I watched her Damsels in Distress video and thought it was really well done. Her message of inclusiveness and gender equality is an important one, especially because the tropes she discusses are still prominent in 2017. I am disappointed in Nintendo that even after they've been criticized for using the Damsel in Distress trope, they decide to double down on it in their Super Mario Oddesey trailer for instance.
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The Legacy of Feminist Frequency's Tropes vs Women Series
- Thread starter Shaanyboi
- Start date
FairFriend
Member
It was thought provoking in the best possible way.
angelic
Banned
This is my last response to you as you can't be civil, but newsflash here, you are not the authority on the subject (and neither am I).
I find her arguments poorly constructed, subjects of her attacks are often forward thinking developers like IO (who allow freedom to choose non violence and sympathetically portrays women), and her as a person seems to be more interested in chasing the money + feminist icon role than performing any noble task. As far as feminism and journalism goes, she's a hack. I dislike the young male boys that attack her position, but that doesnt make her work any good.
*deep breath*
Fine, I'll apologise for my use of the word bullshit and replace it with "poorly thought out statement". I mean that genuinely, but you should understand why you were called out for making such a bold statement without clarifying, and you should take ownership of it instead of trying to make it seem like you're the victim. That is incredibly cowardly, I don't know why you'd want to continue.
And you haven't reasoned why it's not any good beyond one example and your weird focus on the profit stuff (which has nothing at all to do with the actual content of her videos).
So, again, if you're going to make bold claims in future please try to back it up in the first place. This stuff shouldn't require explaining.
angelic
Banned
Sigh. Ok this is my last one to you.
Im not playing the victim, i'm calling out your unnessecary rudeness in a debate.
My posts clearly state my position, her journalism is poor, her videos can be quickly deconstructed and dismissed due to them misrepresenting the subjects. Her cause is a good one, but she is using it for her own ends, rather than trying to further it. She is chasing internet celebrity status, frankly.
I see you have moved on from rudeness to patronisation. Good day sir.
This is one of my biggest problems with the series. All of the examples she uses contain the tropes and issues she's looking at, but quite a few of them are actually examples of good progress within the industry.
And as the industry is rife with examples, better research would avoid this and make her position a lot stronger.
She doesn't actually strike me as an enthusiastic gamer who really understands the medium, not that that is a perquisite for commentary and debate, but it does cause issues apparently.
Your initial claim "she is making things worse" absolutely did not have enough clarification. You got called on it. You doubled down.
Your victim mentality here is absurd. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills right now...
Adam_Vania
Banned
we live in a patriarchal culture and feminism has for the most part been mis-represented (perhaps purposefully) by that culture. as an 80s baby i realize i was raised in that culture, where feminism was a scary unknowable dangerous thing. in many ways, video games are still stuck in that culture, which makes the FF series all that more necessary. what is important is that she introduced generations of people to some perspectives from a feminist viewpoint in a non-threatening way. there are people that would never think of reading a book on feminism that have now seen her videos. and all of that while operating in the toxic sludge of hateful social media that is modern vg culture. i think what she did was very brave and am looking forward to whatever she does in the future.
Brushguy Woodthreep
Member
Do you have more than one example of this? She cites hundreds of examples from different games to support her points, so if this is a widespread problem in her videos, I assume you'd be able to cite quite a few.
It's good to know that you feel this way, and it's a shame that her (speculated) motives cast such a shadow over her work for you. I'd argue that even with a few missteps, the videos themselves draw attention to a lot of recurring themes that crop up again and again (and again and again... literally hundreds of examples) in the ways women are represented in games, and do it in a very entertaining and watchable manner to boot.
She made it utterly impossible for the male-dominated community to continue ignoring the farce that is representation in gaming and exposed a shitload of the pettiness and resentment that minorities in gaming have been facing for awhile now. She deserves every dollar she got from this venture.
Well said, Nepenthe.
nkarafo
Member
She is not a gamer. Others have shown that she doesn't record her own footage either, she is mostly using youtube videos. Which explains why she gets so many things wrong about many of the games she criticizes.
She isn't a journalist and I don't believe the series has been presented as a journalistic piece. It's a cultural critique which has inherent biases and that's fine.
Not targeting you specifically angelic, but the bolded (and at least one comment in all of your posts so far) is an example of a major problem in the criticism of Anita's videos. Way too much effort is being spent on attacking Anita, whether it's her as a person or her "motives", vs the discussion being brought up, as a way to discredit the discussion.
