Anita Sarkeesian
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While she is fairly well known in online feminist circles, and her work has been used in university classrooms,[1] she is most noted for the hatred she has aroused among MRAs and other misogynists on the Internet, especially those within the gaming community, who constantly barrage her with harassment and death threats.[2] This transformation from mild mannered cultural critic to massive target of misogynistic hate gave rise to the term Anita's irony and brought to popular light the long standing issues regarding women in the gaming community.
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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);[3]
- Spent time explaining that provocative beer-serving fembots are, by their very nature, sexist (like we didn't already know that);[4]
- Pointed out showing men as lying sexist idiots in the media is bad for men as well;[5]
- Why HuffPo needs to stop the pseudoporn linkbaiting and "articles";[6]
- Explains why just because 'sex sells' doesn't mean it's OK to use half-dressed women to sell crap;[7]
- 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;[8] 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,[9] and that there is a very low pass rating for such Oscar-nominated movies even today.[10]
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."[11]
Another major video series was her talking about children's games and advertisements. The three videos[12] 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[13] |
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, Newgrounds user Bendilin Spurr 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.[14]
Continued attacks
In April 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."[15] 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.[16]
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.[17]
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).[18] Later, she received some rather specific death threats over twitter, causing her to flee her apartment for an evening.[19]
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 style attack [would] be carried out" unless the event was cancelled.[20] 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."[20] The university initially remained determined to proceed with the event as planned.[20] However, Sarkeesian ultimately cancelled her appearance after learning that the university could not restrict concealed firearms under Utah state law.[21] This unfolded during the Gamergate period, which was itself merely an extension and the ongoing animus that Sarkeesian and others had been receiving.
Alleged involvement with Mirror's Edge 2
Anita held a conference at DICE and tweeted about it, this apparently sparked with a user on Destuctoid who goes by the name "TheKodu"[22] and decided to make a blog post[23] based solely on that. They then go on to state that Anita was hired by EA to "help" make Mirror's Edge 2.
| So what is Ms Sarkeesian meant to be doing for EA ? Well EA thought it would be a great idea to set her to work "helping" the team making, possibly the only female lead game EA has really going still in, the Mirrors Edge series... "I can relate to a lot of fellow female gamers who did not get into this game due to its difficult controls", that’s what she’s reported to have said. |
Reported to have said in only one very unreliable source: a post on 4chan[24] that Anita debunked,[25] the blather continues, taking way too long to say nothing of worth. Alas, in fact they have no reliable sources for anything they just claimed except that the DICE event itself actually occurred. If you think that the comments on the blog would reflect a measured, sceptical approach to such unsupported claims, you must not have been paying attention. Someone went so far as to make a petition [26] to get Anita fired from a position she didn't even have. Of all the faults of EA, twice winner of the "Worst company in America" award[27], apparently the most egregious is hiring someone that some people have intense hatred for. Which they didn't actually do. That odd pressure you feel at the back of your head is your brain attempting to escape from this maelstrom of stupidity.
EA attempted to put the myth to rest:
| This petition is based on inaccurate information. EA is not working with Anita Sarkeesian on development of Mirror’s Edge. |
But that only prompted more conspiracy-minded replies, including:
“” So if she isn't working with DICE as part of the development team, then what is she doing?
She must surely be having some kind of input into the games development but with EA answering the questions asked, without really answering them, leaves too much open to interpretation. Even if she is there to make sure the game is being developed in an unsexist (is that even a word?) way, then she would surely be involved in the games development. And if not this game then what else? EA needs to answer these questions clearly and precisely. Anything else is just political speak which we all know is bullsh*t. |
“”Look who ever at EA decided to write this response, clearly was drunk. We need confirmation that the woman in question (Anita Sarkeesian) is not collaborating, providing input nor working on anything that has to do with anything you (EA and partners) are developing.
"Anita Sarkeesian, is not nor ever was a registered party assisting in the development of EA: Mirrors Edge. We have not requested nor recieved any input from Anita Sarkeesian on Mirrors Edge, and have developers working without her opinion on the game." Just say that, literally all you have to say is in that sentence and then the 48,000 people won't dislike you enough to sign a petition against you! :D So yeah, unless you come clear and clarify this, I'm still gonna dislike you EA. Seriously, where you are right now, having this kind of publicity, is kind of the wrong publicity. You're just gonna make that grave deeper my friends. But I trust you won't make any dumb decisions, we don't need another Enron. |
How EA's statement could be read as anything other than a simple blanket clarification is an open question. As of January 2015 the petition is still being signed. At least the people signing it are in the illustrious company of such luminaries as good ol' Adolf.[28]
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,[29] and have since showered her in a truckload of awards for awareness of sexism in video games.[30][31]
- 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.
- Anita does indeed link to a source where it gives a resounding Yes that over sexualized women in the media and undoubtedly games as well, influence men, unlike violence. In the description of her Women as Background Decorations PT1 video it has a link to a page where she keeps the transcript of the video and sources. Of those sources one is to a page about The Sexual Objectification Spillover Effect, which links to several studies.[33][34][35][36]
- She lied to us about having been an avid gamer since she was small. There's a video[37] 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.[38] 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. Anita has also been majorly influenced by more the more family friendly Nintendo[39][40] so when she says that she's not a fan of those more popular poster games such as CoD, GoW and Halo she's obviously not meaning not a fan of video games as an entirety. Before she made the Tropes Kickstarter, Anita had went to the first ever Canadian Video Game Awards and wrote about the sexism she experienced there[41] strange thing to do for someone who doesn't enjoy video games or other types of games[42] and this was 2 years prior to her Kickstarter. Anita believes in what she says and not being a gamer doesn't make her a con artist, at worst she exaggerated and that's something everyone does on KickStarter. Sure, since Gamergate she has said she doesn't want to consider herself a "gamer", but only because the people who call themselves gamers have made her life a living hell.[43]
See also
External links
References
- ↑ Anita Sarkeesian, "Support My Kickstarter Project - Tropes vs Women in Video Games", YouTube
- ↑ Anita Sarkeesian, "One Week of Harassment on Twitter", Feminist Frequency (Tumblr.com)
- ↑ "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
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 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
- ↑ http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/TheKodu
- ↑ http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/TheKodu/the-sarkeesian-the-dice-and-the-mirror--235992.phtml
- ↑ http://i.imgur.com/hqrKcbD.jpg
- ↑ http://youtu.be/ah8mhDW6Shs?t=6m13s
- ↑ https://www.change.org/p/dice-remove-anita-sarkeesian-from-mirror-s-edge-2-game-development
- ↑ http://consumerist.com/2013/04/09/ea-makes-worst-company-in-america-history-wins-title-for-second-year-in-a-row/
- ↑ http://i.imgur.com/svMCvlL.png
- ↑ 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
- ↑ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.755/abstract
- ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109000432
- ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311000288X
- ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103185710220
- ↑ Vimeo video. Relevant statements begin at 12:00.
- ↑ The latest Anita Sarkeesian "not a gamer" thing, Going Rampant.
- ↑ http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/28/7085487/how-nintendo-inspired-anita-sarkeesian
- ↑ http://imgur.com/1owJMDl a SNES controller in the hands of Anita as a child
- ↑ http://www.feministfrequency.com/2010/05/the-first-canadian-video-game-awards/
- ↑ http://i.imgur.com/24vraUi.png
- ↑ http://kotaku.com/how-anita-sarkeesian-wants-video-games-to-change-1688231729