Full Metal Bolshevik said:
Izanagi009 said:
tangoprime said:
Wow, 17 minutes and no comments yet? I wholly believed this place would be World War 5 by now, congratulations. As much as I believe her kickstarter was an unnecessary and dishonest cash grab, the notoriety it earned her is now letting her reach people academically, so that's a good thing.
Yeah, we may disagree on methods and points but I have a feeling that a lot of people do notice that our perception of women in games is not good to say the least. I honestly don't know why there was so much rage at the initial kickstarter when people make jokes and comments about these issues all the time.
Precesly, I personally don't sympathise with her, but she's bringing more good than harm to the industry, if simply by making consumers and developers think about the issue.
My problem is that she's wrong. The claims she makes are often objectively wrong. They're self-contradictory (saying Violence Against Women is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but objecting to actual depictions of it in games), they're based on incorrect facts and assumptions (saying Jenny's death in the Darkness was about objectifying her, when the person who referred to her as an object is clearly the bad guy and the narrative makes it perfectly clear Jackie cares about her as a person), and their logic is generally a shambles at best (implying Damsel in Distress narratives - you know, the ones about men protecting women - promote Violence Against Women).
People were talking about sexism in games before Anita came along. My biggest problem with her is both that she's not the critic the subject needs not deserves, and that her patented brand of nonsense is spreading [http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-sexist-video-game-problems-even-bigger-than-breasts/]. Even our own dear Jim Sterling used a picture of Rachel from Ninja Gaiden that cropped out the giant LMG and Waraxe she was weilding in order to say she was objectified. Pay no mind that Rachel is portrayed as a capable character with her own gameplay segments; she's sexy, that means she's just an object. The funny thing is that to claim she was objectified, he had to, well, objectify her. Along with the DOAX girls, who can apply boot to rear in their own games just fine, despite their skimpy clothing.
Moreover, she's painted the negative criticism of her as entirely misogynist, anti-feminist harassment from men, when there are plenty of people, including women and feminists, who have provided more constructive negative criticism. For someone who, IIRC, claims to have academic aims, and talks about opening dialogues and having "conversations with pop culture", her studious avoidance of "peer review" seems very suspect. Even the organized conspiracy- sorry,
campaign of thousands of gamers she claims sent her harassment in her TED talk represents less than 1% of even male gamers alone, yet she claims its representative. Moreover, she got harassed largely because someone spammed her KS on 4chan, which is famously misogynist. Either that person was a moron, or they were actively trying to bait 4chan into retaliating. Then she parlayed the harassment into publicity, which lead to more harassment, which led to more publicity, etc.
I really, really hate the idea that criticism of a poor critic can be excused by "well, at least they're getting people talking about the issue!" Especially when said critic seems to want a monologue, not a dialogue. Oh, and to
endorse fanfics where she murders people in cold blood, despite claiming that people doing comparable things to her was Not Okay (which it's not) [http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/58161053721/spider-man-recruits-the-help-of-anita-sarkeesian-to]. Oddly enough, the last time I posted that link in a thread discussing her, her defenders absolutely refused to talk about it, even when I directly asked them if it was okay for her to endorse it.
I suppose this is the part where her more rabid defenders accuse me of being an "MRA troll" (both wrong, even by the Manboobz version of the term*) or other such demonization, while strawmanning or outright ignoring the points I'm making, but doing it in a ~*sardonic*~ manner so they don't get called on it. You can tell whose doing that because they
refuse to talk about the matter seriously or admit when they're wrong.
/rant
* IE "Says something I don't like". I'm not exaggerating.