Salon: The new Gamergate: Angry white men are trying to shut down diverse comics
Right-wing parasites, misogynist Men’s Rights activists, and opportunistic grifters who so desperately latched onto Gamergate are on the prowl again. As the culture war within the video game community continues to lose steam from its peak at the end of 2014, the conservative heroes of the anti-feminist movement are desperately looking to continue their fight against the so-called social justice warriors. And they’ll gladly suck the life out of any geek culture they find viable, if it means battling progressives. Their new target? Comic books.
Comic books are in the midst of a bit of a renaissance. Yes, the struggling industry is certainly helped by a never-ending parade of box office smash superhero franchises, but the comic book medium itself is working toward sustained survival through diversity. Black heroes, Latino heroes, Muslim heroes, women heroes — the new face of comics don’t only appeal to the aging, primarily-white male comic book base.
As we’re now seeing, these diverse heroes’ ability to attract new audiences are quite literally helping save the comic book industry for everyone. But conservative vultures don’t care about that — they smell blood in the water. As the culture wars seep further into geek subcultures, they circle a loud subset of geeks, those ignorant fanboys who feel that merely introducing diverse characters into their video games or comic books declares an all-out war on their whiteness and manhood. And these leeches care not about the art of comic books or video games, but what they need to say and do in order to transform angry nerds into brainwashed angry conservative nerds that deliver page views to their websites.
Of all the bloodsucking culture war hustlers, perhaps none come close to approaching Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos when it comes to ludicrous attempts at manufacturing controversy within the geek world. Like many of the right-wing reactionaries, Milo is clueless about video games and cares even less about comics. How do I know? Milo has outright shown pure disdain for the gaming community he was trying to win over, of course, before he realized there was market potential waiting to be tapped. And he’s been caught doing it for the comic book audience too.
While the new, diverse comic book heroes all seem to have pissed off their fair share of crybaby reactionaries, none has drawn the ire of the Internet assholes quite like the new Thor. Their favorite musclebound alpha male has been substituted — by a woman. And with that, the vultures swoop in. In an article for Breitbart titled “Female Thor Is What Happens When Progressive Hand-Wringing and Misandry Ruin a Cherished Art-Form,” Milo opines about the new “gender swapped” Thor. He complains about how comic writers are being forced to push forth this progressive narrative, forced to transform male characters into females. This, of course, will ruin comic books forever!
The only problem with Yiannopoulos’ article is the entire thing. There’s no “gender swapping” in the new Thor. The man known as Thor, the son of Odin, is in the new comic book series.
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http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/the_new_gamergate_angry_white_men_are_trying_to_shut_down_diverse_comics/
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