The Private Sector: The Girls in Grey (Part 2)

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Welcome to Part Two of a Very Special Mr. Belved – er… I mean, The Private Sector. In yesterday’s column, I hardly scratched the surface, hoping to present the perspective of the female members in the growing online Ghostbusters community (which I affectionately for some reason continue to refer to as The Girls in Grey). In yesterday’s column, it seemed that many of the women agree on how they were introduced to the fan community, how they participate, and how passionate they are about their fandom. But it was when I started talking about personal matters that parallel lines started skewing.

I’m not going to lie; I get nervous when a member of the opposite sex sees my bedroom. Get your mind out of the gutter (but feel free to snicker at the possible inadequacies as a lover that such a statement might initially invoke, I’ll take the cheap laugh). I’m a fanboy and it shows. We’re not talking “40-Year-Old Virgin” bad, but I’ve got Ghostbusters and Star Wars swag on the bookshelf (which also is home to stereotype inducing comic books, of course). It’s a true testament to any future proceedings with friends or potential romantic links when they find out that I’m a fanboy. But my questioning of the Girls in Grey gave a unique opportunity to hear about the shoe being on the other foot. I realized that I was conversing with ladies that had boyfriends into football, MMA, and watching people get hit in the junk on Spike… while they were in the garage perfecting the cyclotron on their replica Proton Pack.

I decided to ask the Girls in Grey how their friends and loved ones outside of the online community reacted to their fandom. Especially given the great number of proppers and costuming ladies that responded, I was curious to hear their responses. Knowing how the people in my life are either extremely receptive or immediately raise an eyebrow when they hear that I’ve built my own Proton Pack, it was enjoyable hearing the response of Traveler of Games who told me, “People either love you or hate you in costume. With friends, it’s a hit-and-miss. It’s the same with co-workers and others. Some people tease me, others don’t care, but when it comes to co-workers, the majority either love the costume or my ‘courage’ to show what I love in public.”

Continue Reading This Article …

(The Private Sector is a weekly syndicated column written by Troy Benjamin presented every Wednesday on Proton Charging, Ghostbusters.net, GBFans, and via Cross the Streams as an op-ed look at the goings on in the world of the Ghostbusters franchise. Learn more about Troy at http://www.troybenjamin.com)

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(Continued from Previous Post)

The majority of the Girls in Grey expressed similar sentiments, although it sounded like a good deal of them were used to a reaction of surprise when others find out about their fandom. Indeed, the term “fanboy” does indicate a specific gender. And the common misconception of fan communities is the lonely pale guy in his parents’ basement – so the response of surprise to anyone outside of that stereotype is understandable. But friends, family, significant others all seem to respond differently to the fandom of our female members.

One member, who asked to remain anonymous, informed me that her boyfriend was not only uncomfortable with her fandom, but also was uncomfortable with the fact that she was posting pictures of herself and talking with a group of fanboys. The jealous type exists no matter what the scenario or relationship, but with this particular Girl in Grey, he was jealous of Ghostbusters. “At one point, he told me he felt that I was more into Ghostbusters than I was into him.”

I didn’t think to ask the follow-up if she was still with said significant other, but what’s to be jealous of? It’s just a group of fans, all with common ground, gathering in one place to discuss and explore a franchise they hold dear to their hearts. It’s not like she was getting hit on or receiving marriage proposals… right?

Wait…

Actually, she was.

“In response to one of the photos I posted, I was told that it would ‘look better lying on the floor of (his) bedroom,” said the anonymous Girl in Grey. Another told me that when she was asking for opinions on flightsuits, a member had sent her a link to a choice ensemble from Fredericks of Hollywood. I’m sure that the latter was in jest, but obviously a bit forward. And thanks to my day job being taken over by a large corporation, sexual harassment training has told me that it doesn’t matter what your intentions are, even if it was in jest. Based upon the responses that I received, almost all of the girls (there were two exceptions, and one of which said she had been “indirectly asked if she was seeing someone”) had been hit on or the focus of flirtation at least on one occasion.

For the record I, your humble columnist, have been posting and around the community for (my God) over fifteen years… not once have I been hit on. It’s cool. Just saying.

Despite my complete lack of personal attention, for many of the Girls in Grey it sounds like it’s a frequent occurrence. “Over and over in strange ways but hey, I have to give some of the guys credit for originality,” Michelle told me. “Some private messages have come my way that were down right crude and based simply on the fact that I fall into the ‘female category.’”

While it’s unfair to say that every member on a message forum or chat room is guilty of making fandom awkward for the women trying to participate, all that it takes is one person to be overwhelming and unbearable to points that escape is the only solution. Several members told me of one particular instance where a female member had posted a picture of herself on one of the forums and received so many direct and forward private messages and comments out in the open that she eventually felt the bombardment was too uncomfortable to continue visiting and has not been back since.

