I'm not saying that people shouldn't love the art they love. But I am suggesting that the mean-spiritedness of geek culture—a mean-spiritedness that is often, but by no means always, directed at women—is not an accident. A culture that values knowledge and access above all things is going to be a culture dedicated to hierarchy and to power—to defining who is in and who is out. Such defining involves, and is meant to involve, a good deal of antagonism, score-settling, back-biting, and cruelty. There's not much point in defining yourself as the knower if you cannot define others as those who do not know."