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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Did Anita Sarkeesian fabricate the death threats made against her on twitter?

Mummelmann said:

 here in Sweden


I wish so much to have a face-to-face conversation with someone from Sweden. Your political situation is imo on a knife's edge.



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Ckorik said:
setsunatenshi said:
 


you can quit the patronizing attitude. no one is criticizing that snake oil salesman because she is a woman. the criticism comes directly fromt he fact she conned people out of 100's of thousands of dollars to make a handful of videos on youtube accusing games of creating sexism while having absolutely NO FACTS OR STUDIES to back up her claims.

Well this is a lie - she started a kickstarter - got backers who volunteered money into a system that says 'YOU ARE NOT GARUNTEED A PRODUCT FOR YOUR MONEY' in big neon letters when you sign in - and was funded. 

It wasn't that much money - and she's producing the video series she promised on top of that.  Kickstarter even lets you remove your pledge up to the very last second of the campaign for any reason.

She didn't 'con' anyone - in fact if nothing else potato salad guy shows us people will give money to anything.


BS.

That's blatant robbery. You get NOTHING from supporting her except making yourself feel good for being liberal.



Richard_Feynman said:
Mummelmann said:

 here in Sweden


I wish so much to have a face-to-face conversation with someone from Sweden. Your political situation is imo on a knife's edge.


I'm actually from Norway but I live in Stockholm. Sweden has an extremely sensitive and hostile political climate and every single argument is polarized. Feminism is the biggest hot topic here, and it carries a lot of things with it; both good and bad.



champybh said:
How are her video snarky at all? I've watched them all and find the tone to be very straight forward and dry.
Also, she didn't MAKE anyone give her money. She came up an idea for a project and she followed through. Just because it got a lot of attention she is now supposed to live up to some impossible standard of what the videos should be.


HELLO.

You don't need any money at all to make those videos. Kickstarter projects usually require funds because they are fundamentally limited in scope if they don't have a capital to work with.

It's unethical.



badgenome said:
MikeRox said:

And without wanting to delve any further into this incredibly toxic subject, that is quite possibly the single biggest issue with her whole "critical" analysis of the subject.

I don't really think it is. It frequently helps to have an outsider's perspective on a subject because they tend to notice things that other people may be too close to really see. Now, I can't say whether Anita Sarkeesian's commentary is any more worthwhile because of this, as I've admittedly never watched one of her videos, but if there's a problem with her work I don't think it's because she's some carpetbagger who isn't qualified to talk about video games. Games are just another form of media, and I sincerely doubt most of the same gamers who so resent Sarkeesian for sticking her nose in "our" business would give a damn if she were just another person criticizing movies from a feminist perspective. If her work is really so bad or sophomoric or uninformed or whatever as to justify any of the venom she's been receiving, I suspect it has more to do with being a professional activist who stirs up controversy to make a buck (which, again, I don't know if she does or doesn't do) than with her non-gamer status.

Her critical analysis was pitched as having had extensive experience with beloved videogames.  And the money was meant to pay for her to be able to do thorough research.

The fact that this was masked, gave the entire thing an instant bias agenda making her entire project of zero academic worth, other than how not to do an academic critical investigation in something.

An outside perspective would be great, but when the examples are so cherry picked, again, it's not really a critical analysis, more a lets find the worst stuff and uses this to form a generalised conclusion supporting the initial hypthesis.

Critical analysis starts with a hypothesis, then looks at all the evidence both for and against this hypothesis, then decides whether the hypothesis has been proven.

I certainly wouldn't say there is no issue at all with the portraital of women in video games. Some games are even outright offensive to me. But to find these moments and state they are the norm is incredibly unfair. When people are challenging this, just shutting down the debate is completely unhelpful to both gaming and the "cause".

That said, I'm also hugely disgusted at the internet in general at the moment. It's not just gamers lashing out with death threats, you only need to look at the more extreme opinions in the Scottish independence debate, I feel 2 groups are being merged and painted as one. As the death threat throwing trolls exist in social media in general thanks to the anonymity of the internet. I don't personally understand how anyone can communicate so prehistorically with another human being with or without a veil of anonymity masked in 1s and 0s.

Two wrongs don't make a right and the trolls on both sides are killing what could actually be a genuinely interesting debate.



RIP Dad 25/11/51 - 13/12/13. You will be missed but never forgotten.

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Nymeria said:
To me feminism is equal treatment, not special treatment. People deserve not to be abused for what they are. I have seen the ugly side of sexism where organizations hold women as second class citizens and wanted nothing to do with them. Why I am happy to work in an industry and for a company that cares about what is between your ears and not what is between your legs.

On media and portrayals of women to me I just like choice and variety of experiences. I love Diablo, and part of it is that small gender choice among classes. That said I have zero issue playing Gears of War or Mario with male characters. It's a nice bonus to play as a female, but plenty of great male characters I have enjoyed playing as. I don't feel threatened by various depictions of women. Sometimes I roll my eyes at helpless damsel, but if the game is fun I am going to save her sorry self anyways.

