On Nerd Entitlement. Do young male nerds lack privilege?

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http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/on-nerd-entitlement-rebel-alliance-empire

Laurie Penny responds to MIT professor Scott Aaronson’s recent comment. To quote Scott -

“Much as I try to understand other people’s perspectives, the first reference to my 'male privilege' — my privilege! — is approximately where I get off the train, because it’s so alien to my actual lived experience . . . I suspect the thought that being a nerdy male might not make me 'privileged' — that it might even have put me into one of society’s least privileged classes — is completely alien to your way of seeing things. I spent my formative years — basically, from the age of 12 until my mid-20s — feeling not 'entitled', not 'privileged', but terrified.”

Young male nerds lack self reflection and perspective.

Honestly I don't see what discussion there is to be had. People will either agree with the premise of the article, or be all 'herpy derp I've had to work for a living, so what privilege?' (Guess which side I come down on? )

Great article though, Penny is one of the most insightful writers around that I'm aware of.

As a white, nerdy male I'd like to say something.

Sigh, you would think eventually at least academics would understand a single life does not invalidate a societal trend. The plural of anecdote is not data.

I say this as a nerdy, white boy who had a sh*t time in high school and the start of college. Of course, noe my nerdiness is recognized by my job as an asset and seems to be helping me move up the corporate ladder with 3 promotions in the last 4 years snd 4 performance based raises on top of the raises for my promotions.

Statistically the trope of the nerdy white gamer being a social outcast is self inflicted. There are gamers, white people, social outcasts, and males. Sometimes these four things combine, but that's not the fault of video games.

I worry this thread title will bring the hordes of "sympathizers to the Plight Of The White Male Nerd" from the G&P forum...

The biggest thing that's going on here is that privilege is one of the most misunderstood concepts in this whole discussion. Privilege, in the sociological sense, is descriptive not accusatory. So, as Laurie Penny says, the amount you suffered isn't necessarily an argument against your privilege.

Is this concept misused? Often. But misunderstanding the concept doesn't erase it. A person who is only up to their waist in boiling oil is better off than someone who is up to their neck, but is still suffering themselves. It might make both people feel better to try and pull down the other, but it just causes more suffering.

Geeky pursuits are, by and large, ones that require a certain level of affluence, even if it's just on a social level, so there is some conflation with economic class, and, yes, privilege. To be able to cultivate an intellectual or introverted pursuit is something that requires a certain level of industrialized or communal support behind it. Not much room for nerds when you're subsistence farming.

The idea of the nerd as a social outcast crosses mid-20th c. anti-intellectualism with youth backlash against conformist squares. By the time that the broadcast media picked up on the concept, it was clearly acting as a shaming device against those who didn't live up to society's gender roles: a nerd is a kind of half-man, without the athletic or social graces. (I say half-man, because the examples in media were mostly male, though occasionally female: women got to be the awkward librarian types, even less noticed.)

Americans love underdogs, so nebbish tendencies aren't enough to prevent Hollywood from eventually making them protagonists. Hollywood rules mean that the protagonist is sympathetic and that he always gets the girl at the end. The girl, being a construct, mostly gets to be the prize.

The core of the nerd-insult is the implication of failure to sexually perform. This is bound up in our expectations for what hetrosexual gender roles should be. A real man is sexually successful, and it turns out that enough financial success can substitute for some of that. (A real woman, on the other hand, gets a bunch of mutually incompatible templates to balance, so have fun with that.)

Now, not all nerds grow up to be Zuckerberg or Gates. Especially these days, when the self-actualization-through-financial-success-route is difficult for Millennials. And the failure to create healthy social relations for sizeable swaths of society (male and female alike) is a looming problem. One facet of this is that some adolescents have great difficulty coming to terms with their own sexuality, because they got run over by conflicting arguments about sex, gender roles, and moral policing.

