http://gamasutra.com/blogs/BrettFujioka/20130306/187916/Japanese_Postmodernism_and_Fandom_The_Rise_of_Raiden_and_What_Kojima_Really_Meant.php

Brett Fujioka wrote about Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2.  Yeah, this was more or less the last game I played before I put down gaming, meaning it was the last game I played in an uninterrupted stream from Mario onward.  During that period games changed a lot, and thankfully they changed just as much when I quit because the industry is quite a bit more mature and the second MGS game of the Playstation era might have been an important part in that.  Fujioka states that post-modernism in Japan grew up with anime and that makes a lot of sense to me and though the MGS creator is famously meta with his game design this article sheds some light on just what that really means. 

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/187769/EAs_LGBT_event_aims_to_be_a_first_step_toward_cultural_change.php#.UTrJoY6jKYc

EA held an event, hopefully the first of many within the industry, dealing with LGBT issues.  While I’m an outsider to the LGBT community there seem to be clear concerns in some aspects of game culture not being as tolerant or as respecting as they should, and though we can all point fingers or say it’s not our problem these things have a way of getting worse before they get better and sunlight is the best disinfectant.  So cliche but I think it works here where developers not only need to admit that the community playing their games might be more diverse than ever but that they have a part to play in whether that community is a positive or negative place for those labeled as “other”.

Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/19xb2m/a_letter_from_an_ea_employee_to_executives/

http://www.analoghype.com/video-games/simcity-senior-producer-blames-users-for-simcity-server-problems/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-LE0ycgkBQ

Reddit has basically been a constant stream of Amazon.com costumer reviews each more 1 Star than the last.  And someone working for EA, supposedly, let off an open letter on the aggregator claiming the ocmpany was failing at it’s core values which they supposedly want all employees to follow.  The Sim City launch is a massive problem for an industry continually finding piracy and their responce to it changing their landscape.  From the gamers who pirate as many games as possible to the protection software locking down games to the new “always on” internet idea the industry finds itself with companies like Blizzard and EA making really dumb decisions regarding how to best deal with the problem.  Though this definitely is a problem.  Think about watching a movie, you probably already have several ideas as to how you could watch it be it over a streaming service or on demand or cable or piracy.  Gaming is a newer media and tastes and perceptions about how consumers access the media are not only still being formed but in flux between digital and hard-copy formats.  But “always on” internet connection as a way of verifying games is not the right move and EA shouldn’t have used this method for such a popular game.  EA is also doggedly persuing a strategy of implementing multiplayer and micro-transactions for games once thought off-limits to all of that material.  Seriously, I don’t know if there’s going to be much demand for this publisher in 10 years once they’ve drilled down everyones love for the franchises they own like they have been for another decade.  I can’t imagine people looking at the next Sim City iteration without this bad taste in their mouth after this launch.  Maybe I’ll write about launches and pre-orders and all that at some point, but for now I’ll just say that the launch is the closest games can get to an opening weekend.  The time when every puzzle solution isn’t on the internet and when people aren’t talking about the game in the past-tense.  It’s kind of an important ritual and EA, like Blizzard before, have tarnished that one moment where gamers allow themselves to really relax and experience a new game on it’s own terms by using draconian anti-piracy methods.

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9342980.page?ClickID=atn9lkzozlzzz9koytskaw0zaravrpslnsrn

This post is so perfect, with Kip Katsarelis a senior producer on the game talking about the server progress in an update, and without much hesitation a poster mentions that EA saw the pre-order numbers and knew how many people were getting the game.  The fact that so many people were going to get online and download their game as soon as possible to get a game in before going to bed or just decided to forego work and planned to enjoy a Sim City inspired sick day and EA thought they wouldn’t download the game as soon as possible.  Why would these people pre-order the game?  Seriously.   If someone wants to download the game 2 days later they’re going to buy the game two days later, and EA knew the pre-order numbers.  So lazy.

Kotaku

http://kotaku.com/5989503/the-many-ways-we-didnt-get-to-play-simcity-this-week?tag=simcity-disaster_watch

This was really the best description of the Sim City launch issue.  Blizzard had “Error 37″ but Sim City was a multi-faceted failure, with some not being able to download the game with others having several other issues all creating distinct failures.

GDC2013

http://www.gdconf.com/news/dragons_dogma_la-mulana_tokyo_.html

The GDC is going to have Hideaki Itsuno talk about Dragon’s Dogma.  Yeah, that’s going to be interesting since I recently got interested in that game I really want to know about the development process and I haven’t seen much on it.  

As well as all those posts, a suprisingly EA/Sim City focused week, the first of Tropes Vs. Women: in video games has come out.  

So this is an important idea for me right now because of reading Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim novel.  Often a novel finds we expect a happy ending, and while that can change from generation to generation or culture to culture Lucky Jim is expected to go from a twirp to become Lucky Jim at the end with the trifecta of “job, girl, life” having fixed themselves.  I’m by no means opposed to this, if the protagonist has grown and adapted to the world and in Lucky Jim the answers Jim finds are quite interesting including the relationship issue.  There’s a girl Jim has a falling out with, but she says that she’s not leaving her boyfriend for Jim since that would just be giving up.  She is a complex character attempting to survive and thrive in her own world and that happens to be in this other relationship.  The fact that she shows this determination to work on her relationship might seem problematic at first but also gives her a true sense of worth and discipline that many female characters lose when they are turned into completely symbolic trophies.  

When a person attempts to persuade me that the Nintendo era was the “Golden Age” of gaming, or that retro games are better in some way than the modern gaming world I have a hard time accepting it.  Partially because they’re trafficking in a nostalgia  for something I remember for what it was and partially because they’re just wrong.  Mario, Zelda these are series that have continued as “legacy” franchises but whose true potential as agents of change are long past.  Any time a “good” Mario game comes out the truth is it’s a chance for Nintendo to get cash and not for the medium to advance.  And while many remember this era with rose colored plumber glasses the reality was there wasn’t any less hate or negativity it was just a time where people accepted that heros would save damsels and that soldiers fought aliens.  The depictions of women, of those a culture considered as an outsider were every bit as problematic as anything considered the worst of the medium now, only these weren’t legacy or retro titles meant to be interpreted nostalgically but were the main images the medium was telegraphing.  For some Mario games might bring them back to a simpler time and good for them, but I prefer to live in a world where Mass Effect or The Witcher portray cultures and races as issues of greater scope versus scaled down mis-representations for simplicities sake. Yeah the issues are more complex and we don’t feel like the hero as often or as easily as scaling a castle and defeating a koopah allowed but hiding in a world with those representations doesn’t make the modern world any easier and it definitely doesn’t make it, or the people that choose those games, any better than the rest of us.  While EA is getting hammered, as they deserve to, for Sim City they have also slowly lead the charge in portraying contemporary sexuality in a somewhat realistic way in an unreal medium.  Though I don’t want to suggest they are anything close to resembling an ethical corporation Nintendo has survived for years by consistently kidnapping a princess and in some ways I’m glad I grew out of that.

