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.
I have to say, the community seems pretty invigorated today. Maybe that blow-up the other night was something we really needed.
Hey, speaking of invigorated, IB22 has wandered over to the Heartiste/Don Draper thread and dropped another stinkbomb of that special brand of stupidity that she buys in cartons of discount non-sequitors.
This ought to be required reading for all the fauxtraged dudebros pretending that someone pointing out unpleasant things in games clearly means that critic hates games:
How To Be A Fan Of Problematic Things.
e.g. I love Scrubs. But I can totally understand how it could be upsetting to the point of being unwatchable for someone with a different set of life experiences, privileges or beliefs. There’s a lot I cringe at (racial and gender stereotypes, depiction of sexual harassment that sometimes gets extremely disturbing, a heck of a lot of gender policing, just to name a few).
That doesn’t mean I’m saying anybody who likes that show is evil, or that all copies of the DVDs should be thrown into the woodchipper, or even that I don’t like the show. It just means I appreciate that it’s flawed (deeply, deeply flawed, sometimes).
Kirbywarp : Social Justice is not about making the oppressors or the privileged feel bad. It’s about fighting for the rights of the oppressed and the non-privileged.
Maybe – but you don’t have to look too far to find some using it as a means of boosting their own egos and engaging in social swarming of designated targets.
Lovecraft and Tolkien were racist, and I still enjoy their writings a lot. I’m willing to admit that they’re racist.
It was a bit painful to me when it was pointed out in Tolkien’s case. I hadn’t thought about it…but it was pretty obvious, and also obvious that I’d not noticed it because I’m Caucasian. Which was a bit embarrassing to realize.
I didn’t go ballistic or issue death threats, a’aight? I just accepted a somewhat painful and obvious truth about an author and series of works I loved.
So…
…What I don’t get is the absolute outrage when Sarkesian points out the sexism. Would it pain the fans of these games to simply say “Yeah, ok, I hadn’t thought about that before, there it is.”
Well, considering she’s getting death threats, apparently it DOES pain them that much.
I don’t get it. It’s not like she’s paying someone to code this stuff in, it’s in the game.
In fact I’d heard about the “shooting the hooker to get your money back” thing that the latest incarnation of GTA did way before any of this.
So…is looking at and/or engaging in female NPC exploitation REALLY that important to the male gamer’s enjoyment of gameplay? The reaction kinda says it might be, doesn’t it?
That’s a pretty scary thought.
Oh for fuck’s sake… STOP USING BULLYING TO JUSTIFY BIGOTRY!!!!!!!!! JUST FUCKING STOP!!!!!!
I had my fucking nose broken in fucking Kindergarten. KINDERGARTEN! At 13 and 14 I was suicidal as hell and was in fact told, many times, by my fucking peers, that I should kill myself. I can’t count how many times I was asked in fucking high school if I’m going to “go all Columbine at the school”. I cannot tell you how many fucking times the women I found attractive called me ugly, and how I was made fun of mercilessly for being a fucking virgin (which was assumed… I never fucking talked about it until I started my fucking blog a couple years ago). Whenever I walked into a fucking room, people would point at me and just start fucking laughing. Even some of my fucking teachers bullied me.
I still suffer really bad social anxiety and phobia over this. I still get a twinge of paranoia whenever any group of people I’m not actually talking to starts laughing, because my first thought is “they’re laughing at me” and I want to run and fucking hide.
And yet here I fucking am, not screaming about how terrible “Social Justice Warriors” are and supporting feminist causes and fucking calling out bigotry where I see it.
I’m throwing my glove in the ring. If you’re a misogynistic shithead… if you think the whole point of social justice is to shame people… you were not bullied. You were one of the fucking popular jocks who did the bullying.
Prove me wrong you shits.
(For the record, this is directed at IB22 and anyone else who uses this same reasoning.)
Can we have a rule that IB can only piddle in the corner in one thread at a time? This is getting tedious. I’m all for feeding the fun trolls until they burst, but this one is just a mean-spirited pain in the ass.
@Tinyorc
Sample dialog post Elliott Rodger shootings:
Some guy: I’m not defending his killing spree, but women have to understand how incredibly painful it is to be young, awkward, and dateless — to be romantically rejected — to be alone.
Me: We do understand. In fact, women experience the exact same thing.
Some guy: But it’s not the same.
Me: Explain how.
Some guy: …….
blahlistic:
Or even just say “Ok, I don’t care, this has no impact on my life” and continue shooting hookers in GTA or whatever. Nerdbros, no one is taking away your pixelated boobies any time soon! All we’re suggesting is that the boobies could be attached to playable characters more often, or at least to NPCs who serve the plot beyond getting raped and murdered.
“…if I already didn’t have long experience with watching you continuously misconstrue conversations and dance around the point.”
“Edward, I know who you are and yes, you’re a sexist asshole. I did not say that you are a sexist asshole because you criticize Anita’s work and you know it. Don’t play dumb. I said I was familiar with you and with your bullshit. Don’t show up here and expect no one to know you from elsewhere. You like to go to feminist spaces and act like an asshole. You have a history of it. You should leave. Go play with your friends at the Slime Pit.”
