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:
Hey Mellertoad, go crawl back under your rock and play with your dolls.
And Meller, if you’re worried about your hurt fee-fees, perhaps you shouldn’t be laughing at cancer patients or the death of someone close to a regular here. I hope Ithiliana comes in with your response to her story and how you said the student was probably asking for it.
I don’t even know what to say about this since my views are similar to the Jezebel piece…women are harrassed and abused so often online that I’ve just become numb to it. Its no longer surprising. All I can say to the dudes who do this to women- congrats. Really. Thank you for proving feminism right and for reinforcing our belief that its still needed. The irony is that they do this to shut us up about feminism, but it has the opposite effect.
Good to know that “owlslave” and “milkslave” are the worst insults known to man.
NWO, if a thorough analysis of the tropes depicting and hurting men has been done, then why are we even discussing it here? No need to whine!
If it hasn’t, and you think it’s needed (I don’t), then go do it! Again, whining here won’t help it.
Actually, your incessant whinings never helped anything or anyone, certainly no poor man, it’ just serves to convince yourself than you’re a white knight fighting the Evil Feminism.
Why are you even writing my name? You’re not responding to anything I said. I talk about video games, tv shows, and you answer with your usua crap of “all women’s life is perfect, all men are homeless (except for Jews and Big Daddy’s staff?) and starving in the street while being spit on by women”.
And, to state the obvious, there are men I care deeply about. My boyfriend, my brother, my dad, to cite the primary ones.Many more I like, many others whose work I appreciate. (even more than a few might be fat and/or gay and/or receiving psychological help, ergo not real men, I know)
also about the dumb dad trope, one only has to look at comedy in general to see that acting like a doofus gets you laughs and makes you the star of the show. What is interesting is when I’ve seen women do stupid but funny things like falling down people will comment with ‘haha what a dumb bitch’ why such hostility? Do people call Homer Simpson or Ray Romano a dumb bitch when they do something stupid?
And now an anecdote. I’ve been a Simpsons fan since I was a kid. Homer was always my favorite and I even idolized him at one point (a strange idol for a little girl I know) why though? He’s fucking funny. Marge is boring and a nag. As are all these beautiful yet humorless women married to their buffoon husbands. That’s why the husbands are the stars that get the laughs and the wives are the killjoy sidekicks. If TV show creators used doofus female main characters I’d be all for it. But first it would be nice to know why they are called ‘dumb bitches’ and the men arent.
The Inept Buffoon Dad in sitcoms is actually the role of power, since they’re the Funny. The wife is the Unfunny. Rarely do you see the husband playing the “straight man” and the wife goofing off. Considering the point of the sitcom is to make you laugh, the silly dad is the most valuable person in the show.
Or, in other words, nobody thinks Ricky Ricardo is the point of “I Love Lucy.”
Also there are plenty of stupid women on TV but they make them ‘girl stupid’ so vapid, naive, shopaholic, ditzy, dramatic, the psycho bunny boiler trope….wow such great role models for girls and women. This is why I rarely watch TV.
Is it that time again?
The Book of Learnin’
Indispensable Facts About the Universe from NWO
Tropes Vs. One-World Government Edition
Science
Evolution is impossible, because otherwise we’d be able to watch dogs evolve into super-dogs. Unless anyone can produce evidence of dogs with super-powers, evolution is a myth.
The theory of evolution claims that life came from rocks. It also states that evolution doesn’t occur anymore because rocks are no longer in make-life mode.
Female animals cannot feed themselves and rely on males to support them. Even in cases where this seems untrue, the males are still tougher. For example, female lions do all the hunting in the pride, but if they come across a really tough enemy, like a hyena, they run and get the male lion to fight for them.
Mathematics
There are two kinds of numbers, quantative and qualative.
Any number over 100 is “billions.”
Health and Medicine
Children are lined up and injected with a dangerous chemical called flouride to make them stupid.
Mammograms cause breast cancer. Doctors advise women to get mammograms at least once a week until they develop cancer from it.
Many hospitals are open only to women and children. They’re not maternity/pediatric hospitals, just regular hospitals that refuse to treat men for no reason.