On the other side of things Senator Rand Paul filibustered a nomination this week of CIA man Brennan.  I might not agree with everything the man says, I am a libertarian so often I disagree with other libertarians as much as the other political ideologies, he was bringing to bear some serious issues.  We can’t fight the future any more, and we can’t put it off.  Serious changes are coming in regards to how we not only understand warfare but how that process is dealt with and drones are a major facet of that.  I’m not going to ask anyone to believe or think one way or another but please do something good for yourself and spend an hour on the search engine of your choice educating yourself on drones and US drone policies.  As well if you are a citizen of another country examine your government’s policy regarding un-manned military engagements.  I’m not going so far as saying we’re going to need to be prepared for mech combat, though that might be interesting, but how warfare takes place is changing yet the motives are not.  These issues are going to be coming up more frequently and if you have some idea of what the reality is from your own research into the subject you won’t have to take someone else’s word for it.

I was going to go on about how I feel about gatekeeping in general but I feel like that would just be me venting even more about my annoyances with people in general. 

To celebrate, we’re going to stick with our Hollywood mojo and assess some films from 2012 that passed the Bechdel Test. Go ahead and click that link if you don’t know what the Bechdel Test is. Anita Sarkeesian explains it very well, and then you’ll have a chance to get to know her and her work, too. Yay, Women!

Ms. Sarkeesian discusses how this test is useful as a barometer for how HWood is doing in its portrayals of female characters on film. What I want to highlight are the films I enjoyed last year that actually Pass this test. From Academy nominees to movies you’ve never heard of, let’s take a look at some films that are raising the bar for stories about women.

I’ll start with the big ones – the movies that the Academy was right to honor with nominations, because they were great films, and they pass our simple but super important test to boot.

1. Zero Dark Thirty
Director Kathryn Bigelow got some flack for her award-winning film The Hurt Locker, because many critics said she had made a “man’s movie” in order to secure a place at the Man’s Competition Table (and then handily crush everyone in their seats). While The Hurt Locker was a wonderful and compelling film, it does fail the Bechdel Test spectacularly, with only two women ever noticeably appearing on-screen, neither of whom have names, or conversations with anyone that I can recall.

With Zero Dark Thirty, Ms. Bigelow redeems herself in every way. Here is a film about the greatest manhunt in our time, and central to the story is Jessica Chastain as Maya, the woman who was essential to bin Laden’s eventual death. Maya develops a friendship with Jessica (played by Jennifer Ehle aka Lizzy Bennett!), and they – surprise – have other things to talk about besides men. Not so ironically, Kathryn Bigelow was passed over by The Academy on this one – she wasn’t even included in the Best Director nominations. Coincidence?

Zero Dark Thirty is also a fierce, engaging and powerful film. Five stars.

2. Les Miserables
Bear with me.
Yes, this is a musical, so in this instance, Singing will count as A Conversation.
Many of the women in this story are known as “Factory Woman 1” or “Whore 3” but many others have proper French names and have ‘conversations’ with each other about work, money, the student uprising, prostitution, and in the case of Young Cosette and Madame Thénardier, mothers, chores, and caretakers.

It passes. Three stars.*

*Stars are relevant to passing the test. For how much I love Les Miserables, it gets ten stars.

3. Beasts of the Southern Wild
Hushpuppy and her precocious self has conversations with several women, and they’re only sometimes about her daddy. They’re pretty short chats, but that has as much to do with the voiceover mechanism and Hushpuppy being a six-year-old as it does with anything else. Four stars.

4. Brave
Please just go see this movie, and make everyone you know see it, too. Then buy yourself a copy and a copy for every child you know under the age of twelve. Five stars.

Now for the lesser-known films that theoretically lack The Gravitas needed to garner attention from The Academy, but also might’ve been looked over because they are stories almost exclusively about women.

5. Pitch Perfect
Okay, so you’ve heard of this one, and you may think me silly for including it, but that’s only if you have no appreciation for Fun and Singing and Awesomeness. With an all-girl a cappella singing group at its center, this thoroughly enjoyable movie passes with flying colors. Plus you get to watch Anna Kendrick doing the cups song! Five stars.

5. Bachelorette
Not to be confused with Bridesmaids, this film is a far more sinister look at weddings and female friendships. I confess it isn’t for everyone, but regardless of whether or not you like it, the movie does a great job of passing the test – especially considering that A Wedding is at the heart of the tale. Far too often, weddings on film are romantic comedies that are all about The Bride and/or Her Fiancée.

Bachelorette is about four friends and the nuances of their sometimes effed up relationships. Not their relationships with men, but their relationships with each other, the men being somewhat on the periphery; which is more like real life than most men would like to admit. Five stars.

6. For a Good Time, Call…
Dearest S brought this movie to my attention, initially because she saw a little of me in the brunette lead actress. Turns out, this is a super fun story about two unlikely friends, their resourcefulness, and their incredible agency over their sexuality.

A special consideration of note: The Bechdel Test says nothing about conversations revolving around Sex, but rather conversations revolving around Men. Think about all the movies you’ve seen where women talk about sex and inevitably the conversation is also about men. For a Good Time, Call… gets bonus points for lots of conversations about the former that only occasionally overlap with conversations about the latter.
Five stars+

Now go celebrate International Women’s Day by watching one or two of these great movies! I’ve seen them all, so I’m going to celebrate by singing some kick ass country songs at karaoke.

And in the future, go see female written/directed/centric movies on Opening Weekend. Hollywood pays A LOT of attention to box office numbers. Let your pocketbook do the talking, and we’ll get more and more stories about women made into movies, until the Bechdel Test is rendered unnecessary and irrelevant! We Can Do It!

If you haven’t seen the Trope Vs Women vids before check out the Feminist Frequency Youtube channel here.

You won’t regret it.

The Damsel in Distress: Part 1

Hey, Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency released the very first episode of her long-awaited kickstarter Tropes versus Women project. Check it out if you have a chance, the history on certain video games (Super Mario Bros 2 was new to me and really interesting!) I’m looking forward to part 2 of damsels in distress, as well as the other topics she’s planning on covering.

Hi everyone. Remember that time Anita Sarkeesian decided to ask people to donate money voluntarily to a Kickstarter project to fund a series exploring how common memes or tropes in videogaming may just present women in a negative light?*

Do you remember how the a community that has always wanted to be accepted by mainstream culture reacted? Like this?, And this? And this?

Therefore comprehensivly proving the need for such a series?

Do you remember how the resulting backlash meant the kickstarter raised over $160,000? Yet those same people who so objected to her starting the project swore blind she would just run off with all the money?

Well today is a happy day. A day you can feel rather smug and come out of it a bit more informed as well. The first part of the series has just gone up.

Those who enjoyed the video can check out her other work on her channel, or her website. Feminist Frequency.

*I’m saying might, partially because its meant  to allow for both sides to have an equal view and prevent bias. Partially because in some parts of the internet people actually believe that with no trace of irony**.

