What a dork.
David Anderegg, a professor of psychology at Bennington College, says that merely mentioning terms like nerd or geek serves to perpetuate the stereotype. The words are damaging, much like racial epithets, he says, and should be avoided.
Oy.
I've never been really into people who get uptight about words that they find insulting, demeaning, or offensive. This is probably the most asinine example I've stumbled across, though. Words, in case it's still unclear to anyone, are merely tools that people use to explain ideas. They have no inherent power over us, and they're not even static in terms of what they mean. They are not something that should be feared, and stifling or banning or avoiding certain words gives them some sort of power that they should not have.
I'm a geek. and a bit of a nerd. Most of my friends are nerds or geeks. They are not only open and honest about this, many of them are proud and enthusiastic about this. Among us, the word is not an insult. It is our word now. We win. No one can hurt us with words like "geek" or "nerd" anymore ("dork" still stings a bit, though...). This sort of victory is empowering in a way that could never happen if the words were merely banned: they would be painful slurs we would be forced to fearfully and defensively pretend did not exist; instead, we have repurposed them into bold statements of identity and purpose.
Clearly, the problem is not the words themselves. They are merely collections of sounds, bearing no meaning aside from what exists in the mind of those who speak and hear that specific sequence of phonemes. They are only harmful if the person on the receiving end feels harmed by them. The real problem, the real source of harm, is the people who use "nerd" or "geek" as insults; indeed, the problem is that there are people who feel that the personalities defined as "nerd" or "geek" are deserving of insult, and that identification as a geek or nerd qualifies as an insult. These thuggish, anti-intellectual attitudes are the problem, not the words that they stupidly try to use as weapons. If these words are discouraged to the point of falling into disuse, as David Anderegg suggests, they are taken away from the geeks and nerds who have managed to reclaim them, and given special protection, preserved as hurtful, damaging words reserved for use by thugs and bullies bold and crass enough to disregard whatever taboo might be built around their usage. We shouldn't discourage the use of these words, we should discourage the negative associations with these words, and with the concepts and personas they represent.
I am inclined to think similar things about other epithets and slurs, but I feel like I'm only qualified to come out and make this declaration in this case, since I am a nerd/geek (and have been called one both affectionately and insultingly), but not a woman or racial minority or GBLT or another oppressed group; it's not my place to tell other people that they aren't allowed to be upset or insulted by a word. But it seems pretty obvious to me that to focus on the words is to ignore, to some degree, the attitudes and intentions that are the real problems.