are still certain things that need to be said. Fakeness as an "issue" is dealt with in my blog post here. Your accusations considering women will be dealt in this one.

This is both a response to the original text and the so called aftermath, and my take on the subject "what is wrong with geek culture and what can we do about it". I think you are missing the real evil here, and I think you should know why.

1. "The problem is that there are pretty women who aren't interested in our culture trying to gain stuff via their looks. They are the pox of our culture!"

No it isn't, and no they aren't. Your problem is that you're annoyed that (you think) there are fake geeks at your presence. Better yet, you seem to resent the possibility that they're benefiting from our pure and undamaged geek field in some ways. Hmm. It might come as a surprise to you, but our culture, the geek world, is in no way pure of people who aren't fans. At cons alone there are booth babes, the staff, the actresses and actors and other performers to mention few. 

You do understand this right? Not all actors in geeky shows are geeks. They are in fact using your precious culture to get money and even - gasp! - attention. You have even mentioned one yourself: Jeri Ryan. And booth babes. Although they are hired to be there, some of them actually use cons to level up in their career, maybe even on a geeky one. They're gaining from the attention they get in one way or another. Even your geek godess Felicia Day has gained stuff from this culture. Or is it allowed only if the person's geek cred is certified somehow? Why? How? By who? You?

2. "They are causing disturbance!"

Are they? Are they causing problems at cons? In your original text such were nowhere to be found. According to you the girls were present at the con. They were trying to get attention at the con. So what? You don't have to give them attention. Don't. If they truly would have been disturbing with their performance (wearing too little for the con standards, sexually harrassing people or, I don't know, prostituting?) they would have probably been thrown out, right? Cons can do that. They have security. Adrianne Curry was thrown out of a con for wearing too little. So was a Finnish cosplayer I personally know. You mention nothing of this sort of behavior in either of your posts. 

In your response to the people who critized your post other people stated (in the comment section) that the people who are present might be ridiculing the geeks they find to be freaky. Now THAT is a problem if true. THAT should not be tolerated at all. Not by con organizers, not by anyone. 

But that's not what you're really worried about, is it. From your texts it came across very clearly that these women are disturbing because they are beautiful (or better yet, not even that pretty they think they are) and because they apparently try to act like "us real authentic geeks". That justifies you being sexist towards them and guessing their motivations.

I could say the pox of our culture are the people who stare and comment on other geeks looks, but I suppose complaining about that in the internet seems kinda pointless, does it?

3. "They don't care about our culture!"

I have read your other posts of how awful it is to you that your hobbies are now popular, and that people can buy Batman-shirts from local stores and that sort. That is truly a tragedy. The opression, it must stop! Well no, not really. I really don't give a shit. And I don't understand why this keeps being such a big deal to you. "Our" geeky things are offered to all people now, consumers. Or am I mistaken? Comic book movies, are they really just for geeks? Can't I buy a pretty thing like a Pacman bag just because I like its design? Should vendors start asking people's credentials before accepting their money? Have you not ever just done a thing, bought a product or enjoyed something without truly understanding its meaning? Please, you who have never sinned, go ahead and throw the first fucking stone.

Our culture is commercial as shit. You didn't see this at Comic Con, the most commercialized event of the geek world? Seriously, even though I don't agree with the definition that this guy makes (mostly because definitions are more or less pointless if you use them to alienate people), I agree that he has a point when saying that what you consider geeky and pure is nothing more than tools to those who produce merchandice after another and grind these things dear to us into big piles of money. And you know what. They don't probably care about the geeky stuff either. But then again, is your geek identity really reliant on what other people do?

4. "It was understandable that Felicia Day was accused for nothing and that I accused Frag Dolls with no reason!"

No it wasn't. Bad journalism is bad journalism. Both cases require you to go as far as Wikipedia and check out what the people in question have accomplished. Maybe next time research first, rant later? Or better yet, don't judge people based on things you THINK you know about them.

5. "They deserve to be harrassed in Xbox Live!"

