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.
It really is incredible that when some misogynyst dipshit makes up ludicrous biotruth horseshit videos the various other dipshits eat it up.
Women say they are being harassed online? “BLUH BLUH SHE’S ONLY DOING IT FOR ATTENTION NO ONE IS HARASSING THAT [STREAM OF SLURS]”
on top of that, in the continuing stupidity that is the Zoe Quinn shitstorm, you’ve got people claiming “indiegames are destroying gaming”
Indie game devs are often the only ones who will fucking TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT instead of just making another goddamn FPS.
Me too Aural, not saying it’s impossible or anything, I only met him a handful of times so I don’t know the guy real well. It’d just be a bit of a shock to find out, this is why I try to avoid twitter and learning too much about performers I like. Hate to learn they may hold some vile beliefs, after the whole Gene Simmons suicide comments I just sort of cut myself off of that sort of news. Except Felicia Day, I will read and watch ever damned bit of media she produces.
@cloudiah:
…
That sounds fun, actually. Can this be a real thing?
@kirbywarp, As long as the topic isn’t Exuin’s comments!
@kirbywarp
Oooooh, can we go canoeing while we participate in the hive mind?
Head’s up; Ed Germer is a sexist troll. I’ve seen him show his ass multiple times over at FTBs. He’s a jerk.
@inurashii
It does always boil down to that, doesn’t it?
“Gash cash”? Is that a common MRA saying, or is it used by Paul Elam alone? Is it possible to distill everything that’s wrong with A Voice for Men into one phrase? I think he’s done it.
Woooo, after years of searching anita arkeesian’s work on google and youtube I finally spelled her name correctly on the first try!!!!! Man, I had absolutely no idea how bad games were. It certainly explains the attitudes of the stalkers who threaten her. I wish there were something I could do. I am considering wearing an anita asrkeesian t-shirt for my first fight.
@bunnybunny
While Exuin.exe’s mention of it is a disgusting, tasteless attempt at scoring Debate Points™, the case he’s referring to has some pretty serious implications about free speech. You can read about it here.
For those of you wondering about Kevin Sorbo…
Christians, Stop Doing This (Kevin Sorbo mouths off about atheists)
Nope, I’ll never be able to watch Hercules again (Kevin Sorbo’s racist rant against the “animals” of Ferguson, MO)
Kevin Sorbo is an idiot, part Umpty-Eleven (More of Kevin Sorbo’s mouthing off about atheists)
Sorry… I was just as devastated by this…
I have read about it. There are implications about free speech when people like Sarkeesian report threats as well, and when legal action is taken against people who make threats of violence online. I don’t condone the charges against Carter, but I don’t think this shit should slide, either.
“But is the the fault of feminists like Anita that this happens? I don’t think so”
From a comment way above. Of course it’s not her fault, nor is it entirely the fault of feminists. However, there’s no empathy here, no awareness of the fact that the goal is to shame some male gamers into becoming aware of the inherent misogyny in video games. To shame and bully them into doing something about it. It’s like policing people’s fantasies, judging them for their thought crimes. If you consider how many gamers game to escape the world of bullying, this would be perceived as simply another attack. Does that justify death threats and harassment? No, but can no one even consider where that might be coming from?
OH NO THOSE POOR GAMERS MIGHT NEED TO LEARN EMPATHY HOW AWFUL.
shut up.
Oh, look, Inanitybytes is here to add exactly fuckall to the conversation.
Won’t someone please think of the poor gamers? You know, it’s not like it’s become a mainstream hobby or anything in the past few years.
Alex M: I honestly don’t think that’s a free speech issue, but rather a prosecutorial misconduct/prison issue.
I think the police were right to take his threat seriously, but there should have been no reason to arrest him after the investigation turned up no weapons, history of violence or pattern of behaviour. What happened to him in prison is heartbreaking.
IB: Anita isn’t bullying anyone. She’s presenting examples of misogyny in video games as plainly as possible, with little in the way of hyperbole. If anything, the examples tend to speak for themselves.
It’s not like she’s the Angry Video Game Nerd, screaming at games on camera just because everyone says they’re bad.
You know, one of the reasons that I take the ‘feed the trolls till they burst’ side of things, is that sometimes you just get to watch a spectacular meltdown, but sometimes (rarely, it is true, but it does happen) they vomit up something useful. Like this
Here’s the thing. Yes, sexism is an attitude and a mindset, but it is also a set of behaviors (or maybe it’s more accurate that it can be manifest in a set of behaviors). Honestly, I could care less what people think or feel. Really. I am not (necessarily) trying to change anyone’s mind. You can still think women are icky and mean and have cooties, so long as you do not get in the way of any woman or group of women living their lives as they see fit and enjoying all the benefits and freedoms of full humanity. That’s it for me as a feminist. You can continue to think and feel whatever you like, but you can’t discriminate.
It is not necessary to prove that a particular game writer or developer team has a particular attitude toward women in order for the manifestation of behavior in the game to be judged (and judged accurately) as sexist. Actually, sometimes these tropes and ideas are embedded so deeply in our culture that you have to work really hard to see them as anything other than normal (they come up all the time, after all), so that people who would be deeply offended if you suggested that they are condoning violence against women might still produce a game where violence against women is used, as Sarkeesian points out, as some kind of shortcut to establish how ‘dark’ or ‘gritty’ a setting is.