I have no issue with some people being more sensitive either. People are free to complain to me that I liked "Sucker Punch", but as long they don't censor or remove my ability to watch it I shrug it off. Free markets means all sorts of ideas get thrown around and responsibility is on each person to listen or ignore those ideas.

Lastly, if this fake then she should be ashamed. If it is real the people responsible should suffer consequences. No one should live in fear, and no one should "cry wolf" and diminish real problems others face. I will see how it plays out before stating anything further.

Totally agree.

Unfortunately some people have taken Feminist to mean activist or to be more extreme. No normal human being male or otherwise would say its wrong for women to have equal pay or treated well. I dont think we actually need a special term for it really, I mean sexism and poor treatment actually happens across all genders and ages. I am getting a bit older now and notice that people are becoming more ageist to me, and I'm only 41 :( 

I don't mind people trying to say something is wrong as long as it isnt forced upon people. When the press and media start getting behind some campaign... oh it's evil that Ubisoft doesnt allow female characters (when they have done more for female characters in games than most companies), gets a bit rediculous. Also the concept now that any game cannot have a strip club or a poorly constructed female character with no backstory is also silly. It is perfectly ok to have semi nake men/women in games, these games are for adults, we don't need a modern day mary whitehouse telling us we can have that in our games, even if it is all perfectly acceptable in the real world. 

I remember when Eurogamer went on a crusade to prevent boothbabes at it's shows, saying it was sexist... of course it was men that was banning it, but no one asked the women if them minded to do it (and obviously the women who did it were now not getting work or paid). But then proceeded to say "hey cos play - dress up" lots of scantily dressed women turning up was perfectly fine. They said it was all about choice, but failed to realise that boothbabes were not allowed choice (to be fair i get more offended by cos-play than i ever did with boothbabes).

I think unfortunately its all gone a bit to far and it's now in the Politically Correct extremes... I'm hoping it all calms down again, because at the moment, its all pretty silly.



Making an indie game : Dead of Day!

Areym said:
It doesn't even surprise me. Not in the least. I do not like this woman and what she represents. She could explain her arguments, which are very valid for the most part, in a less bitchy and aggressive tone, I would be ok. HELL, if she was a real gamer, I would actually respect her for taking a stand in her believes. But no. She is a waste of time and I hope stops being even remotely relevant.

Let a real woman, who happens to be a gamer, make her arguments for her.

Why does matter who its coming from, it doesn't change the content of her argument. Just because you don't listen to Hip Hop doesn't mean you can't find issue with its objectification of women.



Richard_Feynman said:
Ckorik said:
setsunatenshi said:
 


you can quit the patronizing attitude. no one is criticizing that snake oil salesman because she is a woman. the criticism comes directly fromt he fact she conned people out of 100's of thousands of dollars to make a handful of videos on youtube accusing games of creating sexism while having absolutely NO FACTS OR STUDIES to back up her claims.

Well this is a lie - she started a kickstarter - got backers who volunteered money into a system that says 'YOU ARE NOT GARUNTEED A PRODUCT FOR YOUR MONEY' in big neon letters when you sign in - and was funded. 

It wasn't that much money - and she's producing the video series she promised on top of that.  Kickstarter even lets you remove your pledge up to the very last second of the campaign for any reason.

She didn't 'con' anyone - in fact if nothing else potato salad guy shows us people will give money to anything.


BS.

That's blatant robbery. You get NOTHING from supporting her except making yourself feel good for being liberal.

You apparently need to learn what robbery is again, because that's nothing of the sort.  You get nothing from attacking her except making yourself feel good for being a communist. 

Apologies to real communists.



Richard_Feynman said:
champybh said:
How are her video snarky at all? I've watched them all and find the tone to be very straight forward and dry.
Also, she didn't MAKE anyone give her money. She came up an idea for a project and she followed through. Just because it got a lot of attention she is now supposed to live up to some impossible standard of what the videos should be.


HELLO.

You don't need any money at all to make those videos. Kickstarter projects usually require funds because they are fundamentally limited in scope if they don't have a capital to work with.

It's unethical.


Last I heard this was a free country where people could give their money to anyone without being attacked for their reasons - go back to Russia where they tell you what you can spend your cash on.



Mummelmann said:
Richard_Feynman said:
Mummelmann said:

 here in Sweden


I wish so much to have a face-to-face conversation with someone from Sweden. Your political situation is imo on a knife's edge.


I'm actually from Norway but I live in Stockholm. Sweden has an extremely sensitive and hostile political climate and every single argument is polarized. Feminism is the biggest hot topic here, and it carries a lot of things with it; both good and bad.

I would've thought that Islamic immigrants are a little higher on the agenda?

In any case, the gender studies in Norway point clearly to the truth. There's some hard scientific data to back that up.