Definitely, same here.

Geek: I’m a professional programmer who likes programming, so I probably can’t avoid being a geek even if I wanted to. Socially, I suppose I am a geek in the bad way (no makeup, no social skills) and the good way (gets Douglas Adams references, willing to talk about math). If I had to pick a mainstream American culture hat to wear, it would be geek, but I’m not entirely happy with it. I’ve got a secret liberal arts intellectual hat that I can’t let go of quite enough to resign myself to a life of conversations about Elvish and Middle Earth weapons design.

Feminist: I’m a feminist if you define feminist as generally supporting the right of women to live as they please and be respected and not abused. I have plenty of war stories from the trenches of woman in geekdom, as female software developers will. I’m a feminist if you define feminist as getting hopping up and down mad at sexism on a regular basis. But I’m not a good feminist, which is to say, I don’t follow the party line (in very similar ways I am not a good liberal or a good atheist). I don’t like feminism 101 and I don’t agree with half of it. But I am a feminist. Just not a good one.

Woman: Which brings me to the last point. I am technically a woman, and I have no problem with that, but it’s not a strong part of my identity. I know that a lot of women feel really comfortable around other women, or only feel comfortable around other women. I have my usual level of awkwardness around women as around men. My husband is my best friend (really). When I’m in a knitting circle or something I feel kind of like an imposter– you’re letting me into your space because of my gender, but you don’t know, I’m not really one of you. I’m not sure why that is. I think that’s part of why I’m uncomfortable with a lot of feminism. I don’t implicitly trust women, or implicitly distrust men. I went to a women’s book group for a while, not feminist, just women only, and they started talking about how men had no emotions. To maintain the peace I would have had to agree, and I didn’t, so I left. Not hating people based on gender is really important to me, whether it’s women or men. Women are not my people. People are my people (or maybe little furry aliens are my people). In any case, feminism just seems like a step along the way to a better society, an important one, but not the end-all by any means.

I have a female body. Identifying myself as a woman is not something that comes easily to me. I’m not womanly in any way that I can easily identify, except physically. I wear clothes from the women’s section – because they fit better and are generally more comfortable than clothes in the men’s. The typically female activities I engage in such as knitting and cooking – knitting I view as something highly akin to programming, and cooking is just really tasty applied chemistry. I don’t do makeup, I wear flat shoes, I have odd ideas about relationships, and the only thing I want to raise is a cat. In a room full of women, it is rare that I feel comfortable and not like an impostor.

I’ve earned my living as a helpdesk worker (and I actually prefer that to trying to carve out code – my biggest problem there is I’m lazy and don’t want to have to re-solve problems other people have already resolved) and I know I’m more technically savvy than the average bear, so to speak. I can beat most male helpdesk types I know hands down when it comes to taking geek purity tests and similar, and I’m certainly able to learn and retain technical information without too many troubles. But it’s not my sole focus and passion – in fact, it isn’t even a central focus and passion, it’s just one of many. I’m also keen on history (I’ve occasionally tried to create a timeline of historical events for the sheer heck of it, so I can get a sense of what happened when); I’m fascinated by the sciences in general (although I tend to find mathematics and theoretical physics entirely too dry for my tastes); I’m also keen on mythology and story; the history of language; anatomy; physiology; medicine; psychology; gardening; crime theory and a whole heap of other subjects.

I’ve found through conversation that this generalised interest in everything known to mankind is fairly characteristic of people who write for enjoyment (whether or not they’re published authors, or people making a living out of writing). So I identify as a writer. It’s what I am, far more than a geek. Geekery is what pays the bills. Writing is how I live.

I have no problem at all with calling myself a geek, but that’s because I’ve come to define it in terms of that personality of happily obsessive poking and tinkering; I think when I was twenty, I really was worried on some semi-conscious level that the real geeks wouldn’t ever respect me if I didn’t take a strong stance on vi vs. emacs. These days, I feel like I’ve been too many rounds to worry about the surface stuff.