Male suicide is caused by society trying to feminize men, which makes them so depressed they kill themselves. Before modern feminism, suicide was practically non-existent.
After an abortion, the fetus is chopped into pieces and thrown into the nearest river or lake to feed the fish.
If the FDA worked, we’d have cures for cancer, diabetes, and every disease and ailment. Since we don’t, it’s not doing anything useful and should be abolished.
Male erections are incredibly painful. All men hate and fear the sight of sexy women.
The Affordable Care Act covers gender reassignment surgery for five-year-olds.
Education
Reading is not taught in American public schools.
Public schools offer two kinds of math: traditional arithmetic and New Math. Children are allowed to choose which one to learn.
How-to courses on homosexuality are taught in public schools. This is how people become gay.
The University of Cincinnati and all University of California schools have gotten rid of their engineering and computer science departments and replaced them with women’s studies and gender studies.
Thanks to the power of Title IX (see Law), all but two colleges in the U.S. are assembling Sex Police Forces made up of female students and faculty. There are plans to extend this program to grade schools.
Colleges require male students to dress in women’s clothing and march around campus so the female students can harass them. If they don’t do this, they are punished.
There are twice as many teachers and half as many students in U.S. schools as there were 20 years ago. These teachers spend class time walking around in their underwear to arouse elementary-school boys.
There are special schools for toddlers where they are taught about sodomy.
History
Ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, and China under the Ming Dynasty were extremely progressive, feminist societies. That’s why they collapsed.
In ancient China, elite women castrated young boys, while giggling, to turn them into their playtoys. These women lived in harems but were actually in charge.
Before modern feminism, rape was a rare occurrence and almost unheard-of.
The Americas were discovered by Queen Isabella, who ordered every man in Europe to sail westward to get exotic jewels, perfumes and silks for her. It was a stroke of luck that Columbus found land before the male population of Europe perished in a watery grave.
The genocide of Native Americans was perpetrated solely by women.
All beatings and murders of African-American slaves were committed by women.
The only problem faced by female African-American slaves was that no one helped them into carriages. Therefore, a man who has to stand on a bus has suffered worse than Sojourner Truth.
Lynchings in the American South consisted of women accusing men of rape because they were man-hating feminists. In cases where the man was lynched on an accusation from another man, the lynchings were justified.
Women sank the Lusitania as part of a feminist plot to get the U.S. involved in WWI so that men could die needlessly, because women just enjoy watching men die.
In 1919, women took control of all levels of government and law enforcement. Since then, every law in the U.S. has been written and enacted by women.
The Cambodian genocide: planned and executed entirely by women.
The CIA imported feminism from the Soviet Union by publishing Ms. magazine and Miss Mag and channeling funds to a woman named Gloria Steinen.
Geography
The rivers of most major cities are lined with foul-smelling, dangerous factories. These factories are staffed entirely by overworked, underpaid male laborers, but they also have well-appointed human resources departments staffed by women in fancy clothes, fine jewelry and perfume. Since all the men work as laborers and all the women work as posh secretaries, researchers are still unsure who owns or runs these factories.
Linguistics
The word “suffrage” is derived from the verb “to suffer,” because voting is hard.
Spanish and Russian use the same alphabet. The Russians just have a funny kind of handwriting called cryillic script.
“Patriarchy” literally means “rule of the father,” but fathers have no power in society whatsoever. Therefore, “patriarchy” actually means “matriarchy.”
The word “dudebro” is hate speech.
Arts and Entertainment
The Iliad is the story of how Queen Helen of Troy ordered two armies to fight over her. It is based on a true story.
The classical Greek play The Bacchae is a celebration of the roving lesbian gang that murdered the musician Orpheus. It is based on a true story.
The musical Chicago is a polemic about how men should be shot to death. It was written by a female college student in 2010.
All horror movies are about a pretty girl being stalked and assaulted by an evil man. In the end, she kills him and walks away alive.
Prime-time TV shows have the same plot as horror movies, except that the pretty girl is assisted by an all-female investigative team, with a single man in charge. At the end of every episode, the victim sits in a one-way mirrored room, watching the chained-up man with a smug look on her face. Then one of the women from the investigative team squeezes her arm.
Shows on the Disney Channel consist of underage girls in sexy outfits hitting boys while the boys cower before them.
