Actually, I’m citing the creators of Penny Arcade as “Krahulik & Holkins” because those are the only names printed on the comic itself, or even the page where the comic appears. See vertically printed text on the right—“©2004 Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins”—hence the decision to print the names out of alphabetical order, as well. Admittedly, this does make things confusing when citing their “news posts” elsewhere, which are written under their pseudonyms. Considering that they have widely known real names printed on their other work (under which copyrights are attributed), I have simply used their real names whenever citing them.

Mind you, I have whole other sets of rules for citing things from people who I just happen to meet at cons and then follow up with online, which is more geared toward protecting their anonymity. I think the creators of Penny Arcade (and a handful of other “internet famous” people) constitute special cases with regard to the use of pseudonyms, though.

That said, I’d probably in the works cited page listed Krahulik and Holkins writing as Gabe and Tycho. Or conversely just cite them as Gabe and Tycho with a note that their real names are Krahulik and Holkins.

I’d cite a pseudonym with a first and last name just like the twain article.

It is interesting that you’re (hopefully) happily grabbling with the cutting edge of academic citations. And I’m glad you are grabbling with it.

If I may follow up in the spirit of Mike’s hopefulness, I’d like to share a page I stumbled upon recently: a list of “Resources for Men” in the Geek Feminism Wiki. (I hadn’t been aware that there even was such a wiki until Google Analytics told me that some people found their way to this site from it.)

I haven’t read all the links on that page yet, but I was particularly fascinated by “A Straight Male Geek’s Guide to Interaction with Females” (linked to not by that page but by one of the links on that page, “Don’t Be That Guy”, who points out that the behaviors in the “Guide” should be common sense, rather than a rarity in some circles). I also thought that the “Male Programmer Privilege Checklist” offered an interesting perspective, coming from someone who altered his extrinsic gender (female to male), and suddenly realized just how different the experience of being a programmer can be depending on gender (both in terms of one’s own subjective discomfort and objectively observable treatment by others).

P.S. I sure like to use parentheses.

Allow me to explain how I found this page, bear with me as I know it’s boring, yet it is relevant: my fiancée readily identifies herself as a member of the geek subculture, specifically anime and gaming (not video gaming, but tabletop and card games). Suffice it to say I never saw an anime movie or series until I met her. The more I saw, the more disturbed I became regarding the pervasiveness of “fan service” and blatant sexism that was portrayed (usually) in a lighthearted manner.

Now, I realize nearly all films have sexism to some extent, but there is such a thing as gradation, and from my experience the majority of anime series (as David points out) have an absorbent amount of sexism within them. Thus I found myself reading this webpage.

As a feminist activist who has organized more than a few events for NOW, I have to say that I found the pessimism Aenna exerts disheartening. I think, of course, that Aenna is brilliant and points out many important things; however I have serious problems with statements like these:

“there’s not much you can do to get the message across to these people”
and
“It doesn’t matter how logical or thought out or fact-based your arguments against these kinds of people are, they just don’t give a damn”

This is, in my opinion, incredibly false and to a dangerous degree. Aenna obviously cared about sexism in the subculture, yet takes a hopeless inactive stance on it. The logic for this doesn’t make sense to me–for if there were “not much” one could do about combating misogyny in the subculture–and that, according to Aenna the main reason for sexists in the geek subculture is because of percolation of sexist sentiment in the mainstream culture–then what change do we have to change the minds of sexists anywhere? In the mainstream or in a specific subculture? It seems you are advocating we do nothing and just throw our hands in the air and bitterly curse geek sexists in our dark corners.

Certainly: if we don’t attempt to change the status quo and just let it be, we will indeed have no chance to alter the stagnation. It seems to me that attitudes like that are self-fulfilling.

It IS possible, and totally possible, for a subculture to become less misogynistic than the larger subculture as a whole. As an example I give the punk subculture, for instance. While widely regarded as initially typically sexist, after female bands (such as the Slits in England, Bikini Kill in the U.S.) and enlightened male bands offered differing viewpoints the subculture began to shift. Indeed in most punk circles it is now the requirement for (predominantly male) members to be anti-sexist. [Interestingly, I read a blog article online about how punks are becoming so anti-sexist, that they increasingly exert violence and abuse on men they deem to be sexist... an ironic paradox, as such behavior is typical phallogocentric, patriarchal thinking!] Another subculture that has (as I understand it) more open-mindedness and less sexism than normal society is the goth subculture. I am sure there are other male-dominated subcultures with more egalitarian views, but these are the only ones I can speak for with some knowledge.

The way these two subcultures changed is because the cultural productions created by members of the subculture (albums, fashion, writings) advocated feminist views and pointed out the hypocrisy and denigration of women within the subculture. Why is it so impossible for this to be done in the geek subculture? Granted, I understand some such things are being done, but they seem to lack impetus from the people in the subculture, going largely ignored. This only means more needs to be done, and that those people with pro-feminist viewpoints need to speak louder. Not bitterly retreat to that familiar corner.

Thanks for this discussion and all the posts as well,
Mike

And while I’ve seen some argue that the ways that stereotypically/traditionally geeky entertainment are “pleasurable and rewarding” for women may simply be different from the ways they’re rewarding for men, I think the overlap in appeals is pretty strong, as you suggest. Even a lot of the guys who read comics do so despite the hypersexual and anatomically warped portrayal of women in superhero material, not because of it.

Also, readers here may be interested in a Metafilter discussion that has linked to this post recently. There were some particularly insightful comments there, including some brief personal anecdotes by velvet winter (who submitted the links that got the conversation going) that illustrate some of the hurdles women face in trying to interact with geeky guys.

There are a few fairly ignorant comments as well, of course, but they are fascinating to read in their own way. One person even goes so far as to suggest that the sole reason women pursue interests traditionally culturally coded as “male” is because they want to steal what men have. (Some of the responses to that one are particularly clever.)

I would imagine that if a white girl geek like me feels excluded by male geeks (to some extent)…how I would probably feel even more isolated if I were black, since black women are positively represented even less than white women in geek culture.

In answer to your initial question, what attracts me to sci-fi, gaming, roleplay, and extensive reading is that these things are pleasurable and rewarding to me…I don’t like them for special “girl geek” reasons.

My experience as a woman may affect *how much* I like or dislike one particular corner of geekery; I can read Sandman and more “literary” comics, and love the genre of graphic novels in general, but superhero stuff is a huge turnoff because so much of it is he-man wish fulfillment. And because of “woman in the freezer” syndrome whereby strong women get weakened/raped/killed/disappeared in comics storylines.

Girls were not called “geeks” when I was growing up, btw, but “brains.” Said dismissively, as in “what are you, some kind of a brain?”