Anita Sarkeesian
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{{gender}}'''Anita Sarkeesian''' is a [[feminist]] social critic whose work explores the portrayals of [[women]] (and to a lesser extent [[LGBT|sexual]] and [[racial]] minorities) in popular [[media]] such as [[video game]]s, [[movie]]s, and television. She produces a [[YouTube]] series and website titled ''Feministfrequency'' which hosts resources about feminism, especially as it relates to women in popular media. | {{gender}}'''Anita Sarkeesian''' is a [[feminist]] social critic whose work explores the portrayals of [[women]] (and to a lesser extent [[LGBT|sexual]] and [[racial]] minorities) in popular [[media]] such as [[video game]]s, [[movie]]s, and television. She produces a [[YouTube]] series and website titled ''Feministfrequency'' which hosts resources about feminism, especially as it relates to women in popular media. | ||
| − | She is fairly well known in online feminist circles, and her work has been used in university classrooms.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8I0Wy58adM Her Kickstarter video]</ref> She is also hated among [[MRA]]s and [[misogynist]]s on the [[Internet]], especially [[Gamergate|those within the gaming community]]. | + | She is fairly well known in online feminist circles, and her work has been used in university classrooms.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8I0Wy58adM Her Kickstarter video]</ref> She is also hated among [[MRA]]s and other [[misogynist]]s on the [[Internet]], especially [[Gamergate|those within the gaming community]]. |
==Personal background== | ==Personal background== | ||
Revision as of 09:59, 6 January 2015
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She is fairly well known in online feminist circles, and her work has been used in university classrooms.[1] She is also hated among MRAs and other misogynists on the Internet, especially those within the gaming community.
Contents |
Personal background
Sarkeesian was born to Armenian parents in Toronto, and later moved to California. At California State University, Northridge she earned a BA in Communications, then went on to York University for an MA in social and political thought, where she wrote a thesis, titled "I’ll Make a Man Out of You: Strong Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy Television," in which she developed her critique of portrayals of women in geek culture.
In the beginning
She entered the world of feminist vlogging on May 20, 2009 (a full three years before the shitstirring began) with a vlog post discussing the renewal of Dollhouse and the cancellation of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Typical for many of her videos, her analysis focused on the narrative and the characters and what these tell about the use of stereotypes in popular culture. Some highlights:
- She has hailed sci-fi series Caprica for outing a gay character without making it some pointlessly huge deal (but lamenting that he is, nonetheless, a murderer);[2]
- Spent time explaining that provocative beer-serving fembots are, by their very nature, sexist (like we didn't already know that);[3]
- Pointed out showing men as lying sexist idiots in the media is bad for men as well;[4]
- Why HuffPo needs to stop the pseudoporn linkbaiting and "articles";[5]
- Explains why just because 'sex sells' doesn't mean it's OK to use half-dressed women to sell crap;[6]
- Pointed out that just because an actress is an adult, if she's most known for playing a child it's still a problem sexualizing her;[7] and
- Pointed out that from 1960 to 2010, only seven winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture featured a male and female ensemble cast, four were primarily about a woman, and the remaining 39 were about one or more men; as well as the incredibly low levels of representations of women in film production,[8] and that there is a very low pass rating for such Oscar-nominated movies even today.[9]
Tropes vs Women
She did a run of videos titled 'Tropes vs Women' that further focused on stereotypical portrayals of women in movies. It lasted a few videos before it was scrapped for the much larger, in depth and longer series of the same name, which focused on video games. The run included: "The Manic Pixie Dream Girl," "Women in Refrigerators," "The Smurfette Principle," "The Evil Demon Seductress," "The Mystical Pregnancy," and "The Straw Feminist."[10]
Another major video series was her talking about children's games and advertisements. The three videos[11] are nearly half an hour in total run length and focus heavily on the differences in the way boys and girls are targeted by ads and toys themselves. She focuses on how ads and toys for girls focus on being pretty and fulfilling old stereotypes (often cooking, cleaning, and raising children), while toys and ads targeted at boys focus on either violence or creativity.
Sarkeesian becomes a target
“”Hell, as far as Anita goes, there are some solid criticisms you can level at her work. I'm not 100% on her side, you know. She's not perfect by a long shot and her video series seems already to be a little off base, with some of the examples she's named as targets. But we can't talk about that anymore, because the debate's not about whether she's right or wrong. The debate was invalidated when people tried to ruin her life en masse. The chance to debate her on merit was lost once people started threatening to rape her.
|
| —Jim Sterling[12] |
In June 2012, Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of a series of videos. Soon thereafter, she became the target of numerous threats and a sustained campaign of cyberbullying from the, let's say, uncivilized part of the gaming world and other Internet denizens. She was threatened with physical abuse, rape, and murder, failed attempts were made to hack her various accounts and find out her personal information (such as phone number and home address), and her videos were mass reported for everything from piracy to terrorism. In addition, someone actually created a game called Beat up Anita Sarkeesian which allowed players to simulate doing exactly what the game's title implied.
In addition, the Wikipedia article about Sarkeesian has been the target of a persistent vandalism campaign, and she has had to deal with literally millions of insulting comments, many of a profoundly batty nature, as well as some driven by misplaced anti-Semitism. There were accusations that Sarkeesian had deliberately provoked some of this behaviour by posting on 4chan's /v/ board, though due to the anonymous nature of the board and a userbase infamous for false flag trolling, both on- and off-site, proving such is difficult at best.