Again, no love for Troy. Fifteen years. Just saying.

But despite love connections, being a minority, breaking social stereotypes, and the rare exceptions of those that have run for the hills: the Girls in Grey say that they’re here to stay. (Hey, I can make a rhyme every time… coming soon to The Private Sector, Troy’s Green Eggs to Ghostbusters analogy.) Some tell me that they enjoy the fact that they’re part of a small, tight-knit group of females and that it has made them bigger fans of the series and larger fans in general because of the friends and relationships that they’ve made through the online Ghostbusters community. Despite some of the social pressures and nuisances, every response that I received was overwhelmingly positive about the encounters they were having in this ever-growing community. While many still may look at it as “A Boys Club,” and may continue to do so well after these articles have been buried into the recesses of the internets, you can’t deny the fact that there’s a growing group of ladies out there dialing in on their 14.4 modems (that’s what the kids do nowadays, right?), ready to chat about a franchise that they’ve come to know and love and become extremely passionate about over the years.

Special thanks to all those Girls in Grey that took the time to respond to my questionnaire and to those that entrusted me with their honest thoughts and opinions. The Private Sector will be back to form with more of my semantics and gibberish next week, but as always if you have thoughts, questions, found more typos, or you want to break the fifteen year fast and ask me out to a steak dinner, leave them here in the comments section of your favorite Ghostbusters fansite or drop me an email at [email protected]!

(The Private Sector is a weekly syndicated column written by Troy Benjamin presented every Wednesday on Proton Charging, Ghostbusters.net, GBFans, and via Cross the Streams as an op-ed look at the goings on in the world of the Ghostbusters franchise. Learn more about Troy at http://www.troybenjamin.com)

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Good read, Troy. You made me laugh too. “Fifteen Years… Just saying.” I’m also not a womanizer in any light, my gf can vouch for that. But the “…would look better lying on the floor of (his) bedroom” comment made me chuckle. My hat goes off to the girls in grey that are here to stay. It sounds like they’re troopers.

:cool:

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I sometimes wonder the majority of the issues with women being shy on these forums might stem from the fact she’s afraid she might get “hit on” or something as opposed to the whole “leaving the men alone to their poker night”, but it might be a 50/50 there.

So I figure it might balance between the apprehensiveness of being hit on as well as being afraid of joining the boys in the interest, but I think it more leans in the direction of the comments and flirtaceous remarks coming their direction.

Chances are the boyfriend might think he’ll loose her to another Ghosbuster, that’s all I can think of…lol…as silly as that sounds right?In actuality, a woman is going to get hit on in pretty much any enviroment (if the boyfriend isn’t around or if she doesn’t appear to be “with someone”), ESP. in a VERY Specific NICHE crowd like Ghostbusters or anything Sci-Fi related. There’s no getting away from that, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Like a mountain biking group, same thing might still apply. The boyfriend might want to stay home and veg in front of the T.V. while she’ll go biking. She might get hit on there as well.

But, I think there’s more of an ENTHUSIASM when a Ghosbustin’ man and a Ghosbustin’ ladys eye’s meet from across a convention hall and the guy sees visions of him and her in the future Ghosbuster sequel running together on the beach with there proton

packs chasin’ slimer or shootin’ ghosts all the while when he approaches her and performs, quoting Peter Venkman “All NEW cheap moves”. lol

I think, for some, achieving the dream of having a Ghostbuster for a girlfriend is a goal a nerd might set for himself as one of his achievements in life and when the ratio of GB men to GB women are 5 to 1, well, let the competiton begin?

Upon reading this article, and comparing it with my own personal observations

Actually, most women I’ve met so far…had boyfriends doing the Ghostbuster’s thing as well, so it’s kind of moot, at least from what I’ve observed in my short time “out there” in the GB’ing community.

I don’t think I’ve met a WOMAN that didn’t have a boyfriend that was into the same GB’ing or Sci-Fi related stuff as he was, they were actually BOTH equally passionate about the hobby.

Depends on how the pictures are being posted…I have something to say about that, I have seen some risque GB uniforms on these ladies..you know the “sexy” one where you’re seeing a lot of cleavage, I can’t say I can fault guys for bombarding the post with responses which are innuendo in nature. So I guess it depends on HOW the pictures are being posted.

It’s kind of like when women go out wearing some low cut tank top and skimpy outfit, then complains guys in public making remarks.

Now if it’s just the same type of outfit that men wear, then no biggie.

