Can someone explain what is wrong with the Cleopatra example (Dantes inferno)?
In all of these cases, it's probably good to not think of "what's wrong" with the content being examined... (er, except maybe the killer pipe bj in Lords of Shadow 2.)
Look, there's always going to be a bit of, "Yeah, but ... I also kind of liked that part" to some aspects of Tropes vs Women. Classical storytelling hasn't lasted for thousands of years just because it's classical. It also can be good, and can connect to the audience in ways we might struggle to understand. Any one creative designer coming up with a black widow boss or a puss-spewing titty monster is at their will to create what's in their heart. The point of a series of Tropes vs Women, however, is to point out just how often these concepts are perpetuated, and the cumulative effect they (and the lacking counter-value material) have on society. If the only female character in your game is a half-naked demoness who spawns hellish children that suck the life out of the protagonist, maybe have the team check itself before going to publish.
...she called Adam and Eve a "myth". I can respect that she's an atheist or at least non-Christian, but no matter what point one is trying to make, one can surely do it without attacking another's religion or personal beliefs. She could have called it a "story" and it wouldn't have turned me off at all.
She could have called Adam and Eve a "story", that's a fair note.
But I think you could ease up too, I don't think she meant you any harm. The first definition of myth in Merriam-Webster is "1 : a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon." The second definition of an "unfounded or false notion" is something of a repurposing of the word. Whoever composed the Wikipedia entry has a nice mention of the history of the word: "Although the term is complicated by its implicit condescension, mythologizing is not just an ancient or primitive practice, as shown by contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A culture's collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, and moral and practical lessons." We live in a society that is less inspired by myth as once before, and so the word itself has become used more often than not as derogatory to the subject, but that's not necessarily what the word means and Sarkeesian didn't treat Christianity any different, positively or negatively, than any of the other subject matter of the piece.
Not saying that history and mythology aren't full of sexism, however, it should be pointed out that the actual Devil in all these stories tempting the woman to doom man for all eternity is portrayed as a male.
I don't believe the Snake in Adam & Eve has a gender (and Satan doesn't show up in the Bible until much later,) but sure, that's more or less true for that story and others.
Doesn't mean that women weren't burdened with the blame, though. Zeus was the ultimate dickhead, a vengeful despot who raped and ravaged and obliterated at will; he ordered woman to be created as punishment for man. Yet all Pandora ever did was open some box/jar (given to her by guess-who), and she and all like her are forevermore the root of all evil and the reason man is cursed to suffer...
I'm going to need more evidence that Pythagoras was "a total misogynist" other than a quote from a book ascribed to a man speaking in ancient Ionian dialect, 2500 years ago, who has his own set of divination myths including during a time when mythology and history were interwoven.
I wouldn't know nearly enough about the subject to comment (and of course there are always aspects we can only infer from what's left of history,) but there is apparently a whole book on Pythagoras and the way even mathematicians at the time described concepts in male and female terms...
Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars
