(EDIT: u/lol1969 brought to my attention some studies which appear to provide good evidence of sexism against women in video game culture at least, so I am now questioning whether there was more truth in the geek feminists' claims than what I thought. In any case, I never objected to addressing any sexism that may be present; my objection was to the very authoritarian and misandrist ways the feminists were going about it.)

I know some people are sick of talking about feminism, but I was still thinking about a previous thread where we discussed where the current culture war came from. A related question is where the current wave of feminism came from, since that seems to be a major cause of the broader political polarization.

In the other thread, there were basically two explanations being put forth, one conspiracist and one chaotic. The conspiracist explanation argued that intersectional feminism was deliberately promoted by intelligence agencies to sabotage Occupy Wall Street, which was divided by the "progressive stack" in late 2011. The chaotic explanation argued that fourth-wave feminism began with a brief sexual proposition in an elevator at an atheist convention in mid-2011.

But I wasn't really satisfied with either explanation. The sabotage explanation feels more psychologically satisfying, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a conspiracy that has taken advantage of the divisions caused by feminists, but it doesn't explain why Elevatorgate predated the start date of the alleged conspiracy. As for the Elevatorgate explanation, I guess I just find it hard to believe all the political polarization of today sprang from such a happenstance and trivial incident!

Then I remembered something: The draconian sexual harassment policies pushed at atheist conferences didn't come out of nowhere. They were based on a ready-made template from Geek Feminism Wiki. Said wiki was set up in 2008 and mostly written during 2009-2012, showing that feminism's war on nerdy men predates 2011. So I think that fourth-wave feminism may actually stem from this "geek feminism".

From perusing the website, it can be seen that much of the current feminist terminology and rhetoric was already in use there. It also shares the fourth wave's smug dogmatism, saying any disagreement is based in ignorance of "Feminism 101". Yet despite its supposed infallibility, its Feminism 101 is not based on any single gospel - it openly admits to being ideologically eclectic, drawing on "strands of radical, liberal, post-colonial, intersectional, and transfeminism". Those strands are academic feminist theories created in the earlier waves, dumbed down and weaponized for online propaganda by the feminist blogosphere. Oh yes, there was already a thriving feminist blogosphere by the late 2000s, of which geek feminism was its most activist wing. So it's unclear when the third wave ended and the fourth wave began.

Judging from the wiki's timelines here and here, geek feminism seems to be a movement that grew gradually during the 2000s, through outrage over various "incidents" of supposed "sexism", "sexual harassment", and "sexualized environment" in the tech industry. I have not looked deeply into these incidents to find out whether they are being fairly portrayed, but in many cases the complaint seems to be merely that some guy in the tech industry made a presentation with some sexual jokes in it.

Being something of a nerd myself (albeit only occasionally involved in the nerd culture), for a long time I've wondered why feminists are so hateful toward nerdy men and so obsessed with transforming "geek culture". At first I gravitated toward the self-serving explanation that feminists hate nerdy men because we're more likely to call out their bullshit due to our intelligence and disdain for social norms. Then as I became more aware that nerdy men are considered unattractive by women, I realized that might also be a reason why feminists hate us. And these two factors are undoubtedly part of the picture. But even if feminists didn't like nerdy men, why couldn't they just leave us alone to enjoy our interests in science, atheism, science fiction, video games, and the erotica that sometimes overlaps with fandoms?

A more fundamental answer is hiding in plain sight, in Geek Feminism Wiki's definition of "geekiness":

Geek Feminism is about women in a range of geeky cultures/communities/activities including (but not limited to) the Technology industry, Science Fiction fandom, etc. (For a list of communities we cover so far, see Category:Communities.)

Notice how the very first thing they list is the tech industry. Now, why would they list the tech industry first? It's far less interesting than science fiction, atheism, video games, and many other things that I'd list if you asked me to describe "geek culture". Then I realized: the tech industry is an industry in which feminist women want jobs. So perhaps all the other stuff - from Doctor Who to Ghostbusters - is just a proxy for the much more shallow materialistic goal that feminists really care about: Getting women high-paying careers in the tech industry without awkward sexual advances from the numerous and unattractive men who also work there.

