On Monday, Anita Sarkeesian posted the latest installment of her Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games series on YouTube, a half-hour examination of the ways in which video game makers use sexualized violence against women as a cheap way to spice up their narratives and appeal to straight male gamers.
Her tone was measured, her analysis clear and logical and supported by dozens of clips from a wide assortment of games.
Late Tuesday night, this happened:
Some very scary threats have just been made against me and my family. Contacting authorities now.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) August 27, 2014
I’m safe. Authorities have been notified. Staying with friends tonight. I’m not giving up. But this harassment of women in tech must stop!
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) August 27, 2014
That’s right: Sarkeesian was forced to leave her home due to violent threats against her and her family … because she made a YouTube video analyzing violence against women in video games.
She then posted some of the threats she had gotten from a Twitter account set up specifically to harass and threaten her and her family. [TRIGGER WARNING for graphic rape and death threats.]
I usually don’t share the really scary stuff. But it’s important for folks to know how bad it gets [TRIGGER WARNING] pic.twitter.com/u6b3i0fysI
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) August 27, 2014
For a larger version of the screenshot, see here.
Sarkeesian has also been tweeting some of the other threats she gets on a daily basis from anonymous gamers who are incensed that a woman has anything critical to say about their precious video games.
It’s especially amusing that this misogyny laced email is unironically signed “See you soon m'lady. *tips fedora*” pic.twitter.com/rLk3CvoxXV
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) July 15, 2014
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/504437681527353344/photo/1
I get so many emails like this I could publish a coffee table book full of them. pic.twitter.com/qMoYOtV9tT
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) July 15, 2014
Unfortunately, this is an all too typical twitter response to my observations about video games. #E32014 pic.twitter.com/aWmwtQZLnm
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) June 9, 2014
You’ll notice that several of these threatening comments mention videos by Thunderf00t, a “skeptic” videoblogger best known, at least in the corner of the internet I write about, for a series of videos in which he viciously attacks some of the women who’ve drawn the most internet hate from angry misogynists – from skeptics like Rebecca Watson and Melody Hensley to video game maker Zoe Quinn and video game critic Sarkeesian.
Thunderf00t’s attacks have won him kudos from assorted Men’s Rights activists, from the regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit to A Voice for Men “operations manager” Dean Esmay, who has praised his videos and urged other MRAs to subscribe to them.
In other words, the harassment of feminist women on the internet is directly linked to antifeminist propagandists like Thunderf00t – and his MRA fans and enablers.
The constant, vicious, personal attacks on Sarkeesian you see not only in video game circles but from Men’s Rights Activists – on Reddit, on A Voice for Men, on YouTube, and so on – have helped to create a hostile environment in which critiques of sexism in games result in real-world death and rape threats against women. This has an undeniably chilling effect on the free speech of women. That in fact is the intent of the harassers.
Margaret Atwood once famously observed that
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
I think we need an internet corollary to Atwood’s observation:
Men posting on the internet are afraid that women will block them. Women are afraid that men will treat them like Anita Sarkeesian.
Thing is, Sarkeesian keeps moving forward, diligently researching and putting forth the videos she promised she would. All the huffing and puffing of her critics and attackers hasn’t shut her up. Each new video she puts out is a testament to her courage and her perseverance. Each new video is a blow against those who would shut women up. Each new video helps to inspire others who’ve gotten similar threats to continue speaking up and speaking out.
Supporting Sarkeesian helps to support every woman who wants to be able to speak out online without fear of violent threats. There’s no better proof of this than how angry the biggest misogynistic bullies get whenever feminists and other people of good conscience rally around her. The bullies are still angry about the money she raised via kickstarter, money that has enabled her to bring a new professionalism to her videos.
Hell, AVFM Bully-in-chief Paul Elam is still so angry about this that he’s already accusing her of “damseling for dollars,” collecting “gash-cash” because of these latest Twitter threats. Indeed, in a post that’s a lot more revealing than he intends it to be, he complains bitterly that she’s getting bigger donations than he is:
I am jealous. I have had half the major media in a couple of countries disingenuously and maliciously demonize me. Even after forcing some retractions I bet I got more threats than Sarkeesian.
My reward? Jack shit.
Maybe it was because I didn’t swoon hard enough or treat the threats like they were tickets to Disneyworld.
Oh, don’t be modest, Paul. You take in tens of thousands every year by pretending to be some sort of human rights generalissimo. You raked in $35,000 this summer by trumpeting “threats” that you were saying privately were phony.
While Elam “damsels” and fumes, Sarkeesian simply goes about doing the job she set out to do. Each video she puts out is yet another “fuck you” to her haters, and they know it.
U mad bros?
Here’s the video that caused all the stir. It’s well worth watching. CONTENT WARNING: Graphic violence against women.
@insanitybytes22 By that logic aren’t you trying to “shame” and “bully” people with your posts? Your clearly arguing that the sort of behavior here and in Sarkeesian’s videos is flawed. So why are your criticisms valid, but those of others just attacks?