Journalism
Female journalists only write articles about how men are bad.
Suicides are never reported in the media unless it’s a gay man, in which case it’s treated as a national tragedy.
Fashion
Most girls and women over the age of twelve wear see-through tops and micro-miniskirts on all occasions. Although their skirts are so short their genitals hang out, they do not wear underwear.
The only exceptions to this rule are shopping malls, where girls and women typically wear bikinis.
Women only dress to attract men. If a woman leaves the house in clothes, she wants to have sex with any man she meets. Men, on the other hand, never dress to look attractive.
Law
All U.S. law, from the Constitution down, has been supplanted by Title IX, a law requiring that all educational, government, and private institutions be 100% female. Title IX has its own police force, which is exactly like the Nazi SS. This takeover of the government was orchestrated by Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, who now rules the country.
It’s legal in the U.S. for women to murder men. This is common knowledge.
The Violence Against Women Act will create a slush fund which will be used to fund the training of all American men to defer to women by Pavlovian response. Only female victims of violence will receive help under VAWA; male victims will be forced to attend anger management classes.
If the names on a contract are in all caps, those people are legally corporations. If they’re in mixed case, the contract is invalid.
The United States is a communist dictatorship ruled by an emperor. If it were a free country, people wouldn’t have to pay taxes or get licenses to drive.
Requiring people to take a vision test to get a driver’s license is an atrocity on the level of the Holocaust, Pol Pot’s genocide, and the famous Communist massacre of Christians.
Each law has its own police force and legal system. For example, if you urinate in public, the Urination Police will arrest you.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is classified as a hate group.
So are women. Yes, all women.
Crime
False reporting of rape is the most serious and common crime in the U.S. The most common reasons for a woman to make up a rape accusation are cheating, revenge, excuse for missed homework, lateness, work absence, and attention-getting.
The average man is falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison without trial on a daily basis. Available statistics say otherwise because the true numbers are kept under wraps by the CIA.
Gay people are fifteen times more likely than straight people to be violent criminals. All the worst serial killers in history were gay.
California has replaced its women’s prisons with spas to reward women for committing crimes.
If there is yelling in a house, the police are legally required to arrest any men inside.
Economics
All financial crises are caused by the Federal Reserve, which is run by the Rothchild family.
All the real-estate speculators who caused the housing bubble were women.
Women never have to pay rent.
There are no poor women. Whenever a woman needs anything, she sits in the middle of the street and cries, and passerby throw food and money at her for free.
Women control 80% of the world’s wealth, thanks to all the crying.
Business
Because of Title IX (see Law), all businesses with government contracts are required to hire women to meet gender quotas.
Hiring female employees doubles the cost of the goods a company produces.
The only businesses owned or run by women are nonprofit organizations dedicated to hurting men.
Women go to plumbing school for three years to get jobs as construction flaggers, jobs which entail wearing hotpants and working on their tans. Also, plumbing schools for women are way more fun than plumbing schools for men.
It’s very rare for a man in the U.S. to be employed above a middle-management position. All high-paying jobs are held by women.
Charitable Giving
For every dollar women donate to charities to help men, men donate ten billion dollars to help women.
Women’s groups typically receive hundreds of billions of dollars a year in funding. One of the groups that receives the most money is the National Association of Women Lawyers.
Nonprofit organizations operate by photocopying fliers, posting them on walls around town, then sitting back and waiting for the money to roll in. Even though the average nonprofit doesn’t do anything else, it’s much too hard for a man to start one, because men are oppressed.
Men are not allowed into homeless shelters unless they swear allegiance to feminism.
Throughout history, billions of men have died for the sake of women, whereas no woman has ever died for the sake of a man. The best way to balance this injustice is for women to randomly punch each other in the nose.
Government
All nations are controlled by the U.N. and the Jews.
Except for Rupert Murdoch, all financial, government and media leaders worldwide are either black or Arab. There are no white men in top positions of power.
Vice-President Joe Biden, like nearly all U.S. leaders, is of Middle Eastern descent.
Without government, homosexuality would not exist.
Foreign Relations
In war, women act as “cheerleaders” for both sides at once, goading otherwise peaceful men to fight. These women have no political goals or opinions; they just like watching men die.
