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.
Scroll up for troll comment I just let through. Apparently Anita has the power to ruin games by commenting on them. No wonder gamers are so threatened by her!
Women, and/or feminists are not the only ones subjected to hate, threats, and bullying on-line. It’s a huge issue for everyone. Men actually experience a great deal of abuse and violence online too, especially on twitter. Conservative women or anyone perceived as not complying with the dominant politics of the day, receive continuous threats, often from those calling themselves feminists.
Someone recently suggested that rather than ice bucket challenges, we needed an “act like a human on-line” challenge.
I don’t always agree with Anita’s opinions, but her videos are well researched and presented in a noninflammatory way. This last video really struck me, particularly the part about how many people would consider the games less realistic without violence against women, even in games with blatant fantasy elements. That is a clear indication that something is wrong.
It’s disappointing that Anita has had to close the comments on her videos because of these threats. Her videos could start some excellent and productive conversations about violence against women, but some people refuse to let that happen. Nitram is right. These guys are very invested in the status quo and I don’t think they’re necessarily mad about what she is saying. They are mad that she is challenging their world view. Rather than accepting that she has a different opinion and discussing ideas openly, these guys immediately go on the defensive. It’s just really sad because if people were willing to have open discussions without threatening or name-calling, we might actually see some more appreciable progress being made toward equality.
I stand with Anita. How many of us will it take before these guys realize we aren’t going away?
@Misha, okay, I’m gonna go ahead and skip that show.
@emilygoddess
Wow, that’s almost a word for word regurgitation of same talking points I’m hearing from trolls on every article about this topic! It’s like none of them have watched the videos and are just repeating the shit they’ve heard from Thunderf00t.
Less “sanitized”, more “weaponized”. Same idea, but with the added kick of simultaneously conflating women’s genitals with open wounds.
And Anita Sarkeesian is a fucking hero.
It never fails either. “Harrassment is awful.” sez article. “Why can’t I even criticize?” sez dudebros.
a) Harassment is not criticism.
b) Absolutely no-one is saying you aren’t allowed to criticize.
c) Your criticism is also fair game for criticism,
d) because your criticisms are usually terrible.
Yeah, I can tell when a thunderf00t fanboy is stanning because they latch onto whichever one ‘inaccuracy’ he’s whining about in his latest video. “But Hitmannnnnnnnn”
Sometimes it’s even more bizarre:
https://twitter.com/uncooldana/status/504660286670790656/photo/1
Thus Spake ZaraChie Satonaka:
I think I’ve managed to avoid a lot of the most egregiously abusive games for similar reasons: While I do enjoy bleak or morally ambiguous settings, I’m bored with games that use GRIMDARK or sexual content as a lazy way to make a game seem “adult” or “hardcore”. (The cheap heat you can get from senseless, contextless cruelty is even lazier.) So, yeah, the whole Dead Island 2 Special Edition bewbs-with-blood-on-them thing? That’s not “adult,” that’s puerile. It tells me the target audience is 14-year-old dorks who think sexualized violence is “grown-up”.
Oh, and just in case, I wasn’t referring to pendraegon here. Just came over from the report on Raw Story. The major up-voted comments are all supportive, but the assholes are whining up a storm.
Wait. That’s a mixed metaphor…
The assholes are farting up a dirge.
There we go.
Paulie is such a disgusting creep. He’s just mad he hasn’t found a way to siphon more money out of the pockets of his creepy legions.
@ insanitybytes22
That may be true, it sucks. Are you implying that this blog post is somehow minimizing that? Blogging activism isn’t a zero sum affair.
Thus Spake ZaraExuin.exe:
How do you propose Anita Sarkeesian could “ruin” Mirror’s Edge 2? Is she sneaking into the developer’s office at night and secretly planting game-breaking bugs in the code?
Looking at Paul Elam’s response, doesn’t it seem like he throws in the crude and vicious slur “gash” to make sure his irrelevant and worthless posting gets some attention? Any attention? Most recently he called women “cum-dumpsters” for having sex at all. It’s the strategy of a poser with nothing to say.
And in this latest article he whines that his hate speech isn’t working to make him money. He seems to have run out of ideas for how to wring money out of his followers. They’re probably still broke from contributing to save him from the “death threats” that never were. What a fraud.
@insanitybytes22 wrote:
“Women, and/or feminists are not the only ones subjected to hate, threats, and bullying on-line. It’s a huge issue for everyone. Men actually experience a great deal of abuse and violence online too, especially on twitter. Conservative women or anyone perceived as not complying with the dominant politics of the day, receive continuous threats, often from those calling themselves feminists.
Someone recently suggested that rather than ice bucket challenges, we needed an “act like a human on-line” challenge.”
I don’t think Anita Sarkeesian ever said that men in video games or real life were exempt from being victims of violence, IB. But she did say that the violence against female avatars in video games was more sexualized than that of their male counterparts. (Watch the video, it’s in there.)
