Steven Bogos said:
It was both heavily criticized and heavily defended by proponents on either side...
"Either side"? What the hell does that mean? It's inane with-me-or-against-me thinking like that which made a very benign series at all "controversial" in the first place.
Sensible people can typically see more than two "sides", and so for Feminist Frequencies series there were strengths and weaknesses. Y'know, pretty much just like everything in life...
Personally, I felt like the "controversy" really only highlighted how ignorant a lot of people/gamers have been about feminism, with some amusingly trying to paint her and the series as 'extremist', when all she did was present age old ideas in a rather bland way. That she provoked so much ire kinda proved her point about sexism in society, too, that that series could rile so many up.
Personally, I felt some of the earlier videos were perfectly fine, and I feel the channel and that series helped catalyse debates over gamer culture and games themselves. She and the channel have contributed positively, and that won't be wiped away or forgotten. However, the series dragged and it really did seem as if they were conjuring tropes from thin air whilst repeating the same, very basic feminist points. Beyond a certain point there was really nothing new. The contextless use of some games and scenes really riled me, too, and rather undermined their entire project.
Smithnikov said:
..yea, I didn't buy into this line that she was somehow the anti-christ of gaming. She's just another hack to me.
No, she and her team were just people online - people on planet Earth - with opinions. That's about it...
However, whilst I had issues with their presentation and use of content especially after a few earlier eps, as I said above I do believe the channel's contributed to a greater awareness of--- well,
cultural self-awareness, as it were. If they're a bunch of hacks, I believe their net contribution has been positive.
Callate said:
She exemplifies the kind of attitude that not only makes it more difficult for people to find common cause and common ground, but weakens feminism as a whole, presenting it as an unchallengable monolith that has all the answers and is the only enlightened way to look at anything.
Is that
really an issue with her? Or the nomarks who somehow see any and all individuals as sole mouthpieces of incredibly complex and nuanced ideological perspectives?
So much opposition to feminism seems to be built off the back of individual statements from individual people; 'X said Y, so all of 'em think it! Man the barricades!!!'. That isn't usually the person speaking who's really at fault, is it.
The channel and Sarkeesian weren't exactly paragons of--- well, anything, be it feminism or game critique. But I don't think they ever
needed to be. They were/are, after all, simply part of a broader attitude of societal progression. If all they did was kick a hornet's nest, then that's productive in and of itself.