Her video series, which you can see on YouTube, is actually quite good and well-researched. You might disagree with her conclusions (I agree with them) but even if you disagree, you have to admit she's done a lot of legwork.
(sorry for using all caps for once) (I take explanations for downvotes)
There is a reason why I wrote this sentence on this very page.
Yes, Obama gets 30 per day. What a sad world we live in, in which people are okay with that. Also, Obama can pay for bodyguards.
The goal of a death threat is not necessarily the killing, but insecurity and psychological effect.
(Also, what were the makers of God of War 3 thinking? Staggers the mind.)
However, watching the video as a gamer, not as a student, there is one thing about her video which stands out to me as the reason why she inspires rage in a subset of gamers.
Ms. Sarkeesian doesn't highlight anything positive about gender roles in the games that she critiques. While she is under no obligation to do so, the indignant gamer might accuse her of cherry-picking her facts, forgetting that her video series is about "Tropes vs Women", not "when games do justice and injustice to women".
Her series really is like a homework assignment for a college class, where the professor has asked for a list of tropes. If she'd included a "full assessment" of each game, her paper would've been ten times as long, and the professor would've given her a lower grade for including a bunch of irrelevant information.
In other words, her series is so single-minded in its purpose (to identify tropes) that it bothers gamers who feel that it's unfair that she only talks about "Tropes vs Women in Video Games". They misinterpret this as a video series on "games that fail women and are therefore terrible", when she's just doing a series on "games that have these tropes."
They're enraged not by what she says, but rather by what she omits.
And as far as games journalism goes, the fully-fledged "feminist game ratings" YouTube series/website is a void still waiting to be filled.
Except that I don't think she's even doing that. She seems to take pains to avoid implicating any single game, and including so many references actually serves to blunt the criticism of each individual example. Instead, the message seems to be that the conventions of storytelling in interactive media have some deep, fundamental flaws. The entire medium, therefore, must change dramatically for these flaws to be addressed.
I can understand a reaction of "I like my games just like they are, thankyouverymuch" (though such a response obviously does not justify the behavior Ms. Sarkeesian has been subjected to). Speaking for myself, though, I enjoy games in spite of, not because of, these tropes, and I can't imagine that removing them would do anything other than make future games more enjoyable.
You claim other "gamers" will not like her video for the reason you give.
Can you explain how someone moves from "I disagree strongly with some aspects of the video you made" to [insert death threat here]?
It's how immature people act. They feel threatened & don't really know why, so they threaten back. I wish it was just children engaging in that type of behavior, but I know that's not the case.
> hashberry 235 days ago | link | parent | on: My children’s book on technology raised 100k withi...
> The presentation and video was amazing. I immediately fell in love with her. She smiles non-stop. She jumps around with giddy excitement in a cute little dress. She's the perfect manic pixie dream girl trope. I want her to have all my babies.
I know hashberry's too far gone to change his mind, but to anyone else reading, if you're hearing about Anita for the first time and are on the fence about what's going on, realize that there is an army of sexists who swarm to all women-in-tech articles to push the same talking points over and over.
What's wrong is that you seem to think that commenting on your attraction to the female in the video is a worthwhile comment on the video. The video might have actual content, you know? It might be less sexist of you to actually pay some attention to the content, rather than to your attraction to the presenter?
Your inability to point to any occasion where she has lied is telling.