Current Events > I was someone that disliked Anita Sarkeesian

(+) Yeah! (+)

I am a gay male, and my only close friends have been female:

"How dare you disrespect my beloved hobby!", I thought.

Little did I know it would lead to this. This. The state of America now.

I am ashamed.

Sorry if I'm not expressing this in the best way. Hopefully some of you can understand my mindset.

Tbh what did she even do that was so wrong? She gave her opinions on games, that was it.

LightningAce11 posted...

Tbh what did she even do that was so wrong? She gave her opinions on games, that was it.

She did so while possessing a vagina, that's what burned gamers so much

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Is this a gay joke saying I'm a top? I'm half asleep and inebriated.

It's also a big picture and it hurts my eyes.

Someone please explain.

Did she still scam a bunch of people out of that kickstarter project or did she finally deliver?

LightningAce11 posted...

Tbh what did she even do that was so wrong? She gave her opinions on games, that was it.

I think it's that her opinions were dumb. She just whined about sexiness in video games. And her idea of a good female character is one that is so pixelated you can't even tell it's human.

I agree with her message, but theres also space for girlbosses and princess to rescue

NeonPhoenix posted...

Did she still scam a bunch of people out of that kickstarter project or did she finally deliver?

Did she ever fulfill her kickstarter?

CARRRNE_ASADA posted...

I agree with her message, but theres also space for girlbosses and princess to rescue

What is her message exactly? Admittedly the only things I know about her are from Thunderf00t videos that I watched back in the day. And I remember the dude from Drunken Peasants podcast once did a selfie with her in the background, and she accused him on twitter of stalking her.

I mean you're allowed to disagree with her all you want but she still has a right to critique and her criticisms do come from a valid place.

kind9 posted...

What is her message exactly?

That writing in video games, particularly in the formative years, had a largely regressive attitude towards women characters and this can be tracked in trends, or tropes.

GamerGating was quite the embarrassment. (Manosphere etc)

At least you realize it.

The misogynist rage against Sarkeesian was terrible and embarrassing. She did get threats, the "she's scamming people!" shit was wholly unfounded.

There were ACTUAL criticism. A lot of her critique was shallow and poor. She did take footage from others without asking. A lot of her opinions were bad, and she helped lead to a terrible wave in gaming where she got elevated based on nothing.

But her being an untouchable figure was entirely the fault of misogynists

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Yeah, they want games to be considered art but don't want said art to have any messages stronger than Pong.

I didn't care for her even if she had some good points. I just didn't watch her stuff because of that. Easy as pie. Some folks can't do that and must continuously complain about something they don't like and make it bigger and worse than what it is.

Notti posted...

GamerGating was quite the embarrassment. (Manosphere etc)

At least you realize it.

Turns out she was right about some things, given the state of the country as a whole now.

Notti posted...

GamerGating was quite the embarrassment. (Manosphere etc)

At least you realize it.

Yes. That is why I am ashamed. I absolutely don't agree with any of the [manosphere] and grifter culture that came out of it.

Fuck me.

I kind of wish she never happened because a lot of the gamersphere now is so alt-right centric

Yeah this suckered a lot of people into the alt right pipeline

I almost went down the alt-right pipeline because of people like her. It was mainly because of the people I watched in the 2010s influencing me, some of whom are fully alt-right at this point. But I'm still not a prude who is against sexy female characters in video games.

It did look like that she caused a lot of game studios to "overcorrect" but I don't know if that was really just her influence or a combo of other factors.

When Gamergate first popped off, I only really heard of her from misogynists bitching about her and playing telephone with her message. Then I watched a video of hers and it was... fine? She didn't say anything particularly new, but I didn't find her wrong. After seeing a bunch of freaks whine about epileptics on r/KotakuInAction I finally realized I was in the wrong crowd.

You can disagree with Anita, but the level of vitriol really exposed a section of gamers as just disgusting. It's like their whole hobby was going to be taken out back and shot. Don't even get me started on the bullshit with Zoe Quinn.

It's really sad that that Internet moment actually influenced alt-right politics.

Blue_Dream87 posted...

