Back in March, I went back on the Chicago podcast, Loot the Room for a second visit with David, Ben and James to talk about my Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) panel, “Exorcising the Spectre of the Fake Geek Girl: Discussing geek culture, gate-keeping and sexism.” Take a listen to “Pirates of Dark City and the Fake Geek Girl.”
As usual, things were all over the place, which is what makes discussion with these guys fun, and it’s always a pleasure to talk with a group of nerds who love geek culture as much as I do and want to make it as welcoming to everyone as possible. I wish we had more time because this is one of those topics that you never feel as if you’ve been able to say as much as you wanted to (for instance, I wish we’d been able to talk more about how the fake geek girl barriers aren’t just affecting women who are conventionally “attractive” and that whether or not geek men find the women in geek spaces to be “attractive” is immaterial to the degree of acceptance and welcome they should expect to find), but the show ran on longer than normal as it was.
(UPDATE: If you’re unfamiliar with the “fake geek girl” problem in geek culture, I highly recommend Laura Koroski’s excellent summary over at Challenge by Geek. Lucky for me, Laura came to my first panel at C2E2 in 2012 and agreed to join me on the fake geek girl panel).
If you’d like to learn more about the fake geek girl phenomenon, come to the panel at C2E2 on Sunday, April 28th from 12:15-1:15, room 473W at the McCormick Center. I’ll be joined by five other opinionated, articulate geek women who are equally passionate about deconstructing the “fake geek girl” meme down to its sexist, gate-keeping roots. At least as much as we can in a mere 60 minutes (with both discussion and audience Q&A), but thankfully I’m not in charge of moderating the discussion and keeping things moving along this year. It’ll be someone else’s thankless job to keep me from blathering on over time, whoo-hoo!
I’d like to thank Loot the Room for welcoming me back as a guest and for inviting me to participate in the rest of the podcast as well. And I’m excited to say that they’ve invited me back again in April to talk about the Chicago Nerd Social Club and what CNSC is doing to promote the expansion of nerdom in my hometown of Chicago.
CNSC has some fantastic events coming up, including a second outing to the Steppenwolf’s production of She Kills Monsters, a C2E2 after-party on Friday, April 26th at the Public House (at which yours truly will be performing, sans fire, as part of the Raks Geek showcase) and more. So make sure to subscribe to Loot the Room to catch the next installment, and check out the CNSC website for local nerdy news and events!
(For those who are hearing-impaired, I apologize, but I currently don’t have a transcript of the podcast. I will post one as soon as I am able to do so and am working on getting access to a program that will allow me to transcribe video and recorded material).
The interview was great and I am really excited about coming to your panel on Sunday! YAY CHICAGO!
Thanks for listening! I know all the panelists are very excited about it, too. C2E2 is a great venue to hold the discussion and they’ve got a great line up of events and other panel discussions as well this year.