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Forums - General Discussion - Why do people hate Anita Sarkeesian so much?

 

What do you think about Anita Sarkeesian?

l like her 3 5.00%
 
I don't like her, but I d... 7 11.67%
 
I dislike her 50 83.33%
 
Total:60
vivster said:
She is politely expressing her opinions while deliberately hiding facts that contradict her point. Yes, classy woman.

Give me some examples please

 

Mystro-Sama said:
Flilix said:

A quick Google search:

YIKES.

3 of those 6 are fake.

 

CaptainExplosion said:

Ok, her comments about Iwata make me hate her more now.

They're fake.



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LuccaCardoso1 said:
vivster said:
She is politely expressing her opinions while deliberately hiding facts that contradict her point. Yes, classy woman.

Give me some examples please

Her claims have been critiqued quite a lot on youtube. You should look into some of those videos.

Here are some good examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgvYJ9Ei90Y



LuccaCardoso1 said:

I'll admit I just got around watching Tropes vs. Women in Video Games for the first time (yeah, a good 5 years or so late to the party).

From what people told me, I was expecting a crazy extremist host with an extremely biased script, but... Anita Sarkeesian just seems to be politely expressing her opinions, and she even says that these flaws she's exposing shouldn't make us dislike video games, but think a bit more about the clichés they use so often. She doesn't seem dishonest or aggressive either.

Am I not seeing something? What am I missing?

My opinion of Anita Sarkeesian is a mixed one. Personally, I have found her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series to be the best material that Feminist Frequency has published to date, and I broadly agree with its contents. I mean occasionally they contain a bit of reaching for specific examples of this and that, but a solid 95% of it seems spot on to me. Moreover, Anita's presentation is ridiculously polite to the point of bordering on apologetic at times. It's abundantly clear that she was not going around trying to provoke unwarranted controversy, but rather seeking but to present a real academic argument about various ways in which women are commonly stereotyped and harmfully misrepresented in many video games, alongside ideas as to how that can be changed.

In fact, the truth is that I might not even still be paying attention to gaming today had it not been for Anita's Tropes series. At the time of its announcement, I was in a place of considerable disillusionment with my hitherto lifelong hobby and where it seemed to be going and the Tropes series gave a well-articulated voice to a lot of the issues I had and opened up a(n unfortunately very contentious) conversation about them. Previous to the announcement of Tropes back in 2012, that conversation was being held mostly on the margins. Tropes brought it to the cultural forefront. It's not likely pure coincidence that this console generation has witnessed a significant increase in attentiveness to female gamers by developers and publishers of video games.

I think there are shortcomings to the Tropes type of approach to critique, namely in that simply providing developers and publishers with a list of problematic tropes to hopefully avoid affords the same with the simple solution of simply excluding female characters from gaming narratives altogether. Perhaps this mentality is why those at Feminist Frequency regard titles like The Last Guardian as "feminist" works, for instance. It's a wonderful game, but is it really specifically feminist? I don't know if I'd go that far. Though honestly, it must be said that, like many others, I too would actually prefer that female characters be completely absent from any given title than poorly represented therein. I must concede that.

But aside from material attached to the Tropes series and other Feminist Frequency commentaries on video games, as well as Anita's IMO often fun earlier material preceding the Tropes series, I often have a hard time relating to the material and ideas that are promoted on the Feminist Frequency web site. Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election in particular, the overall focus of the Feminist Frequency web site has shifted away from addressing the inequities experienced by women to other issues that don't seem that directly and specifically related, and occasionally seem hostile, in fact. The language has changed too. Where Anita used to use terms like "prostituted women", for instance, she now uses the non-abolitionist term "sex worker" in its place, perhaps to avoid further alienating her 68% male viewing audience. Likewise, where Anita used to promote some semi-radical ideas like separate subway cars for women to protect against sexual assaults that often take place in such contexts, now the situation has devolved to the promotion of gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms because trans politics. I have found many of most popular tweets and Facebook messages sent out by Anita et al. in the last couple years to be irksome, such as a popular one opposing last year's women's strike on Women's Day on the grounds that labor actions are "elitist". And anti-racism has really become the main topic that the group focuses on talking about anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've observed an unfavorable shift away from female-centered, and even just female-friendly, content on and around the Feminist Frequency web site since the election of Trump. The previous women-centered overall focus has been displaced by an IMO misguided focus on race relations and the promotion of gender identity politics (namely the transgender movement and its goals) and that shift has rendered me qualitatively less interested in continuing to follow their material since the conclusion of the Tropes series a year and a half ago now. It wasn't for generic liberal critiques of conservative politics that I became interested in Anita & crew's work. It was for the general quality of Anita's commentaries on female-specific issues surrounding my favorite hobby. With neither video games nor women as central focuses of what they do anymore, it's harder for me to sustain interest now.

