There’s some great news for supporters of The Sarkeesian Effect, the seemingly random collection of badly filmed interviews with assorted people who dislike Anita Sarkeesian that is allegedly being edited into a film of some kind!
In a new video, Jordan Owen — the hairier of the two Sarkeesian Effect impresarios — has announced an amazing new opt-out opportunity for the alleged film’s backers to donate money to him and his pal (then enemy, then pal again) Davis Aurini.
Owen reports that, even though they’re supposedly already done filming their alleged film, the two have somehow managed to work out a way to do some more filming “that we didn’t think that we’d be able to do but it’s really going to tie the movie together,” much like the non-big Lebowski’s famously peed-on rug, I guess.
Now, Owen won’t provide any details — which, he suggests, might have something vaguely to do with the Honey Badgers’ recent escapade in Calgary? — but apparently it is a quite exciting filming opportunity and it somehow requires another month’s worth of funding for the alleged film, and unless the project’s backers specifically opt out by the end of the month they’re going to get charged for it!
It’s all very ethical.
In the video, Owen also invites supporters to check out the amazingly professional web site they have up for their amazing film at TheSarkeesianEffect.com. I would also highly recommend that you check it out; it is in every way up to the exacting standards the two are known for.
And before I forget, I’d like to mention some great news for fans of the unintentional comedy that the Sarkeesian Effect duo provide almost every time they open their mouths.
A couple of Sarkeesian Effect mockers — Andrew Todd from badassdigest.com and @kav_p from Twitter — have come into the possession of puppets that, as Kav P puts it, look “startlingly similar” to the Sarkeesian Effect duo. They plan to produce a series of short videos starring said puppets.
Here’s the theme song for the series, which they call MRAsterpiece Theater. You may notice that despite costing nothing to anyone but the two people who made it, this video somehow manages to look and sound a lot more professional than anything the actual Sarkeesian Effect dudes have produced so far.
You guys have really horrible reading comprehension. Like really bad. You’re setting the bar pretty low for your feminist movement. Lower than it already is I mean.
First off I never said women just started gaming and if you guys weren’t obsessed with twisted my words around to push your agenda maybe you’d have noticed that. I said “when women started gaming in larger numbers.” I’ll make it super easy to understand for you. Women are a minority in gaming today. They were a smaller minority in the 00’s and an even smaller minority in the 90’s. Not so hard to understand is it?
You can sit there all you want and act like you know about the demographics but developers know their audience better than you would. They have to know or else they would lose money and eventually go out of business. Video gaming is the way it is because that’s what the market dictates. For you guys to argue otherwise you’re basically saying that developers have been choosing to give up profit and for what? Because they’re just that sexist? It doesn’t work that way. Even if we assume developers are the evil sexist jerks that you apparently believe they are, they wouldn’t give up millions of dollars for that.
Now for the people telling me the market doesn’t work the way I say it does, you’re wrong. It does work that way for video games. If I own a toy company and I know the toys I make only appeal to maybe 20% of the market, that’s okay because most toys are cheap and easy to mass produce. Video games are not. It takes anywhere from months to several years to design a single game and they can cost tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars to make. Developers just don’t have the time and money to make games that appeal to every minority group out there.
Even something as simple as adding a female character isn’t always that simple. Ya know what? Let’s think about this a different way. Let’s imagine for a second that “masculinists” were demanding they add a male protagonist to Tomb Raider alongside Lara Croft. Do you know how hard that would be? They would have to design this character from the ground up, find a way to add him to the story whether it made sense or not, they would have to hire a voice and mocap actor for him, they would have to test him to make sure there were no glitches, etc. All this stuff takes money and manpower and also time. Video game development teams don’t have unlimited money and time to work with and all the resources they use up trying to add “diversity” to the game they could use for more important things like, ya know, improving the gameplay.