**But to hell with those people.

L’an dernier, une jeune femme préoccupée par le rôle de la femme dans la culture contemporaine a touché une corde très sensible, surtout auprès des garçons attardés de tous âges (le joueur moyen d’aujourd’hui a 30 ans) : la représentation des femmes dans les jeux vidéo. Sa proposition de créer une série de vidéos analysant le rôle des femmes dans ce médium encore jeune aurait pu enthousiasmer les joueurs, dont le passe-temps favori serait enfin reconnu comme sujet d’étude au même titre que la littérature, le cinéma ou le théâtre. Plutôt, elle a subi une campagne de salissage et a reçu des menaces de violence et de viol un peu partout sur Internet.

Les attaques envers la musique rock et la télévision ont largement été détournées vers les jeux vidéo depuis un certain temps, ce qui pousse les joueurs à devoir se défendre, notamment chaque fois qu’une tuerie se produit. Dans ce cas-ci, Sarkeesian visait l’évolution et la progression du médium en faisant ressortir les idées misogynes arriérées qui y prévalent encore : la beauté incapable en détresse, l’héroïne hypersexualisée, etc. Pourtant, en plus du comportement digne de gangstérisme d’une communauté mal connue et visiblement inquiétante, les critiques plus modérées envers son projet ont aussi proliféré depuis l’an passé. On entend dire que les jeux vidéo ne sont pas le seul média sexiste, que ce n’est que de la fiction, que même les femmes jouent aujourd’hui, que les hommes sont objectifiés aussi, etc. Je vous laisse réfléchir à ces répliques… Tout pour ne pas voir ce bastion viril qu’est le gaming devenir aussi progressiste que le reste de la culture.

Quel est le problème d’exposer des jeunes à une objectification presque systématique de la femme ? À quoi bon vouloir faire une place au sexe féminin dans le médium du moment et de l’avenir ? Je vous laisse réfléchir à ces questions ridicules…

À une époque où l’on doit faire des études sociologiques pour déterminer si le rap misogyne a une influence sur l’éducation des jeunes garçons et filles et si la pornographie, intrinsèquement violente de nos jours, influence et corrompt les attentes sexuelles des jeunes, heureusement qu’il y a madame S. pour s’intéresser à la question de l’interactivité. À voir le peu de soutien qu’elle a reçu de ses consœurs journalistes des nombreux sites spécialisés en médias interactifs et les railleries qui persistent à son endroit, je suis particulièrement content de voir que la première vidéo de sa nouvelle série vient de paraître le 7 mars 2013.

Ilu Anita.

Getting it said so the rest of us can point stuff out as granted.

The first video in the Feminist Frequency’s Trope vs Women in Video Games series is finally here!

I’ve written about the Bechdel Test before, but I think it’s worth recapping in honor of the upcoming Oscars. This is one of those “lightbulb” moments in my own education, one of those ideas that, once it had been gifted to me, permanently colored everything I watch. For you visual learners, Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency has a great overview, but here’s mine:

History Lesson: From 1983 to 2008 Alison Bechdel wrote a comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For that followed an array of queer characters through twenty-five years of relationship drama, parenting, and political upheaval. In one panel of a 1985 DTWOF, a character created a “rule” to gauge gender bias in movies. The rule has three parts:

1. There have to be two female characters with names

2. They have to talk to each other…

3. About something other than a man.

That is an offensively low bar. It doesn’t say anything about how women are portrayed in film, it just tests the most basic presence of ladies on screen. Are they there? Do they have a teensy, tiny bit of substance (i.e. names?). Do they have some non-man related agency? The bar is so low, we should all be shocked when a film doesn’t pass it, and yet, here are a few 2012 movies that don’t pass: Battleship, The Avengers, The Campaign, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, Jack Reacher, Life of Pi…

Putting It Into Practice: Take Lincoln, for example. The only conversation between women in this movie is a brief comment by Mary Todd Lincoln to her companion Elizabeth Keckley, but the comment is only about Representative Stevens’ speech. In other words, they’re talking about a man.

Another Oscar nominee, Django Unchained, also fails the test. The primary female character, Kerry Washington, never speaks substantially with any of the other minor female characters.

Remember, the point with the Bechdel Test is not to create some sort of false parity just for the sake of parity. Lincoln and Django are both set in male-dominated environments (Congress and the American West, respectively). You don’t fake female Congresswomen or add a token lady bounty hunter, that’s not the point. The point is that the female characters are not decoration, are not foils or objects. They have agency, autonomy, and lives that clearly exist independently from the male characters on screen. When the women exist only as backboards for male characters to react to, use, rescue, lust after, or discuss, they are not real characters; they are props.

The Bechdel Test doesn’t check for feminism in movies, or equality, or progressive values. It doesn’t ensure that women are treated well, or fairly, only that they are treated as human at all. Why is this important? Half of humankind is female, but the stories that get told (the movies that get made, etc) are overwhelmingly male in both subject and execution. There is nothing wrong with male-dominated movies (many of them are great films), but there is something wrong with a pattern of creative output that ignores female stories or female voices.

Want to try? Start applying the Bechdel Test to everything you watch (television and movies). You may find some things that pass on a technicality, but the exercise of asking yourself these questions is valuable in and of itself.

Related Post: Does Parks and Rec out feminist The Good Wife?

Related Post: Is Parks and Rec the most feminist show on television?

Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency posted this video nearly three years ago, but it reminds me of the Super Bowl commercials which I mentioned in my last post! E.M.

Anita Sarkeesian, looking sharp at her TEDxWomen Talk about Online Harassment & Cyber Mobs.

This post is just a shout-out, or an homage, or a what-have-you, to say that Anita Sarkeesian is an epic badass.

So, for those of you who don’t know, Anita Sarkeesian is the creator of the online video series Feminist Frequency and she is basically the Internet’s Bill Nye for feminism. In her series, she discusses the treatment of women in and by the media, explains feminist terminology and deconstructs the (often harmful) tropes used in the presentation of female characters. She explains her findings and her arguments in an accessible, step-by-step way, which is usually augmented by visual aides in the forms of still images, clips and bullet points.

I like her videos a lot, and my favorites are generally those in her series (sub-series?), “Tropes vs. Women.” As most of the Internet knows by now (it seems), not-too-long-ago, Ms. Sarkeesian began a kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a new line of videos, “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.” And something happened.

Something not very nice.

A particularly nasty sub-community of gamers (who represented as predominately male) took offense. Lots of offense. All the offense. A quite staggering and bewildering amount of offense, really. And these . . . enthusiasts . . . began a campaign of their own, to discredit and revile both Ms. Sarkeesian and the project through a torrential rain of misogynistic online harassment. And you can still find a lot of it out there if you want to look, and Anita Sarkeesian saved some of it so you can find it through her website, but I don’t feel like going into the details here, as looking at all of that vitriolic, threatening bullcrap for too long makes me feel all depressed and queasy.

So what did the Feminist Frequency creator do? She turned it around, made all the money (with support from gamers and fans of her series that was in part a backlash against the trolls’ original backlash), expanded the project to include more videos and made Feminist Frequency her full-time job. (She even hired staff.)

