I like the many other people with fantastic, empowering, and sometimes hilarious signs, I chose NC very deliberately. I chose it because I wanted to showcase my particular brand of Nerd-feminism and to highlight the simplicity behind the idea of non-compliance. One of the reasons I love Kelly Sue and Val’s concept is because non-compliance can be simple or complicated, many or one thing. It simply does not comply. And when I talked with people about the concept it made them think about the millions of things that women are taught that make them un-feminine or can feminize a man. That simple concept can apply to anyone and makes this comic-book-based-feminist idea so powerful. This is also why I chose to fill in the letters with pink and black. For me the use of the color pink is associated with femininity. I had growing up disliking pink and disliking many of the other associations with femininity that came along with it but as I have gotten older I’ve become more welcoming and almost fiercely attached to pink. I’ve taken it up again and paired it with black because it is a color of resistance and power. Black helps connect us to other, and greater, movements of resistance.
What I also like about the symbol is that Bitch Planet is part of a feminist movement in comics and in Fandoms, which have the potential to be feminist havens. For me the intersection between my nerdy interests and feminism was another way place that feminism has to be entrenched. For me, my nerdy interests need to be feminist. Not all fantasy has to help us to be better people but as tools for teaching, it is integral to making us our better selves. Also for so long being a nerd was almost exclusively coded as male and what more recent fandoms have done, by the increase in cosplay and crafting, is incorporate women and transform nerd-dom visually, emotionally, and intellectually.
More than ever at conventions, particularly at conventions like GeekGirlCon, I see people talking about mental health, inclusion, and a myriad of other issues that have made nerd communities more inclusive and cognizant of society’s problems. Before Nerd-dom has a history of being welcoming to women but it, like many professions, has gone through an anti-woman hump that only recently has had a fierce and purposeful restructuring. This has involved opening nerd islands of insolation and discussing how even nerd friendships were unhealthy. Controlling nerd knowledge was just a different form of bullying.
The increase in the number of women and women’s spaces in Nerd dom has meant a re-negotiation of these behaviors. While some have turned from bitter nerds into members of the alt-right, those same feelings of alienation can be used to unite people against the things that reject us. Being part of a persecuted group does not exclude you from negative behaviors but we have a common enemy and those are hate and feelings of loneliness. Additionally, so many works of fiction that create fandoms, whether or not they identify as nerds, are built on ideas of being true to one’s self, cooperation, and resistance to negative forces. Because of that intersectio-nerd-feminism is a must.
For me, nerd-dom is linked to my interest in science-fiction and “nerdom” because it has in many ways helped me formulate and understand my identity. It is a community I participate in and it must be held to the same standards that I require of the rest of the world.
