It still amazes me that people can go through these incredible mental gymnastics to convince themselves that she is an evil man hating money grabbing monster and that therefore the army of rape threatening, wikipedia sabotaging trolls are some kind of brave army of heroes.
Here are the facts, the only thing Miss Sarkeesian can be considered 'guilty' of is making a video series asking for people to give her money so that she can pay to make them. Money that people can choose to donate or not choose to donate, people understood what the project was and what the end goal is and decided of their own free will to donate it.
It's not like she stole money that was going to go to some starving orphans or anything like that!
By contrast she has recieved rape threats and death threats. Youtube commentors and people in the gaming forums mobilized to have her videos marked as 'terrorism' and 'hate speech' and her wikipedia page was flooded with pornographic images and racial slurs. This was done by an army of people who apparently think she is the one who is evil and hateful.
IF YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHO IS THE BADDIE HERE YOU ARE AN IDIOT!
Still, since the conversation is brought up and a lot of the people condoning or dismissing the issue under the assumption that she must be a man hater or some non professional, let me give some information about Anita Sarkeesian.
She has a bachelor's in communications as well as a Master's degree in Social and political thought. Her videos have been used in women's studies at Universities as examples when talking about women's representations in our media. I myself used one of her videos 'The Straw Feminist' as part of one of my media assignments.
She has worked with many online magazines in the past, her first Tropes Versus Women series was in fact a professional job (she was working for a feminist group called '***** magazine'.) Earlier this year she was invited to a conference at Bungie studios to talk about women's (and later on mens) representation in video games.
She has also organized and helped run certain events, including a few workshops for high school students and even kids crafts workshops. She has an active presence in the community and if you check her twitter you will find that quite a few of her friends/followers are male.
Aside from the Tropes Against Women series where she got paid, she got no money for any of her videos on youtube. She made her stance very clear that she didn't want to put ads on her videos, owing to their intended use as educational tools she doesn't want them to be commercial. Hence her videos were very irregular, often only one in every few months. So when she decided to tackle ambitious subjects and acquire the resources, licensing and other such things (in this case LEGO) she added a 'donate' feature to her site so that she could afford to make videos with greater regularity while also maintaining the basic upkeep of rent, food, self and of course for the various charities and events she helps sponsor.
Again she is being very upfront about what the subject is and what the project is, she never lied or pretended otherwise. Therefore if people want to donate (or invest or whatever) then they are doing that of their own free will. Interestingly since it went over the intended price... significantly... she has reported being able to make a lot more videos with the left over revenue so she probably won't need donations for a while.
But the point is, she never lied about the project, people paying for it were never being 'deceived', they knew exactly what they were paying for and chose to anyway.
SHE DID NOTHING WRONG
As far as the content of her videos, while I will agree that the one comment in her 'iphone games' video and the Christmas one do go a bit far and I certainly didn't agree (except for th bit about 'Baby it's cold outside', that song is just messed up when you actually give the lyrics context) there have also been times when I've glared at Moviebob with sheer dumbfounded fury (Anytime he mentions Halo, the Expendebles review and his stance on Mass Effect 3's ending I find to be misinformed) and also with Yahtzee and Extra Credits.
She said a few dumb things that I didn't agree with, it happens. I don't agree with everything she says but truthfully I find the majority of her videos very well thought out and clever, special nods to her videos on the Hunger Games, LEGO, the original 'Tropes' series and some of her videos on ads.
She's earned this reputation as an 'angry man hater' putting up angry hate speech about how 'all men are evil and sexist and GRAAAA' when really all I do is see her say that, hey, sexist stuff exists. These tropes are real and problematic, hell I'll link one:
I mean gosh just look at all that misandry! Saying that brief two second interactions shouldn't cut it, that maybe a minute long interaction works better. Pointing out that there isn't a need for a white straight male bechdel test because there isn't a problem with male characters not interacting with each other enough? Saying that a movie can still be good even if it doesn't pass the test?
My god where does she get off posting such anti-male propaganda. I'm sorry but as far as I'm concerned, even if you don't agree with the video itself, it would take a really cowardly pathetic insecure manchild to think stuff like this was worthy of being called 'violent hate speech' or even 'terrorism'. In addition even you don't like it or think that it's a ripoff scam or whatever else... why did the thought of this series existing bother people so much as to create a vicious organized hate campaign of this magnitude?
These videos will not create an evil female dominated society, they won't cause cancer, they won't kill anyone. They will criticize elements of video game story telling and writing. That's it.
There was no backlash when she first started doing this, the first time backlash like this occurs and it is the first time she decided to take a really deep look at video games. To me that says a lot about game culture as a whole, we can't pretend that youtube commentors aren't 'true gamers'. I have commented on youtube and here I sit typing right now. I play all kinds of games and am deeply immersed in the culture, we have to assume these youtube commentors are similar.
Saying 'oh no that's not us' and then folding your arms is not a solution. As the article says we have to accept that this is a part of our culture and accept the responsibilities associated with it to finally get rid of it once and for all. I'm sick of the piss lame excuses and victim blaming, we need to actually address some of this stuff.
Anyway a few links to an interview of Sarkeesian for further reading:
http://uk.gamespot.com/features/from-samus-to-lara-an-interview-with-anita-sarkeesian-of-feminist-frequency-6382189/
(for the love of god note that she does mention men's representation as well!)
[HEADING=1]On holiday now, please no more quoting[/HEADING]
