The Only Girl in the Room

Source

A lot of people, myself included, worry that geek culture drives women away from technical roles, but that has never been a personal issue for me.  I actually share a lot of the interests and hobbies that constitute geek culture, but that leads to an entirely different problem - one based entirely on perception and meta-perception.  My best friends are usually guys.

As a teenager I built my own computers and experimented with various alternative operating systems (OS/2, Linux, BSD, and even BeOS).  I co-SysOp'd a BBS starting when I was 12 and ran my own solo for a few years in there.  I'm perfectly happy to discuss with you the correct order in which to watch Star Wars (it's 4,5,2,3,6), even though I'm more of a Star Trek person (although, unlike my male friends, I actually liked Wesley Crusher).  In college, I spent about as many hours pushing heavy speakers around campus and hanging lights from trusses as I did attending class.  And more recently I've become obsessed with an incredibly geeky and amazingly addictive game (Ingress - Warning: causes insomnia, purging of one color from your wardrobe, volunteering to go on random errands, and planning of your life around 5-hour cycles).

What do all of these have in common?  They are all overwhelmingly "guy things."  That means it's almost certain that I am going to be hanging out with a bunch of guys -- it's not uncommon for me to be the only girl in the room in my hobbies as well as my job.  I don't mind.  My husband doesn't mind.  My relationship with these guys is no different than their relationships with each other, and yet sometimes I can't help but worry what other people (their wives/girlfriends, other coworkers, random strangers) think seeing us spend time together.  I'm sure the same thoughts are running through their heads.

In an earlier post, I suggested that we try to make sure that geek culture does not become an implicit job requirement for technical jobs - and I think that's especially important in light of the fact that even girls who share geek culture can run into problems.  But there is a reason we geeks like these things, and I think there are probably some helpful skills that are cultivated in pursuit of geeky hobbies.  I'm not going to stop my geeky hobbies, even if it means being surrounded by guys.  So if you see me spending time with a guy, don't assume there's anything between us.