Just look at this comment. What makes her "not a gamer"? Has she never played a video game before or has she not played "enough" games for you to take her seriously to the point that it "saps any remaining credibility" from the points she tries to make?
I have only watched a few episodes, but each one has made me think about the topic and made me realise how wildly ingrained sexism is in the industry. People nitpicking at them seems silly given how rare and how needed this commentary is. It seems like people set an unbelievably, impossibly high standard for Anita compared to practically every other journalist out there in the industry.
Plaudits to her for doing them.
Plaudits to her for doing them.
Adam_Vania
Banned
the only downside to it is the cottage industry that sprung up of outrage opportunists who leech off her content. yes we are all very impressed that you can recut material someone else shot and edited for a "deconstruct and dismiss video", something that is only done on youtube 15 billion times a second. the only thing these idiots prove is that they take videogames way too seriously.
uncredited male
Member
I will never get over the vitriolic reaction to her videos which I find fairly benign in tone.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Some of her videos are right on the mark, some aren't. Overall I'm glad they exist.
What is wrong with taking video games seriously?
Adam_Vania
Banned
not really anything, if you enjoy them responsibly. but if you dismiss somebody's opinion entirely because they don't play enough games or the right kind of games then you have a problem.
The qualifier for that sentence is the word "too".
Oh, I misread. I thought you were one of the people who implied that criticism is taking things too seriously. My bad.
Yep, this x1000. I disliked a lot of her early stuff and thought it was very poorly researched, but the door she opened and the ugliness she exposed made the entire thing worth it. It's a conversation that needed to happen and it needed to happen in a big, unignorable way. It's really awful that she and other women were harassed, stalked, and attacked on a whole new level online due to it happening, but it feels like good has come out of it in the end and I'm glad that she could weather the storm.
Her work not being perfect, or even particularly good at all early on, was not ever an excuse or justification for the monsters that people turned into and the reactions that she got. Bad data for important issues is never a reason to relentlessly harass people, dox them, send death threats, and all of the other awful shit that people have done to women due to them bringing these problems into the spotlight.
It's really fucked up that people freaked out that much over feeling threatened that a woman was going to "ruin" their video games. I'm glad that I no longer have relationships with people who condoned the attacks on her and other women and waved the GG/MRA flag.
petran79
Banned
Human rights and equality advocates, even in Western countries, fare much worse regarding death threats, not only against parastatal agents but often against big moguls and even governments. This didnt stop them.
Problem was she did not get enough support and her own stance was ambiguous at times. This is why she did not intend to focus more on the subject. Video game industry lack the necessary amount of politicisation for something more. Hopefully in the future more will follow her steps without fear of Gamergate.
My problem with her angle is that gaming is such a large sphere now that there's usually something for everyone. If you really want to dig deep enough I'm sure you can find some awful hentai games hidden out there with all sorts of weirdness going on. At the other end of the spectrum there's games like candy crush which is completely inoffensive and massively popular with the female demographic.
Tye The Czar
Member
The perfect modern example of a First World Problem.
There's a difference between being invested in a hobby and being obsessed with the hobby's validation and what that means for your character that you start spreading hate.
Adam_Vania
Banned
she is not a video game reviewer she is a feminist critic. she focuses mostly on popular games because she is talking about issues that are culture-wide. if her goal was to tarnish games and focus on the worst stuff, it would have been easy to just show sick hentai stuff. that is not her goal. she does not want to damage games, she wants a bigger tent. she wants to engage on a larger scale. to this end she was massively successful.
rochellepaws
Member
She brought a considerable amount of valid criticism and debate into the mainstream gaming domain and for that I would think she considers the series has achieved its aims. The quality of her examples to illustrate her points were at time mixed and I found it a bit disappointing that she over focused on western developed games and gave very little attention to the many positive examples of women in Japanese games, particularly from gaming in the 90's when I felt Japanese representation of women was a lot more positive than what was happening in the west.
I must also add that she demonstrated great resilience to remain so focused on her project considering the harassment and noise coming from sections of the gaming community. I never felt as if she let that attention impact or redirect the focus of her work in the slightest which must have been very difficult.
