Kickstarter Video Project Attracts Misogynist Horde

[minuialear]

That's not an excuse to "rage" at someone. If you disagree with someone's Kickstarter, the most reasonable response to it is not to get enraged and spew that kind of hate over it. These comments weren't well-thought-out counter-arguments to her claims that women aren't represented fairly in video games. They weren't just comments of the tune "Well I don't agree, so I'm not going to spend my money on this." These were people who didn't respect her right to have an opinion (regardless of whether it's right or wrong), and felt the need to knock her down for having a different one because of it.

I thought the "right" approach was to start an organized campaign to get the Kickstarter cancelled, ala Tentacle Bento? Then complain that PayPal doesn't bow to pressure as easily, after that group moves their funding drive to their own site?

My point is that disagreeing with someone does not justify insulting them in a manner as malicious as that seen for this particular Kickstarter.

So I don't get why you brought that example up, considering it comprises a completely different set of circumstances. In this Kickstarter, they aren't creating a movement to get the Kickstarter taken down; they are attacking HER and HER sex and HER race (among other things) with malicious insults directed towards HER moreso than her actual described product. In the one for Tentacle Bento, they attacked the KICKSTARTER (no doubt some idiots also attacked the creators, but certainly not this much or with equal amounts of vitrol) because of the content of it (which is a lot more controversial and arguably in worse taste than that of this girl's Kickstarter).

It's when your girlfriend nags you when you're taking a break while playing games, fixing your car/motorcycle, doing your hobby and not letting you have that moment of pause, because it's not as important as whatever she wants. Please try to understand that these women not only exist, but are common.

Where did I say they don't exist, again?

The problem is that in your last post, you said:

The other ting is that any man who's had a girlfriend or wife, knows the feeling of them encroaching on your territory, your place of silence and focus. When girls like Anita make an accusing video like that, men take it personally, because it's another one of those annoying cries for attention(Not saying it is, I'm saying it LOOKS like it).

First of all, "enroaching on...territory" means taking territory that doesn't belong to you; in the context you described it (i.e., you're participating in some kind of hobby/activity, and suddenly your significant other enroaches on your territory), it doesn't mean "I'm playing games and she makes me play with the dog/read her a book." It means "I'm playing video games and she learns how to play them too, which isn't cool because it's 'my thing'," or
"I'm playing video games and she forces me to play with her/forces me to let her have video game time as well." So my confusion seemed to be over your poor choice of words. I'll take that comment back.

But more importantly is that bolded part, which essentially says "All women who have been in relationships with men are guilty of this." Which is patently false, as would the claim that all guys even need time for "silence and focus." Don't project your needs and what you haven't been getting in your relationships on everyone else, because some of us are doing just fine.

Your blatant attempt at white-knighting is an obvious indication of your inexperience in relationships.

You're going to have to explain to me where you're getting this "white-knighting" claim from before I address the rest of this half of your response.

 

[JerrytheBullfrog]

Ok so while i slept this progressed even worse than it was before. Now i hate sarkeesian. I think shes conning people & that this project will not need any more funding than she already has, anything she needs she will already be able to buy, & that her only intent is to continue preaching to the choir. She will accomplish nothing because she set out with that goal. I hate the woman.

Now, she is not a feminist. She is an internet radical. Making like minded fools feel right. Everything is a conspiracy by men, women are thrown under the bus at every turn, & she does all this in the most pretentious, cold, arrogant, and hateful way possible. Now remember that she is targeting games. When games & the communities surrounding them are target it it is ALWAYS done with no intent of being impartial. She says she is about to attack the hobby of gaming with intent to make it look bad. If gamers did rise up and shout her down it would be justifiable. But no. Everyone copied comments from youtube and took it as indicative of the gaming community. Well let me get at least one thing clear as possible. Gaming has no one community. Its a broad spectrum with no central group. Just like youtube has no central hate community.

Youtubes hate community spans a wide range of people.

Spoiler

People that hate religion
People that hate people that hate religion
People that hate injustice
people that hate injustice as they perceive it
people that hate youtube commenters
people that hate those guys
people that hate gay people
people that hate people that demonize gay people
people that hate nerds
people that hate those that try to pass themselves off as dorky in order to make money from youtube
people that hate vlogs
people that hate vlogs based on the gender of the host
people that hate warcraft
people that hate those that hate warcraft
people that hate indie games
people that hate AAA games
people that hate steam
people that hate bad news
people that hate GOOD news
people that hate conservatives
people that hate liberals
people that hate equality
people that hate inequality
people that hate feminism
people that hate the government
people that hate laws
people that hate guns
people that hate technology(yes they exist on youtube)
people that hate TV
people that hate nintendo/sony/microsoft/etc
people that hate walkthroughs
people that hate letsplays
people that hate first impressions

people that hate anything can be found inside the realm of youtube hate so don't act like it is an indication of jack other than yotubes status as roaming area.

