GamerGaters sure do love their Based Mom! Christina Hoff Sommers, as you may or may not know, is a libertarian think-tanker who’s been grinding away at feminism for two decades, while still, rather perversely, claiming to be feminist. Though not a video gamer herself, she’s jumped aboard the GamerGate train, and GamerGaters have repaid her interest in their little crusade with interest, anointing her their “Based Mom” and talking about her with weird reverence.
That is, when they’re not making creepy fan art about her. Today, five of the most disturbing examples I’ve found so far.
1) Virgin Based Mom, in which an old publicity shot of Sommers is pasted onto a picture of the Virgin Mary to very creepy effect.
2) Based Waifu, in which Sommers is reinvented as an anime character.
3) Mass Effect Mom, in which Sommers becomes a Space Marine.
4) Whatever the hell this is.
5) Perfect Mom. And last but certainly not least, this tweet. No image manipulation here, just a guy expressing his opinion about a women. His really, really creepy opinion.
https://twitter.com/ItalyGG/status/537271807326572544
BONUS: The world’s most annoying Christina Hoff Sommers animated gif. Sommers finishes her ironically titled “Factual Feminist” YouTube videos, which are neither factual nor feminist, with an annoyingly contrived tagline: “Check your facts, not your privilege.” Now you can watch her smugly repeat this phrase over and over without end. Which is, I think, the very definition of hell.
Warning: Excessive viewing of this gif may give you nightmares; its smugness is that powerful.
H/T — GamerGhazi, for pointing out the Virgin Mom
Non-threatening. That’s what she is. She doesn’t challenge gender roles, she reinforces them. She reminds them of their mom (and whoa, don’t a lot of these guys seem to want a mommy who tells them how perfect and right they are — and if a girl doesn’t want them, that girl must be stupid.) or their idea of a perfect mother. She has to be a Virgin Mary (because she’s saying what they all want to hear!), otherwise they’d have to categorize her as a crone or just another woman they don’t pay attention to because she’s not like one of the girls in their porn collection.
Fee-fees stroked? Good lady. Mommy! Mommy? Tell me I’m always right. I am? I love you, mom.
When I think of CHS as mommy, I mostly just think of this
On the topic of Shia: I think what happened to him was terrible, and I’m glad he’s speaking out about it.
However, I think it’s sadly predictable that the MRAs won’t believe him and will only use him as a “gotcha!” to try to “combat” feminists.
I remember reading a guy’s story on tumblr that really brought me to tears. The guy is a rape survivor, and he was talking about why he needed feminism, and the biggest reason was that he tried talking to MRAs for assistance and just for someone to listen, and they shooed him away, mocked him, and denied his claims, but used him as fodder for their arguments with feminists without his permission or consent.
He then went on to say that feminists listened to him and helped him get the help he needed without judging him or mocking him, and that’s why he stands with feminists rather than MRAs.
It is, unfortunately, a constantly repeating cycle. Man gets raped, goes to fellow men for help, gets mocked and called a liar, then the poor victim has to turn to feminism for help, where they get it (unless the “feminist” in question doesn’t believe men can be raped, which is bullshit).
Back on the topic of Silly GGer Photoshop 101: I am still seriously disturbed. If this is just the tip of the Bad Photoshop Iceberg, what other horrors lie beneath the sea of shit and bile GGers spew on a regular basis?
But, it also figures that GGers would latch on to someone who hates women just as much as they do, even if the person in question is a woman.
I believe Shia Lebeouf’s account of what happened. But I also feel kinda bad that my second reaction was “Wait, did he plagiarise Marina Abramovic’s ‘The Artist is Present’?”
I hope he gets whatever support he needs.
A bit OT, but speaking of people behaving badly and their moms:
http://www.alternet.org/comments/media/game-reviewer-strikes-back-male-stalkers#disqus_thread
The woman in the article doesn’t tie her stalker to #GG, but this is brilliant.
Oops! didn’t mean to link to the comments.
http://www.alternet.org/media/game-reviewer-strikes-back-male-stalkers
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
You know, if you want to challenge the stereotype of the immature gamer, referring to older people as mom and dad (the latter for Jack Thompson) probably isn’t the best approach.
“Check your facts, not your privilege.” – Christina Hoff Summers
“Why not both?” – Zoidberg
oops, *Sommers
Are they really starting to side with Jack Thompson? That’s like if dickish comic book fans teamed up with Fredric Wertham!
You know, the next thing they need to do is recreate Christina Hoff Sommers as a big eyes character. That would be adorable and I would love it.
It speaks a lot about how insular a group they are, and how much it causes them to be disconnected to reality. I’m sure they think (I’ve heard people sympathetic to them say such) feminists are just as insular and blindly ideological…except the issues feminism brings up, y’know, do actually happen and to enough people to where it’s a concern.
They do not make conspiracies about how, despite the fact such occupations are overwhelming male, politicians and businessmen are somehow at the behest of “the feminist” even though every single established fact says otherwise.