I must also add that she demonstrated great resilience to remain so focused on her project considering the harassment and noise coming from sections of the gaming community. I never felt as if she let that attention impact or redirect the focus of her work in the slightest which must have been very difficult.
Brushguy Woodthreep
Member
This. They're honestly pretty low-key and lighthearted. I don't agree with everything she says, but to watch something so benign and really be offended by it says far more about the viewer than about her or her videos.
When you've lived at the top
(straight white males)
Finale Fireworker
Member
I'm pretty sure this video's argument was rooted in the fact that female depictions are scarce to begin with, so it's a problem when the few women who appear are linked inextricably to their sexuality. It's part of a greater criticism that women are often depicted specifically as to how their sexuality relates to other men in the story or an assumed male player.
But based on your post, I think you're actually more upset she upheld the stigma surrounding sexwork. I don't think it's fair to "hard check out" over that because that's not something all feminists agree on. There are many feminists who believe consent cannot exist as a product of coercion and that sexwork commodifies women. They believe it divorces women from their own sexuality by classifying it as a product for masculine consumption.
There is, of course, the counter-point that sexwork is not inherently sexist. Other people believe the circumstances surrounding women in sextrades - namely how they are treated - are the actual misogynist construct. There is an argument to be made about laws that protect women rather than condemn them and that it is unethical to try to regulate whether a woman chooses to have sex commercially or not.
But these are extremely nuanced and complex conversations and most definitely do not facilitate binary opinions. Whether you believe in a world without sexwork or a world with idealized sexwork, there are lots of ways in between people may still agree or disagree.
You are doing yourself and others a great disservice when you shut down and disengage from other feminists over something as complicated as this. Somebody's opinions on sexwork is a very poor litmus test for whether or not they're "old fashioned."
I hope it's clear I am well-intentioned and don't mean to drag you for post. Being a feminist is a non-negotiable yes or no, but this is rarely true with actual feminist issues. You could have taken issue with her comments on sexwork but agreed wholeheartedly with much else she put forth - or at least found the perspective valuable.
I'm one of the uncommon gamers who knew who Anita Sarkeesian was before GamerGate. I watched some of her videos on film when that was her forté and definitely didn't agree with everything she said. I remember her saying Silence of the Lambs wasn't feminist because people only remember it as a movie about Hannibal Lecter and thinking it was a totally moronic rationale. It is okay to disagree with people on certain things while still finding great value in their greater point of view, you know?
I hope you might eventually give some of her other videos a shot. The fact they are contained by topics makes it easy to separate the things you agree with and the things you don't.
Final edit: I apologize if this is a rough read. I'm typing this on my phone between customers at work and it always kills my flow.
It's ironic though because I thought the gaming was this whole success story where it was originally a safe space for nerds who had been bullied that eventually burgeoned into a financial and cultural phenomenon. You'd think gamers would be more empathetic to minorities if they had first-hand experience with being ostracized.
"Not my safe space!"
The lack of self-awareness of bigots is one of their strongest attributes.
Human Trashcan
Banned
I have no clue what you're trying to say dude.
Anita did something incredible for the industry. Not only did she improve the conversation surrounding sexism in video games, but also raised the baseline consciousness with which both male and female characters are crafted, and called out the lie that thoughtlessly pandering to young white males simply has to be the industry's default. A win that will benefit both diversity and particularity in characterization for years to come.
Like others, I didn't always find her arguments impeccably constructed or especially persuasive. However, her core point, the mode of critical thought with which she made it, and the platform from which she presented it all combined into something invaluable. She enhanced our framework for designing games as creators and absorbing them as consumers.
The amazing thing is that none of this is exaggerated. For being a single person with a YouTube series, she managed to accomplish quite a bit.
Like others, I didn't always find her arguments impeccably constructed or especially persuasive. However, her core point, the mode of critical thought with which she made it, and the platform from which she presented it all combined into something invaluable. She enhanced our framework for designing games as creators and absorbing them as consumers.
The amazing thing is that none of this is exaggerated. For being a single person with a YouTube series, she managed to accomplish quite a bit.
Adam_Vania
Banned
i thought her whole point re: sex workers was that it was always just women, there were never any male sex workers in these games. and given the massive lack of representation for other roles (mostly leading) it ends up limiting the roles women can play in videogames.
Isaac Otherworld
Member
I think this is ultimately the lasting legacy of her work.
