Wonderful profile of Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist games critic who made an army of shitty manbabies very, very upset

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In terms of industry marketing categories, there’s not a whole lot of diversity in that list. I see: three games in the sports category that reflect pro sports’ exclusive focus on male players; two games targetted toward younger children; and five action titles, four of which had male protagonists (as I recall, Destiny had more choices; meanwhile, GTA 5 has three protagonists, all of them male).

Do women age 13+ play these games? Certainly. Are they marketed toward women age 13+ and developed with a gender-neutral mentality (e.g. able to pass the Bechdel Test)? Not really. When Sarkeesian dared to ask and answer the second question, she got death threats.

In regard to that kind of reaction, one doesn’t have to agree with a lying dope like Jack Thompson on causation to recognise that a correlation still exists here. This is a cultural malaise, one that exists between the industry and the core fan base of white adolescent boys of all ages that it’s catered to for decades.

The situation is getting better, but the industry is still far from the point about a decade back in our new golden age of TV where a concerted effort was made to bring more women into the traditional “boy’s club” enclaves of writer’s rooms, with a significant number of them graduating to showrunners over the last few years. I’d argue that this, along with the inclusion of a lot more openly LGBTQ writers, is one of the reasons that we’re now blessed with a cornucopia of good and diverse TV series.

A small amount of progress is being made. There are a group of thoughtful male developers and producers in the AAA sector of the industry who try to transcend the sexist mindset in both the development environment and game concept/content. But pretending that they’re the rule rather than the exception and discounting the 1980s-vintage mentality pervasive in the C-suites and marketing departments and in the coding shops of these companies does no-one – including the industry itself – any favours.

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It is true that I was responding to:

Do you feel violence in video games leads people to be violent in real life as well?

And therefore my answer started from the viewpoint of violence specifically. I did move to add bigotry to my continued response, though, because representation of women and POC are definitely part of the issue and, more to the point, are more on topic with what Sarkeesian was talking about.

In response to my post, @anon59592690 made a specific gaming suggestion to me, explaining a little bit about why she thought it might be worth my time to consider. That’s a great way to bring a newbie into the fold: listen to their concerns, and offer a possible solution.

I don’t live in a bubble. Not only am I aware in general of how men treat women, virtually every family I know of has been dealing with the issue of gaming as it affects their sons. A lot of dads these days grew up gaming, and don’t want their boys to imbibe the same toxic brew. And, as experienced gamers, they are steering their daughters entirely away from the culture. They know a lot more than I do, and that’s the choice I keep seeing those dads make. They don’t live in a bubble either.

Have you ever heard the expression “once bitten, twice shy”? If a man’s reaction to my concern is to say “you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s perfectly fine” I’m going to think back to all the other times men in my life have belittled my concern and tried to steer me into situations that weren’t dangerous or prejudicial for them, but would be for me.

In fact, your response alone, as a result of your position here at one of the better large forums on the internet, has convinced me that it’s still not time for me to get into any sort of multi-player gaming, because behind all the other screens are going to be – AT BEST – men and boys who think like you do. It’s not good enough. The industry may have improved somewhat since 2014, but there’s still a long road ahead.

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This is where I am with multiplayer and online and it makes me sad. I see my partner playing with other people but even if it’s just my personality I just don’t quite want to have to put up with that even in my own home with something I paid my own money for. But I’m not ok with it. Like I watch a lot of people play League. Not once in my life have I desired to play it, not because of the game, but because I’ve watched a lot of people play league. Damn, no, like emotional labor is still labor. I guess m y thoughts now are that something with a more limited scope where you play in teams with the control required to form less toxic teams and some barrier from the general populace is the ideal but at this moment I haven’t achieved it. I’m pretty dead set on getting it though frankly.

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I gave up on multiplayer more than a decade ago when I tried it with a couple of RTS games I liked. The adolescent boy behaviour in the chat was just too off-putting. I can deal with a little trash talk and frustration with my less than perfect P2P skills, but what I saw was toxic schoolyard stuff tinged with bigotry and sexism and a lot of abuse for newbies (many of whom were probably small kids). It doesn’t sound like much has changed.

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Much of the problem in this situation isn’t that people disagree with Sarkeesian’s viewpoint or presentation-it’s that they way the expressed their disagreement was thought rape and death threats. There is plenty of vitriol and petty behavior in academia over gender studies, but it isn’t expressed by having the police swat team surround the other professor’s office.
You can disagree with her conclusions. When the community at large thinks the best way to disagree is to threaten personal violence, the community does, indeed, have a problem.

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Gamers proved Anita right: videogame culture IS hostile towards women on a way no other subculture is.

Like, Lindsay Ellis - a friend of Sarkeesian - has been critiquing film for years and hasn’t faced the same level of harassment and vitriol. Despite, you know, apply thing same lenses to a different form of art.

It fundamentally comes down to this: capital-G Gamers are manbabies just like gun fanatics are.

Like, if you take a look at GTA, it tends to poke fun at specific groups of people and nobody else. GTA is notoriously terrible towards LGBTQ, towards women, and has heavy caricatures of young black men. What it doesn’t parody are White Men as a group. (Why? Because it’s a game series made white men, for white men.) Play through San Andreas or GTA III again, or even IV, and it is impossible to ignore.

