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How many of Anita Sarkeesian's videos have you actually watched (be honest)?

Last posted Mar 31, 2015 at 04:58PM EDT. Added Nov 19, 2014 at 12:38AM EST
55 posts from 50 users

All right, let's get one thing straight: this isn't supposed to be flamebait. There is no prize for claiming to have watched all of her videos and still hated them, there is no shame in admitting you've only seen a few out-of-context clips. I don't have any axe to grind and I'm not posting this to try to change people's minds.

I've watched Damsel in Distress part 1, and a few short snippets from Tropes vs Women. I personally find them to be bland and monotonous (I mean, do we really need 20 minutes to be told what a "damsel in distress" is?), but otherwise relatively benign. I don't necessarily agree with her points, but I'm just put off by how hostile and toxic some of her opposition is to the extent that I find it hard to sympathize with their position. I mean, death threats, rape threats, that one school shooting threat (I think it was a school shooting threat?) are kind of a shitty thing to do.

Thoughts? How's everyone doing tonight?

Not too many, to be perfectly honest, but at least more than enough to know that, in my opinion, her arguments are inane, her methods questionable, and her understanding of the world troublingly warped. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of substance to her criticisms, and she tends to see soggy knees where it simply doesn't exist. I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement in storytelling tropes, but if someone sees sexism literally everywhere they look, they really need a reality check. The thing that grinds my gears about her, however, is the gall it takes to act like boobies in video games are the real problem faced by women when there are plenty of legitimate things in this world that wrong women on a daily basis that should be addressed long before the petty problems she seeks to fight. The cherry on top is that she's a hypocrite, and the very hypothetical game she storyboarded actually manages to not meet the unrealistic expectations she herself laid out in her studies. All in all, I just find her disingenuous and petty, and I don't need to see every single video she has ever made to come to that conclusion.

Last edited Nov 19, 2014 at 10:36AM EST

I watched the first all the way through and could barely stand her. It was some of the most unbiased bullshit I've ever seen that money was used to make. The one thing that really irritated me was when she brought up how Peach was unplayable in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, when Peach was planned to be playable, but her dress physics were a bit hard to work on so another Toad was added instead. The thing is she would've known that had she have done some actual "research." Some more examples of "research" she could have done for two of Rare's games with the first being Star Fox Adventures, where she complained about Krystal was only playable in the beginning and is than captured for the rest of the game, well had you researched that in Dinosaur Planet, what Adventures was going to be originally before Miyamoto suggested replacing Sabre with Fox, Krystal would've been a playable character throughout the game, but Rare was slowly being bought by Microsoft so they had to rush the game out before the buyout. And the second Rare game she brought up was Grabbed by the Ghoulies, when Cooper has to beat up a monstrous form of his girlfriend Amber, the thing here is that a co-op mode was planned for Grabbed by the Ghoulies so this scenario might not have even happened, but again this was released a year after Microsoft's acquisition of Rare and was also rushed, and one more thing about Ghoulies is that Amber is actually playable in the 21st challenge which is all 20 previous challenges except you play as Amber.
TL;DR: I think if she would research on the development of games instead of what's actually released and talk about how that didn't go though all the way I wouldn't mind it as much, but I still can't stand her.

Like 2. The rest from what I've seen is Thunderfoot getting a bunch of clips out of context and tearing into them in at least 500 different ways. I actually think there does need to be some more female representation in games as good characters and less useless sexualization in some cases Unlike Sarkeesian, I don't want female sexuality gone completely nor do I think it's sexist or promotes sexism, I just think it's worthless pandering that usually doesn't belong in a game and is just pushed in as an easy way to sell their games or make people like them more without having to try. I'd rather just have a reduction and only leave in sexuality when appropriate. One example of this would be Bayonetta. It's just her character and her style. While I don't think this excuse could be used for everything and shouldn't, it's pretty valid in her case. Metal Gear games also usually have a pretty good plot-driven reason for a character being really sexual (such as Eva) and when they don't have a reason it's more acceptable because it's the style of the series and both sexes are sexualized in Metal Gear. I mean, Raiden himself is a very sexualized male and have you not seen Snake's juicy ass?