In regards to this feminist idea that women are harassed more than men online, this article written by a reluctant feminist named Cathy Young goes against that: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/04/men-are-harassed-more-than-women-online.html
Also I remember reading in an article a couple months ago that male gamers are more likely to be harassed than female gamers. If I can find that I’ll be sure to post it. I think the more likely truth is that harassment doesn’t happen any more to women, we just focus on it more because society treats women like special snowflakes we and expect men to just put up with it.
Oh 4th troll,
I read the article. It’s discussing a study done with a small sample of public figures. It also doesn’t appear to analyze the severity of abuse. It just counts instances. Calling a man a stupid asshole is the not the same as telling a woman you’re going to go to her house and rape her. It also doesn’t make the point that men may be subject to abuse for being part of a marginalized group such as black, gay, mentally ill etc.
The article and you are setting up a false dilemma too. Saying that misogyny is a problem online does not mean that we’re saying no men are threatened and harassed.
Another big glaring problem with that article, she makes the claim that telling a man he has male privilege is abusive. No. She accuses women of wanting special treatment but thinks men have the right to not be told their gender makes them privileged? I don’t think she knows what abuse is.
Oh, and nobody here has ever said men should put up with harassment.
http://i.imgur.com/F8zQHtf.gif
@Weirwood
Did you actually read the whole thing? If you did you would have seen that it wasn’t just limited to public figures. You say it’s “different” when a woman is threatened with rape than when a man is called an asshole or whatever. Well first of all let me assure you I’ve heard gamers call each other much worse things than that. Much worse. Besides that, I really don’t think it is all that different. Trolls say things like that to get a rise out of the victim. They know threatening rape or saying get back in the kitchen, make me a sandwich, etc. is something that will upset a majority of women so that’s what they say. How many of them actually drive across the country to that person’s house and try to make good on their promise? Gonna guess the answer is zero. While we’re at it, how many people have showed up at Anita Sarkeesian’s house to try and rape or kill her? Again I’m guessing the answer to that is none. They’re trolls and they do what trolls have always done whether women were around or not.
You can tell me my gender makes me privileged all you want as long as you accept that being female makes you privileged also.
Oh here’s another article by the way. It’s not about gamers either but it points out how left wing social justice warriors can be just as bad as you think red pillers are:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/joshua-goldberg/2014/12/when-social-justice-warriors-attack-one-tumblr-users-experience/
Hey, 4th, so you realize that article provides no actual proof of harassment? Now don’t take me wrong, SJWs, like any group that includes human beings, has it outliers that harass people, and they are wrong. But the article you posted? Has no links to the actual harassment, it just has… pictures. That could have been designed in photoshop. And are not linked back to the actual harassment. Did you read it?
“You’re just as bad as I am! I will say this without proof and demand you believe it because I’m a MAN and what I say is magically true. But don’t you DARE call me privileged!”
Oh, 4th Assbag, you fail so hard. Thought Catalog is where idiots go to whine. Or pick up material for “gotcha!” raids that don’t, in fact, get a single thing.
Go cry, emo kid.
What’s Thought Catalog and why is it bad?
Thought Catalog as a citation. LOL. Didn’t read. I guess it’s better than Infowars.
Thought Catalog wasn’t the proof. The guy who wrote the article provided several examples of leftists bullying others but the lefties here don’t want to believe that would ever happen so that means the pictures must have been photoshopped.
4th, he did not provide proof because he did not link to anything. Why is it unreasonable to want links to verify what he says?
“What do you mean you want ‘sources’ and ‘validation’?! I posted a link from a place that doesn’t provide links to sources! Is that not acceptable to you leftie femucommunazis?!”
4th survivor, for the amount of lurking you do around here, I’m surprised at how badly you seem to grasp the problems that feminists have with video games. Here’s a teal dear for you, because I’m in a bad mood and my bullshit tolerance is at an all-time low.
Yes, women were not welcome in gaming because it was seen as a boy thing because sexism, and now we are finally living in a world where there are just as many women who play video games as there are men.
