We have more internecine warfare going on at scienceblogs: in this case it’s a matter of casual sexism. Should someone be surprised at pretty girls reading science fiction, or even being nerdy?
As someone who has been immersed in the nerd culture of the university since the mid-1970s and has also hung out in the science-fiction culture even longer (anyone remember Escape Books in Seattle? Been to Uncle Hugo’s or Dreamhaven in Minneapolis?), and is a heterosexual male who usually notices the hot girls, I will say with great emphasis, NO! In my generation, women in biology were a minority, but really, they looked fine. The students in my classes now are mostly women, and they are lovely, although I tend to see them with a more fatherly (or grandfatherly, sad to say) eye nowadays. Science does not attract the unattractive, so could we please end that stereotype?
We also shouldn’t judge the attractiveness of individuals on the basis of such shallow parameters. True male nerds all know that intelligence is a +2 bonus to charisma, and SF fannishness is an additional +1. Heck, if I were on the market right now (oh, but I’m so glad I’m not), the first places I’d choose to hang out in to meet attractive ladies would be the bookstores, and the SF and fantasy section in particular, but not exclusively.
Not that SF is a prerequisite—my wife is both a hottie and not particularly interested in genre fiction; I’d probably find her in the science section, or math/statistics, or social sciences. And that’s OK, and defies the stereotype, too.
One last datum: my daughter‘s bookshelf looks like a subset of what you’d find at Dreamhaven. If you want to argue that she ought to be homely, you’ll find me looking pissed off at you.
Finally and in general, these expectations about how women should be expected to look, and what set of irrelevant traits ought to be correlated with desirability, and how we guys ought to tie the preferences of women’s minds with our definitions of the sexual properties of their bodies, is more than a little annoying, and something women ought to be rightly irritated about. These unwarranted assignments of roles on the basis of irrelevant characteristics can hurt people.
There was a funny post recently on a similar issue in the gamer world by a friend of mine: Miss Video Game 2007: Sexism in The Name Of Equality!
‘sright. I read scifi/fantasy (and other nerdy books), AND I’m a biologist, AND I love bunnies, AND I think squid are totally cool, AND I’m a helluva cutie (opinion of n=several feedlot pens of men).
Okay, so I’m probably not quite as slinkysexy as I was at 23, but I read scifi/fantasy then, too.
I work with a lot of women biologists, and a disproportionate number of them are *really* attractive.
I read SF all my life and have been PRETTY PRETTY PRETTY just as long. :)
I have always attributed this to the assumed stigma of reading Sci-Fi/Fantasy. You don’t say that is what you are reading because you think the girl will think you are a total freak, so you say you like sports. And the girl thinks the same thing and says she likes shopping. And coming from the mutual lie, they both totally fail to hit it off. While if they had both said that they were reading blah they could have talked about that and then totally made out.
And I have noticed that it is better to talk with passion about something you care about than small talk about crap even if the person has no interest in it whatsoever. Not that I am an expert at romance by any length.
Not just women who read sf but all women and all people in general should be bug-eyed monsters. The world would be a better place. Can I be a bug-eyed monster with super-strong claws?
I have to say that loving sci-fi is at least a +2 in my book. Add intelligence (how many sci fi fans aren’t?) and empathy, a woman would have to come with some serious problems for me to lose interest – like a base charisma in the negatives.
That’s one hell of a website your daughter’s got there. You must be proud. When dealing with the clueless, she writes just like you.
Being a bug-eyed monster would be *great*–I’ll settle for being a queen bug-eyed venomous monster with lots of drones. My minions will overwhelm your puny claws!
hey PZ thanks for the overflow traffic!
Reading the thread you linked to made me doubt that it’s possible to talk about “science-fiction culture” as a single group these days. Sure, anyone in it will probably have at least a little exposure to all parts of it, but I think the differences within the groups are as great as if not greater than between science fiction culture as a whole and whatever is “mainstream”.
The point is, I wanted to chime in with examples from experience, but I realized everyone is talking about college science departments and fans of science fiction novels — and I’ve never got to know anyone through either of those, but through gaming clubs of various kinds. (My strictly personal observation: women make up about a quarter of these groups at most, but they’re as physically attractive as women anywhere else, if not more. Not that it matters.)
There’s plenty of discussion about women in the “geeky” branches of academia. But what about the SCA and similar groups? Is the demographics of TV sci-fi fandom different from written SF? And so on.