While I haven't watched anything aside from her first videos on Damsels in Distress, at least in those videos I didn't think anything in her observations and critiques were beyond anything I'd see in 15 year old Penny Arcade comics, just sans humor.
Maybe the serious approach is a big positive. Maybe they caused more developer introspection than ever before. Maybe her other videos are more interesting. I was just never blown away with what she had to say.
HueyFreeman
Banned
This medium needs a hundred more like her.
This is highly reductive imo.
She has attended events and developers actively engage with her. People listen.
And her platform is one for serious consideration whereas a web comic really isn't the most efficient medium for it, so I don't mind the repetition even if it does exist.
Finale Fireworker
Member
Honestly, the fact that so many of us feel the need to clarify we didn't agree with everything she said but still found her videos valuable shows how difficult it actually is to talk feminism. Why do we feel so compelled to quantify that we liked her videos but, you know, not everything?
Isn't this true for... anyone? Who watches Jim Sterling and never disagrees? Or even Dunkey? Who reads Jason Schreier and thinks he's spot on 100% of the time? I don't agree with every point content-creators ever make but I don't feel the need to point that out. It's only Anita Sarkeesian and her videos that I end up saying "I don't always agree, but..."
That's how hard it is to talk about feminism. I'm a radical left populist progressive with a particular passion for women's rights and even I have to preface my praise for Anita with some sort of unconscious appeal to moderation.
So, kudos to Anita Sarkeesian and her team for talking about things nobody else was talking about and having the bravery to put her name and face out there time and time again in the face of a historic movement against her ideas.
Ideas I share.
I'm not going to be tepid about that anymore.
Isn't this true for... anyone? Who watches Jim Sterling and never disagrees? Or even Dunkey? Who reads Jason Schreier and thinks he's spot on 100% of the time? I don't agree with every point content-creators ever make but I don't feel the need to point that out. It's only Anita Sarkeesian and her videos that I end up saying "I don't always agree, but..."
That's how hard it is to talk about feminism. I'm a radical left populist progressive with a particular passion for women's rights and even I have to preface my praise for Anita with some sort of unconscious appeal to moderation.
So, kudos to Anita Sarkeesian and her team for talking about things nobody else was talking about and having the bravery to put her name and face out there time and time again in the face of a historic movement against her ideas.
Ideas I share.
I'm not going to be tepid about that anymore.
Professor Beef
Banned
Considering what a lot of gamers are spewing nowadays, maybe that's a good thing.
Well, this is certainly a problem with issues like this when people are "Just asking questions!" and other disingenuous responses, but I do think her videos are flawed to the point it deserves to be mentioned.
As a gaming enthusiast I'm invested in the industry she's critiquing, so of course I'm going to nitpick a little. Besides, we're discussing the legacy of her work so critiques and details regarding the things we think she didn't do as well are perfectly valid.
And people do that too for the people you mention, like do it all the time, it's really not exclusive to her (it's probably more apparent though because of all the hateful attacks adding to the valid critiques).
I understand the problematic aspects here, but I don't think it's as easy to spot as you're making it.
funkystudent
Member
Didnt care for the series or the following around Sarkeesian but it got other people to talk about these issues and similar issues afterwords more openly and that has been for the best.
I liked her Strategic Butt Coverings video. The more shameless butt-focused costume and camera work is pretty obvious, so it was interesting to see the methods games use to draw attention away from it when they want to, in the process driving home how much said butt-based objectification is deliberate and reinforced by multiple aspects of the game.
I think it's a pretty normal line of thinking to bring up when you're discussing the overall "legacy" of her work. I don't disagree with you that people feel the need to preface it with that kind of thing when talking about her stuff pretty much all the time, but in this type of thread dissecting different parts of it is what I'd expect. If Jim Sterling's body of work was brought up in the same context of looking over his legacy I'd imagine people would make those same kind of statements too (I know I would).
It really does suck to have to "appeal to moderation", but I don't think that most of the posts are doing that in this context.
so we gonna ever see the cites for objective facts she got wrong or
Finale Fireworker
Member
You're both right. Especially in the context of this thread being about the legacy of the content.
It was more of a personal revelation I had that I am going to keep in mind about when I discuss and refer to Anita and her projects in the future. I have always been very restrained even when exclusively discussing times I fully agree with her. I'm just going to stop being so passive-defensive about it. If others feel the same way, or can relate to my post, I hope they can do the same.