Unless you’re talking about a video game that requires you to stick your penis into to actually play, VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT TIED TO A SPECIFIC gender.
The only reason so few women were playing video games was because video games were overtly hostile to women. Even today, video games continue to paint a world as ‘gritty’ but showcasing gratuitous examples of violence against women. Geez, I wonder if that might make women less interested in playing video games?
Yeah no, a self-fulfilling prophesy is hardly proof. Video games became a boys club thing for no good reason, and you can keep kicking and screaming all you want, but that’s coming to an end (and about fucking time).
Right, just like how action movies are always featuring guys and couldn’t possibly have a female protagonist otherwise all men will hate it.
Oh wait.
So many logical fallacies here.
First, you assume that developers appealing to women will AUTOMATICALLY drive away a male audience. And this is completely bullshit. Do tell, do you actually believe that the vast majority of male gamers are going to go: “what the hell? There’s no sexy woman who exists only to be rescued in this game! This means it sucks and I won’t play it” or “damn, this female character has a personality and her own goals and her own influence on the plot, this game is terrible, I’d rather she just be there looking pretty”.
Btw, Star Guardian Lux came out the other day on league of legends. Strangely, a lot of dudes didn’t decide to quit LoL, even though the skin itself is as girly as can be.
Second, you seem to think that we consider developers to be “evil sexist jerks”. You need to provide some evidence for this, when did we call developers “evil sexist jerks”? Or is this one of your other unfounded assumptions? Well, obviously they are sexist, but not because they are ‘evil’ or ‘jerks’ but because of deep-seated sexist tropes that exist in much of the media and culture.
Wow, you just called 50% of the population a “minority group”. I can’t even. This point is already debunked because the premise that very few women play video games is very obviously false, but I bring it up because you’re making another bullshit assumption:
That women are the only ones who care about the representation of women in video games. Well fuck you. I’m a guy, and I very much care about the representation of women in video games. And I know for a fact that I’m not the only one.
Um, hi there hypothetical guy. May I introduce you to the VAST COLLECTION OF GAMES IN WHICH FEATURE A MALE PROTAGONIST? Have fun, you’ve got PLENTY of options to choose from.
This argument is so flawed that it can only exist in a world where 90% of video games have female characters and most of the male ones are heavily objectified and sexualized. Since we do not, in fact, live in such a world, you lose. Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200.
Also, since when do feminists demand that “every” video game ever must have a male and female protagonist side-by-side? There’s nothing wrong with having a male protagonist in a video game. This is just another straw-man you made up because you fail to grasp even the simplest of concerns that feminists have with video games. You and pretty much the entire GamerGate movement for that matter.
Right, because in your imaginary game design company, the concept artists apparently moonlight as code monkeys. That seems highly inefficient.
WWTH already debunked this, but I want to add, the idea of ‘which gender gets more harrassment’ is not an accurate assessment of the problem.
Here’s one of MANY problems: A woman voices her opinion about sexism in video games, and she is harassed before she can even create her video series. Be honest with me, do you think that is fair? If so, why? I’d really like to know. I think it’s because there are a lot of (predominantly male) gamers who are completely incapable of handling criticism.
The saddest part of all is that what you’re defending isn’t even worth defending. The damsel in distress trope, exploitive violence against women to paint a game as ‘gritty’ are all lazy excuses that developers use to AVOID having to come up with meaningful motivations or put effort into the setting of a world. I think game developers can to better than that.
@the 4 Survivor
You’re wrong. The Daily Beast has a link to the press release and they studied tweets sent to celebrities, politicians, journalists and musicians.
http://demos.co.uk/press_releases/demosmalecelebritiesreceivemoreabuseontwitterthanwomen
There’s also a link to the list of abusive words which include: xrated, willies, wanker, wang, vulva, vagina, turd, tosser, tit, testicle, son of a bitch, smut, shitty, shite, shag, sex, semen, scrotum, schlong, sadist, porn, poop, pissed, penis, pawn, mutha, masturbate, lust, lmfao, labia, knob, horny, goddamn, fellatio, dildo, damn, cunnilingus, crap, butt, bum, breast, boobs, bestial, balls, ass.