Also, and importantly, she started raising awareness about online bullying and harassment, using her own experience as a kind of case study. The above sketch is of her giving a presentation at TED talks about the phenomenon that is the “cyber mob.” (The video is available on her site and through the TEDxTalks channel on YouTube.) In this video, Ms. Sarkeesian details how the harassment campaign launched against her was thought of and treated by its ‘players’ as a “massively multiplayer online game” in which she was cast in the role of villain. (Even now, with all of the awareness and support that she has gathered, two of the first three versions of this talk that show up on a YouTube search have more than their fair share of ignorant misogynistic vitriol in their unfiltered comments sections. One of them is even a–and I use this term loosely here–”parody” video*: an edited version of the original talk to which some enterprising soul added a laugh track and crickets chirping in the background . . . sigh. And commenters on the other unofficial version wonder why commenting was disabled on the official channel.)

I don’t like bullies.** My own experiences of being bullied in school have stayed with me well into my adulthood and they’re not just a memory. They affect me. They manifest in both emotional and physical ways, as trust issues and stress-related disorders and other lovely things that I will not go into now.

As a result, however, I have a lot of admiration for someone who can stand up to bullying on such a massive scale, and who has the drive and ability to step back and turn something so potentially poisonous into a teachable moment.

* * *

*No, I won’t link to it. Why would I do that to you? Last I checked, it had received under 700 views, anyway. Let’s do our best to keep it that way.

**Feel free to imagine Danny Phantom‘s ghost kid Sidney Poindexter (from “Splitting Images”) wailing “Bullies! . . . Bullies!” here. I know I do.

But lets take a brake from my hatred of this woman and let me instead say WHY I have such dark feelings towards her. There are three main reasons my I feel nauseated every time I see and hear her: 1) Her personality, 2) Her BS-PC feminist analysis of everything that perverts and distorts great works of art/ entertainment and 3) her fake victimhood.

But first let me answer the most important question…

Who is Anita Sarkeesian?

If you take any still picture from any Feminist Frequency video you would get an accurate representation of her opinion; Something taken out of context.

If you are not a gamer, or someone interested in the war between the sexes, you may not have heard of Anita Sarkeesian. In short: She is a feminist who believes she is entitled to force her perspective on any artform and demand it to become more gynocentric, pro-female and anti-male.

This is of course not stated explicitly, but implied in her constant bashing of different kind of popular texts (i.e music, books film, TV or games) in entertainment. For a while she was just another unsatisfied women who thought she was smart since she was opinionated. She made lots and lots of “feminist deconstruction” of popular entertainment on her videoblog feminist frequency on youtube, but no one cared until she announced she wanted to deconstruct video-games to.

Why this was the last straw, I dont know, but her whining suddenly was met with hostility. This probably surprised her as she so clearly though she as a woman was entitled to bitch to anyone about her problems with the world.

I would suspect that the reason is that the gaming community is filled with passionate people who burn for their hobby and they didnt want this noob woman coming in from the left and change everything cuz “she felt like it“.

So she was met with opposition and hostility. Some people came with intellectual counter arguments. Others, like me, gave more ironic and sarcastic comments on her annoying personality and attitude of entitlement. Sadly some also gave hateful and over the top comments about rape and other insane extremes. Let´s see what she has to say about this:

Do I feel sad for her? Hell no. I hate feminism with every inch of my body and this woman is the very personification of everything I hate about that -ism. If she didn’t like the heat she should´ve stayed away from the kitchen, and she being a feminist I would suspect she didn’t want to be in the kitchen in the first place.

But enough silly puns… The point is; I dont like sailor language and I dont like people demeaning people to the extreme, but I, being provocative myself, can say that you do get hateful comments but that is what to expect. That is what one should expect if one is being or trying to be provocative. If I went into a feminist rave and said “Go make me a sandwich you fat ugly skanks” I would not be surprised by retaliation any less than being bit by putting my hand down a snakehol. And besides, she has the personality that could aggravate a weed-plant.

1) Her personality

If I for some reason where invited to a hipster New York party with liberal know-it-alls and met Anita Sarkeesian I think I would have left within the hour. That woman shows every sign in her videos of a person I would not go well together with. She is opinionated in the way where its clear she has read a lot of books, and made a lot of notes, but not really understood it.

She probably know a lot of words, terms and phrases and know of great and not so great thinkers of the academia but have no meta-cognition and deeper understanding of anything. Watching her movies she makes a lot of gestures, making smug and smirky facial expression. She is the kind of intellectual that is paradoxically NOT intellectual, just a scholar. She has a lot of jigsaws pieces in her head, nuggets of facts and studies, but no ability to see the picture. This becomes clear when she starts to analyses the “tropes” as she calls it.

2) Her BS-PC feminist analysis of everything that perverts and distorts great works of art/ entertainment

“Tropes” is a text-analytical term that could be easily replaced with terms like “stereotype”, “clisje”, or “common narrative tools”. Basically, tropes is every pattern you can find in symptomatic (see: Film Art for more) interpretation/ analysis of a text. Meaning: Finding the broad meaning of what every love song has in comment over what this or that one love song means. You with? Or, as Anita Sarkeesian does, to claim to find bigotry, hate, rape and phallus symbols in everything.

I have seen a lot of Anita Sarkeesian videos on youtube as I have this perverse need to study things I do not like. To try to understand it. I find myself drawn to things that repulses me. Watching her videos, I also started to see “tropes” with her videos. There definitely are small patterns in her “analysis” of pop-culture that could be nice to “deconstruct”.

With few exceptions she shows no real pleasure in the arts but see only faults. In 2009, she started her show “Tropes vs women” with 6 videos where she rants about why Dollhouse is being produced for another season but The Sarah Connor Chronicles does not (which obviously is another example of the WAR AGAINST WOMEN), how Dollhouse (2009) is a metaphor for rape (or something like that), that there is a RIGHT way (her way) and a WRONG why “Guys Should Hate Twilight“, and that gays should be introduced in a show “just in passing“.

In every video she speaks with a strange authorial attitude that says art and entertainment should be just like she wants it, and that there is a right and a wrong way to make art and to watch art. When she analyses different texts she always forces her convictions on it, even when its clear that her -isms where not meant for it. The results are sour comments on the art that at best is bitching and at it´s worst is complete misinterpretations of the text that at time can be perverse.

The best example I have heard of her forcing feminist insanity and perverting something nice with her -isms is when she “analyses” the “Top 5 Creepy and/or Sexist Christmas Songs“. In that video she kills any christmas cheer and replaced it with tales of suppression, dependence and rape. Her #1 choice for sexist christmas songs are the song “Baby, its cold outside” where she thinks the song is about coercing and rape, not a man trying to court a woman who is “playing hard to get” which is the normal way to listen to the song.

But of course one can not argue with her, cuz she has closed of all comments and one is not allowed to rate her either. This because she has fallen victim to the evil “trolls” of the Internet, or more truthfully, she doesn’t want to hear anyone but herself and her likeminded.

3) Her fake victimhood

Anita Sarkeesian is a true victim, but not for she wants you to believe, but she is the slave of the mind shrinking collective thinking of progressivism. Progressivism is an umbrella-term for many other -isms like feminism and other leftwing ideologies and world views.

