internet

The Mary Sue, a new blog dedicated to subject matters of interest to the discerning geekess, launched this week. I learned about it on Twitter from Laughing Squid, who was linking to their most recent post, “10 Women Who Secretly Control The Internet,” and I was immediately impressed by the content on the site.

There are plenty of “geek girl” sites out there, but The Mary Sue has a slightly different MO than a lot of them:

We know the point at which you would be satisfied is to just be able to geek out with all geeks, of any gender, without feeling like your femininity is front and center for scrutiny. To not feel like you have to work harder than guys to prove that you’re genuinely into geek culture. We want simple things, like to be able to visit a comic book store without feeling out of place. To be able to buy a video game without getting the sense that the cashier thinks we’re buying it for someone else.

But mainly we just want to be able to pursue our hobbies with the other people who share them. We want to play with the boys.

So there are two reasons why there should be more out there devoted specifically to the female geek.

Because even if we want to play with the boys, there is a value to having our own space.

And also, because of this.

I did take a little offense to one comment on their mission statement, which proclaims:

I have never met a geek girl who was even halfway interested in almost anything Cosmopolitan had to say. We were too busy reading Cicada and Popular Science when we were the age that Teen Magazine wanted our attention. [...] The only celebrity gossip I care about is who’s on what project next, the only fashion I’m interested is where to get Batman shirts that allow for boobs.

Never? Not once? I don’t know, I like fashion and makeup and other “girly” things… sure, The Mary Sue won’t be my place for info like that, but it also doesn’t mean that I should feel like less of a geek for being into those things. Am I reading into it too much? Perhaps. But girls who are interested in those things, but want to be more involved in geek culture too, could be a little threatened/intimidated by statements like that.

Overall, I’m super-excited to see what The Mary Sue has up her sleeves. I even subscribed to the newsletter, which is highly unusual for me (I want less email, not more). And if I want my daily mix of geek, fashion, makeup and gossip, I’ve still got my fleet of Sugar sites to keep up with!