Neckbeards
A draft of this was first published on Cohost.
I'm wary of people who use "neckbeard" in the pejorative. In my head this shouldn't be surprising. In the abstract, nobody respectable is openly advocating mocking people's appearances. But the "neckbeard" characterological figure has two special properties: it's creep-coded; and it resembles a lot of trans and autistic people 1. For people who hate creeps but whose conscience denies them body-shaming and weirdo-mockery, this is the forbidden fruit.
Invoking the neckbeard involves a sort of charcuterie of prejudice, with little bites of everything from anti-autism to gender policing. "Ew, look at the fat guy with man boobs and unkempt facial hair. The fuck is his body language? I bet he only remembers to shower twice a month." This is socially lubricating shit-talk. Its purpose is to affirm that the person you're talking to is in the in-group for knowing that showering is good. I always thought it would be funny if we went all the way, in the style of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory: one party says "I consider you to be in an in-group" and the canned response is "I appreciate that. What is the in-group, and who is the Other?"
Of course there's another dimension to anti-neckbeard speech that makes it feel permissible to people who know better in every other arena-- it can reflect past bad experiences with misogynists, or at least the culturally disseminated fear of having a bad experience with one. It's hard to really begrudge someone's nervous system telling them that the guy who resembles the bad characterological figure is bad. What irks me is when people speak with their nervous system and, after that initial reaction, rationalize that as more "correct" than the values they've developed through conversation. I have somatic responses to people who remind me of certain loud men in my life for reasons between me, God, and my therapist. That's why I'm not hedging my bets: those experiences don't entitle me to talk shit to or about them.
A lot of prejudice wears the hat of a half-therapy-speak, half-internet-speak syncresis. "Stop tone-policing me for my feelings" is par for the course when I talk about this kind of thing. My least favorite is "It's not that deep." Or, as Sheldon would say it: "You're no longer in the in-group, because you were saying it's bad to insult a guy who reminded someone of a guy, real or imagined, that hates women." Of course nobody will tell you that you're no longer in the in-group, respect their boundaries, you pig. I think someone conspiratorially minded would believe this is a ruse or a lie, but I disagree. The speaker genuinely believes this is a valid response, because they are speaking with their nervous system to the exclusion of their stated values. Or in vernacular: "Fuck your politics, I'm trusting my gut."
When I was in high school, I got a fedora-- a little gray thing, two sizes too small for my massive head 2 but nonetheless complementary to band tees and plaid cargo shorts. My girlfriend at the time, speaking from her gut instincts in the way I described above, told me I wasn't allowed to wear it. This was a boundary of hers, that I didn't resemble a neckbeard.
With the gifts of time and theory I can explain the web of feelings I had about that. How her hip shots at neckbeards were always creepingly similar to called shots at me, how I felt like a barely unacceptable target. How whining about fedoras is an embodied response I'd like to respect ceteris paribus but this is fork-tongued gossip that makes neurotypicals 3 look like sphinxes spouting riddles. How I am having a somatic response to this too but I would not get the language to explain why until six years and more than six genders later. How, ultimately, sometimes you need to get over your entitlement to personal comfort in the name of assuming people are less credible based on your millisecond vibe check. How this is about autism, and about gender, but I don't want to play oppression poker and compare our five worst protected characteristics over this because you should know better anyway.
It's just that deep.