Garfield Gender Debate

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About

Garfield Gender Debate refers to the heated online discussion surrounding the gender of the American cartoon character Garfield, which was brought into question by American podcaster Virgil Texas in late February 2017.

Origin

On February 23rd, 2017, Virgil Texas^[2] tweeted a message declaring that Garfield is gender-neutral, citing Garfield creator Jim Davis' description of his character from an interview article published by Mental Floss^[1] in 2014. Shortly after, Texas tweeted a screenshot^[3] of Garfield's Wikipedia page^[4] which he had edited and updated to list its gender as "none." Within the first week, Texas' tweets garnered more than 1,800 retweets and 5,800 likes in aggregate.

Spread

Over the next 72 hours, Virgil Texas' tweets set off an edit war on Garfield's Wikipedia page among the fans of the cartoon series and supporters of the genderless canon, leading to a lengthy and heated debate over the character's gender identity, with some participants citing original cartoon strips to make their case for and against the gender-neutral identity of Garfield.

By February 27th, the Wikipedia page had been temporarily placed on lock due to "edit warring / content dispute," though the debate quickly continued after the lock expired in the coming days. Between February 24th and March 3rd, more than 40 edits were logged by various contributors on the site.

Jim Davis' Response

On February 28th, Jim Davis issued a statement to The Washington Post and New York Daily News clarifying that Garfield is a male and his statement from the Mental Floss interview had been taken out of context.

“Garfield is male,” Davis told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “He has a girlfriend, Arlene.”

“I’ve always said that I wanted to work with animals because they're not perceived as being any particular gender, race, age or ethnicity,” the cartoonist said. “In that sense, the humor could be enjoyed by a broader demographic.”

Media Coverage

Throughout the week, the online debate on Garfield's gender was picked up by the Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Mashable, New York Magazine and AV Club, among many others. On March 1st, Twitter wiki bot @congress_edits tweeted that the Garfield Wikipedia article has been edited anonymously from U.S. House of Representatives, which garnered more than 1,000 retweets and 1,500 likes.