The Incredible Disappearing Female Computer Nerds, Ctd

Aaron Sorkin lui-meme responds to a blog-commenter on the portrayal of women in The Social Network, criticized by Dana McCourt here:

Believe me, I get it. It's not hard to understand how bright women could be appalled by what they saw in the movie but you have to understand that that was the very specific world I was writing about... Mark's blogging that we hear in voiceover as he drinks, hacks, creates Facemash and dreams of the kind of party he's sure he's missing, came directly from Mark's blog. With the exception of doing some cuts and tightening (and I can promise you that nothing that I cut would have changed your perception of the people or the trajectory of the story by even an inch) I used Mark's blog verbatim. Mark said, "Erica Albright's a bitch" (Erica isn't her real name--I changed three names in the movie when there was no need to embarrass anyone further), "Do you think that's because all B.U. girls are bitches?"

Facebook was born during a night of incredibly misogyny.

The idea of comparing women to farm animals, and then to each other, based on their looks and then publicly ranking them. It was a revenge stunt, aimed first at the woman who'd most recently broke his heart (who should get some kind of medal for not breaking his head) and then at the entire female population of Harvard.

More generally, I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren't the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80's. They're very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren't women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.)

And this very disturbing attitude toward women isn't just confined to the guys who can't get dates.

 

The rest is here. None of it addresses the real factual questions raised here by Irin Carmon.