I love your assumptions. They're really kind of cool, and totally not reactionary and misogynist at all.

Except it's opposite day.

How is she trying to attack gaming? She is a gamer. She is making videos about something about gaming and gaming culture that bothers her and that she wants to examine. That is not an attack on gaming.

The only conspiracy here is the ACTUAL COORDINATED CONSPIRACY TO SHUT HER DOWN. Vandalizing wikipedia pages, getting her youtube videos flagged as terrorism, getting Kickstarter to cancel the project.

This goes so far beyond YouTube comments you have no idea.

I thought i made it clear that people would perceive it as an attack & rightly so. And yes its an attack on gaming. Her intent was to portray gaming negatively therefore attack on gaming. Regardless of if she is a gamer or not, she seeks to portray the medium negatively and ONLY negatively. At least that was her plan. So i will consider this an attack on gaming on the grounds that she had no intent of portraying it fairly. Until she hit twice her intended goal. Seems fairly straight forward. And no coordinated shutdown conspiracy exists. Its all mob behavior. Its just a bunch of slackjawed YouTube haters going beyond their normal bounds of behavior. The people doing this probably aren't even connected. This started on youtube and it somehow became indicative of how horrible gamers are. But this behavior is no where out of the ordinary. Normally her videos get flagged regularly. Why? Because youtube idiots. Now why would they suddenly jump from regular youtube hate to vandalizing wikipedia? IDK maybe cause she asked for a few thousand dollars to continue doing the work she was doing.

And yes. Because i hate a fake-feminist i must be a misogynist. Excellent work there rookie, you may well be chief of police one say. See i hate her because every thing with her is a coordinated & harmful conspiracy against women. Legos swap from neutral to male favored advertising? Well shes not saying there is a conspiracy against women... But there is a conspiracy against women and lego is in on it. Thats the prevailing thing with her videos. Lego is sexist(stupid defiantly but not sexist & trying to harm women), suckerpunch is indicative of hollywoods hatred of women, popular gaming is populated mostly by mail main characters therefore hatred, etc. Shes not a stupid woman but she has stupid ideas about how the patriarchy idea works.

No, you're just completely misunderstanding her points.

Nobody is saying that the people in the LEGO boardroom are scheming about how they can keep the women down.

The Sucker Punch director/writer weren't saying, "Yeah, let's make a film about how much we hate women."

Nobody is arguing that. She certainly isn't.

But societal values in a culture that is still inherently misogynist to some degree or another mean that these things happen *without people realizing.* That is the insidious nature of sexism (and racism) today; it's the little assumptions that people make without thinking.

And no, it's not an attack on gaming. Only the most insecure of gamers worried that they'd lose their hold on their no-women-allowed circle would see it that way.

PS - I didn't call you a misogynist. I said that your assumptions were. (And they are.)

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Smurfette principle

Your wrong, Clearing the Eye definitely "gets it [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.378338.14792236]".

OP:Out of curiosity, has she covered the stereotypical ways men are depicted in video games and other forms of media? ...or is this just another person telling me how feminism is somehow concerned about men, yet they are reluctant to focus on it?

Except that men being stereotyped are stereotyped for a male audience like women in games. Which is part of the problem.

 

[socialistmath]

Her intent was to portray gaming negatively therefore attack on gaming.

Trust me, male gamers already portray gaming negatively all on their own. No need for any evil dirty feminis- sorry, feminazi's attacking gaming to portray it negatively.

Regardless of if she is a gamer or not, she seeks to portray the medium negatively and ONLY negatively.

This may be a difficult concept to understand, but it's possible to criticize something WITHOUT portraying ALL OF IT negatively. In fact, it's possible to criticize gaming not because you despise games but because you enjoy gaming and want to see games improve how they handle portraying women and minorities.

Shes not a stupid woman but she has stupid ideas about how the patriarchy idea works.

Oh please, strong and so smart male, please tell her how despite her degrees and years of study she doesn't understand the patriarchy nearly half as well as you do! Please, enlighten her with your male wisdom!

 

[AverageExtraordinair]

Another thing That Im confused about is why so many people care what one person says or does to " THE GAMING COMUNITY" as a whole. I mean was I the only was who just looked at this and said meh their are worse things in the world.

 

[JerrytheBullfrog]

Do we? What other crimes do we pursue and sometimes convict on nothing other than victim testimony? What other crime can you say "That 51 year old man committed this crime against me 36 years ago when he was babysitting", and get a conviction with no other evidence (more importantly, how would you defend against that?)? Or for a better example, imagine the person you lost your virginity with (if such a person exists) decided tomorrow to claim that encounter was rape/sexual assault (depending on the genders involved, since forced intercourse isn't rape if it's female-on-male). How would you defend yourself? As far as I can tell, the only answers are video every sexual encounter, and don't stick it in the crazy (always good advice).