The thing is, as with any work of fiction, there is a choice in how you articulate the world you are creating. Game developers could, for example, use violence against animals to show how ‘dark’ and ‘gritty’ a particular world or setting was, in which you would have the mutilated corpse of dogs and cats and other animals lying about, and NPCs or ‘bad guys’ would abuse animals on the street. It is clear, tangible evidence of sexism in society that the choice to use the abuse of women to “set the scene” for a world is seen as automatic and uncontroversial by so many writers and development teams (as is the fact that the choice to subject so much graphic and purely gratuitous “stage setting” violence to animals would raise more general alarm and opprobrium than similar violence enacted on representations of women’s bodies.
Oh, and one more thing. In my former life, I wrote a lot of cultural criticism, primarily of movies and tv. I have never made a movie or a tv show, I don’t work in the film or tv industry, but I am a member of the cultural community in which and for which movies and tv are made, and I do watch some, though it would obviously be impossible for one human being to watch all of them. Just being part of that cultural community gives me the right to write and talk about them and judge them as much as I like, just as Sarkeesian has the right to write and talk and judge video games. She does not need any kind of membership card, or magic key, or permission to do so. She doesn’t have to play each and every one in order to talk about it, and yes, to judge it. You are free to disagree with her, dislike her, or produce as much media as you like refuting or debunking or critiquing her work (right now you are attempting to do so through flimsy logical fallacies and weak, unsupported assertions and it’s not very persuasive) as is anyone else.
But there is no argument, no framework, no justification, no analogy by which it is acceptable to threaten or harass her or anyone for her opinion. No one on Youtube or in a jail cell in Texas, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter, has any bearing on the above.
Oh ffs. Inanity is at it again. Are you here to get more blog fodder or are you just lonely?
I feel no need to empathize with sexist assholes who harass women or excuse others who do so. Being bullied as a child is not an excuse. Lots of us were bullied as kids. I was shy, awkward and geeky with bad hair. And I played video games. I know how it feels to be picked on. I also know that the proper response to that is to oppose the bullying and exclusion of others. All these assholes are doing is staking out an area in which they can use the privilege they do have to finally feel powerful by harassing others. Fuck that.
This is sort of off topic but sort of on topic because it’s about “oppressed” white male nerds.
I’ve seen nerds complaining about the Big Bang Theory because it’s “nerd minstrely” That really pisses me off. A group of people that is privileged appropriating racism to bitch about a stupid sitcom
Social awareness equals bullying? I can feel the stupid.
What? There are children starving in some third world countries? Waaaaa! Why’d you make me think about that?! I feel totally bullied right now.
**eyeroll**
“Nerd minstrely”? Wow, I hope that term never pops up again.
Sure.
A possibly bad space, where they are people who want to zone out and enjoy themselves for a few hours to escape the press of lives that are hollow and people they despite, the young, arty types who were bullied in high school who are too creative for the dreary lives and living in small disaster to disaster existences, caught in the vast vagaries of fate and never quite going to make, too stuck with the bad deals of the past and the unknown quantities of the future. The sort vulnerable, stereotypical geek you might imagine if you closed your eyes when I wrote geek, who really means no harm and intends no evil, but just wants some peace and quiet. You know the sort. Nice dad, good friend, happy worker, a bit distant perhaps, yearning for some inner wonder the world hasn’t quite managed to find yet after the mortgage and the heart attack that killed one parent.
Wait.
No.
fuck that
Did the adoption of Dante’s Inferno really need a “Sin to Win” campaign and endless pictures of naked or near naked demonettes licking various parts of themselves or others? Does pointing out that’s fucking ridiculous really shame anyone?
Analyzing a story isn’t shaming and bullying. No one has even once said “You are bad people for liking this”. People just wonder at the sheer random weirdness of some games and the images and stories those games tell, and offering critique on how this is the way it is, why it is the way it is and in some cases how to change it. “Shame” enters into it because of you.
Yes, you, insanitybytes22, who decide to construe it as a riff on your chosen lifestyle and feel attacked by the words of other people, feeling like you must mount some kind of pre-emptive defense against their vicious meme vectors, the ones that only exist in your head and has no bearing on reality in any way, shape or form. All you can do is clutch your pearls and wail against the evil feminists who bully and hate and deride all men everywhere, despite the fact none of them have done such a damn thing, and you come here, and you do it again and again and again and again and again.
I normally try to be nicer and wittier when I write these kinds of posts, but your specific mealy mouthed inanity and haphazard playing around a topic and random attempts at trying to prove we’re all deluded monsters that hate the poor sad men who are unjustly victimized by a cruel world and only need a hug is so incredibly grating.
If you cared a wit about hating feminism, you’d look it the fuck up and argue cogently against the points raised by feminists. Yet you don’t.
If you really cared about men, you’d spend your time in the comment sections of sites that offered aid and help and partnerships and mentors and talks to men, and they are legion, and they are useful, but you don’t.
Just.. either bloody damn well come here and make a point that’s worth pointing out, has relevance, or is an attempt at pointing out something out, or at least, AT LEAST, be funnier when you do all this.
The rest is just pathetic. And it’s sad. And it gets to me, because I just really, really wish you’d have something more constructive, fun, interesting, wonderful and delightful to do with your life. And I hope you find some wonder to occupy your time.
I’m kind of annoyed exuin.exe flounced without at least thanking Fibinachi and kirbywarp for explaining how to use blockquotes. Rude.
But that doesn’t mean zie needs to come back.
“Head’s up; Ed Germer is a sexist troll. I’ve seen him show his ass multiple times over at FTBs. He’s a jerk.”
Uh, thanks? Still, I think one can like Sarkeesian’s videos, have some mild criticism of them, and still not be a sexist jerk.