When Gamergate first popped off, I only really heard of her from misogynists bitching about her and playing telephone with her message. Then I watched a video of hers and it was... fine? She didn't say anything particularly new, but I didn't find her wrong. After seeing a bunch of freaks whine about epileptics on r/KotakuInAction I finally realized I was in the wrong crowd.

You can disagree with Anita, but the level of vitriol really exposed a section of gamers as just disgusting. It's like their whole hobby was going to be taken out back and shot. Don't even get me started on the bullshit with Zoe Quinn.

It's really sad that that Internet moment actually influenced alt-right politics.

The bigger issues are her attachment to the idea anything with sexuality or violence is inherently "masculine" and reduces women. She's had some painfully bad takes.

I agree with her points that genderswapped characters like Ms. Pac-man who are literally ONLY just game protag but genderswapped are pointless. I somewhat disagree that paying homage to old fairy tales by rescuing princesses who fall head-over-heels in love with the hero is diminishing towards women. If the setting is modern instead of fantastical, medieval, etc then yeah it's more of an issue.
The thing I have the most umbrage about is her underestimation of how many effective female protagonists there have been in gaming history. I can barely blame her though, most of these games have been ignored hard.

Blue_Dream87 posted...

It's like their whole hobby was going to be taken out back and shot.

That's the thing I can't understand about this type. They abhor any game that has things they don't like, it's like you don't have to play games that contain things you don't like or agree with but they get absolutely virulent about such games existing at all. Not all games are meant to cater to one specific demographic.

HighSeraph posted...

That's the thing I can't understand about this type. They abhor any game that has things they don't like, it's like you don't have to play games that contain things you don't like or agree with but they get absolutely virulent about such games existing at all. Not all games are meant to cater to one specific demographic.

They want every game to appeal to them first because they believe they are "the real gamers." It's stupid.

But people in general have forgotten not everything has to be for everyone.

LightSnake posted...

The bigger issues are her attachment to the idea anything with sexuality or violence is inherently "masculine" and reduces women. She's had some painfully bad takes.

It's been like 10 years and id much rather critique her words than how people interpret them. There is a lot of feminist theory that, as a feminist myself, I would roll my eyes at. Hell at the time, 4th-wave/Post feminism had its own niche carved out with hypersexualization. So I wouldn't inherently dub sexualization and violence as masculine, but I do see the arguments that masculinity and the systems upholding it so trend towards promoting violence and sex. Definitely other systems surrounding it and I'm much more interested in how capitalism is propagating these issues than cultural trends alone.

HighSeraph posted...

That's the thing I can't understand about this type. They abhor any game that has things they don't like, it's like you don't have to play games that contain things you don't like or agree with but they get absolutely virulent about such games existing at all. Not all games are meant to cater to one specific demographic.

It's a victim complex that has completely absorbed their identity. I'd say social isolation, and the communities they do choose to participate in, reinforce that. It's pitiful, until they start doing the threats of violence.

Blue_Dream87 posted...

It's been like 10 years and id much rather critique her words than how people interpret them. There is a lot of feminist theory that, as a feminist myself, I would roll my eyes at. Hell at the time, 4th-wave/Post feminism had its own niche carved out with hypersexualization. So I wouldn't inherently dub sexualization and violence as masculine, but I do see the arguments that masculinity and the systems upholding it so trend towards promoting violence and sex. Definitely other systems surrounding it and I'm much more interested in how capitalism is propagating these issues than cultural trends alone.

There's definitely room for discussion. I find Sarkeesian's takes to be reductive and shallow ultimately. It doesn't really help she's actually really, really bad with genuine critique. Even people responding in an academic matter to her points.

PurestProdigy posted...

The thing I have the most umbrage about is her underestimation of how many effective female protagonists there have been in gaming history.

I remember posting about that when her videos first dropped, how she seemingly cherrypicked which characters to look at and which to seemingly ignore/pretend they don't exist, thinking to myself that she was hoping for a quick round of support from people for her viewpoint instead of the full, critically considered examination of gaming that she claimed to be doing. But, yeah, the politicization took over after that and any discussion would draw one into opposing sides.

I always just got the impression her content was outrage bait, so I ignored it (and the frothing at the mouth detractors).