My read on Aaronson's comments, which he clearly didn't intended to blow up like this, is that as a physicist faced with sociological jargon, he misunderstood some of the terminology. And then got jumped on by Twitter hordes, who often also misunderstood the terminology in the opposite direction. I've seen some troubling statements elsewhere by people who are reading the worst possible interpretation into his words. And some even more troubling people jumping to support him on tribal grounds. But there's also been some constructive discussion, like Laurie Penny's piece, that I hope gives a bit more light to the world in general.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Young male nerds lack self reflection and perspective.

Also, basically this. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as you don't stop there.

Seth wrote:

Statistically the trope of the nerdy white gamer being a social outcast is self inflicted. There are gamers, white people, social outcasts, and males. Sometimes these four things combine, but that's not the fault of video games.

Also this. Not to minimize the sufferings of the outcast young nerd (because I've been there) but the problem is often internal self-image as much as it is external pressures.

I was a white nerdy male who was picked on in school up until my senior year of high school. For whatever reason, that year I gained acceptance of myself and acquired a solid chunk of self-confidence (not to be confused with arrogance), and (un-)surprisingly, I was far less picked on and far more accepted by my peers.

College was an initially rough start, since I was in a totally new social group with no people I already knew, but once I found some friends, college was overall a great experience (the only troubles I had in college were medical and mental, not social).

I actually faced social bullying again when I entered the workforce; not when I started in my first couple jobs, but when I started into corporate information technology work. But that didn't keep me down, and I understand from educating myself on the topic that being a white nerdy male has been a significant net benefit overall to my career.

White nerdy males absolutely do have privilege; that doesn't detract from the very real problems they can face. Laurie Penny addresses this quite thoroughly.

I guess I feel really sorry for adults who still think of themselves in high school terms. I left that behind a long long time ago and I am only 34.

SallyNasty wrote:

I guess I feel really sorry for adults who still think of themselves in high school terms. I left that behind a long long time ago and I am only 34.

Yeah, I was over high school bullsh*t when I was still in high school... then was shocked when my first roommate basically kept to the stereotypes. Luckily, my friends and future roommates had also dropped the labels pretty quickly.

I certainly consider my interests nerdy, I like tech, video games, super heroes, and sci fi... but I've long since stopped thinking of myself as a label and just one of a long list of attributes.

If anything white male nerds might be the single most privileged segment of white society, except maybe people who have a connection to get into banking.

I don't know any other field but computer science where people will believe you're smart, just because you're nerdy and talk a good game. If you can get into IT, you don't particularly need a degree, and you don't need all that much experience. Getting the very first IT job can be tough, but you can move very quickly after that, and command an enormous salary, almost completely because you're white and nerdy.

Being miserable in public school is pretty minor compared to pulling down six-figure salaries in your mid-20s.... without a degree of any kind.

Seth wrote:

I worry this thread title will bring the hordes of "sympathizers to the Plight Of The White Male Nerd" from the G&P forum... :(

It took me a minute to figure out what you meant there. I don't think I've ever seen another sub-forum abbreviated!

What I appreciate about the article is that it does acknowledge that for many of us the pain of daily bullying was incredibly real and that it's not just so easy to "get over it." I think there's also a regional and socioeconomic component. Growing up blue collar in the South the fact that I was both nerdy and sucked at sports pretty much meant that I got my butt handed it to me on a daily basis both physically and emotionally. Speaking of sexuality, I was also labeled a sissy and queer for above reasons. It took me a long time to get over it, and I'm not sure I am even still as I can have a hair trigger if I feel somebody's trying to insult me or one of my family.

Oh yeah, my mom also killed herself due to undiagnosed bi-polar in early high school, and the star quarterback made sure to let me know a couple days after the funeral that I'm such a pathetic f@g my own mom had to off herself to get away from me. Let's just say I was still tempted at my 10th High School reunion potluck to tell that guy "hey I'm bringing some potato salad with a side order of AR-15 and a few Glocks special for you."