So, back to Anita, she makes nearly everything so much worse than it needs to be and fills her videos with manipulation and fallacies. Sometimes her points are so bad I actually laugh out loud when hearing them (usually when referencing the invisible patriarchy responsible for everything. At this point it's nearly as funny as serious Illuminati conspirators. As I said, I want representation and a certain degree less useless sexualization in some games, but she wants any sexuality at all to be gone from games forever and thinks pretty much most games that exist are corrupt. You'd think she doesn't approve of any games whatsoever but from what I've heard she approves of like 5 games, which is still a pretty pathetic number. Even games that are very good with women she disapproves of because of some minor nitpick that barely even affects anything. Like the reason the entire Metroid series doesn't count to her at all is because "Samus is in a bikini sometimes". Fucking really?! It's not even every game too, and even in the ones with it, that's a terrible reason to begin with. Also, it seems like the only way she can ever like a game is if you can play as a female character (which is obviously quite ridiculous because it's almost like she wants to remove men as protagonists completely or at least move them to the side in every game which is just not possible. Sure there should be more of those games, but having it as a necessary criteria for a good game is too much. She often ignores games that are good with women or throws them away for some non-existent reason. Her arguments would be better if she used examples of good games instead of just telling everyone what's wrong with everything. If she actually specified more what she wanted to see (however impossible to achieve) more people would listen.

So yeah, Anita is also quite a scam artist and loves to bask in attention and play victim as pretty much everyone knows by now which adds to the problem.

I've watched several of her tropes vs. women videos and all except the last installment of her series on video games. I feel meh about her overall. She makes some good points, but she's not very good about backing up said points. Her videos get very repetitive and I think she should do more to discuss what video game tropes say about us as a culture instead of giving me a laundry list of things she finds sexist. I can't help but feel the need to defend her a lot of the time, though, because I feel like a lot of people react to her way more harshly and negatively than I feel is necessary.

Probably ~80% of them (all of the trope videos, video game and otherwise). I've been watching her videos for a while – can't remember when I first saw one but it was way before the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games shitstorm. I think her videos have improved since the early days and generally I think they're pretty good – could be better, could be worse.

And I'm doing fine – I probably should be sleeping rather than typing this, though!

Last edited Nov 19, 2014 at 07:17PM EST

Crimson Locks wrote:

I've watched several of her tropes vs. women videos and all except the last installment of her series on video games. I feel meh about her overall. She makes some good points, but she's not very good about backing up said points. Her videos get very repetitive and I think she should do more to discuss what video game tropes say about us as a culture instead of giving me a laundry list of things she finds sexist. I can't help but feel the need to defend her a lot of the time, though, because I feel like a lot of people react to her way more harshly and negatively than I feel is necessary.

Heh, funny enough, I feel almost the same way.

Like I said, I find her videos a bit bland and monotonous, and I don't necessarily agree with her. But I think they're otherwise… you know, pretty innocuous. The fact that something as harmless and flawed as her videos provoke such violent reactions and torrents of bile and fury really makes it hard for me to sympathize with her opposition. Personally I don't understand how anyone with a functioning set of senses can miss that gaming in general has a wee bit of an issue with women (inb4 shitstorm).

Oh yeah, I forgot to add that I don't find her as bad as most do. Even though I do have a pretty strong disliking for her, I don't understand the extreme hatred against her like she's destroying everything and the people that seriously want her dead. I feel like hatred as strong as Anita gets is reserved for people who committed actual atrocities against human rights or something serious like that and not someone who makes shitty videos and whines on social media.

I've watched four in full: both parts of Women as Background Decoration, an earlier video complaining about Bayonetta and another about advertising. I haven't said much about Anita or her videos, unless this image counts.

Last edited Nov 20, 2014 at 04:37PM EST

3 videos. That was when my brain began to burn, so I closed the laptop and went the fuck outside to make sure I was still in reality.

I've seen 1 video fully, and I've seen a bunch of her tweets and some snippets here and there:

I dont like the fact that she basically just complains about a bunch of shit. She just…. whines a lot and I find everything she does is just to get a reaction (on both sides).

Its also very odd to me when i see people like Joss Whedon (taught me everything about feminsm, thanks Buffy <3) championing her as a hero when its like… umm have you seen any of her videos? She has some really shitty content, like the vid where she complains about a gay character being evil (because only straight people can murder).

In the spirit of staying the hell out of gamergate so I can patrol as objectively as I can; I have watched Zero of her videos and had stopped following the events of Gamergate for around a month(?) now.

