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.
@AltoFronto,
Whenever I think of Gamergate and web comics, I think of this…
http://www.pvponline.com/comic/2014/09/17/heres-the-pitch
Planet Vegeta isn’t the only filthy monkey planet out there. Frieza needs to blow up earth too.
Totally makes sense for Umbridge to support GamerGate.
http://31.media.tumblr.com/2277c17e159583f68021dc6d07e1e41c/tumblr_ndyv7o4TCw1u24g68o1_1280.jpg
It’s not just a manosphere thing. All sorts of transphobic people hate the term.
I love the lack of awareness.
I mean, the meme kinda shows that to them, actually getting called on their actions – that they can stop any time – is worse than these actions.
They can’t undermine themselves better.
Hey, David,
I love this site. I really do.
Recently though it was brought to my attention that our tendency to use phrases like “manchildren” against MRAs is kind of… crummy. Shitrichcollegekidssay on Tumblr recently went through a shitstorm after one of the mods noted that infantalizing language like that has its roots in ableism and the stigmatization of neuroatypical people. Stuff like “mentally five years old” was and continues to be leveled against people with developmental disabilities to undermine their right to advocate for their own interests, and similar concepts are part of what lets society sympathize with parents who murder their developmentally-disabled children.
I know that was a huge paragraph of jargon, but if I’d had any doubts on this the tidal wave of bad feminists rushing in to accuse the mods of undermining feminism and siding with MRAs and so on and so on, _just because they had asked that certain words not be used when ridiculing MRAs_, really did a great job of convincing me that this is worth addressing.
I know you’ve made a bazillion posts, and I’m not asking you to edit every one that used a word like “manchildren” — just to think about getting away from that language in the future. We can say that MRAs are entitled, spoiled asshats; we can say a lot of things, without resorting to calling willful ignorance “crazy delusions” or assholery “childishness”.
@bertie:
Woah dude, you mean this SlushStuff?
:large
Sexist and racist. Yes she seems like a real winner and the perfect face of your hate movement.
Like I keep saying, there are lots of horrible women in the world. The fact that you can round them up and get them to cheerlead for you doesn’t make you less of a misogynist.
Coincidentally, I’ve been re-watching Buffy online lately… and I turned on the TV right now and Dragonball Evolution is on Film4… and apparently Piccolo is played by…. James Marsters. And now I’m not sure how I feel about my favourite on-screen vampire, since I now associate his face with that gif. 🙁
Liz Baker,
We already had that debate here a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know that anyone really feels like resurrecting it. The majority opinion seemed to be that it’s OK to say manchildren so lets just go with that.
And besides, Gamergomers are doing the “hold your breath and turn blue” thing. If that’s not thinking like a tantrummy toddler, I don’t know WHAT is.
And MGTOW is basically “I’m running away from home, mom, just you try and stop me! Wait, why aren’t you trying to stop me?”
Vivian James: FREE HER!
@cassandrakitty – I’d like a bag of kittens, but I’m nowafraid that 4chaners (or 8chaners o_O ) would steal them and drown them in a river for teh lulz.
These people make space-based frozen penal colonies make sense.
It’s a mark of how much time I’ve spent with the manosphere that I’m impressed that they managed to draw a more or less normal looking cartoon character.
@katz
They didn’t draw her. She’s a 3d render, at least in this one.
Hye Liz, when they stop acting like children having a tantrum because they didn’t get what they want, I’ll stop using “manchildren.” Please don’t bring Tumblr shitstorms here.
I should ignore you, but I just don’t roll my joints that way. Who died and left you in charge of who’s a good or bad feminist? GTFO.
Speaking of tidal waves I’m starting to think that some sort of Tumblr-proof sea wall might be a good idea. I’m not trying to shut the people over there up, they can talk about whatever they want, but if they could stop flooding feminist communities with their silliness that would be nice.
Wouldn’t that kinda defeat the purpose of having a WHTM tumblr? I mean, there is one, David runs it; I’m sure he’d shut it down if he felt it was counterproductive.
Leum: what? I meant that I don’t care what the general Tumblr crowd argues about, but I’d rather they not come here and drag in stupid.
@Liz Baker
Just to explain why “Manchildren” isn’t ableism: It’s not comparing MRAs and #Gaters to mentally disabled people or mentally disabled people to children, it’s comparing MRAs and #Gaters to literal children in the schoolyard, what with their “Girls have cooties” nonsense, egocentric tantrums, constant bullying and “I learned a new dirty word! Boobies!” tryhard-ness… That’s not a word, but whatever, I’m sure you get what I mean. =P
I think most peeps know better than to use the common troll tactic of “someone did something somewhere and therefore you…”
Unless, of course, they are intending to troll the house.
A bunch of whining males who think they’re oppressed because womenfolk now talk about videogames in ways they don’t like then create an imaginary female cartoon character whose existence and words they totally control in order to simulate females who agree with them.
No, not creepy or symbolic at all.
I love that. I’ve never heard of that guy.
Just that right now, because WHTM has a tumblr that links to the posts here, it seems like Tumblr people coming here is a feature, not a bug.