Alright, I’ll bite: what sort of thing would constitute “irrefutable proof” of sexism, Exuin?
And yet here you are, doing the misogynist equivalent of demanding transitional fossils and linking to Answers In Genesis.
@Auntie Alias
They are, yeah, even if just a tribute nowadays as I am kitty-less since last year (part of why it’s taken me so long to start commenting, too many kitties when one is mourning one’s own).
@insanitybytes22: “Of course they have. That’s the whole point of pointing out the violent imagery in video games. That’s the whole motivation behind social justice, to try and shame people into becoming aware of their behavior.”
No, they haven’t. That is not anyone’s opinion, and certainly not Anita, as she has mentioned multiple times in the series that it is entirely possible and okay to like things that are problematic (parts 2 and 3 of the damsel videos, specifically), so long as you can accept that they aren’t perfect and they have those problematic elements. I, for instance, am a fan of both the Hitman games (which are exploitative as hell) and the works of HP Lovecraft (which can often be racist as hell). The point of social justice is to get more people to see those problems so we can move past them, to something better for everyone.
@ib22:
This is one of your things where you try to make our position look silly by using toe-stepping as a metaphor, right? So are you saying misogyny is only real if it is personal, deliberate, and motivated by nastiness? Are you saying that sexism in games is just a mistake, like accidentally stepping on a toe? “Oops, sorry, accidentally spent a month of development time getting this in-game cut-scene of a woman being beaten to work properly. My bad.”
Are you saying that people are “reveling in feelings of persecution” when they try to point out that “hey, lots of games use women, usually sex workers, in the background as corpses or cheap character development for the male characters?”
Inquiring minds wish to know.
@BreakfastMan Well said, inanitybytes also ignores the idea that criticism as a medium is not designed to tear down. It exists to bring flaws to view so that they can be strengthened. Any good artist that I’ve ever known is quick to thank their editors and critics because without them they will never improve.
Hell no aspect of human existence improves until someone is willing to point out the flaws inherent to it.
OK, I haven’t red the comments, so just jumping in here.
I have not exactly “enjoyed” watching Sarkeesian’s videos, but I have watched them all, because they are fascinating, informative, and valuable.
I told my Mom about it, today, and she just gave a blank look. “They wouldn’t really do that.”
“Yep. It’s part of the game. I saw video. Grand Theft Auto, for example…”
“What’s that?”
I envy my mother her innocence.
I saw another screed about how this guy played the game through 60 times, and never saw anyone doing to the female NPCs what Sarkeesian demonstrated on her video, so he claimed that it’s not that bad (only a small percentage of the game actually involves this), and that she must have actually performed the acts FOR the video, to show off what players can (but DON’T! They’d NEVER!) do in game.
Well, that’s kind of her point. The games were designed so that you *could* do this stuff. If there was absolutely no market for it, if no gamers ever wanted to do that, why would the game designers bother to include ALL. THAT. CODING?
Answer? They wouldn’t. They wrote that code because they had enough people asking for it. So, dude who says you never saw it – bully for you. Have you interviewed all the male gamers out there? Because I guarantee, the ones who would do it are definitely out there, and they have the ears of the designers.
If the designers dropped the coding from the games, then these oh-so-righteous male gamers wouldn’t even notice, because they never actually participate in any of it, and it’s just a tiny fraction of the game, anyway. But the game designers could then claim to be oh-so-righteous, too! Yaaay!
It’s all disgusting.
Do you often walk up to strangers and demand that they pay attention to you, or is your entitlement limited to online interactions?
And if it had, it would have been parody or something.
@IB, Fuck your “but they were bullied!” bullshi. I was bullied. I was abused. And yet, you don’t see me threatening to show up at black people’s houses and rape them to death when they point out the entrenched racism in my hobbies. Having been bullied doesn’t absolve people of the responsibility for basic fucking decency.
I think of them as parrots, repeating words without really understanding their meaning. But MRAs aren’t nearly as cute as Disco:
@Pawsjones, hi and welcome!
The difference between “please don’t make games like this” and “please don’t play games like this”: learn it.
weirdwoodtreehugger:
Angry nerdbros always assume that there is no such thing as nerd ladies who were painfully shy and awkward throughout most of their youth and mercilessly bullied for their niche obsessions. Apparently we just spring fully-formed out of the ground in our early twenties, shimmy into our sexy superhero costumes and proceed to stalk hapless nerds around ComicCon so we can ensnare them with our fake nerd cred and lady charms.
Meanwhile, in reality, I wasn’t particularly shy, but as a teenager I had terrible acne, no idea how to dress myself and was so socially awkward that I still cringe thinking about my poor clueless thirteen year old self. I also openly cared about doing well at school and had no idea that this is basically social suicide until it was too late to hide it. I was more or less invisible to guys my own age until I went to university. My teenage years were so lonely and painful that I can still keep myself awake for half the night replaying the excruciating details in my head.