Progressivism wants change (Yes, WE can!) and that change is based on an understanding of the world that there are victims and perpetrators. These perpetrators are not what healthy people view as perpetrators (like criminals) but instead a broad group of people. This broad group can be called “rich white heterosexual christian males (that smokes)“. These are the enemies that needs to be “deconstructed”.

There are many progressive “thinkers” and they work from different angels trying to destroy the evils of the world. Some progressives focus on the rich [1], others on the white [2], [3], some one Christians [4] and some one the males [5].

Their understanding is that “rich white heterosexual christian males (that smokes)” are evil and causes the world to crumble with their powers of “hate” a.k.a greed, racism, homophobia religious intolerance or misogyny. Everyone who is not a “rich white heterosexual christian males (that smokes)” is the victim of the “rich white heterosexual christian males´s (that smokes)” hate and Anita Sarkeesian is one of these victims.

A victim who is also getting rich on her claims of oppression. Being politically correct is big business, but to state that Anita Sarkeesian is getting rich on her whining is of course misogynistic and hateful. If I may draw some numbers out of my ass I would stipulate she has gotten a grand a slur from each “troll” all up into the interweb who has made her into the “victim“ she is.

Well, I think I am done stating my opinion on this woman. I also gave you a deconstructional view on her, to give you my opinions on her opinions and the tropes she represents. TAKE THAT Sarkeesian! I used your own dark powers against you.

Blog 2.0 – Masculin frequency

Filosofen, aktivisten och pionjären Judith Butlers teorier om subversiv performativitet ligger alltid och skaver i bakhuvudet oavsett vad jag gör – även då jag ser på TV. Jag är inte så mycket för att se ett avsnitt i veckan, utan väntar hellre och köttar på med hela säsonger i ett svep. Att se avsnitt så pass intensivt fungerar också belysande för olika karaktärers utveckling. Subjektsformering och genus/kön är ju som bekant någonting som ständigt görs genom olika typer av stiliserade akter. Som att sitta bredbent på tunnelbanan, röstläge, gångstil etc. TV-serier har ju två saker gemensamt, episodformatet och ett längre tidsspann (än exempelvis en film dårå). Så stiliserade akters subversiva möjligheter är stora eftersom de kan repeteras i högre grad i TV-serier. Avsnitt efter avsnitt kan någon figur får leva om, härja och forma sitt subjekt. Och för varje avsnitt internaliseras detta beteende, detta subjekt eller detta sätt att göra kön mer och mer i tittarnas medvetanden. Det tycker jag är kul.

Butler har bland annat skrivit mycket om gränser – gränsland – som är den enda möjliga platsen för subjektet att omforma sig. Maktens normer sätter gränser för vad subjektet kan vara, det finns inget utanför. Därför måste motståndet ske på den yttersta kanten, det är dess enda möjliga plats. Subjektet gör motstånd genom att forma sig på gränsen. Då kanske man frågar sig: Ja, men var är kanten då? Var är gränslandet? Det avgörs självklart av kontexten. Men jag tänkte ta några exempel, på två karaktärer som jag på olika sätt tycker är intressanta ur detta perspektiv.

Jag har precis klivit ut ur det som i synnerhet i andra säsongen byggdes upp till att bli ett fantastiskt narrativ med många komplexa karaktärer. Deadwood utspelar sig år 1876 i ett samhälle som håller på att forma sig till följd av de guldfyndigheter som finns i närheten. Självklart är det mycket comboys, prostituerade, ögon som dollartecken, lera, whisky och sjukdomar. Många av seriens karaktärer fanns också på riktigt, bland annat Wyatt Earp och Wild Bill Hickock. Dessutom Martha Jane Cannary, eller Calamity Jane som hon kallades. Oavsett vad som nu verkligen är sant om henne så ryktas hon i serien tidigare ha varit scout åt en general som hette Custer. Hon svär värre än alla andra i serien (och det säger ganska mycket), super och sover i leran, är en välkänd ryttare och skytt som går som om hon hade en tunna mellan knäna. Beter sig och för sig alltså på många sätt traditionellt manligt. Men hon är inte heller en klyschigt hård cowboy som råkar vara kvinna, utan brottas t.ex. hela tiden med sin egen rädsla för män (hon avslöjar att hon har blivit sexuellt utnyttjad ett flertal tillfällen). Den typen av detaljer är viktig ur ett subversivt perspektivet eftersom det gör karaktären mer trovärdig, ja, möjlig. Alla andra kvinnor i serien är endera prostituerade, vilket gör dem beroende av män på olika sätt, eller gifta och därmed bundna till hemmet och till sin mans vilja. (Undantaget är den rika Alma Garrett, som då hennes make blir mördad uppnår relativt hög grad av självständighet på grund av sina pengar. Hon har ett eget rum, om man säger så.)

Olycksfågeln och praktfyllot Jane verkar alltså i en fullkomligt mansdominerad miljö, men skapar en ny typ av karaktärskategori. Hon rör sig ganska fritt i det utrymme hon skapat åt sig. Den här scenen är intressant ur många perspektiv, men visar lite av hennes karaktär. General Fields träffar Jane för första gången. Han lever under ständigt dödshot eftersom han inte är vit, och försöker få Jane att sälja sin flaska med sprit till honom (eftersom han oftast inte får dricka sprit inne på barerna). Hon sitter och dricker sprit som vanligt.

En annan karaktär som jag tycker är intressant, och som också är en av mina absoluta favoritkaraktärer i serier överhuvudtaget, är den deltidsprostituerade kocken och langaren Lafayette i True blood.

Serien behöver knappast någon närmare presentation. Den arbetar kontinuerligt med många spännande saker ur ett intersektionellt perspektiv, samtidigt som den också innehåller många stereotypa representationer. Men jag tänker inte gå in på det nu. Istället vill jag bara nämna Lafayette, som ju rör sig på gränsen på många olika sätt. Jag kan inte komma på en annan karaktär som hamnar i samma kategori som han.

Den fantastiska Anita Sarkeesian har på sin hemsida Feminist Frequency lagt upp en hel serie av kortfilmer där hon går igenom olika tropes, stereotyper, och analyserar populärkulturella filmer, figurer och fenomen. Jag kan verkligen rekommendera att ta sig en titt där, exempelvis är hennes video ”The Straw Feminist” väldigt belysande och klargörande. Hon har också gjort en video där hon dekonstruerar True blood, bland annat karaktären Lafayette som hon förvisso uppskattar men anser vara ett hopkok av alla svarta stereotyper som finns. Jag håller absolut med henne om att så är fallet, men jag tycker inte att hans karaktär behöver vara dålig på alla sätt. Baby steps.
Kolla videon nedan. Vad tycker ni?

(Klicka på bilderna för källa)

/a.

This video shows there is still a long way to go until read equality is achieved, both in the mindset of the individual and the portrayal of women in the media.  Miss Representation achieved a lot in 2012, combining forces with the SPARK campaign in order to pressure Seventeen magazine to eradicate Photoshop images.