Sarkeesian has taken ownership of the abuse and marshaled it to demonstrate the prevalence of sexism in the gamer community.[13]
Continued attacks
As recently as April 17, 2013, her Twitter account reported an attempted DDOS[wp] attack on her website. There are also several YouTube videos in response to her with titles generally to the effect of "FeministFrequency is everything wrong with feminism" or "Anita Sarkeesian is a lunatic."[14] Most videos criticizing her rely on attacking her credentials, claiming she's "not a real gamer" and is "biased". Additionally, because of the attacks on her she has disabled the like/dislike feature and the comments on all of her YouTube videos, and strictly moderates her Twitter account. In one video, she left the like meter on as an experiment and ended up getting about one-hundred dislikes before the video could have even been completely watched.[15] Why so scared?
How did MRAs take this? Well, one of them illegally downloaded her videos and uploaded them to a channel creatively titled "nasty opinions." If you want to see why Ms. Sarkeesian needs to keep working, just look at the comments on them.[16]
Are we done yet?
In 2014, she was offered an award by Game Developers Conference and invited to speak at their event. Somebody decided to call (email really) in a bomb threat to some of the organizations developers and guests saying it would go off unless her award and speaking engagement were rescinded. Needless to say this was a hoax nobody bought (though the San Francisco police swept the venue anyway).[17] Later, she received some rather specific death threats over twitter, causing her to flee her apartment for an evening.[18]
About a month and a half later she was scheduled to speak at a Utah State University event on October 15. On the morning of October 14, university staff received an anonymous e-mail threat, which warned that “a Montreal Massacre[wp] style attack [would] be carried out” unless the event was cancelled.[19] The author of the threat claimed that “feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and the sake of all the others they've wronged,” and that this would be “the deadliest school shooting in American history.”[19] The university initially remained determined to proceed with the event as planned.[19] However, Sarkeesian ultimately cancelled her appearance after learning that the university could not restrict concealed firearms under Utah state law.[20]
See what you did?
There has been a recognised effect from the attacks on Anita Sarkeesian:
- The rabid attacks against her, turning her into a victim and pushing public attention towards her, are probably the major reason why she managed to get so much money from her Kickstarter, which has allowed her to make a living as a feminist activist and commentator.
- Industry professionals have gone out of their way to stand up for her,[21] and have since showered her in a truckload of awards for awareness of sexism in video games.[22][23]
- There is now an adage called Anita's Irony that exists because of her:
Nonsense claims often made against her
- She's claiming that sexist tropes in video games make gamers more sexist, it's just as bullshit as Jack Thompson claiming that violence portrayed in video games makes gamers more violent.
No. Jack Thompson claims that violence in video games actually makes gamers more violent, which studies have disproven. He was all for punishing developers and gamers of violent video games to the point of suggesting that they be charged with murder. Anita on the other hand only goes as far as to say that sexist tropes that exist can be perpetuated in media like video games. Ultimately she is just suggesting that it might be better if video games treat women better. She is by no means trying to restrict developers in their creative freedom, merely hoping to maybe influence their attitudes.
- She lied to us about having been an avid gamer since she was small. There's a video[25] of her saying she hates games years before doing this series.
This is often mentioned to discredit her as a liar and thus scammer. When you actually watch the lecture she was giving to a college class, you see just how massively those comments were yanked out of context. Sarkeesian was discussing fanfiction and vidding and slash, all intense "fandoms": communities where highly interested people devote many hours to writing, reading, cutting video, and discussing about the possibilities within stories that go beyond the sanctioned stories themselves (be they literature, television, or even video games). When she says she's "not a fan," she's saying it in a very specific context - that of these intense "fandoms." Now, given the lack of clearly presented context there are multiple ways of how one can interpret such a statement and thus one should be considerate of the possibilities.[26] But of course it is much easier to just jump on the hate train and take the statement as what it seems like on its own. Not to mention that even if this was true, it would have no bearing whatsoever on the merits of her arguments.
See also
External links
References
- ↑ Her Kickstarter video
- ↑ "Caprica and the Queerness of Sam Adama"
- ↑ "Fembots, Advertising and Male Fantasy"
- ↑ "What Liquor Ads Teach Us About Guys"
- ↑ "The Huffington Post's Linkbait Strategy"
- ↑ "Retro Sexism and Uber Ironic Advertising"
- ↑ "Glee, GQ and the Sexualization of Young Girls"
- ↑ "Women's Stories, Movies and the Oscars"
- ↑ "The Oscars and The Bechdel Test"
- ↑ Admittedly the videos need to be titled better, beyond just repeating the trope names.
- ↑ "Toy Ads and Learning Gender", "LEGO Friends - LEGO & Gender Part 1" and "The LEGO Boys Club - Lego & Gender Part 2"
- ↑ Jim Sterling, Anita Sarkeesian - The Monster Gamers Created, Jimquisition.
- ↑ Her TEDxTalk was basically just about the attack campaign
- ↑ We're not going to link them.
- ↑ Her own words
- ↑ Again, find it yourself.
- ↑ Bomb Threat Targeted Anita Sarkeesian, Gaming Awards Last March, Stephen Totilo, Kotaku, 17 September 2014
- ↑ Campbell, Colin. "Sarkeesian driven out of home by online abuse and death threats" Polygon.com August 27, 2014
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Cimaron Neugebauer, “Terror threat against feminist Anita Sarkeesian at USU”, Standard-Examiner
- ↑ Erin Alberty, “Feminist cancels talk at USU after guns allowed despite shooting threat”, The Salt Lake Tribune
- ↑ Say Mr. Gears of War himself, one of the biggest dudebros out there.
- ↑ Anita Sarkeesian, Riot co-founders win GDCA 2014 Special Awards, Gamasutra
- ↑ A Day of Honors for Women in the Video Game Industry, The New York Times
- ↑ Internet Rules and Laws 2.0
- ↑ Vimeo video. Relevant statements begin at 12:00.
- ↑ The latest Anita Sarkeesian "not a gamer" thing, Going Rampant.