Comprehensively addressing the stupid, intellectually dishonest critique of Anita Sarkeesian

[gatto]

super cool link. thanks! ( the average age of gamers is 30! wow! )

[anon73629133]

You mean that incident where people are hacking / being abusive to a female game developer under the pretense of rooting out “corruption in video game analysis?”

Hard to believe that shitstorm is happening at the same time as threats against the producer of the hardest-hitting and award-winning video game analysis of 2014: Sarkeesian.

[bmfrosty]

Having fun misquoting the quoted part of the article:

“She takes isolated examples from many games and presents them as a stream of misogyny and successfully creates the illusion that all of these games are entirely misogynist, the entire way through, whether she intends to do so or not.”

I think this describes what’s happening pretty.

I think what she’s saying is entirely noble, and is taken well by those already well versed in the language, and therefore hearing it how she intended it to be heard. Many ‘gamers’ are not, and that’s what’s going wrong. To them it comes off as an attack and they respond in various ways.

[beschizza]

@Maxwell

anything less than full agreement with Sarkeesian’s viewpoint marks you out as a manbaby misogynist.

Nah, it actually marks the author as a kind of unicorn among critics. You want to be a unicorn, don’t you?

[mathew]

@PAPPP

She made an effort to present herself as not and outsider, but it’s the same process as “I own guns but maybe some restrictions are OK” or “I’m a feminist but maybe this is just sexual dimorphism”

So what you’re saying is she can’t be an actual gamer because she disagrees with some aspects of gamer culture?

I guess you’d say the same about me, right?

[daneel]

Yeah, that one. Whouldathunkit?

Adam Baldwin gives me a sad. When I first stumbled onto his twitter feed, I assumed that he was running it as some kind of parody. Now I think Whedon cast him as Jayne because a monstrous arsehole was perfect for the role.

[mathew]

@Synesthesia

Good god. The untouched, watered down whiskey glass, the cigarrette and the suit… Laughing works for a while, but then i just get depressed again.

I know this is ad hominem, but I’m vaguely interested to know if there are any photos of Aurini where he doesn’t look like a creepy rapist? He seems like the kind of defender of video games you’d invent if you wanted to ban them.

[beschizza]

Victims, ranked

3. Women receiving death threats
4. Misogynist manbabies
5. Nice guys with valid critiques who hate to be lumped in with 2.

[PrestonSturges]

@clifyt

The interesting thing was, the whole Explicit Lyrics thing was always voluntary. You could put the sticker on and sell at Walmart, or Target, or one of the big chains - which still require you to do this regardless of gov’t intervention – or you sold at Music Land or Virgin or a hundred other places.

Frank was quite defiant about not conforming to industry norms and in the liner note to Sheik Yerbouti said that lyrics were copyrighted and could not be quoted even for reviews. And he made most of the songs unplayable on the radio. It was also probably the first time anyone ever used the phrase “fist fuck” on an album and surely the only example of “ram it, ram it, ram it up your poop chute” (Broken Hearts Are For Assholes). It’s also misogynist and homophobic.

I saw Zappa play this with Steve Vai, and I’ll brag about that like, forever.

- YouTube

[PAPPP]

Not at all. I’m not saying anything about her being an “Actual gamer” or not, I’m just attempting to explain the phenomenon that produces the hostility - perception, not reality. The hostile reception is not commendable, but it is entirely predictable. None of those examples were being put forth as good things, just things that happen, and all three examples are groups of people responding defensively to potential allies who interfere with their self-image.

[Maxwell]

Not everything revolves around sex. It is never better to portray somebody scantily clad than to portray them as an obstacle which has to be killed to advance. Ever.

I recently read (I’m not sure if the following should correctly be attributed to Sarkeesian or whether I have remembered from another source) the complaint that the ‘good guy’ rescues the ‘damsel in distress’ but neglects to bring her for any form of counseling afterwards. In a shooter game. That the good boss character sends the protagonist out, with the admonishment, ‘Go out and kill every bad guy you see. Rescue any gals need rescuing. And make sure that you arrange an appointment for them with an accredited counselor.’ And the suggestion that, if this wasn’t included in the game, it betrayed the innate misogyny of the game maker. And player.

@themadpoet

I’ve not seen one argument from Anita that says ‘you can’t do this in games’

Really? Seems to me that’s exactly what she’s saying. Repeatedly. You mustn’t have women in computer games unless they are strong lead characters. You mustn’t have female characters portrayed negatively. Etc, etc.

I recently played Tomb Raider (2013). Excellent TPS game. Quality graphics, excellent game-play. Female lead. Don’t remember killing any female baddies.

Main story has Lara protecting her buddies. Male and female. The female buddies are mostly strong characters. The male buddies mostly gormless. I cried throughout the entire game about the way that the men were portrayed. It was relentless misandry. Soul destroying. I am still having therapy.

Actually, no I didn’t. I played the game. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Went back and completed it on hard mode.

It’s a game.

Don’t want to play it?

Then don’t!

[coop]

I see that Tim Colwill at games.on.net laid down the line for blog visitors the other day.