Nor is anyone saying that women like, Sarah Palin and Janet Bloomfield don’t receive threats either; celebrities of all stripes receive threats (Weird Al gets tons of threats) and being aligned to the “right” side of patriarchy certainly doesn’t immunize you from being target. After all, a honey badger’s still a woman when we get down to brass tacks.
But is the the fault of feminists like Anita that this happens? I don’t think so.
As far as the Hitman part of the tweets go, bullshit.
TRIGGER WARNING
That whole section of the game takes place in what is essentially a rape dungeon for strippers from a particular club. The game goes to some detail to set this up, including the fact that women working there generally know what happens, but can’t do anything about it, and the implication is that they’re all killed shortly after. You find a corpse of one them in the rafters, and the game is designed in such a way that, if you want to get by without being spotted, you NEED to throw that corpse in front of the police to distract them.
@Chie Satonaka – it’s for the best.
@emily goddess, great trollxample.
Oy, Exuin.exe who does not believe in citing anything, care to do so? Or actually, don’t.
Did anyone watch the video of Anita receiving the Ambassador of the Year award at The Game Developers Choice Awards? It’s very cool, it’s the first time a woman has received the award, but even cooler is that she’s introduced by the writer and creative director of The Last of Us, an excellent game that won a bunch of awards, smashed a few sales records, received pretty much universal acclaim… and also defied a lot of tired women in videogames tropes. In his introduction, he says that Anita’s work was highly influential for him personally when writing for The Last of Us and greatly improved its story.
I think it’s so awesome that her efforts are having a real and visible impact on mainstream gaming, and that influential developers are actually taking notice and hearing what she has to say. I think that’s ultimately what makes her detractors so hopping mad. Anita is changing things! I mean, she pretty much single-handedly started an industry-wide conversation about the portrayal of women in videogames and has been honoured for that achievement. Meanwhile, thunderf00t et al remain confined to their furious circlejerk, impotently trying to “take her down” and “expose her” while the vast majority of the world ignores them.
There was another game where I was required to make a morally questionable choice in order to move the game forward….maybe LA Noire? I turned it off. Having secret achievements like killing prostitutes is already disgusting enough, I’m not playing a game that doesn’t even allow me to make the choice whether or not I do it. How is that even fun?
Yes. Have you written to Twitter about your concerns yet? There are a lot of common-sense things they could do to reduce the amount of harassment on their platform, but it seems like they’re not going to do it unless people put even more pressure on them.
I honestly don’t think that she’s going to end up being all that strong an agent of change in the industry. Remember that they took sexist trappings for economic reasons in the first place, so, with internet-gaming becoming a common market that’s much wider than the traditional one, there might just happen another tectonic shift in which companies find a “general” video gamer market that includes both genders and people both younger and older than teenagers a worthwile target group for their products again. Kinda like european boardgames.
I feel that such economic shifts caused by changing technology might just be more relevant here than advocacy. Of course, you still need it, because an economic shift is just that – nothing stops them from applying their current brand of video game storytelling methodes to the new market, if there is no resistance and no advocacy for something else.
I mean, they are still trying, what with all the free to play online games being advertized with scantily dressed elf women and such.
These guys are acting out the “definition” of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
And I’m beyond sick of seeing these dudebros claiming she “scammed” people. Nope. She posted a fundraiser to do videos. People contributed money of their own free will. She’s making videos. That is not a scam. If people contributed and are unhappy with the results, well, okay, and? I buy a box of crackers and eat some of them and decide I don’t like them, even though they’re exactly what the box says, I don’t get to accuse Nabisco of scamming me.
Raising money for, say, superduper extra security at an event because you claimed you were threatened, pocketing the cash and never actually proving there was a threat? That’s a scam.
Paul Elam begs for money every fucking day of his miserable existence. He’s got some nerve.
Reblogged this on Sheryl Nantus and commented:
No matter how hard they try these whiny little boys won’t win – real men don’t need to stoop to threats or need to abuse virtual women to prove they’re men. ’nuff said.
@tinyorc
I really couldn’t get into The last of us, but everybody keeps telling me it’s great. Am I missing something?
@Chie Satonaka in one of the Call of duty games the player is required to torture a bound prisoner in a pretty brutal way to advance in the single player campaign. I have a feeling the only reason that the victim is a man is that there are no women in the game.
And the Dragon age thing was really disturbing and it made it a lot harder for me to enjoy that game. Sarkeesian’s new video though… that was extra disturbing. There’s something really horrifying about pointing out just how frequent sexualized violence is in video games.
Sarkeesian addresses the whole “But you don’t HAVE to do it” argument in the video before this one. The fact that people keep bringing it up as an objection makes it pretty clear that the MRHMRMHRM lacks listening comprehension skills as well as reading comprehension skills.