Blatant strawmanning there, so I’ll follow it up with an ad hominen.
You may not be a “de facto chauvinit/rapist”, but you are definitely an asshole.
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Rape threats are not criticism.
A huge amount of the comments here have been complete derails. This is not the first time I have seen this happen in the comments here, particularly when the Fword pops up and a bunch of dudes get all worked up to battle about Feminist boogeywimmen. Especially when the criticism that is bandied about has very little to do with the subject at hand - and veers off into completely ignoring what the post is about, and becomes something else completely. Much of the anti-feminist criticism that is being tossed around here is expressed by dudes who do not sound like this is a topic they have ever given much thought to - or done reading about, or even considered critically beside being dismissive of it. There is some dog whistle reaction like the concept of feminism = buzz kill - as though feminism is a monolith of rigid, inflexible dogma.
I don’t know where your superior intelligence/experience has managed to exist without noticing the disparity of experiences that women and men have. I have no issue with a woman, any woman being criticized. I am not an amoeba that thinks woman = good, man = bad. You can throw around buzz words like “hive mind” and “politically correct platitudes” - but are YOU thinking for yourself ? Have you ever considered that ALL women fear things like sexual assault every time they step out the door - and face things like sexually aggressive behaviour from strangers, co-workers, bosses ? You are probably one of those guys who will pipe up “But I don’t know any women who have been raped” - when the statistics for North America strongly suggest that 1 in 4 girls/women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. That tens of thousands of rape kits go untested in larger US cities because they are deemed “too expensive” to process ? Just because no one you know has told you their rape story - this probably means that they do not find you to be a safe or empathetic person to disclose to.
Are you speaking out against the problem that when Anita Sarkeesian speaks up - that there is a flock of spiteful and hateful trolls that latch on to attack every aspect of what she is saying, as well as her appearance, sexuality, intelligence, credentials ? There is no problem criticizing or disagreeing with her point of view, research, analysis, source materials, citations, etc. But there seems to be a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM when you and others like you (despite being such an enlightened, free thinking, unique intellectual) don’t speak up against the RAPE THREATS. And the misogyny at the root of the rape threats. And the roots of entitlement that allow disagreement/critiques to become personal attacks about the value of a woman’s worth on the basis of her appearance, or right to be in some sort of he man boys club where she was not invited. And that when a woman has an unpopular opinion - that she should be raped and/or killed ?
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I’m not making this shit up.
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Eh, they split off from the discussion about how almost any discussion about Sarkeesian ends with people accusing her detractors of being no different than the psychopaths who, for whatever reason, seem to think it’s really cool to send death and rape threats.
There’s no discussion there; critiquing video games, even if she was just sitting in front of a camera yelling “Stop making shitty games, assholes!” isn’t worthy of actual rape or death; anyone with a shred of decency understands that, and I suspect that in the end, it’ll be some 14-year-old kid.
There is discussion in the notion that saying, “I disagree with this thing that she said,” is no different than sending her rape and death threats, or that it’s inherently misogynist because it disagrees with an important feminist voice, what have you. What is it about the “Damsels in Distress” author that causes people to treat her as if she’s a Damsel in Distress, anyway? Is her argument so brittle that it requires you to jump in and defend her honor? Of course not. She’s a grown-ass woman; many of her arguments are just fine.
Most of the legit commentary I’ve seen to the contrary picks apart the areas where she seems to have either a limited knowledge of the genre/game in question, or is begging the question. Not necessarily wrong, in other words, but maybe lacks intellectual rigor. There’s great fodder for commentary in, say, thunderf00t’s rebuttal to Damsels in Distress; sadly, it usually gets shut down for being horribly misogynist without further comment. That’s intellectually dishonest, imho.
Is Anita Sarkeesian an important, strong woman, or is she a weak, precious flower that needs to be protected? I go with the former (minus credible threats of violence, of course.)
Also, what led to the various branchings of commentary was the usual, tired commentary such as, “It’s not possible to be sexist against men” and what have you. It’s a dumb thing to say and leads to the shit-slinging fest we see here (and I admit to adding to it because I saw some really dumb comments being made about Selective Service. I mean…only men are subject to being put into the Cannon Fodder Lottery, and women are the victims? Huh?!)
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Jeebus - are you missing the part about how the draft/war affects women ? In decades past many women lost husbands and sons, who were the sole breadwinners, which often doomed them to be single mothers who were really poor and in desperate situations back at home. That is like a best case scenario. In countries where the war is happening women - who are not drafted into or enlisted in the military are frequently raped and/or kidnapped as a form of social terrorism, not to mention the unwanted babies born of these rapes. So yeah, cannon fodder, blah, blah, blah does not only affect the men who are drafted.
