I do not understand.

[BreakfastMan]

Why did you copy-pasta almost your exact same OT from R&P, where it was torn apart?

Also, your OP is so full of logical fallacies and blatant misrepresentations it makes my mind explode from the sheer thought of it. Did you ever pay attention during any point at the video? Or did you just watch all of the horrible "response" videos to her without ever questioning what you were hearing and seeking out the video yourself?

EDIT: Oh God, I just read the rest of the posts above me. Most of them make me want to gag from how horrible they are. I have a really hard time comprehending why people think Anita is such a horrible person for simply criticizing games, but then again, considering the shit Jim Sterling gets on a daily basis for criticizing games, I shouldn't be too surprised. -_-

 

[Legion]

-snip-

I disagree with you on a few things, but while I'm certain I wouldn't agree with Anita on everything, I haven't watched any of her videos and I'm not really bothered by any of this much. If her opinions make her so angry, then why do you subject yourself to them? I understand you can't avoid forums like this where people talk about it, but from the knowledge you have on her opinions it seems you've actually seen her work.

Why? You know what to expect from her. I avoid Glenn Beck for this reason. I know he's a charlatan who makes his money by manipulating people and weaponizing their nostalgia and virtues, so I just tune into other things. You should do the same.

While I agree with you on the whole, I think one reason it is important to have seen her work (if you are planning on getting involved in discussions about her) is so you are informed enough to have an opinion. So many people who complain clearly haven't actually watched the videos based upon some of the comments they make, and it just lends credibility to those who claim that people don't argue against her views, but only against her as an individual.

Granted, if people don't want to hear about her they could always just avoid those topics as much as possible, but "Somebody is wrong on the internet" pretty much sums up why people never let it go.

Then again, the OP quoting "Who the hell cares?" while posting a rant, suggests that they do...

I have a really hard time comprehending why people think Anita is such a horrible person for simply criticizing games.

Probably because they don't.

People are not disliking her "simply for criticising games". They dislike her for her specific criticisms that they disagree with, not the fact that she has the "audacity" to complain.

I really don't get how this is so hard to understand. I get the impression most people who assume that she is hated purely for being a woman or because she is "A woman daring to criticise games" haven't so much as tried to look at what people are actually taking issue with, but are just trying to un-ironically "character assassinate" anybody who dares to take issue with her particular way of thinking by labelling them as misogynists.

 

[The Funslinger]

The woman is a hack.

She's like an undergraduate that didn't quite leave enough time for her dissertation and just rehashes the same simple rhetoric we've all heard a million times before.

Not to mention that she has no clue how context works.

I also love the absolutely hilarious bullshit gist of her dissertation.

A major element being: "women being portrayed as brave, physically strong or skilled leaders is sexist because instead of giving the woman her own qualities, she's being made to ape masculine qualities."

Wut. Wut.

[HEADING=1]Wut.[/HEADING]

 

[The Funslinger]

I wonder if Anita has a boyfriend. Who the fuck would date this psycho? If she does, he's probably some BDSM freak who enjoys being choked and whipped.

...

D: My girlfriend likes BDSM.

;-; She isn't a freak!

So does mine to a certain extent, actually.

It's okay man. [sub]It's okay...[/sub]

 

[N3squ1ck]

While I agree with her, that women are misrepresented in games and that something should be done about it, I absolutely despise how she complains about sexism against women on the one hand and on the other hand reduces the males only to servants of the patriarchy, like they would not have any feelings whatsoever.

Just my two cents, I don't have much right to complain about anything, I just observe the whole thing from afar and am partly agreeing and partly disagreeing




Captcha: "I love deadlines" - As someone who is procrastinating right now, no I don't love them, I despise them.

 

[Worgen]

Just try to bear in mind she's an extremist.
Don't take her any more seriously than you would Al Qaeda.

How is she an extremist?

 

[Frotality]

she is your standard extremist taking validity away from otherwise reasonable discussions. there are plenty of reasons to analyze how video-game centric tropes play off antiquated social norms and unconsciously reinforce them, and the actual spirit of her videos is, kind of right, i guess, but she just seems to be operating in a vacuum of men vs women that is equally as shortsighted and antiquated as the tropes she vilifies.

why yes anita, you are absolutely right, men DO feel pressure and guilt to protect and shepherd women because it is still a social influence, its one of the THOUSANDS if not MILLIONS of factors that decide a person's actions and reactions, among them genuine emotion and feelings of attachment which i would think you as a feminist would recognize are not "girly" traits, but just plain "human" ones. the scope of her videos are hopelessly narrow and agenda-driven, and only holding back her own movement.

 

[CriticalMiss]

The woman is a hack.