Being someone who watched Gamergate blowup from just a random blog from a salty ex-boyfriend making baseless accusations that his ex slept with people for review scores because he was salty the relationship was over. It's insane how it snowballed into this whole sexist bullshit attacking literally any woman who dared to have an opinion that Gamers didn't also agree with.

Like when you actually analyze her pop culture critiques...

Her critique of Fury Road is one of the most shallow I've ever seen."It's not really feminist by women use violence like men rather than playing to their own strengths!" Which is so bizarrely gender essentialist and erases a ton of revolutionary history.

Her view on Mad Men is it's sexist for depicting sexism. Like....come on

LightSnake posted...

There's definitely room for discussion. I find Sarkeesian's takes to be reductive and shallow ultimately. It doesn't really help she's actually really, really bad with genuine critique. Even people responding in an academic matter to her points.

To be honest, it seems like she's just taking basic feminist theory to create content to a wide audience. That doesn't take very much understanding, and she probably doesn't face much legitimate pushback. Gamergate definitely didn't help where their arguments were "Just fucking die", that kind of abuse doesn't really set anyone up to be able to react logically.

I do think it's been so far out that we can discuss video games through a feminist lens in a healthy manner, and we have plenty of examples of how video games have matured since then.

LightningAce11 posted...

Tbh what did she even do that was so wrong? She gave her opinions on games, that was it.

She was a scammer that stole video content from other channels, intentionally picked the worst she can find, and spun a false narrative of how video games and its players are violent. She was using it to jump into the world of being a historian through "a feminist's perspective". She immediately got laughed and kicked out of the historian's circle with her brand of blatantly bad revisionist history, she tried to go back to the video grift.

Error1355 posted...

Being someone who watched Gamergate blowup from just a random blog from a salty ex-boyfriend making baseless accusations that his ex slept with people for review scores because he was salty the relationship was over. It's insane how it snowballed into this whole sexist bullshit attacking literally any woman who dared to have an opinion that Gamers didn't also agree with.

And it helped lead to a portion of the MAGA movement. A depressing butterfly effect.

She's not dead. Stop talking about her in the past tense lol

lilORANG posted...

She's not dead. Stop talking about her in the past tense lol

Correct.

MisterPengy posted...

I always just got the impression her content was outrage bait, so I ignored it (and the frothing at the mouth detractors).

Same lol

I still am someone who dislikes her. Game reviews should be about the quality of the gameplay and/or story, not based on how many social boxes the game ticks.

Opposite side of the coin from the "anti-woke" clown brigade that review bombs games for having a minority in the lead or something.

Ivynn posted...

It did look like that she caused a lot of game studios to "overcorrect" but I don't know if that was really just her influence or a combo of other factors.

Gasp so it's her fault that Spiderman 2 is ugly!

Now it all makes sense, all the pieces of the puzzle put into place.

Game reviews should be about what the reviewer wants them to be about. We're adults. We can discuss things from different angles.

Antifar posted...

Game reviews should be about what the reviewer wants them to be about. We're adults. We can discuss things from different angles.

And others are free to criticize if they think that angle is stupid. In general no platform takes a lawless approach to reviews, reviews perceived as disingenuous tend to be wiped everywhere from Steam to Google Play.

She was a little ignorant in some ways that made it feel like she didn't thoroughly engage with some of the games she played. I say this as someone who generally agreed with her sentiments.

Most people were just mad that a woman was upset about video games. There were so many bizarre leaps in logic made by these people to justify their self-fulfilling rage prophecy.

Sarkeesian ultimately champions this form of feminism where any violence or rape is wrong and either shouldn't be included or lessens the work.

It's mostly immaturity, honestly.

The only thing I saw was the Bayonetta review which as I understand it she ended up taking down anyway. It is true that it had blatantly false information in it, but that could just be because it was poorly researched, not that she was intentionally trying to make it look worse. I never saw any other videos, so I don't know what the overall quality was. That said, even if the Bayonetta was a worst possible faith intentional smear campaign against the game that wouldn't remotely justify the insane shit that happened with death threats. Also the whole ethics in game journalism thing always seemed like nonsense to me because it's just impossible to believe that anyone actually cared about something like that. Game journalism was always blatant advertising ever sense we were kids. Many magazines were literally run by and for the benefit of the actual console manufacturers themselves! Ethics only got brought up once they were mad at some women.