And this has nothing, NOTHING ! to do with the topic at hand. What’s next - a discussion of father’s rights and prison rape ?
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As one of those inflamed people, it was kind of surreal to be clashing that vociferously over the semantics of an argument that both parties (seemingly) agreed with. Not that this never happens on threads – when doesn’t it happen? – but it stood out to me as an example of how heated the air around the topic has become.
Actually, on reflection, I suspect that part of my participation in that flameout was fueled by a fear of being lumped in.
Even though the argument had nothing to do with the meat of Sarkeesian’s assertions, I felt like my stylistic criticism was being/could be construed as an attempted deflection of her argument. Of course ego was the main driver, but that fear was subtly involved. So whether or not it’s happening – I can’t cite anything, just now – I feel like people might justifiably feel like it is… Or could be, soon.
Epilogue: That nastiness was ultimately gracefully ceased, thanks in part to some community nudging. So I think there’s hope for all of us fine BBS folk, yet.
But the instinct to self-censor is understandable, given the high emotions currently in effect. I personally won’t be flying that close to the sun, for a minute…
I think the Topic Train has long since departed from Gare du Relevance. 
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Well, let’s wrestle it back.
What does Anita Sarkeesian need to help her feel safer RIGHT NOW ? Emergency funds for hotel/airfare ? Funds for a lawyer or security ? Ideas ?
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Righto. I’ll give it a burl.
Short-term, I’d agree with all of those. Seems like sensible measures and exactly the sort of steps I’d take.
Longer term’s the tricky one. How to change attitudes in the first place. Apparently “Don’t be a dick” just isn’t straightforward enough for people. I’ve got no answers to that, not understanding the sort of mentality that thinks a good way to counter criticism is to send threats.
But there’s enough people both out there and in here that seem to reckon rape-threats are a legitimate response in an argument. I wouldn’t have the first clue on how to change the minds of people like that.
And this is even before we get on to the whole horrible issue of misogyny in gaming. It’s all a very, very fucked up situation.
I think it’s important that she keeps doing what she’s doing. With the amount of heat generated on the subject just by pointing out what to me is glaringly obvious but comes as a surprise to many, changes should be made. And yay, better games. 
Regardless, it’s something that calls for cooler heads, rather than shouting loudly and hoping to drown out your opponents. This has all been kicked around here before, though. Entrenched positions becoming more entrenched, rational discussion giving way to abuse.
As I said, no answers.
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I have eaten well. If your reply was caught up in my teeth as I flew in, I apologize. But dragons must feed.
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I might suggest that the threat-makers are sufficiently obsessed with their entertainment for one reason or another that they have confused their identities with said entertainment, to the point that any criticism or impingement becomes an attack on themselves, personally. This seems to be a universal thing: I’ve noticed parallels in patriotism, religious fervour, Ford vs Holden etc.
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Sometimes you’re a bad-luck dragon.
Dude, just give it a rest. This isn’t the thread where you argue whether Anita Sarkeesian is right or wrong or to what extent. This is the thread where you acknowledge the disproportionate and disgraceful response from a community that looks like it deserves a lot more criticism than anything she could ever dish out. There really isn’t any need for you to reiterate your terrible opinions on what constitutes good feminism here. There’s a perfectly good thread on her latest video still open, if you feel like you really have to do that.
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The MRA thread is down the hall,. If you can’t find it, feel free to start your own. This thread is about the death and sexual violence threats that Anita Sarkeesian has received for having an opinion that many males who like to play AAA console/PC games seem to not like.
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Again, there’s really nothing to discuss about the topic at hand. Once you’ve said, “Jesus, people are real shitheads and we ought to do something about it,” discussion is largely over. Yeah, we could talk about how we need to talk about teaching our kids that this behavior is wrong, but…not only have trollies existed on the internet since it went public, trollies predate the Internet. I’m guessing we’ve always had people who say shitty things just to wind other people up, and it’s arrogant to think we’re going to fix that. I doubt that, for example, Ann Coulter really wants to see a bunch of her political enemies die in a horrific way, but she’s a shitty person for saying it. I’m guessing that whoever sent Sarkeesian the death threats this time around is going to end up being some kid who’s getting off on all the attention he/she’s getting. What else is there to discuss? The person who tried to claim that Sarkeesian was faking it herself got shouted down, so that one’s done with, too.