Also, in 2012 the media critic and creator of Feminist Frequency, Anita Sarkeesian became the target of a horrific online hate campaign. All because she dared to plan to create a video series that would explore the representation of women in video games. The online harassment she received just proves that, even in 2012, a large group of people still wanted to crush the voices of strong and intelligent women. However, here you can see Anita kick back in a dignified and inspirational way:

I have shown you these two examples as a demonstration of how WE can control the media. The Miss Representation campaign reminds us that WE CAN’T BE WHAT WE CAN’T SEE and as it’s rapidly growing and increasing, more and more women are responding to the distorted images that surround them. Anita Sarkeesian saw the dark side of the media, one that threatened her life and tore her work to shreds- yet her powerful response proves that she is not quite ready to give up yet. So then, what do we want from 2013? Firstly, the belief that feminism is not dead. We want loud and confident voices, expressing their opinions and involving themselves in discussion and debate. We have the powerful tool of the social media easily available to us, so let’s have you 2013…

“I really need to get some dissertation done,” he moaned.

“Me too, don’t know why I haven’t got more work done here.”

At this point I would like to point out that both men were sat playing Crash Team Racing on the Playstation3. To an outsider, a non-gamer, this problem basically answered itself. “What are you going to do at Christmas, when you get even more games as presents?” I asked in regards to his productivity later that night, partly to mock him, partly to give hints that I had bought him new PS3 games – which, like, totally, makes me the best girlfriend EVER, and should like, just super awesome presents in return.

“Oh I’m not taking my playstation back with me.”

“Oh… So it’s staying here?”

“Yeah.”

“On its own?”

“Yep.”

“Just gathering dust?”

“Yes.”

“…seems like a bit of a waste, I mean, when there’s people out there who don’t have playstations, in like third world countries, and here you are just lea-.”

“Do you want it?”

“Oh well, if you insist.”

Here I have a small confession to make – I really want a playstation3. A long time ago I loved playing on my playstation1, I had all the classics: Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Digimon World (fuck you, it was a classic to me). But then playstation2 came along, and coming from, as the government would call it, a ‘disadvantaged background’ I was left behind in the console revolution. Overtime, I would watch as the game trailers came onto the TV and let out a morose sigh, pretending I was a modern day Austen character who was too poor to afford the basics in life. Oh woe was me…

By the time the playstation3 came out (costing, as the experts formally called it ‘a fuck load’) I found myself resided to the fact that I would never be a gamer. In fact, I almost felt that I had no right to become a gamer.

Let’s face it gaming is a boy’s world.

Anyone who wants to argue against this point need only look to Feminist Frequency and the hate one woman gathered by questioning the misogynistic principles of gaming characters. Men run the gaming world – you have your brogramers, female gaming writers being referred to as ‘cancer’, the fact that most games have a male target audience, and the footage of mile long lines running from gaming shops during a release of a game like Call of Duty being made up of 95% guys. I’ve even heard of male gamers complaining to other male gamers of a woman’s annoying tendency to brag about being a female gamer – like that’s a crime? If I was an amazing gamer, I could keep up with the best of them in Halo or otherwise, damn right I would let them know about my lady bits. I’d be all BEHOLD HOW MY TITS HAVEN’T STOPPED ME FROM PERFORMING A HEADSHOT ON YOUR SORRY ASS – MUWAHAHA!!

I mean really, if you have a pen full of camels and you dumped a penguin in there, wouldn’t that penguin like a little recognition for sticking it out in the smelly camel pen?

My boyfriend leaving me his playstation3 over the Christmas break was my chance to be that penguin. And there was only one game that I wanted to get made hands on: Mass Effect.

Thanks to tumblr, I have found myself having a massive feminist crush over Mass Effect, which has only gotten worse since playing it. Yes, I’ll admit up front that it’s not perfect. In fact, I very much doubt Bioware had any intention of making their FemShep such a breath of air, as one article states:

It’s no secret that BioWare has always considered ‘FemShep’ (the one and only time I’ll be using that ghastly nickname) a mere alternative to Mass Effect’s real hero – the grizzled male Commander Shepard seen in all the adverts and on all the game boxes.

They provided one because one was expected, but aside from recording a couple of romance scenes and a few alterered pronouns in conversations, then tweaking some armour designs to give them a bit more space here and here, she was a very half-hearted addition. The female Shepard very obviously uses male motion capture data for instance, which reached its ultimate nadir with the Kasumi DLC for ME2, when she gets a slinky dress to wear, but promptly loses the ability to sit down without putting on a show.

And yes, there is the issue that the Asari (who I love none the less) seem to be the only strippers available in every night club, or that every race apart from us human and the Asari have sever female shortages – I mean, after three epically long games, how is it that only NOW we get to see a female turian?

But all of that aside, when I really get into the game, there’s no arguing that the women steal the show.

FemShep, as she’s known online, or simply Shepard to me, feels like a breath of fresh air, not just in gaming but to a lot of fictional female characters in the main stream media. Maybe it’s because she grounded in the male version of the character, but in being so, she has been able to bypass all those tired clichés for heroines – the mother figure, the fuckable fighter, the sexy villain. Our Shepard embodies so much more than that – she’s a soldier. A fully trained, get-the-job-done, warrior. Who’s talent isn’t based on indebted other worldly powers, or sole innate gift but training, experience, dedication, and (excuse the non-feminist phrasing) massive lady-balls.

As other commenter’s have said before, her appeal isn’t merely that she ends up as the right woman for the job, but as the right human. Apart from a few sly comments from some mercenary types, you never get the feeling that Shepard is in anyway limited by her gender, or that the other characters looked down on her or second guess her authority because of it.

Part of this presence, undeniably comes from the voice actor Jennifer Hale, who takes lines that would otherwise come out as tired and a bit silly by any other female voice actor and grounds them with a believable characterization – avoiding the awkward pronoun swapping problem of ‘man with breasts’ syndrome. She gives the character a personality, you sometimes don’t even need to look at the screen in order to heard the smirk in Shepard’s quips.

In comparison, the male Shepard becomes a bit of a bore. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. 

In fact, most of the men, aside the aliens, are like talking meat sacks. Anyone who’s played Gears of War, has seen male Shepard before. The brutish, bulky male hero who powers through the mission, occasionally showing off a heart of gold, or just simply being an asshole because, well fuck it, might as well. And the other men aren’t much better.

Currently I’m playing Mass Effect 2, I’m getting pretty deep into the story and so far I’ve seen a few opportunities for some romance. Unfortunately, none of the men really make the standard. Jacob is just another boring solider type, same goes for Kaiden. In fact I find myself hovering around the characters of Jack, Miranda, Samara, and Tali just hoping for a look in. Those women have character, going through Jacob’s loyalty mission, the only thing I cared about was maybe a monkey running into view…

Even the minor female characters have more grit that some of the men. Would you really want to fuck around with Aria? Or how can you not respect the long standing military physician Dr. Karin Chakwas?

“Maybe it’s less about leaving and more about staying. As a military doctor, I mostly treat people who are in bad shape. Often, they die. And even if I can help them, they move on. Either way they leave.”

Again, I’m not saying the game is perfect, or that video games are moving in the right direction when it comes to feminism – Lollipop Chainsaw? Really? But at the very least, it’s nice to know that some heterosexuals may be picking the lesbian love scenes for reasons other than their porn subscription ran out.

