For those unfamiliar with Anita Sarkeesian, here is an introduction:
Anita Sarkesian is a youtuber who goes by the username 'feministfrequency.' She talks about popular culture from a feminist perspective on her youtube channel. In 2012 she released the beginning of her 'Tropes vs Women' series about the representation of female characters in video games. It particularly focused on the damsel in distress trope being a reflection of the patriarchal message that men are strong and capable providers and women are weak and helpless caregivers. When women are perpetually disempowered (via kidnapping or other misfortune) in games this sends the message that they're less capable beings than men.
She also branched out into different variations of the damsel in distress trope such as when the trope fetishizes and objectifies disempowered women, and various plot devices which are used over and over and strongly send the message that the games are for men. Anita refers to the video game industry as a 'boy's club' and it is true that women who take part in gaming culture experience a large amount of sexual harassment. The repeated casting of the lead female character as being only the prize for the male hero to win is likely to perpetuate this problem, as it creates a fantasy for the male gamer where women only exist for their sex appeal. The fact that these plots are such an overwhelming percentage creates an entitled attitude in male gamers, that video games are only for men, and so women have to ignore the sexism if they're going to participate.
(Links to evidence of widespread sexual harassment in gaming culture directly below)
http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2012/01/nerds-and-male-privilege-part-2/all/1/
http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2012/02/nerds-male-privilege-3-cross-assault-sexual-harrassment/all/1/
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-09-anita-sarkeesian
To sum up the point of Anita's Tropes vs Women series, it is basically to check whether the views being reflected about women are socially progressive or not, and video games fail miserably.
Many people online reacted to this message with uninformed boiling anger, and her comment section was flooded with hateful, misogynistic comments.
These commenters had various motivations. Many were male gamers that didn't want to lose the privilege of having games made only for them. Some were Men's Rights Activists or anti-feminists who hate everything any feminist does simply because they are feminist. Some were trolls that just wanted to write the most ridiculous, stupid bullshit that they could come up with.
She had to turn the comments section off, because virtually every comment was completely idiotic and hateful. This happened before her first video had even been released, and the only reason people knew that the series existed was that Anita was raising money on the internet, where people were to give her money to create the series, through her 'Kickstarter' campaign. Anita managed to raise over $158,000 when she had only asked for $6,000 partly because people decided to donate out of sympathy that she was getting so much hate.
Some of the comments which may have elicited this sympathy included -'She needs a good dicking, good luck finding it though.'
'Why do you put on make-up if everything is sexism? Why don't you shave your head bald, stop wearing makeup and stop wearing huge slut earrings? You are a fucking hypocrite slut.'
'Comment pending: THE ULTIMATE COWARDLY MOVE! What's the matter? Free speech hurt your feelings? Is it triggering your flashbacks? Pathetic.'
'Why are you so God damn sexist? No, the female sex is not any better than the male one. Get that through your thick skull. This is just as bad as racism, I consider you on the same level as a KKK advertiser. And I hate the KKK.'
'Would be better if she filmed this in the kitchen.'
'1940 we want to be equal! 2012 we are superior! Yep... Tits or gtfo.'
'She is a JEW.'
'I hope you get cancer:)'
'I'll donate $50 if you make me a sandwich.'
'Who the fuck needs 6k to make review videos? Why are you so special?'
'flagged for terrorism too.'
'ask money for making a fucking vlog? and you made it in a way that women should pledge not to be dominated by men. Smart and evil plan. you are the reason that womens are the inferior gender for the whole history of mankind.'
'So if someone doesn't agree with you they're trolling? Shut your sexist mouth!'
'So you're a Bolshevik feminist Jewess who hates white people and does websites design for Tim Wise extremeist platform and you expect to be taken seriously with your critiquing video games? Fucking ovendodger.'
'Go back to the kitchen. If you hate it make your own games.'
'Don't bother reading anything. Just call them sexist trolls and keep rambling on with your over-glorified victim complex.'
'Keep supporting the Feminazi.'
'Looking like you are I can understand where the hate for sexy female characters comes from, but please, scamming people won't solve anything you useless cunt.'
'I'LL RAPE YOU AND PUT YOUR HEAD ON A STICK IF YOU EVER TOUCH MY VIDEO GAMES!' (This one came from twitter)
'The only place for women is in chains in my kitchen... sluts.' (I THINK this one was from facebook.)