THANK YOU.
“Should someone be surprised at pretty girls reading science fiction, or even being nerdy?”
Surprised? No. Grateful, on the other hand…..
This really turns out to be a proportioning problem. There are hot women in lots of places you wouldn’t expect. One of the worst cases mentioned was my brother’s mechanical engineering class, and I quote:
“The class is only 10% female and only half of them look it.”
But given that the class has around 100 people, that’s still 5 hot girls who like engines and gears and thermodynamics etc.
Wait…women are attractive? News to me.
While I agree that there are many attractive women made more attractive by interest in SF/and real science, it’s kind of dangerous for male nerds to pass judgment on our own level of attractiveness. Fantasy expresses itself in mirrors, too.
But given that the class has around 100 people, that’s still 5 hot girls who like engines and gears and thermodynamics etc.
… with the remaining 90 some engineer boys competing for these particular girls. These odds, they are not good.
What about cutie-nerds IN sf? I’m thinking of Kaylee (Jewel Staite), the ship’s engineer in Firefly…
I think a lot of it comes from the general pessimism of the tortured romantic/idealist. If someone’s pretty, they must be stupid, if someone’s smart (nerdy?), they must be ugly, if they were both pretty and smart, then that’s just too good to be true, there’s always a catch, and it’s always a big one.
I’ve noticed PZ never links to Gene Expression, even when explicitly referencing it. This is the same treatment given to creationist sites. Is there some bad blood there?
Not every nerd is a huge fan of sci-fi or LoTR. Unless you think I don’t qualify as a nerd (my roommate would disagree!).
I’ve noticed PZ never links to Gene Expression, even when explicitly referencing it.
dude! are you serious that you noticed it??? and yeah, google it, it goes way back.
How we ascertain beauty from a cultural perspective is, indeed, interesting to say the least.
What I find more than slightly disturbing is the correlation between the appearance of almost pre-pubescent characteristics and sexual desire.
The more child-like qualities (physically and psychologically) that a woman possesses, the more value is placed in her stocks and shares.
So, we have female models of 13 in magazines, being oggled over by men at least twice and sometimes 3 times their age. It is kind of strange to me that this has occured, but then I am according to cultural perception, an old broad, so maybe it is just sour grapes.
Frankly, I would prefer that it is just sour grapes, than evidence of something more culturally sinister.
Add intelligence (how many sci fi fans aren’t?)
Lots.
Haven’t you noticed the popularity of male adolescent military fantasy posing as SF? The fantasy world has it’s female equivalent (oppressed girl meets unicorn, saves world). It’s Sturgeon’s Law in action (both the writing AND the fans).
I think I may have just PWNED Razib on his own blog, but would like a third party verification.
We have plenty of beautiful women wandering the halls of our Physics/Chemistry Research Building (where my office is physically housed).
There are also pleny of handsome men (along with the litany of people from both sexes who are made for the stereotype).
There is one point that I will stand on though. You’re born with your looks but SWEET JEBUS everyone has access to showers at a premier research University. It doesn’t make you any scienc-i-er when you refuse to shower. Hell, I’ve got an eye-wash station/ Chemical shower 30′ down the hall from me and I might start forcing its use.
This is one stereo-type that has a kernel of truth since it does exist and there is no reason why it should. It’s not _that_ common but it’s consistent.
I’m done with my first semester so SF (and SN-F) here I come!
Frankly, I would prefer that it is just sour grapes, than evidence of something more culturally sinister.
It’s something more sinister, sister. After all, I’m often mistaken for much younger, and believe me, there are lots of creeps out there. (Like guys my own age hitting on me because they don’t think I’m their own age. Married guys too. Eek.)
I think I may have just PWNED Razib on his own blog, but would like a third party verification.
*snap*
I’m a nerd and proud of it, lucky all my friends are too.
I’ve been reading sci-fi forever, my Mum’s a big nerd to I blame her.
I’m no model but I’ve been called cute a few times in my life.
When I was much younger used to play various “Warhammer” games, tabletop, Roleplay etc. Would walk into the ‘GamesWorkshop’ store and either the male workers would ignore me thinking I was there with my boyfriend or get very hot under the collar when I could talk about my High Elf army, the latest rules editions and how Genestealers are funky…;)
When I left work a few months ago I got a ‘World of Warcraft’ bag,(I think as a bit of a joke but I do play it alot) Its a very handy size, so walking through Sydney I do get a few looks.
