Boyfriend-transmitted geekdom is an issue for women in geekdom where, if they happen to have been introduced to a geek skill, geek interest, or geek community by a former or current male partner (or even male friend), they are always viewed as an impostor geek.
Some women internalise this issue and spend a lot of time proving to themselves that they're still a "real" geek "despite" their initial introduction to a geek scene by a male partner or friend. Because of their knowledge of the stereotype, they're afraid of letting the side down.
This is the flipside of Here with my boyfriend: in "Here with my boyfriend" all geek women are falsely assumed to be present in geek communities primarily due to their male partner. In boyfriend-transmitted geekdom, the subset of women who were introduced (or are still being introduced) to geekdom by a male partner are viewed as lesser. These issues are closely related, both positioning men as real geeks and women as secondary, as limited to only being partners, apprentices and impostors. It also positions women with sexual partners as somehow lesser.
This is also a subcategory of a famous anti-pattern from Joanna Russ's book How To Suppress Women's Writing; a Denial of Agency attack.
Examples
- A guest post on the Geek Feminism blog in 2011 The Girlfriend and The Geek was read by many commenters as being an example of this issue. (See also Confession: I’ve been a girlfriend)
- In Geek feminist harassment at OSCON Nice Girl reported that some geek feminists told her to not describe herself truthfully as "here with my boyfriend"
- A games journo attending a comic show with her comic-writer boyfriend wonders how legit she is in Journalist's Secret Handshake .