That’s what happens when you lionize anti-intellectual sentiment…
I mean, the fact they get mad at people for analyzing and making observations about a game’s subject matter – rather than just accept it as part of enjoying the medium – shows how hostile they are to anyone who isn’t just entertained on a purely mechanical level like they are. It shouldn’t bother them, they should even be happy that people are taking the medium seriously as they always wanted, yet (being rage-junkies) they practically force themselves to get outraged over it.
NO GG! YOU CANNOT HAVE FEMSHEP! FemShep is a feminist gamer icon, you cannot splice her with your ridiculous “based mom,” appropriating her for your own nefarious purposes!
It’s all so unsettling.
Could we have a spiritual successor to Bioshock about a bunch of GamerGaters going Galt?
You wouldn’t even need any art assets for propaganda posters; GamerGate seems content to create such creepy artwork themselves.
You could probably build interesting opportunities to make moral choice by offering opportunities for players to fulfill Gamergate’s desire for a cult leader for money at the price of additional attention to your actions from GamerGate ala the way it has forced minority members out. The reality here fits the polarization of moral choice-driven games pretty well.
Could toss in character customization as a difficulty slider too. Only problem would be simulating discussion in the game without resorting to dialogue wheels.
I suppose there’s the risk of them thinking it portrays them in a good light. They’ve done that for everything else.
grumpyoldnurse
Whelp, this girl is my new favorite person.
I always have to wonder what these people’s mothers would think if they could see them sending out such threats of rape and murder. I know my mother would smack me upside the head and verbally rip me a new one at the very *least*. (Because my momma didn’t raise no rude individual.)
NickNameNick
GGer: “Vidya Games are art!”
People: “Okay, then we’ll critique it like art by looking at the social impact it makes on society as a whole, and we’ve found some flaws here and there.”
GGer: “Why can’t people just enjoy games?! Vidya is supposed to be MINDLESS FUN!”
I don’t think these people would last five minutes in one of my old college courses. Once you get over taking critique personally, it’s all good information. :3
FFS, critique of ANYTHING isn’t a personal attack (or at least, if done properly it isn’t)! It’s simply pointing out flaws in the hopes that it’ll change for the better! I don’t critique games because I hate them (I wouldn’t spend so much time playing them if I did), I critique games because I love them and I want them to keep getting better and better!
On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying what we have now. However, that doesn’t mean we have to swallow it blindly and not question it. I can love a game and still admit it has flaws instead of blindly worshiping it.
Case in point: The Saint’s Row series. Problematic as hell, but still really fun to play. (Though, in my opinion, Saint’s Row treats sex workers way better than GTA does.)
@ ParadoxicalIntention – I would probably die of embarrassment if my kids did something like this! If, by some miracle, I survived the embarrassment, I’d probably do like your mom and whomp them upside the head. But then, because I am mean, I would tell their father! His stomping would make mine look tame by comparison. Functional parenting for the win!!
This whole thing makes me feel so justified in my decision not to have kids. My dad keeps saying that if they were my kids they wouldn’t act like that, but that’s probably because I’d be all “you’re grounded till you’re 25, and also I’m telling your future wife about this”.
This is a fantastic idea! Has any game ever done this?
I get a kick out of imagining how ggers would react to such a mechanic. LOL
When my kid was about 15 or so, he’d troll people by correcting their grammar.
*sniff*
So proud.
If he had done worse I would have wanted someone to tell me, though.
Madmonk, your game idea is awesome.
http://i.imgur.com/FYYc6Il.jpg
Here’s another weird pic of based mom
No unfortunately. It’s partly based on an article that said privilege is like easy mode as a metaphor to explain the issue to people who play games, but there was never any game that actually put it into practice.
Part of the problem is the lack of ways for organic dialogue in games without really limiting the options down, but fortunately stereotyping should provide those limitations to make it easier to program. Bigotry based on race, gender, sexuality are based more on perception from the bigots than actual origins or identity, meaning you could probably boil it down to a handful of point values for sexuality, race, and gender when it comes to simulating their behavior and just create two behaviors for each stereotype along with some randomly set values for the bigots determining which stereotypes they lean toward.
They will treat you like madonna or whore, angry black person or “one of the good ones”, assume you’re straight until you show outward non-heterosexual affection, treat you like your gender identity based on whether to them you pass or not. It’s a rare instance where simple numbers will represent actual human behavior because the beliefs behind their actions are themselves simplistic. There’s bingo cards for the things they say for a reason after all.
The cool part is that you could make it first person to ensure that all of the issues of stereotyping would show up in the gameplay. You would never see your gender or skin color or what you wear except in places with mirrors or reflections, but you would feel it constantly through the reactions and mechanics of NPCs within the game and which choices you might feel comfortable making around them. You might not see that you, say, forgot to put on makeup as a woman, but you’ll know.
Apparently based Mom does not believe in vegetables. See, from a ridiculous manchild’s perspective she really is perfect!