I think the next couple of generations the lines will blur alot. I was a bit odd liking such things but I see my 8 year old niece (who is uber cute) who likes Sci-fi/Fantasy, is a whiz on the computer and has a harder grade Maths book at home cause she was bored in class.
beepbeepitsme: there’s more than just culture involved in these mate preferences. Cross-cultural data vary little, per Buss’s Evolution of Desire (I cite this somewhat controversial source for convenience, not certitude). And of course it’s not just humans either – see any text on mate choice behavior, e.g. Zuk’s Sexual Selections.
Ah! She looks more like her mother. How fortunate. ;-)
“Casual sexism” aside, I think it’s only fair to point out that physical attractiveness is an extremely subjective thing. Also, since we’re not dealing with data, polls or statistics here, simply gut reaction and generalization, I would have to say that it’s not out of the question to make a conclusion about the relative attractiveness of those people who like scifi or science or whatever. I think it shouldn’t be limited to women, that if one should make such a generalization they should make it about all “nerds” or whatever, but that’s just me. I am a nerd, I have spent much of my life amongst nerds, and I decline to comment on just how many anime conventions I’ve actually been to… My personal opinion is that, in general, we are not a healthy, attractive or good-looking group of people. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between. But it doesn’t really matter, because looks aren’t everything when it comes to charisma or attraction or whatever.
Again, this is my personal experience…I’m not saying it’s impossible for hot boys or girls to be nerds, it’s just very, very unlikely.
“My personal opinion is that, in general, we are not a healthy, attractive or good-looking group of people”
Yes. I agree totally.
Wait…you were talking about nerds weren’t you, I was thinking of humanity in general.
PeterV wrote:
“We’re a virus with shoes,” as Bill Hicks liked to remind everybody.
Well I guess could have been talking about nerds, Americans or Humanity in general…all three seem to fit the bill these days.
One of the remarks my wife got from one of her colleagues was, “All this time I thought you were in HR. You’re too cute to be an engineer.” Definitely not a great way to welcome the new female electrical engineer into the company.
Well, all I can say is that THIS is my favorite science babe and SF fan….
Now’t hotter than brains. Except maybe brains and a phaser.
Lisa Randall is hot and hot! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Randall
I would like to mention that, despite my relative indifference to the topic at hand, I am a double contradiction of stereotypes. I am unattractive, and also generally loath science fiction books.
See this Frank Kelly Freas cartoon from *1957*
http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/freas3.htm
funny guy, Freas (but then you could tell that from his Astounding! illos even before he did stuff for MAD as well.
Shortly after finishing my undergrad education at Caltech, I was visiting some old friends there during spring break and stopped to chat with another visitor… who happened to be one of the hottest young women I’d ever seen. We discussed Heinlein, X-Men, Watchmen, Anthony, Niven, and the philosophy of SF/F. Till three in the morning.
Then I proposed.
Going on seventeen years later, she’s still that hot. Smarter than me, more sensible, tremendously capable. Her one drawback is that she’s never realized just how much she outclasses me. For which I’m eternally grateful.
Awesome cartoon! That’s going on my wall.
I used to read MAD Magazine too (the only girl I knew who did). In fact, I still have my collection of them.
Yes, awesome cartoon!
Eyelessgame, you’re my kind of guy. ;-)
“Should someone be surprised at pretty girls reading science fiction, or even being nerdy?”
Good grief! LOL!
No!
At least, I hope not. I haven’t yet read all the comments here, but I did just read Dr. Smith’s blog entry on the topic and must echo her first thought: “Are we still talking about this? Uh… why?”
While beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, patterns of attraction do emerge and I can honestly say that I haven’t had any complaints about how I look (except from this one guy who… well, never mind that, he’s a curmudgeon, and who is this “Jerry Lewis” I supposedly resemble?) :-) And a couple of years ago, I was cast as a stereotypically vapid blonde starlet in a stage play about Hollywood because, well, I sorta looked the part. (And because I can’t act, lol.)
But yes, yes, I always did better at math and science than in humanities (excepting music). Growing up I always chose baseball over Barbie, ice hockey over figure skating, and so on – and those trends persist.
More to the point, all kinds of science fascinate me; my favorite movie is “Contact” and I’ve read more S/F than most people twice my age, and I’m proud of it, and have never seen a movie with the word “sisterhood” in the title.