A quick quote:

So, here’s another change for you: if you really think feminism, or women, are destroying games, or that LGBT people and LGBT relationships have no place in games, or that games in any way belong to you or are “under attack” from political correctness or “social justice warriors”: please leave this website. I don’t want your clicks, I don’t want your hits, I don’t want your traffic. Leave now and please don’t come back.

http://games.on.net/2014/08/readers-threatened-by-equality-not-welcome/

[daemon23]

@Maxwell

One thing of note, however. In these games, in all of these games, I have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of male characters. I have shot them, head shot them for extra points, garrotted them, slit their throats, disemboweled them. And on and on and on. But not once have I felt that I was or have been accused of being, a misandrist.

The difference here is that these characters were defined by their role, not their gender. The fact that these characters are men is generally not a part of the character design–they are not wearing garments which clearly define and draw attention to their secondary sexual characteristics. They are not animated in such a way as to emphasize their male sexuality. You are not killing them because of their masculinity. This all exemplifies the observation that male is the default, not misandry.

[Jehovazilla]

Thank you, I was working on a long post on why I can dislike her project, but not be some caveman misogynist, at the same time.

One thing I dislike about her project is that it brings out the whole “you dislike Israel the country, therefore you are an antisemite and your argument is invalid” school of fallacy.

Obviously she has some good points, but she is, in essence, human flamebait, and as such I think she does more to hurt her cause than help it. Everytime she comes up, all calm rational discussion dissolves into a bunch of shrill yelling and self-congratulatory smug talk. The people who agree with her already are reaffirmed, and those that don’t are further galvanized.

My main issue with her is that we’d all have a different reaction to her if she was talking about books. For some reason books are allowed nuance, where games are not. Second, I don’t really buy into postmodern criticism, to me it says that anything you say about a bit of media is valid, if you phrase it nicely enough. It isn’t objective, it doesn’t require stringent logic or reasoning. Third, I’m not sure it matters, sure there is a problem, but there isn’t a solution presented. Anyone can point at things, but its much harder to actually DO something meaningful. She isn’t, in my eyes. She’s just pointing and saying “bad!”.

[mathew]

@Mister44

One of his points with the Hitman example was he watched 40 walk throughs of that stripper dressing room level, and NONE of the players just went and and gratuitously abused the strippers, Most of them just snuck by. It wasn’t like they made the “knockout/kill a person and hide them in a box” mechanic just for the strippers. As I understand it, that mechanic is used in other parts of the game.

I made a similar point about GTA in a series of articles in 2008. Nevertheless, the series seems to be getting more sexist as time goes on. GTA V’s near complete lack of solid female characters was pretty blatant; they were basically all tropes as cardboard cutouts.

Ironically, though it’s far more offensive and filled with sexualized imagery, the Saints Row series has been doing a much better job of presenting women as characters. (Not to mention that you can actually play a female character.) The Saints Row developers seem to feel Sarkeesian was right to call them out, so it’s obviously something they actually think about.

[mathew]

@Jehovazilla

One thing I dislike about her project is that it brings out the whole “you dislike Israel the country, therefore you are an antisemite and your argument is invalid” school of fallacy.

Blame the victim much? She is not responsible for the fallacious crap that gets thrown at her.

[Jehovazilla]

When did I blame the victim? I was very careful to delineate between the person and the project. The project exists beyond her, it now exists as a cultural object. I never stated that she, herself, was doing this.

[mathew]

OK, so you stated that her project was responsible for the fallacious crap that gets thrown at her, and she is responsible for her project. Still a bogus victim-blaming style of argument, even with an extra indirection.

[Maxwell]

@daemon23

The difference here is that these characters were defined by their role, not their gender.

Yes they were defined by their gender. The baddies in computer games, films, etc are almost always exclusively male. This is deeply built into the game design. To dismiss this as being irrelevant deflates any argument against sexualised female characters.

@daemon23

You are not killing them because of their masculinity.

No, but you are killing them because they are presented as dangerous male antagonists. They don’t have to have their nads hanging out to present as gender specific targets. If it’s okay to have strong female characters, as several recent FPS games have included, why are there still so few female baddies?

@daemon23

This all exemplifies the observation that male is the default, not misandry.

I have no idea what it is you’re trying to say here.

[aneurin_price]

@Schiraman

If you don’t agree with her general point, or with some of the individual points she makes, that’s fine.

My basic problem with her is that I do agree with her general point, and with most (not necessarily all) of the individual points she makes, but I think she makes them so badly that it risks being actively harmful.

Like most people, I like seeing things that reinforce my existing beliefs, so when I started watching her videos, I was expecting to get that warm agreement feeling. To my surprise, I found myself actually changing my feelings and becoming adversarial. That is to say, her arguments are so non-persuasive that they are actually anti-persuasive. Obviously that’s an emotional response, and my real opinions aren’t going to change for more than a few minutes as a result of it, but I’ve learned that the best way to continue agreeing with all of her points is to avoid watching her attempt to make them.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to analyse what it is about her videos that makes me feel so immediately contrary (I’m pretty certain I’ve read some of her writing and not had that response at all). So far though, the only things I’ve come up with are variations on a number of points that have been widely derided here, and I feel like there’s more to it than that. She does give the feeling of being highly aggressively adversarial, which tends to provoke an emotional response in kind, but I can’t even identify exactly what it is that gives that impression.

The issues she raises are very real, and it can only be a good thing that every time this shitstorm comes up means people are paying attention, so overall her videos are probably having a positive long-term effect (even if it seems like a terrible short-term effect, particularly for her). Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel like all of this could be a great deal more productive if it were coming from somebody that’s actually persuasive.