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Feminist Frequency

Turo602

Vocare Ad Pugnam
Joined
Jul 31, 2010
Location
Gotham City
I don't know but she does sure yap a lot. Maybe if she wore some lingerie she would get my attention.
 

Garo

Boy Wonder
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Location
Behind you
Before I say a word, let's get this out of the way: regardless of what she says, it is never okay to harass somebody for disagreeing with you, and especially not okay to issue rape and death threats. That is beyond not cool, and is something that we as people who love video games should all be ashamed of.

Moving on: I don't care much for Anita Sarkeesian. On one level, this is a very simple matter of I don't find her video style particularly effective. They're very rote and mechanical feeling, as if she wrote an academic paper, toned down the academic speak, and read it into a camera. It's not a very compelling style and doesn't do her any favors in communicating her message, and given the wild success of her Kickstarter, is notably low on the production value spectrum. She raised a lot of money for this series; invest in some video editors to inject a bit of style and flair in your series, please. It'll do wonders for those on the fence about your message.

On another level, however, I am not the biggest fan of her specific message. While I am absolutely all on board for pointing out the inherent misogyny in this industry and its trends, I am not entirely sure that Sarkeesian is doing the best job at it. There is value, I think, in pointing out the prevalence of the damsel-in-distress trope in video games. However, I think it is also critical to note that such a trope is present in society at large, and is not a problem exclusive to video gaming. This is my primary point of uncertainty regarding Sarkeesian's actual message: she's pointing out misogyny in society at large, but presenting it as something unique to video gaming. This is damaging to the reputation of video games, making it appear that it is the only industry with such representation problems (it's absolutely not). It places the onus on society rather than on gaming culture, making her claims something easily deflected to "this is just a problem with society, not games specifically," which makes it easy to ignore the very real problems that gaming has that are unique to this industry.

In summation: I think the work she is doing is valid and important, as we don't have enough female voices in gaming today, but I think it is slightly myopic in a weird way by not highlighting gaming's very specific brand of misogyny, and I also think it is being delivered rather poorly in her videos, which lack a compelling style.
 
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Jonny

When in doubt, mumble.
Joined
Dec 22, 2011
Location
Winterfell
Before I say a word, let's get this out of the way: regardless of what she says, it is never okay to harass somebody for disagreeing with you, and especially not okay to issue rape and death threats. That is beyond not cool, and is something that we as people who love video games should all be ashamed of.

I shall start by agreeing with that point whole heartedly. The reaction to her videos by some is enough to disgust even the most ardent opposer to her work who still contains a level of sanity.

For my self I also hold problems with her work. As someone who does agree that there is sexism in video games and the marketing, I was rather disappointed by how she chose to present her work. My personal gripe is with her high reliance on individual incidences and how they themselves are sexist, rather than the generally trend in games. She does on occasion hint at or say that these incidents are a heavy trend within the games industry, but failes to bring any stats to back it up. The problem here is that an individual case can be defendable. Having a prostitute shot or a woman beaten in one scene when so many other scenes feater men being tortued and abused is never going to evoke much more of a reaction than an eye roll from gamers. Individual incidences can easily be argued to be important to a games setting, story, etc. and going through a list of examples that each could claim this does not help. A game with a princess getting kidnapped and a male hero going to rescue her is not sexist, the fact that the vast majority of games are (when applicable) a female being kidnapped and a male going to rescue her is. Basically the trend is the sexist part, not the individual games.

What, I think, would have beenfar more helpful would have been to present comparative stats on how many games showcase women in a highly sexualized form while not not doing the same to women (especially within the high budget games). It would have been helpfull to showcase the percentage of games that are activly advertised towards men as opposed to women. It would have also been helpful to show the number of games that have a strong female lead or the number of games that complete the easy of easy bechdel test. Equally showing how games are compared to other media in these regards in order to show how they fit within societal trends to represent women. To my mind these are the important bits. These are the bits that give us understanding as well as a place to work from.
 

Emma

The Cassandra
Site Staff
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Location
Vegas
First thing, this needs to be moved to MD, this topic deals with larger issues than just gaming that can get pretty heated.

To the point, Anita Sarkesian is a con artist. She has lied every step of the way. She lied about what was going on in the games, she lied about being a gamer, she lied about playing the games, she lied about using pictures and video from other people without permission, she lied about what she was doing with the money, and she lied about getting credible threats worth contacting police over. The police, actually have been trying to contact her about that and she's been ignoring their calls. Ignoring the police after you just claimed to have gotten credible threats. She wants the attention, she wants the "poor me" sympathy out of it and she's completely disingenous about everything. She does not care about women, or anyone else for that matter. She only cares about herself and what she can get. Look at what she and her supporters do by profiling gamers as all being overweight, neckbeard , straight white men living in their parent's basement. They are the ones being intolerant and bigoted, not the people they complain about. I find them complaining about the comments they get no different than the Westbero Baptist church complaining about what people say to them when they're picking a service for children who were killed by a gunman. When you say crazy, hateful, dishonest things, you don't really get to keep the right to complain about what people say to you. You can't expect to have your feelings protected when you are actively hurting other people. When she's saying people are being "misogynist" what she really means is that they are just disagreeing with her. They're twisting the meaning of the word. Most people do not hate women. You can find a small vocal minority, yes, but you can do that with anything. The issue is that if anyone disagrees with these radicals, they just react by accusing them of being misogynist even though what is between their legs had absolutely nothing to do with anything that was going on and had no bearing in the thought process of the person they're accusing. Yet we as a society like to take these accusations as guilty until proven innocent. It's a shaming tactic. And it's pathetic. Anyone who uses it, only does so because they know their arguments are nonsense and cannot stand to criticism so they want to scare and silence the criticism so it can't endanger their crazy and harmful ideas.

What she has doing, and thanks in large part to the recent Gamergate scandal, a new movement has started called Not Your Shield, basically it's about gamers tired of their identity being crapped upon by dishonest people with a selfish political agenda. The basic idea is that they don't what people using them as as shield to protect their own beliefs and they're tired of being generalized and abused for the selfish desires of others.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
Just woke up and I'm too tired to be anything but blunt.

The name "Feminist Frequency" alone nearly made me spit out my coffee in laughter. Sarkeesian is a swine, con artist, and just one of many examples underlining the evil that is modern feminism.
 

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