Like their identical cousins the Men’s Rights Activists, GamerGaters have a bizarre fondness for terrible graphics and “memes” and collages of blurry screenshots designed – if that’s the word for it – to spread their sometimes incomprehensible propaganda.
The graphic above, found on Twitter, is my favorite GamerGate graphic so far, I think, and not only because it looks like a famous old Windows screensaver gone wrong. No, this little graphic wins my heart because it so baldly, if inadvertently, reveals the sheer ridiculous hypocrisy of GamerGaters claims of victimhood, and the intellectual bankruptcy of their #NotYourShield campaign.
In the graphic, as you can see, GamerGate’s mascot Vivian James, the perpetually petulant girl gamer who wants to do nothing but game, tries to fend off an array of accusations and epithets swirling around her. “Cis White Male,” “Misogynist,” “Rapist,” “KKK,” “MRA.”
But Vivian James can’t be any of those things, apparently, because she’s a GIRL. NOT YOUR SHIELD!
While it’s certainly true that Vivian James is not a cis white male, or a rapist or a member of the KKK, it’s also true that she is COMPLETELY IMAGINARY.
Unlike all those GamerGaters who are indeed cis white males, misogynists, rapists, nazis and MRAs.
If you’re trying to change the perception that your movement is made up of a bunch of entitled (and, FWIW, mostly white) manchildren who feel threatened by real women with opinions different from their own, you might want to think twice about using a manic pixel dream girl whose slogan is “shut up and play” as your, yep, shield.
Oh, I know, there are real women involved in GamerGate. But aside from Vivian James and the non-gaming “based mom” Christina Hoff Sommers, and perhaps our friend Cameralady, it’s doubtful even most GamerGaters could name more than one or two, if that.
EDIT: As several people on Twitter have reminded me, I forgot to mention one of the most creepy things about Vivian J. — the color scheme of her sweater is apparently a reference to a really creepy, rapey meme called “piccolo dick.” Which you can read about here, if for whatever reason you want to.
Also: the phrase “manic pixel dream girl,” a reference to the manic pixie dream girl trope, popped into my head partway through writing this. But after posting this I decided to google it to see if anyone else had used the phrase — it seems like a pretty obvious one. And indeed people have. Here’s a cartoon called Manic Pixel Dream Girl, an account of growing up as a female video gamer.
Right, because this isn’t racist AT ALL.
https://twitter.com/SlushStuff/status/521793824621088770
I’m going to get beat up for this I’m sure.
There seems to be a couple of pro GG female YouTubers who epitomize the typical stereotypes – the two who did the live interview with the HuffPost a week or two ago. Listening to them made me cringe. They are so young. That’s all I can think to excuse their uninformed hysterics. They became noticeably emotionally worked up over things that had already been proven untrue. They really do believe the line of crap they are spewing. It just seems cultish to me.
Oh and there was another I noticed a while back who does lets plays bent over the camera. Seems to me like some of these ladies are simply looking to keep their mostly male viewers tuning in.
I’m guessing Hoff-Summers is the only woman older than 25. She’s got books to sell, integrity be damned when the almighty $$ is involved.
Also totes not sexist.
https://twitter.com/SlushStuff/status/509751142956695552
You have a very poor example of a ‘not sexist/racist’ gamer gater. Fail.
I’ve spent the last week looking at everything I could find about gamergate: this blog, some of the links in both the misogynist and misandry categories, all the little colored pills, many, many links and blog posts from the MSM and “just folks” who needed a place to put it. I have read every kind of argument I could find on both sides, just to have a full picture. I don’t have a twitter account and I don’t go on facebook although I do have an account, but I have linked to lots of those accounts around this issue as well. I am not a gamer myself but my son was; that’s why the issue is important to me, because of his friends.
I do believe there is a group of folks, both men and women, who want this to be about communication to benefit gaming. I do think they are the ones who have been hurt by the “Gamers are dead” meme and what they perceive to be imbalanced reporting about gamergate by the MSM. I don’t think they have a chance in hell of stopping this train, though. There are cohorts of both sides of the issue who are being abusive to varying degrees but the proGG side is painted with the MRA brush and there is no way those opportunistic maniacs will let go, it’s totally gravy for them, another pool to piss in.
I’m a woman who raised sons and I’m so proud to know that my gamer would be disgusted with this; my son the non games programmer had no idea about it, he sees only 10101000011111.
They’ve also come up with an “Evil counterpart” of Vivian that’s been floating around, basically an ultra-stereotypical man-hating straw feminist whose Twitter schtick seems to be trying to egg anti-#GGers into harassing and doxxing #GGers to make #GG look like the good guys (ETHICS!!!11one)… I’ve forgotten her name, though.