As I said in the other thread, none of this excuses bad behavior by nerds. But there are plenty of scientific studies out there that show hardcore bullying echoes into adulthood. Maybe better questions are why American high schools suck so bad, why America has such a high rate of bullying, and how we should be encouraging the nerds a lot more in the 21st Century than guys who can play a game really well.

jdzappa wrote:

What I appreciate about the article is that it does acknowledge that for many of us the pain of daily bullying was incredibly real and that it's not just so easy to "get over it." I think there's also a regional and socioeconomic component. Growing up blue collar in the South the fact that I was both nerdy and sucked at sports pretty much meant that I got my butt handed it to me on a daily basis both physically and emotionally. Speaking of sexuality, I was also labeled a sissy and queer for above reasons. It took me a long time to get over it, and I'm not sure I am even still as I can have a hair trigger if I feel somebody's trying to insult me or one of my family.

That was my childhood too (even to the point of growing up poor and nerdy with no athletic ability in the Deep South). I don't know what it was that allowed me to acquire self-confidence and some degree of acceptance in my final year of high school, but I do acknowledge that many others with the same childhood experience as me don't have that positive experience.

I also hadn't thought about it before, but it might explain part of why I am so quick to become defensive if I feel that someone is denigrating me or people I care about.

jdzappa wrote:

As I said in the other thread, none of this excuses bad behavior by nerds. But there are plenty of scientific studies out there that show hardcore bullying echoes into adulthood. Maybe better questions are why American high schools suck so bad, why America has such a high rate of bullying, and how we should be encouraging the nerds a lot more in the 21st Century than guys who can play a game really well.

I agree fully.

Americans love underdogs, so nebbish tendencies aren't enough to prevent Hollywood from eventually making them protagonists. Hollywood rules mean that the protagonist is sympathetic and that he always gets the girl at the end. The girl, being a construct, mostly gets to be the prize.

I think it's a great delusion perpetuated in American culture and psyche -- that of American love of the underdogs. Probably so that we can feel better, thinking of ourselves as kind, compassionate, and benevolent.

The truth is that AMERICANS DON'T LOVE UNDERDOGS, and never did. Neither in real life, nor in pop culture. They only love em when they accomplish daring and enterprising feats of initiative, bravery, masculinity, and achieve success. In other words, when they stop being underdogs, begin to successively assert their proper alpha male traits, and start winning already, dammit.

@jdzappa - that is heartbreaking that that son of a Female Doggo would have told you that. My comment was in no way meant to denigrate or suggest that people's suffering was not real or valid. I guess because I don't view myself or the world in high school terms it is just hard to relate to people who do(not suggesting you are one of them).

I wasn't sure who you were directing your comment at, SallyNasty, so I chose to assume you aren't targetting anyone in this thread sharing our painful experiences from growing up.

I for one don't consider myself as falling under any high school labels, but in terms of a discussion involving people who have been given that label by others, I'm certain in the category referred to by the thread title (Many of my coworkers call me a nerd, albeit they don't do so maliciously; they're simply using the societal label that they feel I fall under).

I am a much more complex person than any simple label like that could ever hope to describe.

On highschool: It took going to grad school for me to realize that I'd always belonged in grad school and just hadn't realized it.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

The truth is that AMERICANS DON'T LOVE UNDERDOGS, and never did. Neither in real life, nor in pop culture. They only love em when they accomplish daring and enterprising feats of initiative, bravery, masculinity, and achieve success. In other words, when they stop being underdogs, begin to successively assert their proper alpha male traits, and start winning already, dammit.

Analysing the films and television shows bears this out: the nerds didn't get revenge so much as they got co-opted into the traditional Hollywood power fantasy film plot. Death of a Salesman this isn't.

Though I think we're at a point where shows that embrace actual misfits can find an audience. But we don't need another Community thread, so I'll leave it at that.

Farscry wrote:

I wasn't sure who you were directing your comment at, SallyNasty, so I chose to assume you aren't targetting anyone in this thread sharing our painful experiences from growing up.

At the time I made the comment no painful sharing had begun, it was a specific reaction to the author's inability to understand his own privilege due to, by my reading, his own view of his own life/experiences based on high school power dynamics.

I'm on a quick work break but wanted to say thank you all for a good discussion and your understanding. My remarks werent aimed at anyone here so I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilty. If anything I've seen a lot of trolling on various sites in the aftermath of some national teen suicide stories and it had me fed up in general. There's definitely a current out there that bullying is some rite of passage and teens who can't hack it are doing society a favor by choosing suicide.

