Yesterday, Twitter exploded in joy at the news Serena Williams – tennis hero, role model, general BAMF – was 20 weeks pregnant. Amongst the hundreds of GIFs, congratulatory tweets and crying emojis, I saw a few people who were more than slightly puzzled. News of Serena’s pregnancy had prompted a few people to look up who the father was and they couldn’t believe that she was engaged to Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit.

It does seem an odd match, someone as athletic, powerful and generally cool as Serena Williams partnered with the co-founder of the nerdiest place on the internet, but the heart wants what it wants and if they’re happy together then good luck to them. However, nestled amongst happy people celebrating the news yesterday were a few tweets like this:

Tweets like this completely enrage me for so many reasons, but mainly because they play into a “Geeks getting the girl” rhetoric that I’m utterly sick of. You know the (incredibly heteronormative) story – a geeky boy loves a girl but she is in love with someone handsome and popular and can’t see the geek’s obvious superiority. We’re meant to feel sorry for the poor, lovelorn geeks, and like it’s unfair that the the girl fell for someone charming and attractive rather than the guy who can’t even look her in the eye. Then the geek then somehow “wins”, discredits the popular guy, and has the girl fall in love with him. Sometimes there’s a nice twist where the geek wins at the end but no longer fancies the woman in question and she is humiliated or punished for not having fancied him originally.

Being a nerd isn’t going to stop you from finding love, but being an entitled, bitter asshole will

I see this story in popular media all the time, and I hate it. So many fairy tales revolve around men going through trials and earning their brides, so many video games involve the protagonist earning the right to rescue or sleep with a woman, and so many films - Superbad, Can’t Hardly Wait, Zombieland, American Pie, Loser, Back To The Future - have the geek getting the girl in the end. It fits nicely within a circle of fuckery that also includes “The Friendzone” and “Nice Guys” and all ties back to the idea that women are things to be earned, prizes to be won, and if a woman doesn’t find you attractive then really it’s their fault because they’re just superficial and find things like confidence and high levels of personal grooming attractive.

You might think I’m overreacting, but this trope is dangerous. It leads to male nerds feeling angry, bitter, and hating women for not loving them. Sometimes this comes out in, ironically, Reddit threads dedicated to attacking famous women. Sometimes it comes out in things like Gamergate, where female gaming journalists and personalities received death/rape threats after having their addresses and personal information published online. Other times it comes out in a man going on a shooting spree and killing six people because women won't have sex with him.

And then we have Serena Williams engaged to the co-founder of Reddit, or Miranda Kerr getting engaged to the co-founder of Snapchat, or Talulah Riley marrying Elon Musk, and these men take it as proof that they’ll triumph in the end. They treat a sporting superstar’s happy pregnancy news as a “moral” to women everywhere that they should date boring nerds they aren't attracted to because they'll be rich and successful in the future. They reduce relationships to business transactions where women only want men for their money, and miss out a huge part of why these successful rich men are dating these successful beautiful women – namely, that as well as being clever and nerdy they had the charm, drive and passion required to make a business a success. These are all attractive qualities! Being a nerd is not a barrier to finding love, but you have to be fanciable as well. That's not because women are superficial beings, it's because people deserve to be in relationships with people they want rather than people who feel they “deserve” them. 

I’m not saying that women never will and never should fall for the nerds – I am married to one, actually, and we’re very happy together – but I am saying that no-one has the right to a sexual relationship and shaming people from not wanting to date you is a horrible thing to do. And you know what? It's also counter productive. Being a nerd isn’t going to stop you from finding love, but being an entitled, bitter asshole will. 

@jimsyjampots