I mean it’s one thing to be just plain crude, but posting such photos is going to probably get some kind of slight innuendo even from the gentlemanly of gents. (But I think some guys keep it to themselves, so they don’t hear from that one poster that says, “Dudes, chill out, stop drooling” when in fact, he’s drooling just as much himself".

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Great read.

And yes its sad… Eheh

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Troy = Zoidburg.

Girls in the hobby = Welcomed.

Guys who hit on the girls = Proof that humanity will someday procreate.

That doesn’t mean I’m endorsing pestering the ladies. I’m just saying that it’s perfectly normal for guys to do their best to ask a woman out if she interests him ( and vice versa. ) If not for hitting on girls, there would be no future generations of humans. Sure, it can go too far but what exactly is the “perfect” way to ask someone out? There is none, every attempt also runs the chance of being offensive or coming off wrong. It’s all personal opinion. My only regret with this scenario is that the quotient of like-minded female hobbyists is so unbalanced from their male counterparts that girls are going to get a lot of attention they don’t want. Regrettable but also unavoidable to some extent. You’ll find this anywhere.

I can think of at least one costume/prop building member who met his wife through a prop board. They’re married and just had a kid last year. There’s something to be said about people with like-minded hobbies finding each other. ( My g/f is into that Renaissance Fair stuff. It’s not my bag, but I respect that she has her and I have mine. ) We sort of met through our hobbies. She was into costumes and her last b/f wasn’t. ( He was into arson, burning her place and going to prison for 14 years. Long story, I’ll tell you about it someday. ) Thank God I had the nerve to hit on someone within my own hobbies otherwise she would have been home with a cold last night and no one would have been there to bring her chicken soup.

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This is the fisrt Private Sector I’ve ever read but I will be back for the next one. That was great.

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And now, Troy is king!

I’m all for meeting significant others and love connections being made. Especially with arsonists… wait… please have that stricken from the record… but the impression that I got was that the internet is just as “real” as real life: some guys just don’t take the hint when she just wants to be friends.

PS: It’s been too long since we’ve hung out… soon? Build day?

Where is this magical land you speak of? All my ex’s had no interest in any of my fanboydom… and I sure see a whole lot of bored girlfriends at CCI every year…

Glad to have you aboard! Hopefully I don’t let you down… but now that you’re one of us, if you wouldn’t mind stepping over here and taking this free stress test…

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Heh. I’m reminded of hawking self-published comic books in the Artist’s Alley at Wizard World.

I did so one year with my male colleagues. Sales were lukewarm.

Another year, I brought my girlfriend. I can’t rule out the possibility of other variables in this incredibly uncontrolled experiment, HOWEVER, I can say anecdotally that having a woman at the table brought in Y chromosome-bearers like nothing else.

There were so many questions posed to her; “who are you?”, “did you draw this?”, “do you come to a lot of these?” and general questions fishing for her relationship status. She became something of a novelty. She wasn’t dressed like some of the tacky promoters large companies employ, and she was imminently approachable. Our table became a bugzapper for fanboys. She took it in stride, and there weren’t any truly appalling advances.

Still, it underlined a certain lack of grace some men exemplify when suddenly overpowered by the notion of meeting a woman that may be into the very thing that they may have been ridiculed for appreciating. And to be clear, that generalization is not applicable to the entire male fanboy population, just a narrow and often visible slice.

Looked at another way, this behavior isn’t entirely difficult to understand.

For the purposes of this example, let’s presume that you’re a single guy looking for a single female. You’d likely be looking within a certain geographic area. Say Chicago, a city of 3 million people. Looking for someone 25 or older? 1.5 million people. Women comprise 51.1% of Chicago. Now you’re down to 750,000. Then you start breaking out the segment of the population by a specific age range and availability. Then even further by specific interests, who you find attractive, compatible lifestyles, and of course, who finds you desirable in return.

I’m going somewhere with this.

The odds of finding someone that is bright, into your niche of fandom, mutually attracted AND available become acutely minute. I can almost understand how some guys might trip over themselves to swoop in without hesitation on Ghostbuster fan with ovaries. Almost.

I brought a girlfriend with to a comic convention, and numerous fanboys hit on her. I’ve also had it go the other way, in which I was followed around by a fangirl for about a day at the Con. Sounds great? Or like I’m gloating? No. It’s quite offputting. And for all I know, this individual may have been pretty cool. But the way she chose to express her interest was jarring to the point of halting any sort of dialogue. It’s not often that a guy gets to experience something akin to how men might doggedly pursue women, but holy hell, it was unpleasant.

In retrospect, doubtless I’ve conducted myself in a similar fashion at some point in the past. At a bar, in some social setting… we all do it at one time or another. That behavior simply gets a little amped up when you find another person that happens to be into the very same rarefied thing you are.