One thing I appreciate about this site is it has taught me a lot of empathy. I am in a good place now where I can give back and I'm thankful for that. I also am more aware of suffering around me and in the grand scheme of human drama I know I have it ok. At any rate big hugs all around.

SallyNasty wrote:
Farscry wrote:

I wasn't sure who you were directing your comment at, SallyNasty, so I chose to assume you aren't targetting anyone in this thread sharing our painful experiences from growing up.

At the time I made the comment no painful sharing had begun, it was a specific reaction to the author's inability to understand his own privilege due to, by my reading, his own view of his own life/experiences based on high school power dynamics.

I think your initial comment was astute, because I reacted much the same way. Being upset by mistreatment is one thing. But railing against The Football Team well into adulthood does not exactly speak to a worldview to be taken seriously...I mean, unless you work for the NFL or something.

In reading this thread, it seems to me there's confusion between feeling privileged, and being privileged.

Bullying hurts, and it leaves scars, but it doesn't typically ruin you for life. And while society as a whole may not like underdogs, and visibly scorns nerds every chance it gets.... it nonetheless typically pays them very, very well.

As a white nerd, the chance of having a very successful life (with success being narrowly defined as a high-paying, respected career, with a high degree of material wealth), is probably much higher than for any other group of people in the entire world.

Athletics may be celebrated in popular culture, and a few athletes achieve superstar status and become fabulously rich, but almost all of them end up broke and going into something else.

Nerds may be teased and miserable when young, but they do very well indeed, out in the real world.

Building upon that Malor, I'd say the idea that "nerds" can't be even liked or popular anymore is basically bullsh*t. Look at YouTube, you have plenty of nerds making decent bank doing exactly what a lot of nerds already do, watching movies, critiquing them, playing video games and talking about them, etc...

Meanwhile, one of the most popular shows on TV is centered on the life of some genius nerds, with a cast that is, itself, pretty nerdy as well (though I think they tend to do more making fun of nerds rather than life as a nerd, but whatever).

On top of that, there are several very visible examples in the 1% crowd of how well a nerd can do in breaking into a very insular group that makes your high school cliques look like they accept anyone by comparison.

Then again, there are nerds, and then there are, well, nerds.

Some of them go on to clinch good IT or engineering jobs, create decently paying YouTube channels, start videogame review sites, or launch quirky by nerds, for nerds products. They end up enjoying a modest but real uplift of their living standards versus the median among their peers.

And then, there are nerds. Those who work dead-end IT jobs, carry useless academic degrees, live with roommaters or parents, and suffer from an early onset of health issues.

I cannot tell for sure what is the distribution between these two types, but I posit that unlike Malor suggests, it is actually skewed towards the 2nd type.

I got bullied a few times, but I also rest easy knowing that the chances of me getting beaten or shot during a routine traffic stop are pretty much zero.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Then again, there are nerds, and then there are, well, nerds.

Some of them go on to clinch good IT or engineering jobs, create decently paying YouTube channels, start videogame review sites, or launch quirky by nerds, for nerds products. They end up enjoying a modest but real uplift of their living standards versus the median among their peers.

And then, there are nerds. Those who work dead-end IT jobs, carry useless academic degrees, live with roommaters or parents, and suffer from an early onset of health issues.

I cannot tell for sure what is the distribution between these two types, but I posit that unlike Malor suggests, it is actually skewed towards the 2nd type.

Well said and it would be interesting to see the breakdown. The idea that every science and math nerd goes on to make six figures doesn't jive with my experiences post 2008. And also don't forget those of us who lean towards being word and art nerds face even worse odds long term. I'm not saying nerds are massively oppressed, but I also don't buy that most nerds should be considered in the same 1 percent class as Gates or Zuckerburg.

nel e nel wrote:

I got bullied a few times, but I also rest easy knowing that the chances of me getting beaten or shot during a routine traffic stop are pretty much zero.

This a million times.

My privilege as a white male nerd was knowing that the worst I'd likely face was unkind words from cooler kids than me.

jdzappa wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Then again, there are nerds, and then there are, well, nerds.

