There are different cultures and subcultures all over this planet. Briefly I have already mentioned my own frustration in belonging to a culture and that I also associate highly with geek culture. This is all still very true. I strongly identify with the geek subculture. I feel my parents are closeted geeks who still struggle with allowing their inner geek to come out. My husband is a geek and several of my real life friends are geeks. My inlaws are not geeks, my poor husband.
I feel most at ease with people who also associate, at least on some fundamental level as geeks. Sure I have other things that aren't geeky about me. Yet, over my life my closest friends have been those that are geeks. This has posed a real problem for me. As many of you are starting to guess, that has meant most of my friends are men. Now I have nothing against my geek-guy friends. I love them dearly and we have some great discussions, but it is a unique and wonderful day when I meet and am able to befriend that rarest of finds, another She-Geek.
Like many titles the definition changes over time. While I wore black before goth was trendy. I experimented with retro before it was common. I donned the title geek before it was cool. I enjoy video games, even had a job at an arcade in high school. I love geeky films, and can quote Star Wars (the three real Star Wars movies). Even the name Callista Knight is of Star Wars origin. I know my Star Trek captains. I stood in line for hours for movie releases (before I had kids), and I attended Trilogy Tuesday (all three Lord of the Rings - first two extended - in one sitting at the theater). I know my sci-fi cliche's. I was playing with email and the internet before most people knew how to turn on a computer. I started programing before most people knew who Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were.
It's getting easier for a girl to like this stuff. To think programming is fun. To want to build things and take them apart. To spend all your free time attached to electronic devices. But it's more than that, it's a way of looking at the world. Maybe we all walk along the edge of insanity to some degree. We look out at problems to be solved, not conditions to deal with and manage. We know that utopia means certain sacrifices and that the vices of human existence and the prevalence of greed will be their undoing. We are bored in the boxes that confine us as girls and women. We aren't boys either. Sure a she-geek can do anything a geek-guy can do, but we aren't the same and we don't want to be the same. I'd say we don't want everything in pink and purple, but one of my best she-geek friend's signature color is pink.
She-geeks are still rare in this world. Even as geek morphs and becomes more and more dominate within society. The true she-geek, the ones that sit around discussing the ideas gathered from insanity. The ones that sit down and figure out the practicality of a mag-lev hybrid commuter locomotive for rural communities while playing board games until the insane hours of the morning. They are still hard to find. I have been blessed to know some, and I hope that in the future I am blessed to know more.
My oldest daughter is starting to show her inner geek. I know it won't be an easy road for her. She is already so sensitive to the opinion of others. As her interests in being pretty and popular are superseded by science and learning at a depth that most just don't have the drive for. I hope she too will meet other she-geeks, that she will not grow up an outsider. Smart, but in a way different from the masses. Regardless of what happens, when she reaches the point of blooming into her own person, when she embraces the geek culture like I feel she may, then she will be another of that rare find, a she-geek.
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