IceForce said:
Just because something is bad, violent, or abhorrent, doesn't mean that it's automatically sexist.
Unfortunately, Anita has gone down the route of showing violent acts performed against female NPCs in video games, even though the violent acts are not even unique to female NPCs at all. And she's ended up discrediting herself in the process.
Could it be due to scope creep? Probably.
Anita isn't a serious intellectual, and her narrow focus on women and only women shapes her entire understanding of seemingly everything around women. There's always going to be problems with everything Anita does unless she addresses these issues, but there's no reason to expect she will. And there's benefits to having such a narrow focus - sometimes she sees things others don't whose vision is wide enough to encompass more reality.
Just because Anita's not an ideal intellectual or ideal representative of feminism doesn't mean she doesn't have good points. When you're looking for diamonds in the rough, you can complain about the rough or be happy when you find diamonds.
The stripper as sexist is complicated, since it's true that women in games are often depicted in sexual ways that men are not, but it's also true that NPCs regardless of gender are overwhelmingly victimized in games.
So we could look at it this way - would a female NPC rather be an engineer blown away by the "hero" or a stripper blown away by the "hero"? It seems like the NPC regardless of how they are depicted would rather have their life respected, and once they are not just a violated and exterminated object they can determine what profession they prefer.
Your point is completely valid - Anita's narrow scope, her desire to be a feminist hero instead of a serious intellectual, caused her to overconsider sexism as a factor in this case. But it's also true that because there's so much Sarkeesian hate among gamers, they'll jump on every flaw or problem she has, pointing out and laughing at every "rough" and doing their best to ignore the good points she makes. How is this any better?
Sarkeesian is not an enemy to gamers. She's a flawed intellectual who makes some good points about women in games. Every good point she makes benefits gamers and game developers. It's fine to point out her flaws in the hope that she can improve upon them but it's really silly to demonize her out of a mistaken thought that she's an enemy.
I'm going to look for more serious feminist gamer intellectuals on the internet, and if I find any who produce better work than Sarkeesian I'll talk about them in this forum. But maybe Sarkeesian, for all her flaws, is the best out there.
