feels like the norms + expectations + behaviors + clothing conventions + job paths for vanilla genders differ substantially from their nerd counterparts, like if you took an axis from M to F and copypasted it and rotated it 90 degrees youd get nerd M to nerd F
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ohhh interesting. my first instinct is "wait how is that different from just talking about different social types or groups or something" but actually I think there might be parallels to the social push against being gender nonconforming that make this really useful
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ooo do you mind elaborating?
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(also i dont think it actually is drastically different from social types! idk where the line is tbh)
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hm I dunno. so I imagined violating the "nerd girl gender norms" towards "normal girl gender norms" and I felt so much internal pushback. Scary, undermines my sense of who I am in a major way, shakes up what I think I'm allowed to do. Also experimenting feels taboo...
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fwiw i've run into stuff like this and experimenting ended up being just straightforwardly great. like e.g. i had a thing like "nerd boys aren't allowed to lift" but then i started lifting and everyone was really supportive and i heard about other guys lifting too
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i could imagine similar girl stuff getting genuinely more pushback but idk i think it would be really wholesome to like, see nerd girls experimenting with makeup or whatever it ends up being, i'd support that anyway!
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got more pushback in like, middle school
afaict people chill out a lot as they age (or I've been filtering for chill friends)
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this makes sense, i absorbed weird "mean girl" memes and didn't realize til recently that that was never the norm
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yeah I guess the honest truth is that people I care about have only been encouraging when I break molds as long as I feel good about it
apparently i'm still locked in a mental battle with teenagers, cooooool
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it doooo be like that sometimes (all the time) huh