I never played Warhammer, but I’ve been to a local Games Workshop with my brother, and when we were younger, Hero Quest was a family staple. I’ve played more than one MMORPG and have engaged in other, similarly “nerdy” passtimes, and while some of them were dead ends for me, I enjoyed them very much while there. I read “Childhood’s End” at 12 (cuz my parents recommended it) and “I Will Fear No Evil” at 14 (because my parents tried to hide it from me) and let me tell you, the world never again looked quite the same. And those titles don’t even begin to scratch the surface.
So I guess this makes me a statuesque-blonde-jock-nerd-geek, or something. Many of my friends like S/F too, and many of them also defy the stereotype that’s at issue here, and two of them are likely headed for PhD’s in biology. One example is my friend J: a gorgeous, redheaded former cheerleader and student council member who loves S/F and claims she is all about “gadgets and monsters.”
Bottom Line: You can’t always tell by looking! Most, but apparently not all, people know this…
thwaite: I was thinking of Kaylie from Firefly, too, but as much as I like her (and as adorable as she is) I think the character was designed to be cute but less than gorgeous, given her background, her lack of self-confidence, and the fact that Jewel Staite gained about 20 pounds to play the role. (Really!) Nonetheless, she’s a good example.
On the other hand, she is fictional, so maybe no use to us in this discussion. S/F is full of hot babes (be they warriors, techies, or sorceresses) who can do all sorts of amazing things – a fact that helps perpetuate the stereotype of S/F going out of its way to feed the fantasies of the socially inept male-geek who lives in his parents’ basement.
Oops, I wrote waaay more than I intended. Interesting topic, though, as always. Skewering negative stereotypes is always worth whatever time it takes. :-)
Partly because intelligence correlates with imagination == more fun in the sack. And, of course, better pillow talk than “mind if I turn on the TV?”
TV … pffft. :-)
Silly boys, missing out. I love science and science fiction, have done so since I was young and I thank my father for that. He also taught me how to tell the red wire from the green wire, and how to figure out how things work and repair them.
If you haven’t read CJ Cherryh’s “Foreigner” series, go to the library now (multi-volume, so requires considerable time investment). Science fiction, not fantasy and simply wonderful.
Lisa Randall is hot and hot! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Randall
Hot looking (especially with those tall black boots she was wearing last week) but cold as ice.
As an attractive woman in the largely male dominated field of earth science I have to deal with some quite sexist attitudes. And looking like a ‘bimbo’ certainly doesn’t help to be taken seriously, but I enjoy breaking the stereotype and being attractive and would certainly never dull myself down to avoid these situations. But I have a question concerning the diversity of gender in the sciences – how does the ratios of women studying life sciences compare with those studying earth science, engineering or ‘hard’ sciences? If there are more women studying life sciences do you think it’s because there’s more interest in this field or more discrimination in the other fields?
Whether or not science-minded women are particularly attractive is far less interesting to me than why there is such a huge apparent disparity in male versus female interest in various topics in the first place.
I’ll never forget my freshman physics class in college — I could have placed out with AP credit but instead decided to take the honors-track intro physics course. My lecture comprised 62 students, 61 of whom were male. Later, I was a T.A. in the computer science department at the same university. I can’t say that, many years later, I recall every other T.A. by name, but I also can’t say I recall there being a single female among them. And being a typical hormonally-saturated, heterosexual, college-age male I have to think I would’ve taken notice had there been any.
Today, as a co-founder of a technology startup, I work daily in an environment that is literally 100% male. I have a fantastic team, but I still find it odd that there are no women whatsoever among them, and it’s deeply disconcerting that I can go for days at a stretch with no contact with a live female other than the barista I order coffee from in the morning. It’s not that we don’t hire female applicants — we just don’t *get* any female applicants, at least for technical jobs. About a year ago, when we had a temporary need for foreign-language translators, we had a group of contractors who were predominantly female. But when we look for developers, IT staff, and that kind of thing, there just aren’t any women in the candidate pool.
Conversely, I have an ex-girlfriend who works in an area related to genetic counseling. She tells stories of conferences where there are only a handful of men present among dozens, sometimes hundreds, of women. More broadly, I definitely get the sense that women are much better represented in the life sciences and medicine, for example, than in physics, CS, and engineering.