I mean…it’s not like most people going around doing shitty things are out in the open about it. And why aren’t they? Because they already know that what they’re doing is wrong. A thief doesn’t steal because they don’t know any better. It’s not like most people go around announcing to the world that they engage in what others consider deviant behavior. Extreme example here: one of the most active members of my mom and dad’s church is doing prison time because he was caught on the roof of the family business, with his boyfriend, dressed like Dr. Frank N Furter. Any one of those things would have ruined his reputation in the community (please, nothing from the peanut gallery about church and attitudes about homosexuality…I think we all get it), so he was doing it in secret.
And really, this notion that because there’s a vocal group yelling about what a bitch they think she is…jeez, that means the majority of guys who play games for fun are shitty people? I’m not a gamer, but I couldn’t give two shits about whether a female character is buxom and scantily clad, or looks normal. I want to play a freakin’ game to unwind at the end of the day, alright? If the industry is going to take her arguments seriously, so be it. But let’s not pretend that because she’s been threatened, every argument she’s made is 100% valid and that anyone who disagrees with anything she says is equal to the people sending rape and death threats, alright?!
And I mean, if you want to go down the route that women are the real victims of males-only conscription, can we also go down the route of how “why don’t we teach men not to rape” is actually just another way of shitting on women?
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Lessse, that would be somewhere between $300 million and $3 billion? Those Kickstarters keep getting better and better!
She could actually start with some few indie games, one at the very least:
I mean, she raised more than 150k, I honestly don’t know how she uses that money, but since her original request was less than $7000 I guess she can spare some of the surplus in funding one or two games.
linking doesn’t seem to work, it only embeds the video, but google “Sarkeesian kickstarter” if you want to see the numbers
Still, this “how much you raised” thing is not worth a death threat, but it certainly deserves an answer from her.
I would like to see how a “Sarkeesian approved” game looks like.
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I read it as a third party and I definitely sensed that was what was happening, so I guess it’s weird for me to say that that doesn’t happen much on these boards. I supposed what I meant was that you won’t find someone saying, “If you disagree that game X is a good example of misogyny then you are a rapist,” and it’s a little crazy that that is actually saying something to be said for these boards when compared with some others.
But on the other hand, maybe it isn’t amazing that an argument over word choice can turn into an argument over who is on the side of people making actual death threats. I think a big problem here is that we have a system of rational justification that is built up over people’s emotions. Even look at Cory’s headline from the other thread “Lazy writing.” Well, we don’t know if these games had lazy writing or if they had bad writing done by someone who was genuinely trying their best. We need to paper over our feelings - the misogyny is terrible - with a rationalization that makes us faux-objectively right instead of just people with opinions.
Misogyny is terrible, and I think the case that it is terrible can be made solidly and rationally. All of us realize that moral relativism gets us nowhere (well, except for those are are fantastically objectively wrong - moral relativism is their only defense). But most rational arguments are merely masks over emotions and tribalism.
Rational arguments are supposed to protect us from abuses of power but they largely don’t. The rigour required for an argument is proportional to the power that its target has. If I argue that all of A, B and C suggest D then a person who agrees with D will approve of what I am saying and a person who disagrees with D will scrutinize A, B and C to find any flaw in any of them even if that flaw is not fatal to the overall argument. Sarkeesian’s arguments largely go after the biggest of the big budget games - they go after big money - so any flaw in her presentation, any imagined hint that she is being dishonest is enough to stop them. There will always be a word or a sentence to argue over.
So arguing with words and sentences and individual examples can be insidious. (That particular example really wasn’t, @emo_pinata actually just shared an emotional reaction to the sentence while overall agreeing with the point, they did not try to suggest that the sentence undermined the point) Like I said above:
I think she could do a better job delivering her message, but unless she wants my advice or someone else who is making a similar video wants my advice I’m not sure what my critique is accomplishing. Ordinarily I would just throw my opinion in on anything, but in this case I realize I should know that any critique will be taken as evidence that she was wrong by people who will accept anything as support for their idiotic position.
To anyone who thinks Sarkessian’s arguments are also just rational paper over an emotional reaction, stop and consider what it means if that is true. What does it mean about her experience of these games and the images they contain? What does it mean about the experience of many other people who were willing to put money into crowdsourcing campaigns (and note that those who donated to the campaign are not the same as those who are complaining about it)?
If we take away all the rationality, people are being hurt. People’s feelings are being hurt by these games and people are being hurt in real life when they say their feelings are hurt by these games. What does that say?
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She actually proposed a game that sounds relatively intriguing. I could see, say, a LucasArts-style adventure like this (disclaimer: I was all about the adventure games, not so much on any first-person or side scroller, so I’m biased. 
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I’m not a big fan of the genre, so my opinion is also biased, but I’m not thrilled about the story, I would like to play it before giving an opinion.
Any idea of the actual status? release date? platform? I can’t find any more info.
