Why Anita Sarkeesian is the worst thing to happen to videogames since Sonic ‘06
I think my favorite simile describing her is “What George Lucas is to Star Wars and Star Wars culture, Anita Sarkeesian is to Video Game culture”.
Anita Sarkeesian, a Canadian-American feminist, released a miniseries of videos titled “Damsel in Distress: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” in 2013 , where she discussed misogynistic and anti-female themes in video game culture, such as the oft-employed “Sexy Armor” and “Battle Girl” tropes. These three videos are about twenty minutes in length each, and were the result of a rapidly successful Kickstarter campaign asking for Six Thousand American dollars. In these videos, Anita repeatedly draws attention to the idea that, while women should have equal treatment as men, they are often seen as either sex objects, weak, or otherwise helpless to the villain’s agenda in games, and therefore shames game producers for their blatant sexism and misogyny. Anita Sarkeesian is a generalizing feminist who, in about an hour of footage, proved nothing besides the fact that she is no better than a two-faced 9gag “le internet trole”, and absolutely is not a gamer. And hold on to your hats, folks, because it only gets better from here.
Sarkeesian The “Expert”
Sarkeesian, before getting into the actual content of the videos, has set herself up as an “expert” in a field she has no credential in; the Gaming Community. She has not worked in the gaming industry. She does not play as often (and, frankly, probably not as well) as even casual-tier gamers. She didn’t even produce any of her videos. Somehow, though, she had the time for Activision to fly her to Sweden to talk to DICE, had the time for in-depth TV interviews, and had time for a TED Talk. She even missed her first due date on Kickstarter, which is odd, because you’d figure an expert would want to prove her expertise to the people paying her six fuckin’ THOUSAND DOLLARS to do just that.
In addition to this, she’s set herself up as a “poster girl” for all sexism in the gaming community despite not actually have much involvement in it to begin with. She’s used the misogynistic backlash directed at her (because she released these highly opinionated and controversial videos in the first place) to become an expert on Internet harassment; in fact, her current “fame” (I use the term lightly here) is primarily the result of this backlash, manufactured by poking the large dogs that are 4chan and Reddit with a long stick.
It is upsetting to me that there are female programmers, artists, coders, designers, and project managers that receive this same harassment organically (that is, they don't manufacture it on purpose), but Anita, by crying Wolfenstein, has somehow become the face of all of them.
Sarkeesian The “Critic”
Sarkeesian in her videos is often accused of cherry-picking and generalization regarding games and their portrayals of women. She shows that the “Damsel in Distress” trope is prominent in all forms of media in one shape or another, but so what? Everyone knows that. That’s what makes it a “trope”.
What she would have done were she an actual critic was comment on the actual issue of the trope: whether or not it portrays all women negatively, and if this is relevant to the real world. But no, she just wants everyone to know that because a girl is seen as less strong than a guy in anything ever, that thing and all things related to it are bad.
Also, as another example of cherry-picking, Sarkeesian implies Princess Peach is a negative portrayal of women in her videos, while entirely avoiding the fact that she is a valuable character in many games such as Mario Party, Mario Kart, and even Mario Land 2, by claiming they are “not canon” to the series. Mario Party and Mario Kart, despite admittedly being knockoffs of the Mario franchise, are some of the highest selling games with Mario on the cover of all time. And Mario Land 2 isn't even a knockoff, it’s pretty damn canon where Nintendo is concerned. I mean, sure, it’s a dream, but Mario had it, and Peach’s hover ability in that game was super OP.
She even goes so far to name games like Shadows of the Damned to be a new “Damsel of the Undead” trope, despite the fact the game’s narrative is designed clearly and specifically to subvert such tropes. Sarkeesian absolutely is guilty of tampering with evidence to suit her needs in this way.
Sarkeesian The “Educator”
Finally, regarding “Tropes vs. Women” itself, the goal was not to examine evidence and make a case nor to identify overall trends, it was to find material that would exclusively validate her preexisting conclusions. In some places, such as high-school debate class or an opinion piece, this might make sense, but in the context, she claims to be an authority on video games by searching for a handful of semi-supportive anecdotes that sort of help her demonstrate a point, and milking them for all they’re worth.
This is evidenced (see what I did there, Anita? Pay attention, now.) by the fact that she refuses to see that any harassment may have been caused by the fact that she asked for money on Kickstarter for video games. Most gamers produce free content, and certainly wouldn’t ask the public for money to buy the games. In fact, most gamers already own their games, and have already played them.
All she would have had to do was apologize and say that she is a “media critic”; it’s not unusual for media critics to ask for money to buy content to critique. She could have even asked for donations of used or old games rather than cash. But instead, she outright ignored any valid criticisms or questions regarding anything she did involving Tropes Vs Women; She disabled comments on all of her videos but one, to effectively divert all negative attention (that anyone knows about) to that one, adding to the ever-growing butthurt she’s caused the community to experience.
Final Thoughts:
Anita Sarkeesian, I applaud you.
You've done something with an hour of footage of games you didn't play that 4chan has been trying to do for years; you re-defined what it is to be an asshole.
A 4channer or a 2channer will come to your house (after finding your information on EXIF data from a photo of your cat you posted) and shit on your doorstep, or send you a thousand dollars worth of dragon dildos that you paid for with your credit card, but that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? Dildos and porch-shit aside, you wanted to bumgrump everyone aged 16 through 35 who games. What you did blew Battletoads pranks and “Tits or GTFO” out of the water in terms of bullshittery and level of asstardation: You made people think that if they gave you six thousand dollars, you’d prove to them that videogames were misogynistic and wrong, and then you took all of those people’s money, spent it on games that you didn’t play, posted an hour of half-researched, half-assed bullshit on YouTube and 4Chan and Reddit with disabled comments, and rode the wave of anuspain to victory, you mad master troll.
And sure, there’s more than one video out there that shreds her conclusions entirely and clearly demonstrates the level of cherry-picking and/or bullshit involved. But they're all much less popular and have far less views than this decidedly dispassionate analysis. And why?
Because the one thing Anita Sarkeesian is an “expert” on is manipulating the media to meet her dastardly ends.
(And wouldn’t Mario dreaming Peach as this badass character capable of fuckin’ Superman-tier superpowers be totally empowering to women anyway? Whatever, I’m done.)
