Bring Me Your Rage Quitting, Your LARPing, Your Nerdy: A Profile of a Member of My Audience #1

Injustice and harassment is coming from all sides of the gender politics battlefield. Female nerds screaming "misogyny" and "discrimination." While there are male nerds stuck in the corners screaming "misandry" and "censorship." Because of this patchwork of genders, I'm splitting up my audience member profiles into two people: a male and a female. I'm doing this in order to better represent all those who have been wounded in the battle of nerd culture and gender politics. Here is the first person.

Her name is "Tate." She is a 25 year old college graduate with a BA in Gender Studies and Communications and Media Studies. She currently lives with her two closest friends from college in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, NYC. Tate is biologically female -- her sex -- but she identifies as "Genderqueer." Despite not identifying with any particular gender binary, she still prefers female pronouns (she/her).

Tate is greatly involved with the gender and nerd culture debate because of her long time affiliation with the culture. She was raised by two nerds. Both of her parents met at a Star Trek convention when they were in college. They encouraged Tate's interests from Doctor Who to video games to cosplay. Her parents even took her to her first convention when she was 9 years old. Through everything, her parents have always been her number one supporters.

When Tate was younger, she would find that making friends with similar hobbies was easy and fun. She would hang out with her friends all weekend; playing video games, watching their favorite television shows, dressing up as their favorite characters. It was wonderful. However, the paradise soon started to disintegrate.

It started when Tate entered middle school. All of her friends started to cancel plans on her. At first, it was every so often. Then it was every time, her friends ignoring her calls. When she confronted them about it, they teased her and called her names, telling her that she wasn't a true nerd because she was a "fake nerd girl." She felt isolated and unwanted.

In high school, Tate found the cosplay community. With having a predominantly female population, she thought that she was safe from judgements and hurtful words. And for a while she was right. Tate would work hard on her cosplays. She would work on them for months at a time. And when she presented them, she was welcomed with warm compliments and helpful critiques. Then it started again. Judgmental hecklers would call out to her while she posed. Convention goers would "accidentally bump" into her, groping her backside or attempting to take up-skirt photos. She was exasperated. It seemed as though no matter what she did or where she went; the only thing people cared about was that she was female.

Sick of everything, Tate left the cosplaying community for a while. Isolated once again, she tried to make new friends anywhere she could. She ended up falling in with a small group of female nerds who were also sick of being excluded due to their sex. For a while, the group of friends got together, made cosplays, played video games, and watched television shows they all loved. It seemed as though Tate had found what she had lost in her childhood. Then, it started. 

"Why do you wear make up?" One of her friends asked one day. Tate was curious about the question. She wasn't the type of person wear a ton of make up on her face, but she had always felt comfortable wearing it. "Because I prefer how I look with it on rather than how I do when I'm not wearing it." Tate responded. The situation was subsided with her friend rolling her eyes, but it only continued after that. And from all of the other people in her group of friends. They would judge her for everything from wearing make up to her gender identity. It was as though she were back in middle school, being judged for everything that she did.

It's safe to say that her affiliation with those friends didn't last too long. Fed up with them, Tate found herself back at square one. She felt defeated. She felt annoyed. She felt as though she had no one in her corner with her. She felt silenced. Tate stopped participating in anything remotely nerdy for a while. It was only by sheer luck she managed to meet another small group of nerds. They felt the same way, but this time it was different.

They knew how important it was to stop this harassment and intolerance. Yet, they didn't judge anyone. There wasn't a list of unspoken rules that Tate had to follow in order to be "a good nerd." The only rule was "have fun and do what you love." And it was this idea that sparked Tate's involvement.

Tate and her new group of friends started an anti-harassment and tolerance campaign through social media. They created a blog where people would anonymously submit their stories of intolerance, discrimination, and harassment in all sects of nerd culture. Tate would also post information about other movements and campaigns who had the same mission. She knows that there is a long road ahead of her. Yet, with the help of her friends and supporters, Tate isn't scared. She's excited to boldly go forward in this quest to seek out new ways to help all of those who are affected by this ongoing battle -- with phasers set to stun, of course.