Many of you are no doubt aware of this already, but I just wanted to highlight a recent appalling example of the rampant misogyny in the gaming community online: the harassment that feminist pop culture analyst and video blogger Anita Sarkeesian has gotten for her Tropes Vs Women Kickstarter project, a video project designed to “explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.”
Her YouTube page has been inundated with comments calling her, among other things, a “Dumb ass nazi [obscene gender-related slur],” “faggo.. I mean lesbian,” and “the reason why womens are the inferior gender for the whole history of mankind.” IRONY ALERT: while some are calling her a Nazi, or comparing her to the KKK, others are denouncing her as a “bolshevik feminist jewess” and a “fucking ovendodger.”
And still others are defacing her Wikipedia entry with all sorts of vile shit. (Here’s a screenshot.)
Here’s her discussion of the harassment, which includes screenshots of some of the comments.
An Escapist piece on the harassment, which is where I got the quotes above.
A Jezebel piece, “When There’s So Much Bullshit Online, You Forget How to Feel.”
A piece on The Mary Sue, “The All-Too-Familiar Harassment Against Feminist Frequency, and What The Gaming Community Can Do About It”
Kotaku also weighed in, leading one commenter there to note that similarly misogynistic comments appear there all the time.
Meanwhile, over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, temple117 garners 138 net upvotes for a post urging poor oppressed men to “Fight back! Sexism exists for males too, support these men in their expose of gender tropes in video games!”
And, joy of joys, Men’s Rights buffoon Bernard Chapin has weighed in on the controversy as well. After dismissing the harassment — using a “funny” voice, apparently the most powerful weapon in his rhetorical arsenal — he suggests that women complain about video games because games are a male thing, and women are jealous that men are paying attention to something other than them. “Whatever the male is enjoying himself at,” he says, “it diverts him from taking orders; that’s got to be the focus of their ire.” Then he accuses Sarkeesian of being without “honor” because she’s asking for money to fund her project. (Might want to take that critique up with your pal Paul “Donate Today” Elam, dude.) His video is below, if you want to waste your time with it.
But before you get to that, here’s something a bit more encouraging on the gamer misogyny front: Comedian/actress/gamer Aisha Tyler’s take-no-prisoners takedown of the misogynist assholes who attacked her for allegedly ruining an Ubisoft press conference at the recent E3 gaming extravaganza, apparently by being too female or something. Here’s a screenshot of her comments, and a surprisingly un-disgusting Reddit discussion of the controversy.
Here’s Bern:
MIke, do you think asking null-questions so you can pretend to a lordly level of being above it all is actually going to persuade people?
No, probably not. It’s just a way to tell us how stupid you think we are; without having to substantiate the claim. Got it.
If, however, you should actually be interested in trying to engage in conversation (not this drive-by mal mot), feel free to explain just what it is that is “creating more of these guys”.
Guys your tone implies aren’t all that savory.
Tell us, please, what it is (that isn’t asking for something less exclusionary and marginalising) we are doing to create the sort of asshole you are, in a left-handed manner, defending.
Yes and no. They are pissed off because women are asking them to relinquish privileges, which is part and parcel of requesting equal rights. But the men are not pissed off about the equal rights, they’re pissed about loss of privileges.
Will do. While we are giving advice, try not to hurt people.
I see. Feminists are provoking the MRA’s into abusing women on the Internet. That right there is why the MRM is known as the abusers’ lobby.
You bring this on yourselves, each and everyone of you. Men are getting tired of being kicked around by feminists and their white knight enforcers and this is their way of fighting back. Things are going to just get worse for women. Not that I care of course, but things will get worse.
You do care. You care that feminists aren’t letting the issues drop. You don’t care if women/feminists get hurt, but you do care that the supremacy of men re re-instated.
We care that it doesn’t. One of us is losing. Right now, it’s male supremacy, and I’m fine with that.