Some of them go on to clinch good IT or engineering jobs, create decently paying YouTube channels, start videogame review sites, or launch quirky by nerds, for nerds products. They end up enjoying a modest but real uplift of their living standards versus the median among their peers.

And then, there are nerds. Those who work dead-end IT jobs, carry useless academic degrees, live with roommaters or parents, and suffer from an early onset of health issues.

I cannot tell for sure what is the distribution between these two types, but I posit that unlike Malor suggests, it is actually skewed towards the 2nd type.

Well said and it would be interesting to see the breakdown. The idea that every science and math nerd goes on to make six figures doesn't jive with my experiences post 2008. And also don't forget those of us who lean towards being word and art nerds face even worse odds long term. I'm not saying nerds are massively oppressed, but I also don't buy that most nerds should be considered in the same 1 percent class as Gates or Zuckerburg.

True, but they have some pretty decent representation in that 1%, and that representation is widely viewed by our society as a whole on a level that beats out even most pro athletes, actors/actresses, etc... at least from my experience.

Demosthenes wrote:
jdzappa wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Then again, there are nerds, and then there are, well, nerds.

Some of them go on to clinch good IT or engineering jobs, create decently paying YouTube channels, start videogame review sites, or launch quirky by nerds, for nerds products. They end up enjoying a modest but real uplift of their living standards versus the median among their peers.

And then, there are nerds. Those who work dead-end IT jobs, carry useless academic degrees, live with roommaters or parents, and suffer from an early onset of health issues.

I cannot tell for sure what is the distribution between these two types, but I posit that unlike Malor suggests, it is actually skewed towards the 2nd type.

Well said and it would be interesting to see the breakdown. The idea that every science and math nerd goes on to make six figures doesn't jive with my experiences post 2008. And also don't forget those of us who lean towards being word and art nerds face even worse odds long term. I'm not saying nerds are massively oppressed, but I also don't buy that most nerds should be considered in the same 1 percent class as Gates or Zuckerburg.

True, but they have some pretty decent representation in that 1%, and that representation is widely viewed by our society as a whole on a level that beats out even most pro athletes, actors/actresses, etc... at least from my experience.

Well first off, the Gates' and Zuckerbergs of the world are terrible examples, they're the 0.0000000000001%.

That said, I'll see your anecdote and raise you my own anecdote. Those parts of my graduating cohort (electronics degree from a good UK university in '99) that I'm still in contact with, have all, without exception, been consistently employed since graduating, in jobs that currently pay the equivalent of six figures.

Sure, not every math or science nerd will find that success, but the proportion of them that do is waaaaayyyy higher than the norm.

Flips side of that is the you're spot on about the art and word nerds. I don't know a single one of them making bank.

As Gremlin said at least part of the problem is a misunderstanding of the word privilege as it's used in academic discussions. I've found that most of my peers that I've had conversations about this subject with view privilege as a binary state. Any attempt on my part to even broach the idea that as a white male living on Long Island they have some level of privilege going for them tends to cause them to a) immediately take it as some form of personal criticism, despite my bending over backwards to point out my own privilege and use the most gentle language I could, and b) start throwing out any and all examples where they ever perceived themselves as being disadvantaged. The assumption seems to be that if they can prove one instance where things didn't go perfectly for them then it's obvious their not privileged, and how dare I suggest otherwise.

The most pure example of this is possibly my one friend who is fond of telling me he gets followed around in stores just as much as African Americans. I've on occasion pointed out he has long hair, a beard, is wearing a rather grungy denim jacket, and is a literal drug dealer. The response is that it still means the employers are stereotyping him, which fair enough is true. Somehow though I can never get him to understand that he could very easily change his appearance and never be followed again, something one cant do when the reason your being followed is skin color.

I think it's safe to say whatever issues young white male nerds experience are dwarfed by those experienced by young black male nerds.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I think it's safe to say whatever issues young white male nerds experience are dwarfed by those experienced by young black male nerds.

Donald Glover's bit about what happened to him when someone started a rumor he might be the next Spider Man supports this.

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