Thread by @seananmcguire

I am continually astonished by men who claim that the mere existence of women is political and "forcing social justice into fiction." I've been a geek girl since I was three years old and obsessed with Doctor Who, My Little Pony, and Vincent Price.

And on the whole "fake geek girl" narrative, if I'd been able to control my interests, I would have. What child doesn't want to be whatever fits the local definition of "normal"?

The boys didn't want to talk X-Men or play superheroes with me, because I had cooties. The girls didn't want to play with me because I was weird and liked "boy stuff." Being a geek is HARD on a girl in a patriarchal society.

It only got harder. I spent high school listening to the boys talk about how girls would never love them because they were smart and nerdy. I was getting better grades and just as nerdy as they were, but I didn't fit the mold they'd decided meant "girl."

My existence is political because the boys made it that way. They told me I was an "it," instead of a girl, for the crime of liking "boy things," which meant the girls who COULD control their interests found more socially acceptable things to do.

I have never pretended to like things I didn't for the sake of a boy's attentions. I have never invaded a geek space for the sake of disrupting it. All I have done, over and over, my entire life, is asked to be allowed to have my turn.

I periodically run into men who say that it's okay for them to still be running a He-Man Woman-Hater's Club because girls were mean to them in high school. It's justified. I shouldn't judge them.

So what does the fact that boys were mean to me, called me "it" and "ham planet" and "freak," honked my breasts so hard it hurt, justify?

If the response is "it justifies nothing, because not all men were like that," please do me the favor of BURNING THAT FUCKING CLUBHOUSE DOWN.

You don't get to hold a multi-decade grudge and say it justifies kicking me out of a house I helped to build, that my existence is political, if your feelings are going to be hurt when I even intimate that I might have the right to hold the same grudge.