Word not included on list of abusive words: kill, stab, punch, slit, shut up, shoot, die, slap, kick, suicide, rape and any variation of the word rape
Also, the fact that the female journalists are attacked more fits in with pattern of opinionated women of lesser stature, fame and resources are the most popular target.
To Male Celebrities To Female Celebrities
Overall Tweets 192015 242325
Abusive Tweets 9964 (5.19%) 3309 (1.37%)
Abusive Tweets from Women 2370 (23.79%) 564 (17.04%)
Abusive Tweets from men 7395 (74.22%) 2064 (62.38%)
To male Journalists To Female Journalists
Overall Tweets 45792 60048
Abusive Tweets 898 (1.96%) 3136 (5.22%)
Abusive Tweets from Women 260 (28.95%) 1198 (38.2%)
Abusive Tweets from Men 623 (69.38%) 1892 (60.33%)
To male Politicians To female politicans
Overall Tweets 230342 111909
Abusive Tweets 11865 (5.15%) 873 (0.78%)
Abusive Tweets from Women 3152 (26.57%) 250 (28.64%)
Abusive Tweets from Men 8531 (71.9%) 615 (70.45%)
To male musicians to female musicians
Overall Tweets 509635 614550
Abusive Tweets 2095 (0.41%) 2506 (0.41%)
Abusive Tweets from women 283 (13.51%) 868 (34.64%)
Abusive Tweets from men 1812 (86.49%) 1514 (60.42%)
I want to highlight the, uh, quirkiness of the list of words they consider abusive.
That threats weren’t the study but knob and butt and tosser were is telling. Meanwhile there was a story just today about Brianna Wu getting death threats at her home phone.
Because rape is the favored threat of twitter trolls, this explains why the study is slanted toward men. Men don’t typically receive rape threats, women do. If they counted rape, women would literally eclipse the ratio of people receiving threats on Twitter.
Oh, I guess I’m mistaken that a rape threat means anything if it’s directed at a woman. Speaking of rape threats, how can women be constantly lying about rape when women are constantly threatened with it – by men? Antifeminist beliefs never cease to befuddle me.
Wait. A study about threats and they didn’t count any threats? Yeah, the only question is if they did that for their own benefit or if they were paid off.
The press release says they were measuring “abuse”, but their word list has terms that would literally offend no one, like “sex”, and doesn’t include a single word involving violence. I have no idea how they can defend finding clinical terms for genitalia more abusive then the word rape. It would have been nice if The Daily Beast did more than just badly summarize the press release, because the word list completely discredits this study.
OFFENSIVE WORD LIST FUN FACTS (Note: I didn’t censor some salty language that isn’t harsh slurs but I apologize if I missed something.)
Note: This list as an almost endless sex and genitalia terms that could potentially be used in a anti-gay or misogynistic way.
For women:
Bitch – 12 variations (including bitchin and bitching)
C*** – 2 variations
Slut – 2 variations
Whore – 8 variations
For minorities:
Gay men:
Ass f***** – 3 variations
Bugger
F***** – 7 variations
Fudge P****** – 2 variations
Gayl***
Homo
Nobjockey – 2 variations
Lesbians:
Carpet M******
Dy**
Homo
Trans:
Hes**
Shem***
Ableism:
Ret***
Spac
East Asians:
Ch***
Jap
Black People:
C***
N***** – 10 variations
POC other than Japanese, Chinese or Black people:
Nothing. There are four racial slurs on this list of offensive words, a list that has six variations of “cyberfucking”.
Words that I had to look up and/or confused me:
Bellend
Buceta
Bunny Fucker
Cipa
Cyalis???
Dirsa – This one stumped me.