I’m not going to pull a Larry Summers and claim that women or men are intrinsically predisposed to different interests, particularly based on my flimsy anecdotal experience. That said, I can’t help but wonder what reasons — be they social, economic, ego-driven, genetic, family obligations, whatever — lead to these apparent disparities. Leaving attractiveness out of it entirely, why is there such a huge male-female imbalance in so many professions and interests?
My wife is a wonderful stereotype-buster, she is:
1 – A sci-fi fan but beatiful with a great body (OK, I’m biased)
2 – A loving, caring primary teacher in training but utterly obssesed with Muay Thai (brutal kick-boxing martial art)
3 – A classically trained pianist, violinist and cellist but just paid twice the face value to get a ticket to a Nine Inch Nails gig next year.
Damn, I love her :-)
… with the remaining 90 some engineer boys competing for these particular girls. These odds, they are not good.
As a female friend of mine said: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
I know some women who are both attractive and geeky in general; I’m not sure how into Sci-Fi they are. My wife certainly has that potential, but due to circumstances of her upbringing never developed it. :'(
My wife’s an engineer, and she’s hot, but as one of only a handful of good looking electrical girls in school, she was stalked by some “odd goods” on several occasions.
I can tell you that where I’m from, the majority of engineers and physics people are still males, with some exceptions for engineering disciplines like environmental engineering, where it’s almost 50-50. When I was briefly doing biology, it was definitely more even than in engineering.
And I can certainly attest that most men would be happy, no, ecstatic if more women got into engineering.
S/F is full of hot babes (be they warriors, techies, or sorceresses) who can do all sorts of amazing things – a fact that helps perpetuate the stereotype of S/F going out of its way to feed the fantasies of the socially inept male-geek who lives in his parents’ basement. And yet, if said female characters cringed in the corner and waited to be saved, the very act of being rescued by the Square-Jawed Six Foot Hero would feed those fantasies (and perpetuate the stereotype) even more. Empower ’em, get slammed. Disempower ’em, get even more slammed.
But then, which radical misanthropist feminists read SF anyway? (They should stay away from E.E. Smith; he had them in mind when he created the society on Lyrane II. Any Smith fans out there?)
The scary thing is that people are people. There is no difference in appearance between people who go into science or engineering than those who don’t. There are very few truly unattractive people. There are some strikingly gorgeous women out there on TV & screen, but most people are good looking. Even with a little extra weight or with Frumpzilla clothing.
As to what King Aardvark said, I would be ecstatic if more women got into engineering for the exact same reasons that I would be ecstatic if more under-represented groups got into engineering (and the sciences). Diversity of culture & background brings fresh ideas.
Seanly, I agree, most people are attractive!
Justin, that’s a good point, there’s a lose-lose aspect to how women are portrayed in S/F. The solution is simple in concept, if not in implementation: make those female characters three-dimensional, real, human, not just fantasies or props. Anyway, the point is not that I personally like or dislike some of the common archetypes, but more that I don’t think citing attractive fictional characters effectively addresses the primary topic of this thread…
Which radical misanthropist feminists read SF anyway? I have no idea. I’m not one. I have never read E.E. Smith, but I did read the first two “Tarnsman of Gor” books out of curiousity, and found the “willing slave” paradigm for Gorean women to be… depressing. It didn’t piss me off, though. Those kinds of relationships work for some people, and not for others. I’m not cut out to be quite that subservient, but hey, consenting adults, and all that…
John C.’s question is very interesting. The influence of gender roles on that phenomenon is subtle but profound; it’s surely cultural in part, but these things have pretty deep (biological) roots, I think. I don’t know. I’d like to see some comments on that…
It ain’t casual sexism – it’s “scientific” sexism.
Does the fact that Razib includes Steve Sailer in his blog roll give anybody a clue where he is coming from? Besides that fact that he writes for David Horowitz
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9545
and the American Conservative http://www.amconmag.com/09_08_03/article.html
and that Lawrence Summers is his hero
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/003459.html
and so is John Derbyshire
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/11/10-questions-for-derb.php
@ Nancy:
I wasn’t aware Razib was just your typical undergrad with an axe to grind. I come to scienceblogs to read phds with axes to grind (Seriously. The internet is filled with the other type.)
Meh. I saw him referred to as a geneticist and just assumed.
how did i miss this
SCI FI + BIOLOGY + PRETTY = ME …guys half my age ask me for dates ..(actually, that’s more embarrassing than flattering) …”errr, ummm,…. you and my son are the same age, you know”