Last year Jocelyn Codner was stuck in place — frustrated with her career and the place she was living.
She and her boyfriend had struggled to make friends in an upstate New York town for two years. Ms. Codner, 28, said there was no youth culture, not even with a large university nearby.
“It just wasn’t our place,” she said. “We were really depressed.”
So they turned their sights to Pittsburgh, drawn by the stories of other young people who were flocking here and making a difference.
“We love the city,” raved Ms. Codner, who now lives in Shadyside. “It’s our kind of people and our kind of environment.”
But she wasn’t sure how to find people who shared her rather uncommon interests, which include an online romance book club called Vaginal Fantasy, the brainchild of actress Felicia Day.
Ms. Codner, a self-described geek whose greatest delight is talking “about true crime in inappropriate places,” saw the hashtag “Geek Girl Brunch” (http://geekgirlbrunch.com) float across her computer screen. Going down the Twitter rabbit hole, she discovered an international organization of pop culture fanatics with about 50 chapters around the world (45 in the U.S.) and plans to start twice that number. Pittsburgh needed one more volunteer officer to officially launch, and she was it.
“I thought, ‘I want to be a part of this.’ I wanted to make sure I had people around me and had a support system [after the move].”
She knew she’d made the right choice at the first group brunch.
“I didn't have to worry about putting up a front the first time I met them,” Ms. Codner said.
Kristin Killmeyer, 28, of Squirrel Hill, agreed. “It is like the one thing I look forward to each month. It's a huge part of my life now.”
Geek Girl Brunch isn’t just for like-minded women to “nerd out” about their favorite fandom while eating together once a month, its members say. It’s also a place of acceptance in a male-dominated subculture where women haven’t always been welcomed.
“Women who are classified as nerds and geeks have had a hard time fitting in, and it becomes harder when you are an adult,” Ms. Codner said.
“We reach out to people who aren't represented or don't have a voice in the geek world,” said Lis Day, 30, of Castle Shannon.
In its first year, Geek Girl Brunch’s Pittsburgh chapter has grown to more than 150 members. There are several off-shoot programs, including a local Vaginal Fantasy book club, and the group is looking to do more community outreach. They signed up several new members a month ago with a booth at the Wizard World Comic Con.
Members said the group prides itself on being inclusive.
“We’re all geeky and kind of weird, and it’s OK,” said Laura Myers, a 25-year-old Mt. Lebanon resident. “It's OK to be weird.”
“We create a safe space for women who feel like they have never had one without fear of being made fun of,” Ms. Codner said. “We want you to be healthy mentally, physically and socially.”
They welcome members of Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ community, an expansion of Geek Girl Brunch International’s embrace of “identifying geek girls.”
“Those who identify as nonbinary and gender fluid are also welcome, as long as they’re cool with taking on the geeky girl identity,” Ms. Codner said.
“We already have so many labels that we don't want to push anyone away,” Ms. Day explained. “We just want to talk about geeky things and not get judged.”
For Lenore Usher, 28, of Bloomfield, a friend’s invite to a Geek Girl Brunch last fall was a revelation. She came out as transgender in February 2015, but her short, wavy haircut and occasional 5 o’clock shadow made her wonder how she would be treated.
“I haven’t started my transition yet,” she explained. “I still look like a guy.”
“Everyone has been really welcoming. It’s just great to be in a group that recognizes you as the gender you are.”
Ms. Usher grew up in what she describes as a conservative and Catholic family in Pleasant Hills. After graduating from a Catholic university in Ohio, she returned to Pittsburgh and realized she didn’t fit in as a man anymore.
While she has come out as a transgender woman to her immediate family members, she said they don’t understand yet, so they “act like it isn’t happening.”
Ms. Usher said Geek Girl Brunch is the “best thing that’s happened to my social life in the past two years.”
Her new friends have become her support system and another family. She was a bridesmaid in two weddings in October and is eager to begin her transition soon. While she knows the road ahead will be hard, she said Pittsburgh is the place she belongs.
“I get really defensive about Pittsburgh because I love it a lot. We have our issues like any other town, but I don’t think Pittsburgh is as backward as people think,” Ms. Usher said.
She described how she recently went to a dance in a skirt and “no one even looked twice at me.”
Ms. Usher feels Pittsburgh is the perfect place for Geek Girl Brunch.
“I think people are willing to listen to you. Even if they don’t understand it, they are willing to learn.”
Sarah Core is a Mt. Lebanon-based freelance writer: sarahcore@gmail.com.
First Published: December 4, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
