Anorak Exemption?

[akirlu]

In a couple of recent, unrelated conversations -- one about the comparative and persistent of absence of women in the computing professions, the other speculating about sexist voting in the FAAN awards -- unconnected groups of correspondents produced rather strikingly similar observations: essentially, that women are just not prone in the same way as men to obsessive monomania. Women don't become alpha geeks in any noticeable numbers. I'm still digesting that one. At first blush, it seems right to me. If I understand the point, this isn't a question of intelligence or ability, but one of disposition. There's a certain personality type, given to coherent-light levels of focus on, and micro-molecular scrutiny of, a single narrow field of interest, irrespective of its marginality. And I can't offhand think of any women who display it.

Then again, maybe I'm suffering from first blush syndrome. Sometimes a hypothesis sounds just ducks to me until someone else pops up with a double handful of counterexamples.

And on the gripping hand, it occurs to me that maybe women are still likelier to obsess about things that are in some sense invisible to me as "interests" rather than practical necessities. If being pathologically house proud is the same sort of thing, maybe women get it too.

I can't really use myself as a good yardstick, though. I'm well into multi-sigma territory, inability-to-focus-wise.

UPDATE 5/31/01 Just to pitch in further controversy into the pondering, does it seem plausible that men are more likely to do solitary geeking than women? It occurred to me that I've met my share of women rockhounds, but they all seem to be in it with their husbands as a sort of social hobby.

Another candidate for hobbies filled with obsessives: birding. Our friend Tina seems at least moderately geeky about birding, but she tells me that the overwhelming majority of avid birders are unmarried men.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Perhaps there are women who could be called "makeup geeks" or somesuch.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but I don't think I've met anyone who, in the case of this example, owned an exhaustive library on the subject of makeup through history, formulated their own in accordance with the practices specific to the latter part of the 16th century, insisting on authentic historical ingredients, to include ones that are now known to be deadly, etc. As I say, it's this quality of obsession and narrow focus taken several sigmas out, and to the exclusion of ordinary social functionality, that I'm thinking about, and I don't think I've ever encountered a woman who had it about makeup.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but I don't think I've met anyone who, in the case of this example, owned an exhaustive library on the subject of makeup through history, formulated their own in accordance with the practices specific to the latter part of the 16th century, insisting on authentic historical ingredients, to include ones that are now known to be deadly, etc. As I say, it's this quality of obsession and narrow focus taken several sigmas out, and to the exclusion of ordinary social functionality, that I'm thinking about, and I don't think I've ever encountered a woman who had it about makeup.

I suspect you don't know enough women in the SCA.

My theory is that women are not permitted to become that obsessed with one thing. From a very early age, we are expected to notice other people, we are expected to be kind and nurturing, even when we are toddlers. It's very difficult to develop a monomania if you allow yourself to notice people.

It's possible that this is genetic, but I'm waiting for a non-sexist culture to act as a control before I draw any firm conclusions about nature vs. nurture. From the moment the gender of a child is known, which these days is usually pre-natally, the way people talk about that child is markedly different. Baby boys and baby girls exhibiting identical behavior are evaluated differently, interacted with differently, and spoken to differently. The easy example is an infant's gripping reflex. When a girl child does it, it is sweet, her hands are so delicate, so small, she's such a darling, and so loving. When a boy child does it, he has quite a grip, sure to be athletic when he gets older, and usually the person will play at tug-of-war with the boy child, pulling just hard enough to slighly dislodge the grip, but not enough to actually do so. The voice used to talk to a girl child, regardless of the gender of the person talking, will be significantly higher than the voice of a person talking to a boy child. When they get older, boy children are played with more roughly than girl children. One of the arguments for genetic differences between boys and girls is observation of their behavior in preschool. Boys prefer rowdier play, are more physical, and louder. However, when they were six months old, they were played with by their parents more roughly, and spoken too more loudly than were their sisters. By the age of two, it is not the least bit surprising that boys would be rougher and louder than girls. Mayhap boys respond more positively to more aggressive play at six months than girls do. I don't know if anyone has ever studied that. But correlation is not causality.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I think I know plenty of women in the SCA. Among my various dirty secrets, I'm a dabbler in historical costume, and while I think you're onto the right tack -- historical costuming is one of the areas I know of where women seem closer to displaying the degree of dysfunctional/locally functional absorption I'm pointing at -- IME the SCA isn't actually the best breeding ground for really anal costumers. The reputation of the Society is changing over time, and the quality of costuming has improved dramatically, but the places that I observe the most obsessive focus on accuracy in every detail is generally in other, more authenticity driven, venues for historical recreation. Civil War (either) recreationists, for one (where the most extreme cases I've heard of again have been men, insisting on authenticity down to the vintage and type of contents in game and tobacco bags, original buttons wherever possible, etc.), and people independently interested in particular eras. I do now recall one woman on the h-costume mailing list, who drafts historical patterns under the name The Mantua Maker, who at least according to her writings on the list, does absolutely all her sewing by hand, and wears period clothing *all* the time. And has her children dressed in period costume all the time. This, to me, is much more the type of borderline insanity that I had in mind.