Last edited by Jaicee - on 13 September 2018

She was amazing on the Colbert Report. When Colbert asked her to name three games that were emblematic of "male power fantasies" , and she seemingly locked up, and tried to shift the conversation in another direction. Was asked a second time, and again tried to deflect the question. Then was asked again, and finally blorted out...."uhhh, Grand Theft Auto."

Out. Standing. Truly an expert in her field. Whatever that is.

I'm paraphrasing. Can't watch the video in Canada for a refresher.



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

Cause she discriminates people based on what they have between their legs.



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Because she twists words around from facts that make them fit her agenda. Thunderf00t on youtube always busts on here quite well, check them out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI



~-~

I don't like her because she is dishonest. She stole that kickstarter money, never fulfilled what she said she would, and the product she did put out was filled with stolen footage from people who actually played the games she's talking about.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

The vitriol against Sarkeesian? I'd guess, more than anything, it's because she sort of became a figurehead of the culture war. Her feminism is pretty run-of-the-mill, her points often rather obvious. She's good looking and mild, her videos are decent but not particularly entertaining or well made. It's rather amazing that she gained any sort of fame outside of a small circle, and I'd attribute that as much to her detractors as anything else. I don't know whether she wanted the controversy, but I'd guess it worked out pretty well for her.

Also, I've heard (over and over) that she misrepresents the games she's discussing, and claims about her raising large sums of cash -- without her products reflecting the sums she's raised -- do seem to me to have some validity. Then, at the height of her popularity/infamy, she made a big deal about her own victimization, deleting comments and cancelling appearances and such, with reference to insults and death threats, etc. Even though that sort of thing happens to all such controversial figures, Sarkeesian was given this special, sanctified status (I remember a friend of mine referring to her as a "hero"). That rubbed some folks, myself included, the wrong way.

In short, Sarkeesian was at the visible forefront of the ongoing movement to inject progressive politics into video game culture. Whatever her other virtues or sins, this was always going to earn her some amount of hatred.



RolStoppable said:
COKTOE said:

She was amazing on the Colbert Report. When Colbert asked her to name three games that were emblematic of "male power fantasies" , and she seemingly locked up, and tried to shift the conversation in another direction. Was asked a second time, and again tried to deflect the question. Then was asked again, and finally blorted out...."uhhh, Grand Theft Auto."

Out. Standing. Truly an expert in her field. Whatever that is.

I'm paraphrasing. Can't watch the video in Canada for a refresher.

She isn't wrong, is she? If you beat up hookers in GTA, you can get your money back.

That's a thing in GTA? I'm sorry, but I've never heard of that before. 



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

vivster said:
She is politely expressing her opinions while deliberately hiding facts that contradict her point. Yes, classy woman.

Yeah, I think the "ignoring facts that contradict her points" is the primary reason for the flack she gets. It's a trait that is often found in extremists (on all sides) who can't seem to view things from different angles.

For instance she described Hitman: Absolution as a game where "the player cannot help but treat female bodies as things to be acted upon, because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters."

Here, she hides the fact that the game punishes the player for harming civilians as well as ignores the fact that the far majority of the characters that you are rewarded for killing are men. I know a (female) developer who worked on Hitman: Absolution who was quite disappointed by her coverage of the game (link). Often when someone tries to point these facts out to her, she censors them (turns off comments on YouTube, blocks people on Twitter, etc).

 

Personally, I don't have an opinion on Anita Sarkeesian and I certainly don't hate her. I think some of the things she stands for are legit and important but better handled by other women and men.

Last edited by Replicant - on 13 September 2018