Indifferent sky – I watched it twice, thought is was one of the best around. Thanks for the link, I hadn’t bookmarked it.
Joins Lea at the barf fountain.
DalekK: Internalized misogyny is a hell of a drug.
You forgot Jennie Bharaj. The woman who claimed feminists want men to disintegrate on HuffPostLive while also claiming to be a feminist and shrugging off feminist critique.
Her name’s Occulass Thrift, and yeah she’s just a straw feminist. I personally like her more than Vivian because she actually has a personality beyond “I play video games and agree with whatever my creators say.”
The Vivian James thing is shocking, really. Even regular MRA’s have never gone full wtf and just made up a woman. (Although several of them plan to when robot-wives become available)
I’m not sure why they think “We have wommmmmeeennnnn!” is some sort of shield against criticism. Granted, maybe they haven’t heard of MRM women like Janet Bloomfield, GWW, Alison “Feminists Stole My Electricity” Tieman, et al. But surely, they are familiar with Ann Coulter? Phyllis Shafley? There’s even Carla Homolka and Pauline Nyiramasuhuko if you want to go to the extreme end of the spectrum. Women are shit to other women all the time. Plenty of them have made careers out of it. It doesn’t excuse anyone else’s shit behaviour, and it doesn’t change the fact that this “movement” is heavily targeting women who don’t know their place and fall in line.
@zennurse:
But the journo piece that talked about that, was talking about how so many people are gamers now – i.e. gamers are mainstream – that this whole concept of “gamer” as a minority oppressed group doesn’t exist in actuality.
It’s like the “gamers” didn’t read the article, only saw the phrase, and drew their own erroneous conclusions. Which led to a bunch of hating and negative consequences for women involved in gaming.
I can’t dredge up any sympathy for people who couldn’t be bothered finding out what the statement was really about, and therefore are feeling hurt for a reason that only exists in their own minds.
And if you look at the analysis here: https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/gamers-are-dead-article-analysis/ you’ll see that the “gamers are dead” phrase post-dates the start of gamergate.
I don’t believe people who engage in historical revisionism, especially when it is used to justify what they believe to be “persecution” and in particular when they are 1. the priviledged group and 2. engaging in actual persecution.
* to justify what they believe to be their own “persecution”
The woman who wrote the Manic Pixel Dream Girl comic is Elizabeth Simins, probably best known for her clever response to people constantly derailing feminism conversation with demands for an lecture: she charges for it.
We had to make up a imaginary female to agree with us…that really says so much doesn’t it..what a pack of clowns …
Lots of new commenters here – Hi, have a Welcome Package, everyone!
oh! love that link Merus, thanks. I wish it had an icon that goes with it when I post it on facebook, just shows up as a link. Hopefully people will click on that. Well I guess I could add my own image. Yes I will do that.
The dude who created the #NotYourShield is a /pol/ frequenter btw. Not really a beacon for diversity.
Pallygirl
I was in no way defending their position, only stating that they felt hurt by it, just kind of reporting what I had read. I agree that they did not fully absorb the article or recognize what Leigh was actually trying to say. That’s what I mean, it becomes this knee-jerk “how dare they” us vs them attitude that stops the conversation. Even the moderate ones are whiny foot stampers without much evidence to defend their position except “because ethics” and “they did it first/too” It’s a hopeless stance because their shoes are covered with the shit of the MRA madness.
@YoullNeverGuess, The thing is, most of us with Asperger syndrome, myself included, don’t even regard the word “aspie” as a slur. It was actually coined within the autistic community and we often use that word to describe ourselves.
Pity that Vivian is just a mouthpiece for a bunch of bigots. She’s a cute character. If she was in a webcomic, I’d at least give it a look.
BTW, has anyone heard the claim that someone called King Of Pol received threatening mail because of his participation in Gamergate? I was over at the Newsweek article today, and that was part of their “both sides do it” spiel.
Does anyone actually have the smoking gun from the creation of Vivian James as to the choice of colours? Logs, etc? (I ask so it can be referenced in the RationalWiki article. In our experience, truly minute and detailed referencing can actually help a bit.)
The purple and green as a rape meme makes my eyes roll even more, given they, with white/silver, were the suffragettes’ colours.
Found this video that sums up GamerGaters and entitled angry geeks in a nutshell:
It’s worth a watch.
Please do not mistake my reference to madness for that other word c**zy, to me there is a huge difference. But I’m sorry if you did.
Thanks for the welcome package, I love scented fucking candles.
Hi everyone. Shut up, Woody!