Donkeyribber
Flang
Teez
*Forgot to add that they thinks this word makes a tweet offensive to a Brit: BLOODY*
They’d be right to think that. Hardly anybody remembers why it’s offensive, but it’s still considered strong language if used for emphasis. Nowhere near as strong as “fucking”, but more than “damned”.
By Our Lady = Bloody
@gilshalos
I thought it was the blood of Christ?
Yeah like I really care. Get over yourself m8.
They were (for the most part) not interested in video games which is why they were seen as a boy thing. Nothing to do with sexism. I already addressed your comment about half of gamers being women before because that doesn’t take into the account the huge number of women who play games like Candy Crush and the like.
You’re delusional if you genuinely believe that. Like really delusional. There are extremely few games that even give you a choice to be violent against women much less require it. On the contrary, the majority of human characters who get killed off in video games are men, whether they be enemies or important characters to the story. Women aren’t used as cannon fodder in video games for the main character to kill in droves. Men are.
They became a boy club because boys gravitated to video games in large numbers while girls did not. Kicking and screaming? You’re the one going ballistic here, not me.
For the record here I won’t be “kicking and screaming” because I don’t care if they start adding more women characters in video games. My favorite game of all time is Perfect Dark and that has a female protagonist. I don’t want more female characters but I’m not against it either. I don’t care either way. I also don’t have a problem with people who ask for better female representation in games. I have a problem with the social justice warriors who imply video game developers and fans are sexist for not complying with their demands.
Well first of all there’s more to appealing to men and women than just adding more characters of a certain gender. Giving people the choice to play as a female character probably won’t drive any dudes away but female gamers are more likely to be casuals and by appealing more to a casual audience developers could definitely drive away their hardcore gamers. To be honest it has less to do with gender and more to do with the whole hardcore vs casual war in video games. These hardcore gamers see everything casual as the enemy and have a fear that appealing more to women would mean appealing more to a casual market. I believe these fears have merit and while I have nothing against casuals or video games designed for that audience I’m definitely worried about all or most video games eventually becoming casual games. To give one example Konami just recently said they were going to put most of their focus on mobile games from here on out because it’s more profitable. I could easily see other developers following suit with that.
If my point got lost in there basically what I’m trying to say is many hardcore gamers have an intense dislike of anything casual and they see catering more to a female audience as catering more to casuals. It’s not so much about male vs female as it is about hardcore vs casual.
You’re a guy? Wow I’m surprised. Your comment sounded like something I would read from Jezebel. You even said “I can’t even” like they do lol. That’s pretty funny. Anyway your reading comprehension is just as bad as everyone else’s here because I didn’t call women a minority group, I called women gamers a minority group which they are. Also never said very few women play games either, just that they’re a minority. Also like I said before I have nothing against developers adding more women characters to their games. Some of my favorite games have female protags like Perfect Dark, Resident Evil, Front Mission, Soul Calibur and tons more.
Ya know I knew someone would say that. Could’ve bet money on it. Congrats on missing the point entirely. The point is that it’s not always as simple as just throwing a character of another gender into a game. There’s usually a lot of work that goes into it. In a game like Call of Duty they can just throw some female skins in there but it’s not that easy for every game.
You mean it offended her and she disregarded it because it doesn’t go along with her worldview that women are perpetual victims? Is that what you mean by debunked?
No it’s not fair and you know what else isn’t fair? When male developers are harassed or even get threats of violence for changing minor things in video games. Look it up, it happens and it’s not rare. This is why so many other people dislike fanboys. Anyway the reason these women are taking so much crap isn’t because they’re women with opinions, it’s because they come across as whiners, they play the victim card constantly and they brand the opposite gender as the enemy. Not really a good way to make other people like you. Granted it doesn’t give them a right to send threats of violence but I guess that’s what you get when you have a medium like the internet where people have anonymity and the freedom to do and say what they want without consequences. It sucks but it is what it is and I doubt a bunch of whining feminists are going to change it. They’re just gonna make it worse as more people rebel against them.