We all know a nerd. We all know when we need them, and when we want to avoid them. They’re handy with fixing the Ethernet connection; not so much with jazzing up the conversation at a work party. Married to a nerd? You’ll know.

[…]

I dropped my dear child off at the elementary school, and watched the other kids run away to avoid being trapped in an intensely detailed conversation about the latest thing he’d picked up on. But nobody calls kids “nerds” these days. It’s a word you hear less and less. […] Are we witnessing… nerdocide? I don’t think it’s only the nerds. The same thing has happened to tomboys, too. Maybe I’m showing my age, but where are all the girls who dirt-bike? All the teenage girls I see these days look the same. Where are the girls in oil-stained overalls, talking about engine parts? And then there’s lesbians. A recent Gallup poll gives us some (nerdy) stats on this. The number of lesbians went up, all the way through the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s… but then it hit the down slope.

When I first saw this, it really didn’t make sense. We’re all getting more tolerant nowadays, right? So why the shift? I know that lesbians aren’t all tomboys (or vice versa), but it looks like they’re both heading in the same direction: south. I couldn’t help thinking it’s the same thing that’s happening to the nerds. But LGBT identification overall is going up. Way up. It’s not that there are more gay guys: it’s that there are more trans people, as well as categories we didn’t have until recently, like non-binary. There are even people who say they’re queer and straight, which really does make me feel old.

So, are these new LGBT people (even the straight queers!) actually just the nerds and the tomboys from back in the day? It feels like the two things at least might be linked.