CRIMES AGAINST GAMING ????
Ok ... now they are just being cliche versions of thenselfs ... it CANNOT be serious
They very much are. To them it works like this:
-Got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to nitpick videos with stereotypes that are already easy to spot and some way too much. (If you have a woman in a weak role that means they're saying all women are like that!)
-Forcing their feminist ideology on the market by claiming victimhood and telling the men to give the women what they want rather than empowering women to do make change, thus against the ideas of first wave feminism
-Missed her deadlines and cried wolf when people hounded her
-Mostly just poor ideology for the person doing this and people blowing up something to a far bigger degree than they believe it is.
Reminder, this is not my views. This is my reflecting /v/'s views from the time I spent with them.
Yeah that's a pretty good summary of the complaints lodged in the /v/gas. That said "CRIMES AGAINST GAMING" is not serious and is not meant to be - it's awards show hyperbole as usual. That doesn't mean it doesn't represent some very sick and entrenched ideas within the gaming subculture - and the /v/gas did themselves no favors by allowing investig8tive to do the narration and using footage from the "beat up Anita" flash game unironically.
I rather prefer the idea that videogame turn boys into violent murderers over violent misogynists.
Also I keep forgetting that Sarkeesian is one of those radical antipenis feminists.
Hahaha thanks for the laughs. We needed that on the even of the release date.
In case you were serious, however...
The issue with video games causing sexism by practicing it has come out a few times but it hasn't been as widespread. Hopefully because of the double standard of saying sexism or 'rape culture' is caused by things like video games but violence.
This isn't a double standard.
Anyone seriously equating criticism about the portrayal of women in videogames with the "videogames caused this" hysteria that has come up every time a "crazy" person has shot up a bunch of kids since Columbine really isn't thinking very hard about it. Not Anita nor any of the other articles critical of the role of women in videogames are opportunistically blaming videogames when a man shoots up his girlfriend's or wife's workplace to get to her.
Instead of circling the wagons like /v/ and every other message board did and thinking of all criticism about videogames like the "violence in games causing mass murderers/spree killers" hysteria, think about it like general media criticism that every medium is subject to - what messages are being sent and what messages are being received? Think of it like advertising - what are they trying to sell and what is being sold?
"Society" vehemently disapproves of murdering your wife or girlfriend, co-workers, groups of random strangers, or especially schoolchildren. So even if it were a message that "videogames" were trying to impart, it wouldn't mean much, since "society" pushes back on it so strongly. But if you stop to consider what messages they could push that would reinforce the dominant societal narratives... well that's a whole different picture, isn't it?
No, "videogames" are not causing people to just decide one day to grab a gun and go on a murder spree, and we rightly revile those who have made such claims. But are they reinforcing dominant societal narratives about war and heroism? Are they boosting recruitment for and creating public support for perpetual war and occupation? Are they playing on and promoting cultural fears of apocalyptic terrorism or invasion by foreign hordes, even to people who live in a country that militarily outspends all others combined? Are they reinforcing recent cultural narratives about the efficacy of barbaric torture as a means of gathering information? Or are they going against them?
Once you've performed that thought exercise, think about the depiction of women in videogames in that light. If women are underrepresented in videogames, then the remaining depictions gain all the more clout. That women are so often kidnap victims/prizes to be won might not mean so much if that was a much smaller proportion of their role in games... or if it wasn't so common in other media as well. And while no one takes away the message that "it's ok to just kidnap women," it is worth asking if this does effect how we think about the agency of real women... or make judgments about their vulnerability.