Good points. Plus everyone involved in these seems to have a very short memory.
- The perception is that she is saying very similar things to what Jack Thompson was saying. Thompson also claimed he received death threats and harassment. Many of the folks who egged on the shitstorm around Thompson seemed to have flipped when it comes to Sarkeesian making largely the same points (though, obviously, Sarkeesian is much more cogent and coherent than Thompson was).
I mean, are we just going to pretend posts like this didn’t happen? Is it cool to criticize video games for excessive sex and violence if you’re a feminist, but not if you’re a conservative Christian? (and not the slam on feminists in the excerpt Xeni posted there…)
- The gaming media’s position in this is a bit weird. You are seeing a lot of gaming journalists closing ranks behind Sarkeesian’s criticisms of video games, and openly deriding “gamer culture.”
Which is fine, except these are the same folks and sites who have enabled this for so long.
Take Hitman: Absolution which Sarkeesian goes to town on in her recent video (as far as I can tell, rightly so). So when that game came out, it was given rave reviews by the same sites that are now posting rants about how awful the people who defend these games are.
It’s like “hey, Hitman: Absolution is awesome, go buy it and play it…and when you do, we’re going to call you a neckbeard man-baby for not realizing how misogynistic it really is.”
