PGN Perpetuates Negative Nerd Stereotypes

This week's edition of the Philadelphia Gay News carries an editorial cartoon continuing the false stereotypes of nerds, and gamers in particular, as being misogynistic. I've submitted this letter to the editor:

I'm disgusted by the false stereotype of nerds in this week's editorial cartoon.

"Those nerds might appreciate a girl -- any girl -- joining their class!" Oh, really? In fact there are lots of women and girls in gaming and other parts of nerd culture.

Here's a video of three women actively involved in speaking out against being "invisibilized" by the false stereotype that all gamers are cishet white guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtzrUsi6Y1s&t=1s

And here are thirty more gamers who don't fit that stereotype -- 22 of them women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwGIHUCtjU&t=2s

For ongoing coverage and discussion of nerd culture anchored by three women, check out this website/podcast: www.honeybadgerbrigade.com.

If any girls are discouraged from getting involved with nerd culture, it's usually not the boy nerds who are doing it. It's all the people outside of the culture who perpetuate the false stereotype. PGN shouldn't be part of that.

P.S. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that it's inherently derogatory to suggest that only members of a particular demographic group are interested in a particular kind of hobby. The only problem with that is its potential to discourage members of other groups to pursue the same interests. What was inherently derogatory was in the following panel, where it was implied that male nerds had been uniformly opposed to a female Doctor Who and that the reason for this was misogyny. There actually was no such uniform opposition, while it's not hard to think other possible reasons for such opposition as there was. For one thing, inasmuch as the Doctor is supposed to have continuity of personality from one incarnation to the next, doesn't regeneration as a woman pose the potential for gender dysphoria? (We see the reverse of this process depicted in Dreadnought, a novel about a transgender superhero who's finally freed of gender dysphoria when the cape she inherits gives her a perfect body, including one of the right sex for the first time.)