In addition to this her Wikipedia page was vandalised with pornographic images, a game was invented on the internet where the aim was to bash Anita up, people repeatedly e-mailed her photos of video game characters sexually assaulting her and every one of her social media accounts online was reported as fraud, spam and/or terrorism in an attempt to have the kickstarter campaign removed and donations revoked. Other consequences include that her email was hacked into, there was an attempt to knock her website off the internet and people attempted to collect and distribute her personal information including her home address and phone number. Anita describes it as being the target of an online hate campaign.
Needless to say, the response to her series was... an overreaction. A completely batshit-crazy overreaction.
I usually wouldn't watch these videos, because I could smell the bullshit wafting out of the titles and couldn't stomach diving headfirst into the stink. However, I made an exception on a video by Men's Rights Activist Karen Straughn, because it was short. Karen was peddling the similar hate that had come about during the 'kickstarter' campaign by stupidly summarizing Anita's views as 'now I get to make the rules because 'vagina' and also 'rape.'' The 'now I get to make the rules' part of the comment was clearly pandering to the male gamer's angry, paranoid thoughts that an all-powerful, Anita Sarkeesian is coming to take their video games away from them.
I left some comments and engaged with Karen's viewers for a while but all they do (mostly) is make the same terrible excuses to dismiss Anita, that are present all over youtube.
Here are just SOME paraphrased examples of those frequently used bad reasons or excuses to not listen to Anita, and my responses. All of these were comments below Karen's video except number 4 and all were directed towards me except 4, 7 and 8.
I am not saying that there are no legitimate criticisms of Anita's channel, but there is a widespread idea that everything she does is wrong because she did it, so whatever incoherent nonsense you make up to prove that point must be correct!
1. But there ARE strong female protagonists in games!
Which can otherwise be phrased as...
'My first thought is you're an asshole Nazi who thinks he has some right to shut people up.
So I'm going to make this real simple for you:
Games with women protagonists:
Tomb raider
Bayonetta
Soulcalibur
Borderlands
Hunted
Mirrors Edge
Portal
Mass Effect series
Fallout series
Dragons Dogma
The list goes on and on... Want to know why you don't know of women in protagonist roles? Because you're the fucking sexist... Not everyone else. In your face pussy.'
Making a list doesn't prove anything because it doesn't say anything about the industry as a whole. A 2010 study (as cited by Wikipedia) says that 85% of playable characters are male. Meanwhile a study by Entertainment Software in 2013 said that 45% of all gamers are female and 46% of the most frequent game purchasers are female. It's easy to see how the gaming industry can have those exceptions and still be sexist overall.
There is a certain implied acceptance in comments like this that if 100% of video game protagonists were male and women never got to be the heroes then that would say something about our society and gaming industry. Specifically it would say that there are clear gender roles within our society, of men being in charge and women just needing to look pretty. Furthermore operating outside these gender roles is unacceptable. By extension then, you should accept that a gaming industry where there are a significant majority of male centred games, games with male protagonists, and repeated tropes involving female disempowerment also sends this message. It just doesn't send it quite as strictly as it potentially could. Listing a handful of exceptions doesn't blow Anita's argument out of the water.
Apparently you really thought that Anita's argument was 'there isn't a single playable female character anywhere in any video game ever!' and that you could debunk this just by listing games.
You are so mind-blowingly stupid it's unbelievable.
As for calling me a pussy, it is a bad idea to insult people by calling them 'female' if you're trying to prove you're not sexist.
2. Feminism only focuses on women's issues. This is because it's really about man-hating and not equality. There is a certain implied acceptance in comments like this that if 100% of video game protagonists were male and women never got to be the heroes then that would say something about our society and gaming industry. Specifically it would say that there are clear gender roles within our society, of men being in charge and women just needing to look pretty. Furthermore operating outside these gender roles is unacceptable. By extension then, you should accept that a gaming industry where there are a significant majority of male centred games, games with male protagonists, and repeated tropes involving female disempowerment also sends this message. It just doesn't send it quite as strictly as it potentially could. Listing a handful of exceptions doesn't blow Anita's argument out of the water.
Apparently you really thought that Anita's argument was 'there isn't a single playable female character anywhere in any video game ever!' and that you could debunk this just by listing games.
You are so mind-blowingly stupid it's unbelievable.
As for calling me a pussy, it is a bad idea to insult people by calling them 'female' if you're trying to prove you're not sexist.
