Feminist Take on Games Draws Crude Ridicule, Massive Support

[Neoma]

Pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter campaign a few days ago in hopes of raising $6,000 to make a series of feminist-critique videos about the roles women play in videogames. She ended up getting a bit more than she bargained for: She raised more than $120,000 while generating wrath among the online hordes, who have been harassing her in the crudest possible terms.

In response to the call for funding for her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games project, the 28-year-old California woman has received an overwhelming number of negative comments on her YouTube channel (sample entries: “tits or back to the kitchen, bitch” and “fuck off prude” — more rude remarks are screengrabbed here). The Wikipedia entry about her has been defaced as well.

“I have been running a web series on YouTube for a few years now that both deals with questions of sexism in the media and also has ‘feminist’ in the title, so I’m certainly no stranger to some level of harassment,” Sarkeesian said in an e-mail to Wired. “I knew that delving into videogames might provoke a bit of a misogynist backlash … [but] this level of organized and sustained harassment, vitriol, threats of violence and sexual assault in response to a project that hasn’t even been made yet is very telling.”

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[Warpy]

1. There are a lot of women gamers out there

who know better than to self identify as women. I do know they're universally pissed off at those grotesquely drawn, watermelon boobed creatures who were pumped into rubber or leather "clothing" that covers very little and would be uncomfortable has all hell and posed reclining languidly because that's about all anyone can do in hooker heels.

There is a really good reason the funding goals have been achieved in record time, fellas. Maybe your porno "heroines" need to be sent back to, well, porn.

[Neoma]

2. I've always self-identified as a woman.

Especially in Call of Duty teamspeak. I said it because I kicked their butts. (Insert inappropriate language against sexists here.)

[Scootaloo]

3. I can't wait to hear Anita's opinion of "Bayonetta"

I imagine it will involve setting things on fire.

And yeah, there's plenty of good reason for female gamers to hide their gender; the blog http://fatuglyorslutty.com/ is basically a compilation of the harassment female gamers regularly face. Personally I can't understand how anyone can grow up thinking that saying shit like that is acceptable.

Maybe Penny Arcade has the right of it;

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Ive said elsewhere, ive been impressed with Bioware. Both mass effect and dragon age offer

Oppotunities to play multi gender and/or multi orientation main characters.

[enough]

4. k&r (nt)

[LadyHawkAZ]

6. this was always high on my list of reasons

why I generally don't play games with human characters. Not the #1 reason, but high on the list.

I'm not surprised about either the support or the backlash one little bit.