This, then, is the real reason why fourth-wave feminism has largely consisted of demonizing nerdy men.

This explains why "geek feminists" have trashed all the geek subcultures they claim to care about. Geek communities had organically evolved around nerdy men's intellectual interests, creative interests, and yes, to some degree, sexual interests. But despite "geek feminists" branding themselves as fellow "geeks", their interest in geek communities was never about these geeky interests per se (I'm not saying this about all nerdy women or even all nerdy feminists, only whoever drove the agenda of "geek feminism"). Because real nerds (male and female) actually cared about the interests for their own sake, we failed to comprehend that geek feminists were more interested in the associated dollar signs.

This explains geek feminism's obsession with gender-flipping male sci-fi protagonists even if it means trashing everything interesting about the story - it is intended to inspire girls to go into the high-paying tech industry.

This explains why geek feminism's sexual harassment norms are so draconian - because they see geek subcultures not as social events for extracurricular interests, but as a career path to the high-paying tech industry.

This explains why feminists slanderously accused James Damore of calling women "inferior" when he merely argued women may be less interested in technology - because they care more about women's jobs being high-paid than being interesting. They want women to get a piece of the wealth, power, and prestige of the tech industry, regardless of the fact that nerdy men gained that through interest in the subject matter.

It even explains why they called it "geek feminism" rather than "nerd feminism" - the words have subtly different connotations. "Nerd" is an unflattering descriptor that only a real nerd would apply to themselves, connoting obsessive niche interests and social awkwardness. A "geek" is someone who has leveraged their nerdy interests into a successful career in the tech industry. In hindsight, it is very telling that "geek feminism" linguistically aligned itself with the latter archetype.

Of course, we already knew that getting women into the tech industry is one of feminism's stated goals. But if I'm right, that is the original and primary motivation of fourth-wave feminism. If I'm right, then the "culture war" was never really about culture - because to feminists, "geek culture" was about economics all along.

In my opinion fourth-wave feminism (and to a lesser extent the previous waves) has caused an untold level of damage to men's free speech, due process rights, sexual opportunities, and mental health, with male nerds on the frontlines - to the point where I often wonder if attacking men is some feminists' primary goal. But more likely, feminists care so little about male suffering that they see it as a mere means to an end. And their real main goal may well be to get women into tech jobs that most women probably don't want anyway.

Finally, note that my explanation does not necessarily rule out an element of conspiracy to sabotage the left. There is some evidence of intelligence agency involvement earlier in the history of feminism. Geek Feminism Wiki's timeline contains a very notable incident intersecting with establishment interests pre-2011: the sexual assault accusations made against Julian Assange in 2010. And the tech industry is closely intertwined with the surveillance state, so it is possible that geek feminism was promoted to distract tech employees from more substantive left-wing ideas. (Of course I am not anti-technology - it's technology that is enabling us to have this very discussion - but I'm wary of the institutions who control that technology.)

Arguably, tech feminism was eerily foreshadowed in Apple's 1984 ad for its personal computer. The ad looks absurd today, but was apparently very effective at persuading people that owning a personal computer would prevent computing technology being used to create a surveillance state. The ad begins with a crowd of identical-looking drably-dressed bald workers listening to a televised speech by a male leader preaching about censorship (“The information purification directives have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology where each worker may bloom secure from the pests conveying contradictory thoughts!”). All the workers are male as far as I can tell, unless there are some bald women among them. Suddenly, a brightly-dressed athletic woman, running away from armed policemen, throws a large hammer at the screen, symbolizing Apple's promise that “1984 won’t be like ‘1984’.”

Perhaps it's no coincidence that both feminism and the tech industry have more recently revealed their true colors in favor of information purification to keep out contradictory thoughts.