Who are you and why are you watching me? In any event, there is another mild criticism of Sarkeesian that I have, though not one that’s particularly her fault. When you take someone like say, Roger Ebert – he could be brutal in his reviews, but he also could be quite complimentary. He critiqued movies, but you could tell he loved movies. Sarkeesian’s videogame series has gotten a little bit preachy, and while not explicitly saying so seems to suggest if you like games like Grand Theft Auto you hate women. This is obviously rubbish, and triggers a strong defensive reaction in people. I know she isn’t saying that, but her critiques do come across that way a bit. There isn’t a lot of love for games that comes across in her videos.
@strivingally, I was thinking of linking to that essay, but I didn’t think IB22 would bother to read it.
And yeah, Scrubs. It’s one of my all-time favorite shows and I still quote it all the time, but goddamn if JD isn’t an enormous sexist asshole.
You haven’t heard her gush about Papa & Yo, have you? Or watched the latest one all the way through to the end? Or seen her playing Zelda?
I can’t imagine anybody who didn’t love the medium would play through as many hours of games as A.S. has to get the footage and examples for her videos.
I love gaming (eight games machines in my house, from across multiple generations). That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with Anita that there’s a lot of problems with portrayals of women in games. In fact, someone who’s not invested is *less likely* to bother trying to agitate for change, simply because it’s a waste of their time.
Also I have no doubt that if Sarkeesian had been less formal, analytical and dispassionate in her delivery, she’d be slammed for being a bimbo, knowing nothing about her subject matter and playing the “fake geek girl”.
Welcome to another round of You’re Female And You Can’t Win!
Gah. Sorry, my last comment is obviously addressed to Edward.
@Julie, RIGHT!? I encounter that attitude so much – this idea that men, for some ill-defined Reasons, feel rejection much more keenly and deeply than women, like it’s a super special brand of Male Loneliness that we ladies could never possibly understand.
Like a lot of sexism, I think it comes down to empathy. Men, in general, aren’t really expected to be able to empathize with women in the same way women are expected to empathize with men. Most mainstream media doesn’t treat female characters as full human beings with the same emotional breadth and depth as men. Media that does centre women and their emotional lives and relationships tends to be considered niche and low quality – chick flicks, romance novels, etc. So when we tell men that we do actually experience rejection and yes, it fucking hurts for us too, they are genuinely surprised and take a while to process the idea that we might also have complex inner lives that don’t conform to stereotypes.
Men feel rejection more accutely than women?
Is that what people who think women aren’t fully human believe?
If men do feel rejection more acutely it’s because it’s wounding their sense of entitlement, not because they just have more or deeper feels in general.
…I had that in my teens and 20’s. I find it more sucky than my return to agoraphobia…Funny how I find it less painful to think people might want to kill me than they are laughing at me.
You’re awesome. Don’t let the bastards get you down, man.
@Shiraz, it seriously seems to be a real belief that some men hold. I’ve seen it used to justify everything from catcalling to domestic violence, and even had conversations about it with male acquaintances IRL, whose arguments basically boiled down to “but you don’t understaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaand.”
cassandrakitty:
Boom. Nailed it.
@strivingally
I don’t disagree with you – I’m not saying she doesn’t love games, but her presentation makes it look like she doesn’t. For example, Grand Theft Auto is a very popular and very highly rated game. By just about any standard, it is a good game. However, the way she critiques focuses entirely on the problems with it, and none of the good. Critiques can always cause hard feelings, but if the viewer feels you are being unfair or misrepresentative, it can cause a lot of hurt feelings.
For example, take a movie like Taxi Driver. It’s a critical favorite and a popular film that deals with a lot of different issues. If you tried to critique the movie by reducing down into a simple example of misogyny, you would insult a lot of people who like the film.
Hugs if you want them Nathan. And solidarity. I didn’t get it quite as bad as you, but bad enough.
I am a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia and it suffers from a lot of the same issues as Tolkien’s writings. Also, I’m not even remotely Christian. But I still greatly enjoyed the stories and the overall universe. But I definitely recognize how problematic it is. I would not recommend the series to anyone of the Muslim faith. Really not a good series of books for Muslims or people of Middle Eastern descent.
I also don’t get the feeling at ALL that Anita hates video games. I think she loves them so much that she feels it is THIS important to go through all the really terrible aspects of games and point out why they are terrible. She, like many many other gamers, want to IMPROVE the quality of video games BECAUSE we love them so much.
Edward Gemmer: Me? Just a dude that’s been reading Freethoughtblogs since it was founded, and Scienceblogs since that was founded. You stand out.
And as for your “mild suggestion”, you do realize this is the first of her topes vs women in video games videos which didn’t have the following disclaimer at the beginning:
“As always, please keep in mind that it’s entirely possible to be critical of some aspects of a piece of media while still finding other parts valuable or enjoyable.”
Apparently, that’s not enough. Would you like her to stroke your hand, and tell you “There there, I really don’t think you’re a terrible person for playing a video game where you murder a prostitute in a snuff bar to use her body as a distraction”.
Would that be enough?
@tinyorc
“but you don’t understaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaand.”
Ah yes, I’ve heard that before. I put that one on a shelf next to, “Give him a chaaaaaaaace.”