Cognitive dissonance (a Minicon moment)

[redbird]

There was a woman at Minicon with black-and-bright-blue hair. We were in the dealer's room, and started geeking hair coloring. She said that she was a "girl geek", elaborating that this meant she geeked all sorts of what she called girl things, and I would call adornment or (if to be labeled with gender) maybe femme things: hair color, makeup, etc.

I remarked that much as I like the purple, I'm not sure how long I'll keep it, because HR departments might not like it. Her response was "That's what men are for: their job is to bring us money."

This is so far from my view of the universe that I could think of nothing to say in response, so I just drifted away, in the direction of elisem's table. Somehow, pointing out to her that cattitude isn't sleeping on a pile of gold didn't quite seem appropriate, and I was too gobsmacked to start discussing sexism and gender roles. I described this conversation to rysmiel later. Rysmiel observed "That's not even wrong," a quote that seemed entirely apropos: orthogonal universes in a fairly small physical space and among people who probably think of ourselves, most of the time, as being of the same culture and subculture.

Comments

[snippy]

My word, yes, that's not even wrong. It's from a different worldview entirely. I keep hearing about these women, and it always makes me glad I don't actually know any of them (to my knowledge, anyway).

The comment about a common subculture reminds me of something I've read in alt.poly to the effect that just because I share one uncommon viewpoint with someone doesn't imply any other shared opinions. I've really incorporated that in my worldview.