She does talk about women more than men, although she still mentions men on her channel when talking about toy commercials and beer commercials, as well as mentioning in her Tropes vs Women series that men are gender-boxed into always needing to respond with violent rage in response to death or tragedy. However, she doesn't necessarily mention men less because she hates men.
Based on her actual arguments rather than a presumption of misandry, her main focus is on women's representation because it's overwhelmingly the female characters getting disempowered and objectified.
3. Men are objectified in video games too, because men frequently have unrealistically muscular body types.
You don't know what objectification is. Objectification refers to lack of agency. It's the male heroes going on the adventure. An 'object' wouldn't be able to do that because an object wouldn't have it's own agency. If the female characters are good looking but also get an active role in the story where they control their own fate then objectification is solved. There is no equivalent of this agency being removed among male characters.
4. Anita should review games for free. She was scamming people with her Kickstarter campaign.
Here's what you're claiming to be a scam:
She told people what the project was, they gave her money to do the project and she delivered the project that she promised with no complaints from anyone who donated.
In other words, she did exactly what she said she was going to do. For it to be a scam she would have to mislead somebody. Uh-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuh!
5. Men have more upper body strength therefore these games featuring damsels in distress games don't reflect any false reality in relation to the strength of the genders.
Anita is talking about strength of character. When the female character sits around waiting to be rescued and the male is doing all the work despite any obstacle then it's sending a message about character, not body strength.
This is no reason why women could not star in their own adventures just as often. If body strength is integral to these games then that would also mean that smaller men would be unable to beat up bigger men. Yet protagonist adventurers are frequently smaller than the bosses they battle, whether it's Mario being smaller than Bowser, Link being smaller than Gannondorf etc.
On top of this a lot of games have guns which hurt just as much when women shoot them and games like the Mario series are too unrealistic to take something like body strength seriously into account. If we can believe that a short, fat plumber can swing a huge dragon around but its tail and throw it 100m up in the air, then we should be able to believe that a woman can be a heroic protagonist in the series.
6. Video games are made to reflect how much men love women. It's also done because of the free market. It's not a conspiracy against women.
What? Are you saying that you've been missing the annual 'White Male Conspiracy Meetings?' I guess we must have lost your email address!
Of course it's not a conspiracy against women, you blithering dunder-dead! That's not the argument!
Firstly, it's often NOT about the man loving the woman. Video game adventures are frequently male power fantasies, rather than love stories. They don't bother establishing much or any emotional connection between the male protagonist and the damsel. They skip right ahead to the gameplay where the male protagonist is beating the shit out of people to get his woman back. If you get a message from about the importance of a loving relationship, rather than an unstoppable juggernaut male getting his possession/woman back, then that's a generous inference made by you. That message is routinely not actually going to be in there if you pay attention to the actual dialogue.
If the game does convey love that is a significant improvement, but it could still be sexist. For one thing it's likely to still be normalising the idea that it's natural for men to have all the power in relationships.
Secondly, the fact that this sells games doesn't make it more fair. It's an explanation, not an excuse. An explanation of a problem isn't enough. You also need a SOLUTION dumbarse! If the police thought the way you do, all murders would be solved after the autopsy!
Imaginary Police officer: 'Elementary my dear Watson! The reason he's dead is because there's a knife in him! Job well done! I'm going home! Another murder mystery solved!'
Thirdly, even if selling to men is more profitable (even though 46% of the most frequent game purchasers are female so there's plenty of women to sell to) you don't need to make an entertainment medium sexist to sell it to men. 'Kill Bill' isn't sexist.
Fourth, the damsel in distress trope doesn't only appear in the games designed by greedy capitalists. It also appears in games designed by amateur, independent game designers. Game designers don't think about the messages this will send. People reflexively use stereotypes without thinking about it. (see the video 'TavernTalk_1 Trope vs women in video games directly below.) ,which is another reason why it's not a conspiracy.
Anita specifically qualifies in the second video of her series that the misrepresentation of women in games is not a deliberate conspiracy and that these gender stereotypes are perpetuated unintentionally. I find it frustrating that you failed to absorb this concept even after it was specifically qualified for you in the series that you're supposedly responding to. I don't think you even watched the series.
7. She says she's against damsels but she's damselling herself by turning off the comment section and talking about it at TedTalk. What a hypocrite!
No, her ATTACKERS damselled her. She didn't ask those people to attack her.