For first. Are you saying they are still fakes even though they play online? You know, in a place when no one can see their (not even that) sexy poaching bodies? This alone proves you don't really know what you're talking about. That you think that people are fake because they don't reach your criteria or behave in a certain way, not because they aren't actually interested in the thing you say they aren't. 

For second. No one, absolutely NO ONE deserves to be harrassed. Not anyone. Not even a person that you, the mighty geek king find annoying. Not even a person who dresses sexy to a club or a con. It is clear that you have no idea what online gaming harrasment, or harrasment in the internet, or IRL, or inside a geek community means. Despite of your so called apologies you never ever apologized for this. So, don't even try to jump into the shoes of us geek girls, because it's obvious you will never ever understand a single fucking thing what it feels to be one. I know what it feels like to be harrassed, you don't. And seriously, I wouldn't wish that to my worst enemy.

6. "I must tell how much I despise them in my blog!"

Yeah, no. While you concentrate trying to fix things by busting the fakes and spotting the realz (along with Suicide Girl fans), there's better ways to do it. Why are there people who try to use our geek culture for their own personal gain? Because we let them. It is pointless to start pointing fingers to single con-goers or consumers (especially when it's so difficult to say who is or who isn't "genuine", "authentic", "real" or whatever you choose to call them). There are however companies and organizations we can hope to plee for things. I don't know if it will help since our culture, the geeky one, is, as said, so deep in all of this. However we can try. 

I don't have to repeat what is already said so throughly about the use of booth babes, but in short it is insulting to men, alienating to women, lazy, and most of all degreading towards the female body. All and all booth babes increase the amount of sexual harrasment in cons towards the regular con-goers. It is also harmful to those who are trying to have an informative booth, and who are (because of babes) assumed to be babes. Thus booth babes can certainly be critizised as an phenomenon, a marketing choice, and thus we could actually try to do something about the booth babe use in cons by aiming our critizism to the people who demand the use of booth babes, the people who hire them, and to the cons that have no regulations against them. PAX has already stepped up and put limitations to booth babes. (Thank you PAX.) I would hope that booth babes would eventually disappear and that they would be replaced by informative booths and people who know their shit instead. You know, because that would give so much more than just eyecandy to all. It might limitate sexual harrassers. It might change the whole field. If we want more "real" gamer or geek people in our cons and expos, we should demand so. So, less empty marketing, more awesome stuff, yeah?

If we want to go one step further however, we should be go and question the whole "putting sexy geek girls on a pedestal" idea. It has gotten out of hands and causes only harm to everyone, including you, I guess. As long as there is a "geek girl sex goddess" fantasy out there, it will be used to a lot of people's gain and thus it will continue to annoy us. This fantasy is constantly being pushed to us by a) media, b) industries, c) people who contribute to it and d) people who buy it. If women were treated like normal people, even though they might be sexy, they would probably be taken more seriously (what most of us want), harassed less and suspected to be "fake geeks" less (which is an actual problem). The equality that so many women want is constantly being caused damage to by this unhealthy fantasy that needs to boost the sexiness of geeky girls in every given opportunity. "Geeks, sexy - not geeks, not so sexy". That is exactly it. That is the goddamn problem, man.

So maybe next time a geeky woman appears in a magazine, just maybe we shouldn't take pics of her half naked body, or worse yet, when she's talking about her geekiness in a totally non-sexy situation, make it a sexual thing by force (as seen with Megan Fox). Maybe we also shouldn't give women the special attention that we accuse others whoring for. Maybe we shouldn't be creepy. And maybe if we want to advertise something, maybe we should think other ways to do that than via a sexy woman with glasses or a controller. This applies to anyone producing any visual imagery to geek culture (including the women). That would mean, at the end, people would be there because of their own interests, not because there is something to gain. To be there to express themselves and not to want "attention" from us. Wouldn't that help you with your problem as well? 

Or you can continue dividing women into imaginary groups, putting them against each other and using them as an instrument of useless rant, too. It' entirely up to you.

With love,
Fantagonist