Yet I’ve somehow managed to restrain myself from sending graphic torture fantasies to people who criticize my hobbies.
insanitybytes22:
This is just silly bullshit. Critiquing a piece of media is not bullying in any way, shape or form. Saying so is hugely insulting to anyone who has ever actually been bullied. Do you also feel “shamed” if when people you see advertisements highlighting poverty and asking you to donate money? Bloody hell, and I thought it was women who were supposed to be overly sensitive.
No, it’s actually nothing like that, at all, on any level, because unlike “thought crimes”, videogames are actual physical things that are consumed by millions of peoples and play a role in shaping culture and attitudes. By this logic, no one should critique any media ever, because all media is inevitably tied up with someone’s inner fantasies and critiquing it might hurt their feelings.
I see IB22 in the “recent comments” sidebar on this article and wonder …should I bash my head against a wall now or should I wait until I read the thread? Hmmm….
Disco is too cute! MRAs…..not so much. :/
tinyorc- I’ve also been a nerd/geek all of my life. I really hate it when they completely dismiss girl geeks because they think we aren’t “real.” We’ve been here the whole time if you fucking bothered to be aware of your stupid surroundings instead of your own selfish bullshit. I also had to deal with being horribly awkward and liking good grades and history and dressing frumpily and all the social backlash that entails. A good hearty, fuck you, to these assholes is well deserved.
tinyorc:
I believe IB22 is self-designated a woman (and cis-sexual, to the best that I’ve been able to discern), and we usually let folks stick with their preferred designation, even if they are utterly awful human beings regardless of sex or gender (which IB22 definitely is).
@freemage, oops, my bad and I apologize to IB22 for misgendering her.
@tinyorc & redpoppy Seriously have these idiots never been in a game story. I’m lucky enough to live by a truly awesome game and comic store and you can’t swing a cat (plush cat of course) without hitting a geek girl. And not the mythical fake geek girl either hard core magic players and comic collectors. Not so many female Warhammer geeks though. Which is unfortunate.
@emilygoddess
Hi, and thank you!
BUZZZZZ WRONG!
The purpose is to get people to CHANGE their behavior, so that non-privileged people don’t have to suffer. Making privileged people feel bad does nothing useful to the victims of social injustice. We don’t care about your damn guilt, because this isn’t about YOUR feelings.
Following your tortured metaphor: it doesn’t matter if the toe-stomping was accidental or not, it still hurts – and it would do good for you to change your behavior so you don’t go around tripping on other people’s toes all the time. Instead you scream bloody murder and say that others should move out of the way instead. What about no?
Heh. The last tournament I was in (King of Tokyo), I sat down and looked across the table to see a bright fourteen year old girl. She grinned at me, and I quailed. And then she introduced herself as, and I’m not kidding, “Medea”.
Needless to say, she kicked the collective ass of everyone at our table.
pendraegon- You’d be happy to know that I know at least one gal who is into Warhammer. I, myself, haven’t really played any of the games or painted any of the models, but I find the whole universe fascinating. Especially Warhammer 40k. My friend is super into Adepta Sororitas.
For that matter, I really like Adepta Sorirtas. They’re so bad ass it hurts in the most delicious of ways.
emilygoddess:
Yeah, this. By IB22 logic, numerous English professors were “bullying” and “shaming” me throughout my university career by pointing out problematic racial tropes in some of my favourite books and plays. Edward Said probably wrote Orientalism back in 1978 deliberately to make me feel awful for liking Aladdin. And don’t even get me started on the lecturer who explained Tolkien’s racism to us – doesn’t she understand that I used to turn to Lord of the Rings to escape from my sad lonely childhood? In fact, the whole Postcolonial Literature course was probably designed to make me feel like an asshole.
Lady, you’re a friggin’ idiot. I mean, thanks for stopping by and proving you don’t shit about social justice and a host of other things, but Jesus, don’t you have anything better to do with your life?
@redpoppy LOL I respect the sororitas but at the end of the day it’s Greenskins all the way. Da red ones go fastah!! after all. 🙂
Seriously though almost every gaming group I’ve played with has had one or two female players, and frankly were the better for it. I’ve noticed, at least amongst my friends, when there’s a mix of genders at the table we’re more likely to engage in actual role playing rather than just kicking open the door, killing the orc and taking his loot.
pendraegon- Hehehe so you like da Boyz, eh? My ex really liked dem Orks. He once wrote an entire battle synopsis using their particular brand of speech. It’s rather Cockney sounding, isn’t it?
@redpoppy It is, which interestingly was deliberate when the system was being created since it was considered a low class dialect by the developers. The Orks were always my favorite though I still miss the rules that let you steal abilities from other armies by modifying the figures. Now if you add an Eldar weapon to an Ork unit it just turns into a generic shootah.