She's like an undergraduate that didn't quite leave enough time for her dissertation and just rehashes the same simple rhetoric we've all heard a million times before.

Not to mention that she has no clue how context works.

Don't forget her silly earrings. They're like parachute ripcords!

I'm also fairly sure this thread has been made before. If you dislike what she creates then don't add to the flames by throwing more fuel on the fire. I know that the only reason I ever heard of her is because of seeing a dozen threads about the same person popping up on The Escapist, I'm probably not alone in that respect. Hell, it even quietened down recently because she hadn't released a video in a while. One gets uploaded and the angry froth circus rolls in to town shortly after.

It's fine to disagree with her. If you do then stop watching her videos, if you hate them so much and are so sick and tired of what she has to say then ignore her. Go watch something you enjoy and talk about that instead, maybe you will find another video maker with a cool message you agree with and can share it with everyone. Then we'll all forget Anita except for those who already decided that everything she says is gospel.

 

[Manji187]

Whatever wrong she has committed (if any)...no need to start foaming at the mouth.

 

[Byte2222]

What don't you understand?

Learn more about feminism then.

If you want to know, Anita Sarkeesian is on point in context to feminism as a school of thought. Nothing she has conveyed in her videos is incorrect and she demonstrates her criticism with great clarity and abundant evidence.

Media does have an effect upon us, not directly of course, but ideas conveyed by narrative can leave impressions upon us in the way we interpret things and our own introspective thoughts. (Games like Final Fantasy 7 and Tales of Symphonia for example have had some influence in regards to how I approach ideas in relation to morality or other topics)

If you don't care that is your own fault. You should not blame Anita for your own disinterest in the subject of how women (and men for that matter) are presented in popular media and narrative.

And the fact that people continue to judge her character shows me that they are not interested in actually learning something new, rather going on a petty crusade to assassinate someone who dares speak about awful and problematic things in video games.

The thing is, problematic things DO exist in video games, there is nothing wrong with talking about them. Just because a video game is merely meant to be 'entertainment' like any other form of media, it does not excuse it from greater dialog or insightfulness. How else do you expect people to understand the WHY of things if we just pretend that its 'normal' or expected that representation of women in games are roundly awful? And not just awful, but pretty much stereotyped to the point that the Exceptions always always always float to the top of relevancy because of how much awfulness there actually is!

Though in the end, I could always revel in the fact that Anita brings out the worst in gamer dorks everywhere and make fun of them.

I agree with this guy. Most of what she's said so far has been observations and they have all been fair observations. Gaming does have a sexism problem (case in point: name 5 games with a non-user defined female protagonist) and while some of her criticisms may hurt (I loved Pandora's Tower and didn't enjoy her tearing it a new one), they are all fair and we need to acknowledge and address this if we are to be taken seriously as a medium.

I would also like to add that everything she does is/has been very slow, prompting certain criticisms. Episode 1: "hey, when are you going to talk about something from the last decade?" and episode 2 is about modern examples. "Why does this matter?" addressed at the end of episode 2. "This is all well and good but what do you suggest we do?" episode 3 will cover positive examples. Why has it been slow? Presumably because of the amount of effort she puts into the videos, which also necessitated a kickstarter.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

I wonder if Anita has a boyfriend. Who the fuck would date this psycho? If she does, he's probably some BDSM freak who enjoys being choked and whipped.

and this is a bad thing how exactly?

 

[VoidWanderer]

I wonder if Anita has a boyfriend. Who the fuck would date this psycho? If she does, he's probably some BDSM freak who enjoys being choked and whipped.

Boyfriend? Seriously? I think her devotion to the 'Men are people who view women as objects' is her 'partner', as she seem to display the same emotional range as the perceived 'men' in said videogames.

I am sure there are people who think Anita is a good person... Actually, they would be interesting to meet, so I know who to avoid in future.

 

[Sexy Devil]

just rehashes the same simple rhetoric we've all heard a million times before.

Not to mention that she has no clue how context works.

Holy crap, she's a high school English essay! This explains everything!

 

[Legion]

(case in point: name 5 games with a non-user defined female protagonist)

Portal
Mirrors Edge
Beyond Good and Evil
BloodRayne
Tomb Raider
To the Moon
DreamFall Chapters
Assassins Creed 3: Liberation
Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Borderlands
Lollypop Chainsaw
Tenchu
Final Fantasy
Amy
American McGee's Alice
Hydrophobia
Wet
Left 4 Dead
Heavy Rain
Bayonetta
DreamKiller
Metroid
Velvet Assassin
Heavenly Sword
Bullet Witch
Perfect Dark
Haunting Ground
No One Lives Forever
Oni
Dino Crisis
Defenders Quest: Valley of the Forgotten


There are countless others that I have never heard of myself (mostly Japanese), plus I kept out most of the ones that people would try and argue are literally nothing more than eye candy, just for the sake of argument. Also no film/TV tie-ins. I also didn't bother listing sequels. Or ones where they are female but not "human" (Sorry Daystar, Okami doesn't count).