"B-b-but what about people accused of rape!?" Really? You bring up bullshit about false rape accusations? Do you have any idea of how statistically insignificant those accusations are? Do you not understand how much bullshit a woman goes through when she dares to accuse a man of rape? Why would any woman want to go through all that?

Rape cases need to be thoroughly investigated, tried if there's evidence, held to the same goddamned standards as every other criminal case, if there's a finding of guilt, punished appropriately, and if there's evidence that it's a false accusation, then that needs to be thoroughly investigated, tried if there's evidence, held to the same goddamned standards as every other criminal case,

Regardless of whatever men's rights activists vomit out of their putrid mouths, rape already is held to those standards.

[yes, I am saying falsely accusing someone of a sex crime should itself be a sex crime]).

You're mentally ill if you seriously think this. Seriously? You equate the false accusation of rape to rape itself?

Likewise, I think the media should be barred from naming either defendant or victim in such a case (as opposed to the current practice of anonymizing the victim and plastering the defendant's name everywhere, thus effectively ruining his reputation even if innocent).

"Think of the poor rapists' reputation!"

If the defendant is found anything other than guilty, I think the defendant's name should not be released. If there's a false accusation case, I think a finding of guilt should involve releasing the false accuser's name, but letting the falsely accused remain anonymous.

Let me guess, you want their name made public so they can get what they deserve, right?

To be completely honest, none of the responses she's gotten are really that surprising to me. Most boys and men are incapable of understanding, or even caring about, problems that women face unless they are buttressed against problems that men face. You see it in many of the replies here: "what about the men?" "what about tropes that harm men?" etc. etc.. A woman is never allowed to say something is harmful for women, unless, of course, she mentions how it also harms men (which is clearly the most important part). It's almost as if men don't see women as people.

You. I like you.

 

[SkellgrimOrDave]

I realise i'm late to the inevitable flame war, but i'm going to chuck my two cents into the growing pile of them in this thread anyway.

First off, she's taking a one-sided stance, tropes vs. women being the title of her project. Not "Stereotypes of women in videogames" or any other such title, but an immediate statement loaded with the idea that tropes are somewhat opposed to women. Common and stereotypical portrayals of both genders exist in all media, both to men and women, it's just more common in video games because most developers still see (truly to some extent) that videogames are a male-dominated market. So they put women in as eye candy because half our thinking is done with our lower brain. If the market was dominated by women, to shift sales i'm certain that there'd be overly muscled or unrealistically handsome men acting as set dressing. If it shifts sales, it'd be done, it's how developers work to sell stuff.

Tropes are just as harsh to men as they are to women. More so in some way, as men often don't get to complain about them. Women complain about stereotyping and the like and are treated by the majority as fairly nit-picky, but still having a point about underlying sexism. If a man complains about unfair representation, I doubt it'd be taken as seriously, he'd be told to man up and grow up. Double standard prevelant just about everywhere, but still, shit happens.

Stereotypes in videogames in particular are just as bad to men as women. You could count the majority of most game characters (barring the exceptions) on one hand. You've got the brute, six foot tall and just as wide, a wall of muscle that can only be made in real life through genetic luck and about three tonnes of protein poweder. You've got the scientific sidekick, often seen through a video linkup, rubbish but spritely in a face to face fight, but good at support, thinking, and sending backup (usually via a cutesy little robot of some kind). And at the moment I can think of very few others. Freeform characters a la Skyrim are obviously exceptions, you create your character and how they act, but in general anything other than the two types i've described seem to be (in games I play, admittedly restricting my experience, feel free to debate this) treated as some kind of plot point, if a hulking brute has an emotional side, it's not seen as normal, he becomes "the sensetive guy". If a skinny tech-savvy type can hold his own in a fight, everyone else is almost obligated to be surprised, you can't fight AND know stuff, that's just not fair on the rules!.

TLR : Go read it anyway.

In conclusion, she just makes a bad point in general, it's the one-sided stance she took that resulted in such negative feedback. That and the youtube community suffers from the usual problem with anonymity and a keyboard.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

And feminists are for gender equality VIA THE ADVOCACY OF WOMENS' ISSUES. Because they need it a lot more than we men do.

Again, I'm not asking for women's issues to be brought up, I'm asking for the focus to be expanded to men's issues as well. Instead of focusing on the gender issues of one group, there should be a focus on the issues of both groups.

Holy shit, how are you not getting this? How is this such a hard concept to understand? She isn't focusing on men's issues because A.) she doesn't want to in this project, B.) she has no obligations to, and C.) arguing that she shouldn't be able to talk about womens' issues without discussing mens' issues to is disruptive, derailing, and silences the whole discussion.