In summation: regardless of your sex or sexuality, a little tact goes a long way. Even then, don’t presume that a concurrent hobby will lead to anything past a discussion of what ribbon cable to use when building a Proton Pack. Hot, hot ribbon cable talk.

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Aww…you had a girl fangirl followin’ ya around…ain’t that sweet? lol j/k

Right, and perhaps knowing THIS…some guys might have to force themselves to put on the breaks, biting their lip, tongue-in-cheek, yadda, yadda, yadda. And not seem so intense in their approach and the “20-questions” they may ask any woman attending a convention.

Quoting Peter Venkman, “We guys like to do with what We call ‘self-control’!”. (not sure if that was the exact quote)

LOL

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Well put, groschopf. Amazing what an effect a female can have on the male of the species, eh?

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Groschopf gets fangirls following him around. All I get is security doing the same. Move over Zoidburg, make room for Rodney. No respect.

I’ve seen it both the way that Evil Tony describes and the way Netsolo describes.

There’s plenty of women whose b/f is in the hobby and when you’re single, it seems like those are the ONLY ones out there.

There’s also plenty of women whose b/f is NOT in the hobby and when you’re single, you realize that either way you’re still single and neither one of these types of fan girls are remotely interested in you, so you curl up into the warm hive of building props and sobbing gently to yourself as you work in your shop night after night while wondering what’s so wrong with you that no woman will…

But I digress.

( Yes, Troy, it’s been too long. It feels like only months ago that I saw you working on your pack at Sean’s but now that I think about it, it was… 2007? I’m taking this Sunday off but then the Sunday after am resuming operations over at Sean’s new place every Sunday until our latest projects are done. )

I got to thinking about the similarities between gamer girls/guys and prop girls/guys. In the gamer world, the vast majority of girls I know prefer to play single player and enjoy the story offline while most guys I know are all about online and go for that certain level of testosterone driven competition. ( Thusly why the L4D world knows me as “Chicago Ted”, the unspoken legend of zombie extermination. )

Prop guys and girls aren’t much different. Guys are vocal and competitive on the boards. By contrast the girls on a forum are… Are… Something, something, ponies, something, cellphone, something clothes shopping, something “Are you even listening to me?!” something. I forget the rest. I was playing L4D.

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Hot, hot ribbon cable talk.

That’s all I got from this, and it is amazing.

Nah I kid, love the article, Troy; and love the following discussion, great stuff.

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Gurls hab cooties!!!

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So, when will you do the article about fan persons with alternate lifestyles?

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Who cares about them?

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This is a fantastic topic I have recently been mulling in my brain.

I am a girl, have been all my life, and it doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

I have also been a GB lover since I was born. I WANTED to be a GhostBuster as a kid, and didn’t think twice about my gender changing that. I still do and it doesn’t appear to be a wavering.

It’s been a strange experience with my costuming.

All my costuming and creating career I’ve hit this really strange wall that was described aptly before as hit or miss, a common on is

*Cool costume! Wait, you are a chick? That’s, like, kind of sick!

You aren’t a guy, why are you costuming that?*

There has been mostly surprise and raised eyebrows.

I’ve had several men privately contact me and say they were surprised a young woman would tackle a character or creation, and they were complimentary about it, they just didn’t want to tell me publically.

Lol.

Most memorable was a private email from a fellow costumer who realized I was a girl and sent something like;

‘Hey I so love your Grima Wormtongue costume, but I just wanna know. You are a chick, right? Were you always one, or not? And, like, are you one of this chicks who thinks they are a man, and maybe you will get a gender change one day? Don’t worry! I really don’t want to be intrusive, and I am totally cool with whatever you are!’

But, strange faces and occasional repulsed comments aside, I have felt much welcome and honor in the land of costuming.

As also said above, there is a creepy level of testosterone that is suddenly friending and watching. It seems to be a thing of ‘hotness’.. a chick who games, likes action movies, like, armour and sword play, AND costumes like my favourite characters! HAWT!’ :sigh:

Evil Tony sums it up perfectly;

Exactly what I am discovering.

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[quote=“InKibuster”]

As also said above, there is a creepy level of testosterone that is suddenly friending and watching. It seems to be a thing of ‘hotness’.. a chick who games, likes action movies, like, armour and sword play, AND costumes like my favourite characters! HAWT!’ :sigh:

Evil Tony sums it up perfectly;

[quote]

Right, I mean this is probably the complete OPPOSITE of the Carrie Bradshaw/ Sex in the City interests that another category of women have. LOL.

I mean, which interests you more?

Them

or them?

LOL…hmmmmmm :blush:

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Why are they hoarding toys in the middle of a park? Oh wait, Supergirl has a Santa’s hat on. I see.

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Thats one mighty fine spiderwoman!