Wars are typically started by women nagging their husbands to invade other countries to get pretty dresses.
Female protesters, no matter what the subject of the protest, are just there to goad men into killing each other. They are never injured or killed themselves.
Russia is the “deathplace capital of the world” for men because feminism was invented there (see Feminism). It is the most feminist country on earth.
All taxes in Scandinavian countries go toward women’s causes. Scandinavian grade schools have a holiday where girls are given cookies and ice cream, while boys are given stale matzo. Men in Scandinavian countries are imprisoned for farting.
Pet Ownership
Only women own cats. The main reason women own cats is so they can spend money on kitty litter that would otherwise go to men’s shelters.
Romance
Women hit men to test them as romantic partners. If a man hits back, it’s proof that he’s a worthy mate with strong genes, and the woman will immediately have sex with him.
Men enjoy being raped. Any man who says otherwise is lying.
When gay men have sex, they usually do it in front of a straight woman to provide her with free entertainment. Straight women are working to turn more men gay so they can enjoy plenty of gay sex shows.
Marriage and Family
Somewhere in the U.S. is a place called The Ghetto, where between 70% and 99% of households consist of unemployed single mothers living entirely off welfare. Everyone in The Ghetto is black. Sociologists are still struggling to determine why women in The Ghetto don’t support themselves as other women do, by sitting in the street and crying until people throw stuff at them (see Economics).
99% of feminist marriages end in divorce.
The vast majority of violent rapists come from female-led households, because the feminist indoctrination boys receive in such households makes them so angry they have to go out and rape people to let off steam.
Fatherhood is illegal in Britain and there are plans to outlaw it in the U.S.
The most common reason women give for divorce is boredom.
Youth Culture
Teenage girls participate in hazing rituals wherein they go to the mall in sexy outfits, usually bikinis (see Fashion). If a man looks at them for more than six seconds, they pounce on him en masse and strip him naked.
At the age of five, children are tossed out of the house by their parents. At that point they are able to support themselves and require no further care.
At the age of five, most children are still in diapers.
Religion
Judaism is the most aggressively evangelical religion on earth. Less than 5% of Jews are ethnically Jewish, while the rest are recruited from the tireless Jewish recruitment efforts.
In the story of Jesus saving the adulteress from stoning, the moral is that sinners deserve to be stoned.
Pedophilia
All child molesters are either women or gay men. Girls are never molested.
Prepubescent girls desperately want to have sex with middle-aged men. They advertise this desire by wearing swimsuits to the beach.
Feminism
Feminism is a highly organized international movement created in the Soviet Union and currently funded by the United Nations.
Phyllis Schlafly has worked tirelessly throughout her life to promote feminist causes.
Predictions of the Future
By the end of 2012, federal law will require that 50% of all CEOs be women. Male CEOs will be fired en masse, and random unqualified women will be hired to fill their seats.
Someday a straight white man will beat up a lesbian for molesting a five-year-old. Everyone in the world will sympathize with the lesbian and immediately legalize child molestation.
In 100 years, white people will have gone extinct because white women didn’t reproduce enough. Archeologists discovering the remains of Western culture will laugh at us for letting women have rights.
Grade schools will soon require children to pledge allegiance to the idea that women are morally superior to men. This future event has punctured the space-time continuum and is causing girls and women to feel superior right now.
MRA slacktivism knows no bottom.
Now the MRAs are crying that a kickstarter for a popular youtube channel is receiving more money than a kickstarter for a seriously documentary. 500+ precious /mister upvotes for this brilliant and not flawed-at-all comparison despite the comments ripping it apart.
The post asking people to put the money where their mouth is seems to be receiving less attention. Maybe it’s because they’d rather whinge endlessly?
I see two of the biggest whiner-activists are on manboobz today.
NWO – “WAHH it sucks living in my imaginary parallel universe where men have no power.”
Meller – “I’m going to call women and feminists silly names but calling me a name proves feminutterbutters are hateful, WAHH.”
*serious documentary.
Let’s forget that hundreds of non-serious kickstarters have raised much more money than Feminist Frequency. MRAs are just upset about Anita’s kickstarter because they are an anti-feminist and anti-woman hate group.
