One of my earliest memories of engaging with political discussion as an adolescent was picking up on the frequency of the term ‘feminist’ being thrown around as an insult at school. A ‘pink haired feminist’ or a ‘triggered social justice warrior’ were pejoratives that signalled that identifying with feminism was a clear pitfall into losing social standing amongst groups that were comforted by a misogynist and anti-intellectual status quo.

The word feminist took a measurable nosedive in the online culture of the mid 2010s with the conflation of feminism as an intersectional liberationist identity with uninformed radicalisation, pettiness and physical ugliness amidst the proliferation of meme culture online, primarily on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Gamer Gate is an important modern case study that can allow us to peek more at how online communities including video gaming, social media and political commentary communities displayed their shallow propensity for progressiveness within their spaces. It captures the zeitgeist of online men talking about feminism and shows how so many negative traits have been attributed to the feminist identity.

The Gamer Gate culture war arose prominently as a media scandal involving online male gamers attacking women with followings in their spaces, most prominently media critic and blogger Anita Sarkeesian.

Sarkeesian’s ‘Tropes vs. Women in Video Games’ was a crowdfunded YouTube series, broadcasted on her Feminist Frequency YouTube channel between March 2013 and April 2017.

The series called into question the assumed roles and portrayals of female characters in video games and related media. Notably, the series begins with a discussion of the ‘damsel in distress’ trope, think Princess Peach from the Super Mario Bros. games. Sarkeesian makes the point that “the popularity of their ‘save the princess’ formula essentially set the standard for the industry and the trope quickly became the go-to motivational hook for developers as it provided an easy way to tap into adolescent male power fantasy”. The ensuing virality of Sarkeesian’s statements as well as other feminists online who agreed or shared similar sentiments displayed further that feminist critique of video game culture was seen as unfairly encroaching on a nonpolitical space, or even bigoted itself against the category of ‘gamer’.

Before the series even began, the crowdfunding alone was enough to encourage death and rape threats against Sarkeesian, causing her to flee her home. One gamer even developed an independently hosted game: ‘Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian’ where you could click to bludgeon Sarkeesian, returning variously intense gory images of Sarkeesian’s bloodied face.

In the 2020s, online monetizable and algorithmic media has hugely rewarded anti-feminist creators such as Andrew Tate in what has been widely heralded as a conservative backswing from the ‘woke’ 2010s. These creators would have you believe that you are part of a majority that is exhausted with diverse identities being represented in world media, and feels as though ‘traditional’ values are under attack, with the goal of protecting the cultural and political dominance of the man (especially the white, heterosexual, able-bodied cisgender man).

It is becoming increasingly difficult to follow modern conservative media trends, especially with large, government affiliated organisations like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA sponsoring and employing burgeoning levels of new conservative influencers to reinforce the core tenets of modern conservatism. Markedly, anti-feminist action such as supporting legislation to criminalise abortion and contraceptive resources, conflating transgender people with paedophiles or sex offenders and strict conformity to biblical teachings, including promoting the aesthetic of trad-wifery, or total submission of the woman to her male counterpart in heterosexual relationships.

‘Feminist’ is a loaded term, dripping with histories and remaining as countercultural as ever in the wake of new forms of fascism that we see across political, digital and societal planes.

Image credit: Fig Oakes