But regardless, even if there is some difference of degree between women and men on this, I didn't mean to imply a position about the nature/nurture origins of such a thing. Like you, I've observed differences in the way people react to little girls versus little boys. Among other things, little girls are far likelier to be rewarded for flirting and mobilizing passive agressive cuteness as a manipulation tool. Girls are more often praised for their appearance, rather than their actions. And so forth. I sometimes think that I owe some portion of my comparatively unfeminized world view to the fact that my mother kept me in short hair and trousers for my formative years, and the fact that my grandfather -- my strongest father figure -- tended to treat girls and boys much the same. I remember him praising me for my strength, and recollecting with proud amusement my various first enterprising attempts at practical jokes. So I'm with you that nurture is a likely culprit in creating such a difference between men and women, if it even exists.

But I'm still leaning to believe that there's a difference in degree or frequency between the sexes for this phenomenon, whatever its etiology.

[webbob.livejournal.com]

I'm in a rush, so no coherent thinking, but some areas that come to mind:

• knitting
  
• textiles
  
• Regency romances
  
• sewing machines
  
• dog & cat shows
  

And I think that there are areas where women are α geeks but don't dominate the field, i.e. leading scientists in various areas being women even though women might be outnumbered in the field at large.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

A couple of these have some potential, but I'm very skeptical on sewing machines. IMO, sewing machines, even to women who are comparatively expert on them, are just tools, not Platonically interesting objects acquired for their own sake, and you may find women who have more than one, or even more than two, because they do different things well, but not just because there are keen and interesting mechanical differences between them. If I compare this to an even moderately involved, run of the month car enthusiast, as a monomania, collecting sewing machines just doesn't even rate. I've known numerous car enthusiasts who bought (yet more) cars just because that particular model had a particularly interesting cam arrangement, or an especially effective and ingenious shaping to the piston heads, or so on, utterly irrespective of transportation needs, storage practicality, and so on. I knew one guy who had so many Jaguar engines, he had them stacked two cross two, like cordwood. My brother, when he was rebuilding a vintage Harley, took several cross-country plane trips to look at replacement parts before buying them. These all represent a far greater committment of resources to the hobby than I've ever seen a woman devote to her sewing machine(s).

[numbat.livejournal.com]

I could introduce you to a number of women I know in the SCA who are into costuming. This involves making new and elaborate outfits for each major event they attend. Work I might add which can take an hour or two a day over several weeks. they also have extensive libraries, not just SCA publications and the sbrt of costuming books you might find in your local bookstore or library but large and expensive publications ($80+) which can only be obtained via mailorder. Lastly but certainly not the least they own stores of cloth. They buy cheap useful material in bulk to be never short of the makings of a chemise or under-dress. They check fabric stores whenever they pass them on the lookout for expensive cloth on sale. A work-room belonging to one of these women might have anything up to $5000 worth of material stored in it. And they always discuss current and future projects when they meet. Such conversations convincing me they can list every item in their stores of cloth. No mean feet when you have filled the floor to ceiling walk-in wardrobe which covers one entire wall of your work-room. This is a serious hobby.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It is indeed a serious hobby. I know quite a few costumers and fabric artists, and have had a not-inconsiderable fabric stash myself (given away, when we moved) and there may be a case to be made for extreme cases of the fabric-stash phenomenon as being akin to what I'm talking about. But as for costuming itself, I think I've only encountered one, maybe two possible cases on the international, Historical Costume listserve, who might qualify as suffering a bona fide obsessive monomania, and none of them SCAdian, whereas you can usually find several dozen possibles at any antique or vintage car event.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

You might like to read this in regards to obsession:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/sneerpout/97336.html