I also wonder what exactly you'd have her do. Being the target of an online hate campaign is a story worth telling, because it stands as an example that the widespread usage of these sexist portrayals of women does have consequences. How's she supposed to tell that story without 'damselling herself?'
When Anita criticizes video games, she provides useful direction towards more progressive plots. The people who call her a hypocrite for 'damselling herself' provide no direction as to how she's supposed to deal with it other than the inadequate resolution of 'suck it up and stop complaining.'
In other words, IT'S NOT AN EQUIVALENT! Video games ARN'T REAL! When women are damselled in video games you can just write a different plot! That isn't an option in real life. When a person is abused in real life you're supposed to give them help and support. Not tell them to shut up and stop complaining.
You can't make a serious argument that it's wrong for her to inform the public about her being the target of an online hate campaign because it might send the message that all women are weak. You're just pissed of because you don't like what she's saying, and you're jealous of how much money she raised, so you're making pathetic excuses to be a piece of shit!
8. You're white knighting! (You're just defending Anita to get her into bed. You don't really believe what you're saying.)
What? I might get laid for leaving a positive youtube comment? I didn't realise that Anita is reading every single comment about her on the internet, in the hopes of finding something positive so that she can have sex with the commenter! What a revelation this is!
But in all seriousness, how does this conclusion make ANY sense. This is a completely baseless accusation of an embarrassingly stupid, single-minded perspective.
I think you must be projecting your own thoughts onto the 'white knights.' The only reason you'd ever help a woman in any given situation would be to fuck her, so that must be what everyone else is doing.
9. I don't see why you're angry at Karen Straughn. Karen has a right to free speech in regards to Anita.
I'm angry with Karen because when I see someone say something stupid and obnoxious my first thought is not 'Hooray for free speech!' My first thought is that 'I wish you would have the self-awareness to realise how out of your depth you are and shut up!'
If I spent all my time marvelling at how great free speech is instead of figuring out what's wrong with the content of the free speech, it would probably result in me having poor critical thinking skills.
Karen Straughn.
10. Anita should focus on more important feminist issues (like the sexism of Muslim fundamentalists)If I spent all my time marvelling at how great free speech is instead of figuring out what's wrong with the content of the free speech, it would probably result in me having poor critical thinking skills.
Karen Straughn.
This is a fallacy. This is like saying that we should never focus on burglaries while there are still murders taking place. We have to take care of both the more important and less important issues.
Besides, if it were such a small issue there wouldn't be so many people pissed off.
11. Anita argues that women shouldn't be portrayed as weak but if they ever act with violence and strength they are acting male which is also unacceptable. This makes the problem impossible to rectify.
She doesn't argue that women can't use strength. That's ridiculous. People only believe this if they've taken (the youtuber) Thunderf00t's word as gospel true and not listened to Anita's series.
The evidence Thunderf00t showed you was a chart that divided the positive and negative traits of stereotypical male and female characters. Thunderf00t told you that this chart was Anita's guide to how things SHOULD be in popular culture, therefore Anita must be saying that female characters are not allowed to show male qualities like 'competence' or 'leadership.'
If you watch her series or have two brain cells to rub together you know this isn't true. The point of dividing the stereotypical male and female behaviours up like this is to make sure that the heroic protagonists have female traits. The positive male traits like rationality and decisiveness are important but she would also want the heroes and heroines to have positive female traits such as emotional expressiveness and cooperation. This is how she rates a character on how progressive and feminist it is. By examining lots of heroes and heroines she can also figure out whether male or female traits are valued more in our culture.
If you'd watched her whole series, you'd know that the end of Anita's series displays the type of game she would like to see. This involves a woman punching a hole in a prison wall so it' pretty clear that she has no moral objection to female characters using strength.
Thanks for wasting my time, you complete, thundering idiot. And fuck you.
12. Historically men had it worse because men had to do hard, dangerous, back-breaking work in coal mines. Women got to decide how this worked because it was women who raised the kids. Women tell men how important and superior their jobs are to get them to do dangerous labour so that they can stay liberated as housewives, brainwashing the children into continuing this male oppression throughout the generations.
Grandpa have you gone off your meds again? It's my understanding that women actually DON'T like to have husbands that are dirt poor, crippled or dead, therefore they probably don't want them to be coal miners. Especially if they don't have a job to support themselves.
That's hard to believe isn't it? Maybe you can have your nurse explain it to you.