Now does anyone know how to get Tali to take that damn mask off? And no, my boyfriend will not be getting this game back or his console…

Anita Sarkeesian , host of “feminist frequency”, a web series on YouTube analysing the representation of gender in TV and film, recently gained allot of attention after she announced that she was planning on making a series of videos analysing the role of women in videogames. She has always had a love- hate relationship with the people of the Internet, but her enemies found this idea particularly unacceptable. She was subject to a mass hate campaign, which she described as a “cyber mob”. She was sent multiple threats of death and rape as well as videos showing her likeness being raped by videogame characters. However her friends responded by donating far in excess of her requested amount to her indie-go-go campaign.  The series of videos will now be far in excess of what was originally planned. She talks about her experience hear (http://www.upworthy.com/a-bunch-of-sad-insecure-dudes-attacked-a-woman-and-everyone-got-what-they-deserv ) however I am going to write about her videos that are already out there. All the videos I discuss will be referenced at the bottom of the article.

I personally enjoy her videos. Not enough people recognise how the common themes in our literature, drama and other arts reflect how our society thinks about certain ideas or groups of people. Sarkeesian, whilst I do often disagree with her, gets people thinking about this. I am so tired of the “its just a story” line in response to my concerns about things like abusive relationship patterns shown in twilight being romanticized. She displays this best in the “tropes vs. women” series and I hope her “tropes vs. women videogames” series will be just as interesting.

I was shocked when she applied the Bechdel test to all the Oscar nominees with disastrous results. I had never heard of the Bechdel test before and I am thankful for her introducing it to me.I am not sure about her idea of adding a “60 second” rule to the test, as it would remove the “lowest common denominator” element from the test. The best thing about the Bechdel test is that no one can claim that with the Bechdel test you are being petty or nit picking, its really the least you could ask for.

I also enjoyed her analysis of advertising to children Sometimes I feel like I am the only person in the world who notices not only the disgustingly gendered nature of advertising to children but also the lack of ambition, which is advertised to young girls. Sarkeesian points this out in a blunt no nonsense fashion. I agree with her almost entirely on this point. Companies advertise in a nature that encourages girls to be nurturing and boys to be ambitious offering almost nothing in the opposite direction. I am glad someone with as wide an audience as Sarkeesian is pointing this out, even if many of her viewers are just their simply to make comments like “make me a sandwich bitch” and “tits of gtfo” (Sarkeesian however is impressively effective at removing these and blocking all comments if they get out of hand)

I am not without my reservations with Sarkeesians videos. She has often been accused of “problem hunting” something which I definitely think where evident in her analysis of True Grit and a photo-shoot of the glee cast (I must mention, however that I have never seen true grit). It often seems that she either has a problem that women are being shown in a traditional gender roles or that they’re strength comes from being “like men”. In the latter situation “problem hunting” is definitely evident in my opinion.

She also seems to struggle with complex morality, some thing I am in love with. Whenever a “bad” entity is shown to have “good” qualities she accuses the artists making the film or TV show as endorsing the “bad qualities”. This was particularly evident in her analysis of “the doll house” (I must mention here that I have never seen the doll house). She also seemed to demand allot of transparency from “the doll house” by saying that they “haven’t discussed weather or not this is rape”. It seems to me that it is being discussed simply by the doll house’s presence. This also seemed to translate into one of her tropes vs. women videos in which she discussed “mystical pregnancies” which she believes “reduces women to their biological functions” whilst this can be true, she fails to mention the incidences in which the hi-jacking of women’s bodies is shown as distressing, with a little tweaking this trope could be made into an interesting commentary on women reproductive rights.

Overall I think that whilst feminist frequency appears to have very black and white view of the world and a small dose of ‘never enough’ syndrome (the only media I have ever seen her satisfied with was the first book and film of the hunger games, the first two series of veronica mars, and a terminator spin off- this is since 2009), I appreciate her analysis and I think she brings some important problems to the fore. I would also like to point out that whilst, should you find Sarkeesian a pain, you are entitled to whatever opinion you want, there is NO EXUCUSE for the level of harassment she has received.

Tropes VS Women By Feminist Frequency:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJUxqkcnKA&list=PLBBDFEC9F5893C4AF&index=1

Feminist Frequency on The Oscars and The Bechdel Test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8

Feminist Frequency on Toy Ads and Gender

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZn_lJoN6PI

Feminist Frequency on “true grit”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbiP3wxImAY

Feminist Frequency on Glee Photo Shoot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX5IXYoPzDA

Feminist Frequency on “The Doll House”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvDg8VeGWJs

Feminist Frequency on “mystical pregnancies”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rhH_QGXtgQ

Recently, the name of a self-proclaimed popular culture critic has been all over the major game sites. Anita Sarkeesian has managed to take the full attention of the gaming press by storm. Her site is called Feminist Frequency, and she tries to be a warrior of justice defending the oppressed women in the world of gaming. Fighting for her righteous cause, she focuses on both the harassment women have to endure while playing games online, and the portrayal of women in games, which is, according to her, usually overly sexualised. Recently, her Kickstarter project aiming to gather funding for a video series presenting just how badly women are objectified in games, raised over $160,000 – a large part of which came not from women, but from “white knights” – an embarrassing portion of male gamers internet users that feel the urge to defend a woman whenever they think she needs defending. Now, I hate to be confrontational in any way on this site… But, as a relatively objective, not to mention male gamer with quite some experience with not only gaming, but also the way it is portrayed in media, by both game journalists and ones not very familiar with what gaming really is, I am sure you can already tell that I think Anita Sarkeesian is full of crap.

I give credit where credit is due, and Anita does deserve quite a bit of credit. For one, I have a great doubt whether she’s even really much of a gamer – her videos so far have not really proven that, the fact she decided to buy a bunch of games with part of the Kickstarter money she got only further shows it. Yet, she’s managed to make herself into the speaker of female gamers, she’s been invited to comment on the problems women face in gaming on several major websites and even on TV. And, again, the Kickstarter. She managed to strike a chord with her presentation, and not just any chord, but a $160,000 chord. Nearly 7000 people actually donated. Fame (15 minutes of it, but hey, a vast majority of people never get that far), check. Money, check. Anita is a success. But how does that affect gaming, the very tool leading to that success?

Anita Sarkeesian claims male gamers are misogynists that consider women sexual objects, sandwich makers and little more. She portrays women in gaming as victims, often talking about how she herself has been harassed online because of her feminist activities. She even had a TEDxWomen talk recently, telling how awfully harassed she was, and how that harassment also got her sympathy, ultimately leading to the Kickstarter success. She tried to turn her story into something motivational, into a sign of things to come, claiming it signifies a huge change about to happen in gaming, as emerging masses of gamers and game developers want to see women in gaming treated differently.

