I don't really care about Twilight, but...

... I thought this was an interesting article. I found the comments here about the reaction to Twilight fans in the geek crowd and online revealing. The comparisons with the reaction to Harry Potter are also very interesting.

I've always felt geekiness was a very male place, despite the increasing presence of young ladies with piercings, tattoos and odd coloured hair in comics shops. Representations of women have always been problematic, and I never felt that the sexy kick-ass chick was quite the answer seem people seemed to think. I boggled at the idea of Xena as a feminist icon, for example (although it would be foolish of me to try and speak for women who did find that image attractive) and while the soapier elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer made that a much more female-friendly show (and of course the Buffy/Angel relationship prefigures Twilight), it suffered a little from the feminism = sexy lesbians equation that gets into geeky creators heads when they try and make strong female characters (in this case Willow, although she got mired in all sorts of sick-making paganism crapola as well).

That kind of typical nerd "empowered" female just looks like a male fantasy to me, created by men for men. When you look at fantasy actually created by women and targetted at women you get something else entirely and I find the territorial squawking of the fanboys pretty funny.