2007
thoughts after a sleepless night at Apple
I got home this morning at 0330 and couldn’t sleep for all the Coke I’d consumed during the day, the better not to turn into a pumpkin around 10, as is usually the case, so this may not be all that coherent (starting with a run-on sentence, w00t!).
I officially started at Apple yesterday. This consisted of showing up a half hour before closing & helping pack the store to be moved to a new location. My fingers, feet, and back hurt. Hooray for employment. But it was a great way, I think, to meet my new peeps (hee hee). I think I know most of their names by now, which is certainly more than could have been said after my first day of work at my old job.
The thing that really struck me was the ease that the genders blended. This may seem like a strange observation, but college is hyper-sexualized, so not a great place for gender interaction, and at my old job everyone was female, which made men not only the anomaly, but made me wonder what it was about the industry that attracted women (most of the doctors & lawyers we interacted with were men). There were only four women last night, probably about the ratio I should get used to in a geek-environment, but I noticed that ratio less than the ratio at my old job. The store manager is a woman and the geek-guys have no issues taking her orders. On occasion, I was reminded that these types of guys are exactly my type; and probably vice versa. But the fact that we all have such similar interests (debates about Tim Burton’s injustice to Batman, Roald Dahl, and Star Trek ranged about during our break, which made me smile) makes our gender differences just fade away. I like that.
Hey Miko,
I worked support desk for years. It was a job very similar to the genius bar at apple. I found what you’re saying to be quite true. It was almost like nobody I worked with even noticed I had two bumps that they didn’t.
We were at Game Empire this week (in Pasadena), playing Pokemon. And we noticed a similar thing there too. Our daughter was playing pokemon with all these guys, and everyone was on a level playing field.
Both of these areas are dominated by men, in that the percentage of male participants are really high. But there is little, if any, gender issues.
On the other hand, from the outside, it’s noticeable. My friend tells me time and again that she hates working with women at the genius bar. That they are all biatches. I haven’t had a problem. But I do kind of prefer the guys just cuz, well, most of them are pretty cute. The best thing? They don’t even know it. That’s the best kind of cute evah!
ahhh, dittos
I so far really like my female coworkers. Aside from the manager (who can’t really count as a friend for that reason), we’re three personalities that generally wouldn’t give one another the time of day. But again, we have a common excitement over expensive technology items and this seems to bridge the gap.
Where did you do tech support? Will you fix my computer?
When “gender” is (IMO too) associated with roles and behaviors, “geek” is – necessarily becomes – a gender in itself.
For a great many years, I expressed this as, “If men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, I’m chopped liver from outer space.” – “chopped liver” for all the times I was taken (for the sake of crying on my shoulder or letting off steam) to not count as one of those inexplicable, aggravating feminine creatures. Several months back, a friend on a forum I frequent put me onto the idea of geek-as-gender, a much more concise way to express it.
Another way to put it, of course, is “person”. I don’t present as a woman (or a man, or an androgyne), I present as a person, and others are likely to see me that way without thinking about it (and, if they’re not subculture folks, experience serious cognitive dissonance when they do think about it).
In Geekdom in its many realms, thinking of people as people first, and by their gender second (or alternately, “geek or mundane?” being considered a far more important distinction than “woman or man?”) is a cultural norm. I may – rarely – encounter someone who insists on assuming I fit “woman” role/behavior norms because I have female physiology, and who experiences cognitive dissonance when I do not (tee-hee!); I virtually never encounter anyone who reflexively perceives me as a person and then cognitively dissonates when they notice, because “person” is their default.
Hmm, I should write an entry for my own LJ about that, rather than sticking it in the comments on another blog.
(If folks were wondering where I’d gone, I hadn’t gone anywhere – I’ve been reading, but too much of my time/attention/energy was elsewhere to comment. That’d still be the case, except this is a high-interest, thus high-priority, topic for me.)
Sunflower
Miko – I did four years of tech support at UCR when I was a student there. I did three years at UWMadison while I was a grad student there. We played nethack and subscribed to listserv groups. After hours, we has LAN parties playing Spaceward Ho on the macs. Oh, man, what fun memories!
I like this concept of geek-as-gender. I wonder if we could also discuss geek-as-race, since it is often a cultural thing. Sunflower mentioned simply presenting as “person; perhaps geeks are just more evolved (I, of course, have a vested interest in this being the case), if gender, race, & age are ultimately immaterial next to what one things of Star Trek, Batman, or Apple. On second thought, maybe it’s geek-as-sexual-orientation.
Tammy—awesome! Sounds like a ton of fun!
I hesitate to go so far as “more evolved”, but it’s an attractive notion.
I notice you mention age as one of the immaterials; that’s very true, and something I’ve always cherished. “There are a lot more important things to have in common than the numbers on your birth certificates.” (Me, on many occasions over the years.)
As for geek-as-sexual orientation, a word has been coined for that: sapiosexuality. (For more info, go to my LJ – it’s what my name links to – and look in my user info under “member of”.) While it’s often used as a subclass of bisexuality (as in, “the plumbing matters less to me than the wiring”), I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone object to straight or gay sapiosexuals using the identifier.
I’ll grant that “attracted to intelligence” isn’t absolutely synomymous with “attracted to geeks”, but the overlap is huge.
Sunflower
You know, I’ve heard of the notion of sapiosexuality (prolly here) but didn’t remember it. There’s likely a good correlation of geeks (the gender) who are sapiosexual.