“BuT AnITa is InAcCuRaTe!” some shout hoarsely with chapped lips afteran afternoon of hurling epithets over voice chat.

Here’s abridge, there’s their manfeelings, it’s time for Gamers to get the fuck over themselves.

But instead, gamers keep sending bomb threats while centrists stand by wringing their hands about “inaccuracies” instead of fucking examining the art they engage with.

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youre-awesome-yes-thank-you-finally-dean-supernatural

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I don’t like Anita Sarkeesian critiques, but she’s one of the most important figures in game journalism for a reason - and not just because of internet trolls. She’s clearly one of the driving figures journalism in games has improved, even the quality of coverage from people who didn’t take a side or supported GG are taking things seriously and reporting news about industry abuse and where development cycles and business directive drove games off a cliff. All of those conversations came to the forefront because of Feminist Frequency’s fundraising campaign to improve the scope of games journalism.

Sure, people were providing good journalism beforehand but it was always pushed to severely indie territory and now there are several mainstream sites with active editorial pages and coverage along with a big shift on what is popular to watch on YT and such. Even some of the big names tied to GG and anti-Sarkeesian attitudes changed their tune in the years following after it exposed how deeply entrenched site me dedicated to those causes has deep inseparable ties to white nationalism (especially since it was immediately pounced on as a recruitment tool online).

So even in being critical of the work out of context, history will look back on this time as a turning point centered around a few outspoken women - one of whom is Anita Sarkeesian. And that needs to be respected.

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Yes. It’s one thing to argue about her conclusions, quite another to completely dismiss her out of hand or to attack her as the gamergators did. Without her, I doubt we’d have others debating these issues online in quite the same way. Agree with her or not, she most certainly took games seriously as an art form (as @tinoesroho) and opened up new possibilities for how we can think about games. That’s more than enough to argue for her importance to journalism and cultural criticism. And the fact that she did so outside of academia and in the public is important too. She even makes the point in the article about how academia talks a big game about public engagement and then doesn’t quite make it there, in part due to how our discussions happen (in places that are restricted access - academic conferences, journals, in classrooms where people have to pay to enroll, etc). Her bringing this more academically inclined critiques (that sought to avoid being too jargony and sought to be engaging) helped open up a new way for the lay person to understand some of what we do talk about in the academic world. It helped invite new people who might not have ready access to that world into the conversation, widening that conversation to new people.

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The gators - and their “centrist” youtube allies - didn’t just dismiss out of hand, they spent ENTIRE YEARS uploading 3+ videos attacking her every. single. goddamn. day.

You may notice that those same guys are now attacking :sigh: Kathleen Kennedy and Brie Larson.

“I’m a logical guy” some techbros may think, “i’m bound by logic and not swayed at all by rhetoric.”

well, here’s the thing. enough concerted attacks - no matter how unfounded - can and do change opinion. we can take Justin Trudeau or Hillary Clinton as an example: despite having few, if no recent missteps, a concerted campaign was able to absolutely kneecap their campaigns. it’s called the Exposure Effect. it’s the same mechanism whereby kidnapped folks identify with their kidnappers, the same effect that turns undercover operatives into full-blown extremists, and the same effect that the far-right has successfully employed since forever.

any techdudes - Jeff especially - would do well to re-evaluate their views.

and uh, techdudes should listen to women. fuck’s sake.

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Yes, I’m aware. But people also just dismissed her. I think that we shouldn’t ignore one because of the other, because at the end of the day, the more measured dismissals can be problematic too.

Did I say or argue other wise? Do you think as a woman, I’m unaware of the problem of men not listening to women or talking down to us, or assuming we don’t know something because of our gender? I’m very aware of this, as it’s something I’ve had to deal with in my own professional life. The dismissals matter, and shape the culture of violence that targeted Sarkessian and other women. They fed on the more low level dismissals and believed that their actions were justified because of the more “polite take downs” of her work, which assumed that she didn’t know or care about gaming (one example).

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Agreed; the whole entire spectrum of harassment and disrespect that Sarkeesian received, from merely being dismissed out of hand to getting bomb threats because she dared critique something as “sacred” as freaklin’ video games, is highly problematic.

Nothing ever changes, if nothing ever changes.

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Yes. And I think one feeds on the other.

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Absolutely.

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I personally don’t think video games add anything of particular value to society, and ultimately we’d all be better off spending our time doing anything else. So this is correct.

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So… you’ve spent all this time vehemently arguing about something that YOU personally don’t even care about???

Wow… what the actual fuck, dude; I wish you could see how that makes your position look, from this end of the spectrum.

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image

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R&R is crucial for humans. Gaming (in general) has value in that regard.

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Indeed. Escapism in moderation can often help keep people calmer, saner and from acting out in negative ways in real life.

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I guess it’s taken me a while to appreciate the deeper issue, which I alluded to in early 2014

You’re right — it is the lowest form of journalism not because it is historically the laziest “dude doing a video review of Halo 6 in a Cheeto fueled living room bong haze” form of journalism, which is what I originally thought … it’s because the entire video game genre is of extremely low value to the world.

Everything else follows from that. Burn it all to the ground.