Not to my surprise, all these comments come from the same little collision in my social venn diagram; those who consider themselves to be a part of geek culture, combined with those who like to think they’re “edgy”.

Edgy. Never has a word made me feel so much shame on behalf of those I know.

You know the type. They’ve had a makeover, but deep down they’re just still Beavis and Butthead sniggering in front of a glowing screen. They equate inserting sexual innuendo out of context into conversation as being the same as engaging in witty banter. They got a nose-ring after they saw one on Neighbours.

Geeks by nature like to think they accept weirdness. They’re, supposedly, the ones who got beaten up at school for preferring tinkering with their electronics kit to playing soccer, the ones who always ended up doing all the work in a group project. The culture of the nerd is vast and all-encompassing. There is a certain comaderie and an expectation to have open arms for those other persecuted types.

At first, this is what we used the internet to do. We met other weirdos and carved out our own places. Then, the realisation sunk in. On the internet, we had power. And a vocal number of us seem to think that now it is time to start dealing out the harshness to other human beings they see as being different to themselves.

The part that angers me most is that they still like to pretend they’re oh-so-edgy and risque – so long as it’s what’s popular.

Okay, you don’t find men in skirts visually appealing. That’s fine. But I bet you wouldn’t go ALLCAPSsing around the internets about how traumatised you were if you saw someone who wasn’t sexually appealing to you but was didn’t stand out in terms of behaviour or dress. Unless you’re a gigantic whining worm, but I don’t tend to subscribe to those people so you can whine at lesiure out of my earshot, thanks.

One or two comments I can ignore, but over the last month there has been a stream of cross-dresser hate in the geeky dialogues I follow online. Always aimed at men, of course. It’s difficult to accuse women of cross-dressing in Western cultures these days, unless they don a fake moustache.

But there’s something about men playing in this area that makes us ‘open-minded’ nerds quiver, apparently. Women can wear pants, of course. But men in dresses?! THIS IS A WORLD TURNED TOPSY TURVY.

You can’t help but draw a line between this attitude and the old “female attributes have less worth than male attributes” point of view that feminists have been attempting to throw off for the last century or so.

Masculine women do cop flak (“She’s bossy,” as opposed to “He’s driven,” perhaps) but I don’t see those attitudes popping up as frequently in the nerdular regions I frequent. However, a lot of Western geeks seem to still have a huge problem with males possessing feminine attributes.

And I don’t think it boils down to something as simple as “oh I like looking at pretty women but I am not sexually attracted to this man in a skirt and by seeing one I am traumatised forever” because dude, man up. SEE WAT I DID THERE LOZ.