A.)Why not? She has more than enough money to do so. B.)If she is for gender equality and having there being accurate and fair representations of gender in video games, then yeah she does. C.)I have no intention of silencing anybody no matter how many times you would like to claim otherwise. Again, when talking about gender issues, it should be about both genders.

I'm done here. Take the blinders off please and actually LISTEN to what you're being told. Don't just hear, listen. And think.

I've listened, and you haven't really contributed much besides telling me how gender equality groups (feminist) should tackle the poor representation of gender in video games by focusing on women's issues while neglecting and passing the burden of men's issues onto others.

 

[socialistmath]

Common and stereotypical portrayals of both genders exist in all media, both to men and women, it's just more common in video games because most developers still see (truly to some extent) that videogames are a male-dominated market.

Video games hard hardly a male-dominated market anymore. That developers think it still is shows how little they understand their own market.

So they put women in as eye candy because half our thinking is done with our lower brain.

This is incredibly sexist to both men and women. It's sexist to women because it implies women are just eyecandy for men. It's sexist towards men because it implies men can only see women as sex objects, and not as fellow human beings.

If the market was dominated by women, to shift sales i'm certain that there'd be overly muscled or unrealistically handsome men acting as set dressing.

I doubt that'd be the case. What men think women find attractive and what women find attractive are often two very different things.

If it shifts sales, it'd be done, it's how developers work to sell stuff.

"It sells" is not a good justification to throw half of the world into the objectification ghetto.

Tropes are just as harsh to men as they are to women. More so in some way, as men often don't get to complain about them.

Again, this is just a case of how men are ALSO harmed by the patriarchy.

Women complain about stereotyping and the like and are treated by the majority as fairly nit-picky, but still having a point about underlying sexism. If a man complains about unfair representation, I doubt it'd be taken as seriously, he'd be told to man up and grow up. Double standard prevelant just about everywhere, but still, shit happens.

I agree and if you really think this then you should be totally on the side of feminism. Feminists fight for equality of the sexes, for the destruction of the patriarchy. And the disabling of the patriarchy will also help men.

Stereotypes in videogames in particular are just as bad to men as women. You could count the majority of most game characters (barring the exceptions) on one hand. You've got the brute, six foot tall and just as wide, a wall of muscle that can only be made in real life through genetic luck and about three tonnes of protein poweder. You've got the scientific sidekick, often seen through a video linkup, rubbish but spritely in a face to face fight, but good at support, thinking, and sending backup (usually via a cutesy little robot of some kind). And at the moment I can think of very few others. Freeform characters a la Skyrim are obviously exceptions, you create your character and how they act, but in general anything other than the two types i've described seem to be (in games I play, admittedly restricting my experience, feel free to debate this) treated as some kind of plot point, if a hulking brute has an emotional side, it's not seen as normal, he becomes "the sensetive guy". If a skinny tech-savvy type can hold his own in a fight, everyone else is almost obligated to be surprised, you can't fight AND know stuff, that's just not fair on the rules!.

The difference? Men get to be stereotyped as ALL of this long list of shit... and women? They get to be sex objects and... that's it.

 

[BrionJames]

Okay, I appreciate the desire to create awareness of the use of female characters in a respectable way, to help bring gaming out of the male-controlled dark ages, that it apparently has been. I support the idea that women should be more positively portrayed rather than just, male fantasies of what heroines should be. However, aside from the RPG's available that allow you to choose to play as a female character, I can't remember seeing a positive female character in a game. Maybe Samus Aran, some charcters from Final Fantasy(Terra being my favorite and the main protagonist of that story). What I would like to see, are more games with a female protagonist that is more than just a scantily clad badass, I'm looking at you Lolipop Chainsaw, Bayonetta, Wet, Heavenly Sword, Tomb Raider, so on and so forth. I'd like to see characters with depth and intrigue, not tits and ass bouncing as they cleave an orcs head in half.

As for internet assholes. Unfortunately, people like that are always going to exist on the internet. There isn't much that can be done, except to report them to Admins and hope that the educational system gets better.

 

[ElPatron]

You're just upset because no-one touches your penis, aren't you?

This kind of attitude pisses me off a lot more than random people on youtube.

 

[Grahav]

Could someone point me to a page or anything that tries to explain WHY misoginy and/or misandry exist?

 

[bat32391]

You know what I don't get? Why the hell are people using "Jew" as an insult?

 

[socialistmath]

You know what I don't get? Why the hell are people using "Jew" as an insult?

Teenagers (and mental teenagers) think casual racism and sexism are funny.

 

[bat32391]

You know what I don't get? Why the hell are people using "Jew" as an insult?

Teenagers (and mental teenagers) think casual racism and sexism are funny.

Well isn't that great? Stupid teenagers.

 

[Aisaku]

How the do we even know the attacks are real? For all we know the same group could be staging this to get more people to fork over cash to their kickstarter.