This is why I suggest people don't exaggerate when trying to make serious points. It just makes your argument weaker, and I am somebody who frequently comments on the ratio of decent female protagonists being too low for my own liking.

they are all fair and we need to acknowledge and address this if we are to be taken seriously as a medium.

Because films and books aren't taken seriously thanks to Twilight, and music is a joke thanks to Justin Bieber.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

(Sorry Daystar, Okami doesn't count).

You whore, you shut your goddamn whore mouth, it totally counts D:_>

<__>

-_-'

Ah, who am I kidding.

[sub]I was kidding about the whore thing by the way, usually I wouldn't add a disclaimer, but well...[/sub]

 

[Byte2222]

(case in point: name 5 games with a non-user defined female protagonist)

Portal
Mirrors Edge
Beyond Good and Evil
BloodRayne
Tomb Raider
To the Moon
DreamFall Chapters
Assassins Creed 3: Liberation
Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Borderlands
Lollypop Chainsaw
Tenchu
Final Fantasy
Amy
American McGee's Alice
Hydrophobia
Wet
Left 4 Dead
Heavy Rain
Bayonetta
DreamKiller
Metroid
Velvet Assassin
Heavenly Sword
Bullet Witch
Perfect Dark
Haunting Ground
No One Lives Forever
Oni
Dino Crisis
Defenders Quest: Valley of the Forgotten


There are countless others that I have never heard of myself (mostly Japanese), plus I kept out most of the ones that people would try and argue are literally nothing more than eye candy, just for the sake of argument. Also no film/TV tie-ins. I also didn't bother listing sequels. Or ones where they are female but not "human" (Sorry Daystar, Okami doesn't count).

This is why I suggest people don't exaggerate when trying to make serious points. It just makes your argument weaker, and I am somebody who frequently comments on the ratio of decent female protagonists being too low for my own liking.

Fair enough. There are games with female protagonists (that I'm not going to argue with) but (like you said) they tend to be... a little too few and far between. I was just hoping to give a simple example, as I can't think of many games where women are portrayed as equally competent as men (or that pass the Bechdel test, but that's another story)

they are all fair and we need to acknowledge and address this if we are to be taken seriously as a medium.

Because films and books aren't taken seriously thanks to Twilight, and music is a joke thanks to Justin Bieber.

I'd argue that, with films/books/music, Twilight/Bieber and their ilk are considered exceptions to the rule (with the rule being enjoyable, respectable media). I feel that, with gaming, the outside world perceives us as... actually, like we were 20 years ago but to a lesser extent as the kinds of people who live in our parents' basement shouting abuse at people over the internet. Say what you will about people like Fox news who perpetuate this stereotype but my point is that the merely perpetuate it and people already tend to think of us like that. Like I said though, this is what I feel, and I don't claim to know how the rest of the world feels about us.

 

[BreakfastMan]

I have a really hard time comprehending why people think Anita is such a horrible person for simply criticizing games.

Probably because they don't.

People are not disliking her "simply for criticising games". They dislike her for her specific criticisms that they disagree with, not the fact that she has the "audacity" to complain.

I really don't get how this is so hard to understand. I get the impression most people who assume that she is hated purely for being a woman or because she is "A woman daring to criticise games" haven't so much as tried to look at what people are actually taking issue with, but are just trying to un-ironically "character assassinate" anybody who dares to take issue with her particular way of thinking by labelling them as misogynists.

I still have no idea why people would claim that she is, to quote earlier posts in this thread "a psycho", a "bad feminist", or an "extrememist" simply for criticizing the overuse of tropes. You disagree with her critiques? Fine. But calling her a psycho because she criticizes the overuse of the Damsel in Distress trope? I have no idea how you get there.

 

[Miyenne]

She annoys me. A lot.

I hate this femininism shit, honestly. I never felt inadequate or anything growing up. I gamed all the time. I never once though that because it was usually the girl being helpless that I should act helpless too, it never made me feel less of myself because I had a vagina too. It never even occured to me.

Does she ever point out all the strong females in games? Or the moments of weakness/utter failures the male protagonists have? Because that does happen a lot, and then the women tend to save them.

I haven't watched much of her vidoes because they make me want to crawl through the screen and slap her and tell her to gtfo of my gender.