Thanks a lot for your thorough reply. You certainly have a point that the kind of discrimination that nerds receive is in no way comparative to what homosexual

Thanks a lot for your thorough reply. You certainly have a point that the kind of discrimination that nerds receive is in no way comparative to what homosexuals have to put up with. Gay people get killed just for their sexual orientation alone, and that is certainly not comparable to the bullying nerds receive. But it was not my intention to claim that these two are the same, and if you got that from the "thought experiment" I described you misunderstood me. Still, I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings, yours or some other reader's, with what I wrote. My point was not so much to say "both groups are exactly equal in the discrimination they experience", but rather to raise awareness that there is, in fact, discrimination happening against nerds. People today are more sensitive to gay rights, and imagining that an article was about gays rather than nerds might help illustrate potential problems in that article. That said, let me point out one more time that I do not think that this particular article is especially bad. I've written it before that for the most part it is a fair depecition, yet it cannot resist the temptation to throw in some of the same old cliches that are well-suited to manifest a certain discriminatory picture of nerds. If you are right and the number of flattering articles is improving all the time, that would be a very welcome development. I certainly hope for it. But that doesn't mean we should accept anything less than that. I am not sure I agree with your assessment of people's opinions in the wider world, but even if it was a minority that discriminated it would not be acceptable.