@NWO
“And since you’re never going to admit how frequent, heinous and life destroying false accusations are, why should any man give a crap about womens problem? Parrot another lie and watch the hatred grow. The gang at the top love funding you gals, women are so easily manipulated. Just like unthinking herd animals, natural born communists.”
STFU. Adults are speaking here. If your balls want another tongue bath go over to The Spearhead.
@Fembot
“STFU. Adults are speaking here. If your balls want another tongue bath go over to The Spearhead.”
Why? Has the worshipful tongue lashing you’ve given your pussy been spoiled?
@katz
To be fair, I’d be mortally insulted if you called me owlslave, and I’m sure any man who’s intereacted with Owly feels the same way, so Meller may be on to something. Come to think of it, the same could be said for Mellertoad!
Translation: NO U!
@DKM: Name-calling is the least of it.
Name ONE time you or any other troll here has been threatened with rape or death–not in the sense of “I hope you get Xed,” but “I’m coming to kill you/rape you.”
Or, the always popular “I hope you get cancer.”
You’re the only one gloating about people getting cancer.
Didn’t NWO get banned from the Spearhead? I think he is too out there, even for them.
@Ithiliana — “penis-waving lockstep” I just discovered I can’t breathe taco salad. I shouldn’t try to eat and laugh at the same time. +1 internet.
@CassandraSays — “Boobs and butt pose, how do I loathe thee?” This will probably raise your blood pressure, but have you heard about the cover to Catwoman #0? Hell, I found a rather subdued boobs & butt pose in a D&D book just now. I guess I can’t say I expect D&D books to be free of sexified women, but it was just kind of exhausting.
An example of DKM’s “reasonable” response to women, and ONE reason why so many of us call him Mellertoad (though I think that’s an insult to toads):
Your words. Live with them:
@falconer
That Catwoman is pretty ridiculous…but that Captain America by Liefield….whhhyyyy?!?!
I rather like this response to the Catwoman thing: http://www.themarysue.com/catwoman-0-cover/
The first entry says it best, I think.
Meller: You REALLY do not get to claim the high ground or any innocence. Unless you’ve forgotten your little diatribe about how you laugh at cancer victims (happy fucking father’s day to me – I lost my father to cancer three years ago – wanna laugh at how he and my family suffered?)? Or that you told me to euthanize my kitten because she scratched me? Because those are TRULY the actions of an innocent man being railroaded by teh ebil wimmenz.
Having just discovered The Mary Sue, I gotta say I’m loving it, but for some reason it just bugs me that their Starbuck mascot cosplay has the tattoo on the wrong arm.
Nitpicking fan art on the Internet. What have I done, that my life has come to this?
Oh NWO, so very wrong again! Let’s start with — “Are you guilty until proven innocent by a third party and unable to face your accuser in college, Dear colleague?” — so college student discipline boards treat men and women differently? Citation needed. Because I could tell you multiple stories of people glad to be facing the student discipline board instead of the local cops. (Then again, I already told you how much more lenient Pitt’s student board is, didn’t I?)
“Does a man have the legal right to kill your unborn child?” — trans* men with uterii and the ability to get pregnant have the same right to abort that cis women (and other uterus-havers) do, yes — when you can get pregnant, come back with that argument. Except don’t bother, because you can bet that abortion will be guaranteed within 5 min of figuring out how to get cis men // trans* women // other uterus-non-havers pregnant.
DKM — when people start calling you horribly antisemtic things; telling you they hope you get cancer, or die, or worse; or really, call you worse names than those that would pass for kindergarten taunts; then you can talk. Compare — “Mellertoad” vs “Dumb ass nazi cunt” or “fucking ovendodger.”
Except no one here would ever say anything that vile, except maybe you or NWO.
Ithiliana (re: DKM) — holy fucking shit wtf is that shit? (sorry, when my brain fries I end up stuttering curses, it would seem DKM pushes that limit)
crocodile — “…What they are facing is not really misandry but misogyny as well.” — excellent summary of the problem. And don’t worry about not being a native English speaker, we won’t mock your English, not even the trolls get that.
Worry not, you’re in good company.