Yes, Anita does also target developers. In her view, they aren’t much better than the people men playing their games, as they portray women in their games as weak, dependent, in need of a man to protect them. They’re either damsels in distress (Princess Peach, Yorda in Ico, Ashley in Resident Evil 4, etc.), or, when they can actually hold their own, they’re still reduced to eye candy for the male players (Tifa, Lara Croft, the Dead or Alive girls, etc.). You know better than I do what a load of crap such a claim is, considering how many games have strong female protagonists or sidekicks (Samus, Terra, Elena Fisher immediately come to mind, not to mention the very girl on Anita’s final Kickstarter “Thank You” picture, Faith from Mirror’s Edge – though I hope that was kind of the point, maybe Anita sees Faith as an outlier). Obviously, most games have male protagonists, but to claim that women are always portrayed as inferior is just a lie.

The sexualisation is, of course, a valid point. It’s there, no way around it. We know how even Samus, once (before she was given an actual personality) perceived as the pinnacle of the female game protagonist, looks underneath her suit. But is this sexualisation proof of misogyny in the industry in any way? No, a thousand times no. It’s not any worse than in other visual media. The reason behind it is trivial – money. “Sex sells,” pretty girls in your game may not bring it a fantastic financial success, but they certainly wouldn’t hurt. And, of course, the more important the girl is in the game, the better she looks, as nobody wants to play as some average-looking chick, right? Guess what, absolutely the same goes for the male protagonists, they are also designed to be sexy. So much for this proving supposed misogyny in the industry in any way.

Anita likes to pretend she’s an expert on video games and how women are portrayed in them, and I really don’t see how she would know more about that than, for instance, the thousands of women who have actually worked in the industry. In her Kickstarter campaign, she asked for money so she could buy games to make videos about and expose the female stereotypes in them… Surely, you can see that this just doesn’t click somehow – other YouTube gaming channels do not ask you for money to buy games, mostly because they’re gamers and they already have the games. They make their videos because of their own desire, because gaming is a passion for them. While Anita used an innocent excuse to take a lot of money from the people who believed her.

In short, Anita Sarkeesian’s claims are unfounded and plain bogus. It doesn’t even take much thought to prove them as such. She is trying really hard to present herself as some kind of hardcore gamer while she really isn’t, that cute little photo she showed at the TED talk only further proving that. Her success is based on her ability to spin the facts and present them in a way that somehow resonates very well with people who already have some degree of bias on the matter. I highly doubt that more than a few neutrals have supported her Kickstarter campaign, and any that have must simply not be very informed about the state of gaming in relation to Anita’s claims.

All the while explaining how the insults and harassment she endures only prove her points, Anita also censors the comments to a lot of her videos in YouTube, at times she even disables Like/Dislike ratings. It’s not hard to see why – it’s extremely easy to take her points apart, and a lot of people in the comments do it – it’s not all misogyny and hatred as she would have you believe. There are already quite a few YouTube videos absolutely destroying her views in a calm and collected manner, supported with facts, quite far from the angry mob of women haters she likes to present the ones that don’t agree with her as (this one being my favourite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lERF9q40iS0).

Needless to say, Anita’s campaign and media appearances, where she mostly speaks about the dreadful online harassment she’s endured, only further solidify gamers as “bottom of the barrel” people in the eyes of those outside the gaming community. She portrays her critics and, by association, the average male gamer, as an uneducated, primitive misogynist with absolutely no regard to women’s feelings, and, naturally, the media eats that right up. And this comes at the end of a generation which helped a lot to bring gaming more into the mainstream and mend the bad reputation gamers have always got a little bit… Certainly, people like the one who made a game where you can “beat Anita Sarkeesian up” (screenshot) deserve to be chastised by society, but, unfortunately, all gamers get a bad name because of these overly exaggerated exceptions.

To make matters worse, the big gaming site Kotaku recently announced Anita as one of the gamers of the year 2012, complete with a tear-jerking write-up repeating her side of the story. Considering everything stated above, this only solidifies my opinion about how bad “professional” gaming journalism is. It’s a resounding slap in the face of your audience to give such an award to an individual who is not only alien to gaming, but exploits the medium to make money without actually contributing anything to it.

Is this the way feminists would want their points portrayed? Does Anita truly deserve to be the figurehead of feminism, or at least feminism in gaming today?! Someone who obviously values money more than any “cause,” and has proven to be extremely superficial in her “analyses” of the portrayal of women in gaming? Or do feminists just flock to the loudest one of the bunch, regardless of what’s beneath the surface? Feminists, please take a moment and think if this woman really deserves to be your voice.

Also, must anything really change? Are women really represented in a negative light in video games? What drives this, like any other industry, is money. Macho male and well-endowed female characters sell their games, so that’s what developers aim for. That will not change. If they tried to meet Anita’s demands somehow (that she focuses mostly on criticism instead of actually suggesting something better is another story), that would result in feminist ideas being forcefully put into games to serve a purpose quite different from the developers’ initial concept of the game – much like adding sexy women only for the sake of it. I can certainly understand why some women would be angry when they see the Dead or Alive girls and how their entire franchise is based around their sex appeal, but that doesn’t undo the hundreds of female game characters where sex appeal is a complementary feature at best, next to physical and spiritual strength, intelligence, wit, kind-heartedness…

So why, exactly, does Anita Sarkeesian’s work only harm gaming? Here are the three key points, in short:

1. Her media appearances focus mostly on the harassment she’s received – this is particularly bad in non-gaming media, as it paints the average gamer as a villain, a blabbering idiot, a heartless woman hater – further hurting gamers’ already shaky reputation outside the world of gaming.
2. Her obnoxious, militant approach towards games, gamers and game developers provokes a justified, but often rude backlash, bringing the worst out of many gamers – which she subsequently uses as an excuse to continue her crusade.
3. Even if women in games were to be represented according to Anita’s, and other feminists’ desires, games would only suffer because it would be a forced insertion of ideas tainting the genuine game concepts – much like the very thing Anita’s fighting against, adding sex appeal for the sake of it.

Anita Sarkeesian’s goal to rid gaming of misogyny and make male gamers be accepting towards women is a good thing on paper. Some of her points in pursuit of this goal do have a degree of truth to them. Anita’s net contribution to gaming, however, will definitely be negative. She’s clearly not someone who loves gaming, this whole campaign is just a nice fame and money-making niche she’s discovered and is now exploiting to her heart’s content. So do not be fooled into giving a single cent to her, even if you consider yourself a feminist or if you just share her views.

1. WRITING: Man, If only our shared first name meant I shared talent with Emily Rapp (Ditto Emily Nussbaum, Emily McCombs). In this essay for The Rumpus, Rapp writes about finding intimacy while her son continues to die. If that sounds sad, it is, but it’s also beautiful.

2. PARENTING: Emily McCombs, editor of XOJane, writes about her creative path towards motherhood and it’s pretty inspiring.

3. INSTAGRAM: Complete with lyrics (for your singalong desires), College Humor nails our obsession with Instagram with this parody of Nickelback’s “Photograph.”

4. SUFFRAGE: Weird and strange and weird again. Here’s a children’s book from 1910 against women’s suffrage.

5. TED: Anita Sarkeesian, from Feminist Frequency, speaks at TEDx Women on online harassment.

6. ROLES: Really interesting video imagining what club life (ha) would be like if the stereotypical roles of men and women were reversed. Who objectifies and gets objectified?

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