(Or that is just a super original excuse to say I've been busy with school and would rather spend my time on something fun rather than online drama)

i watched all of the damsel in distress videos, the one about female protagonists who are males in female bodies, both women as background decoration and i think that's it.
while there is truth to many topics she brings up, her explanation and derivation of the current state of the industry are pretty horrible, and don't even get me started on research (especially considering the kickstarter money) and her interpretation of the material and all the undialectic crap (does she believe in patriarchy theory btw?). but as i said, there is some truth to her videos, if you zoom out from the details that she's obviously wrong on. the violent backlash she got only proves that it's not just the industry, but the consumers too.
i also like this video:


…and just 2-3 years later, she likes to pose next to arcade machines and piles of game casings. do you smell the delicious hypocrisy?

now, i stayed out of all that gamergate stuff, since, in my opinion, gamergate is a lot like anonymous:
it looks like a cool thing, but anyone can claim it for himself, which does have its benefits, but those things are often hijacked by the extreme part of the movement, and they often lead the whole thing into a totally different direction than originally intended. not having an more or less fixed agenda everyone who takes part has to agree to can be very toxic.
anonymous is full with conspiracy-theorists, psychos, antisemitists (primarily structural) and racists. or at least those are the people who like to wear the guy fawkes mask the most ostentation.
that doesn't mean i don't have an opinion on topics like this or the whole quinnspiracy thing. i just can't identify with either side.

so, is sexism in the videogame industry real? of course it is.
is it stupid to point out that you can kill women in open world games? that's a benchmark for stupidity.
are there sexist assholes tweeting #gamergate #notyourshield? let's not close our eyes there and point at the evil, evil feminazis.
is anita sarkeensian right?
is that a complimentary ticket for you to vilify everything she and feminists in general say?

opening the 2nd window of my advent calendar, if find this:

first thing to point out, why does it say white males, and then they only speak about gender?
and about 15 of those are the same thing, being "i can tell everyone my gender online without fear of being harassed".
apart from that, i can see most of these things happening to female gamers, though i've never experienced it irl (on cons, in-store with friends etc.)/ingame (meaning outside of not-ingame chats and forums).

Last edited Dec 02, 2014 at 05:01PM EST

Crimson Locks wrote:

I've watched several of her tropes vs. women videos and all except the last installment of her series on video games. I feel meh about her overall. She makes some good points, but she's not very good about backing up said points. Her videos get very repetitive and I think she should do more to discuss what video game tropes say about us as a culture instead of giving me a laundry list of things she finds sexist. I can't help but feel the need to defend her a lot of the time, though, because I feel like a lot of people react to her way more harshly and negatively than I feel is necessary.

Absolutely. I absolutely disagree with her portrayal of video games as completely irredeemable cesspools of sexism, but that's no excuse to demonize her the way people have. She's pointing out the problems and not offering solutions. The most she's guilty of, then, is taking up space in the debate without contributing anything particularly meaningful.

Most of them. My general opinion:

1. Professionally made, at least by the standard of youtube videos.
2. Adresses some good points, and promotes discussion on the subject.
3. Lots of inaccuracies and heavily biased bullshit. The analysis is of media is distorted by an overly ideological theorethical framework. Also, pretentious and incorrect use of postmodern buzzwords, (like "deconstruction", when "analysis" would be more accurate).
4. I think she literally says in one of her videos that "equal treatment is not equality" WTF?
5. The removal of the comment and rating function is regrettable, but I blame the trolls for this.

I watched a little bit of her portion on the Colbert report. I felt sad when I watched the video more than mad, not because of her (I honestly don't care about her). It's because I like Colbert, and seeing him view this issue in such a one-sided fashion really brought me down.

She actually makes some decent points. She makes a lot of shit points, granted, but she's nowhere near the Lovecraftian abomination every MRA and GamerGater takes her for.

I only ever saw one video about a year or two ago, I don't remember exactly when but it was her first video, back when it was about a month or two old. I could see what she was getting at, but I didn't really understand how it was that much of a problem, at least, compared to other problems out there. Also, yeah, how she makes her arguments is pretty flawed, and you could argue that her kick-starter for the series was kinda misleading. Still though I didn't hate her, didn't even dislike her, in fact I still don't, she seems pretty harmless.

Funnily enough, she did make me question how many on the internet view feminism, and how our own insecurities can make us act in shitty ways. This wasn't because of what she said though, but what was said and done to her, the colossal demonisation of this one person who dared to ask questions and make criticisms on a small video series that was pretty much inconsequential. The amount of bile she got for something so little was honestly surprising to me.

That said, I have as little hate for her opposition as I do for her, it's only natural to want to defend yourself, and I bet that there are many, many people against her who are perfectly rational people, who have good reasons to be against the things she says. I just think the backlash against her was way too strong.

All her Tropes vs. women videos. What irks me is that she never mentions lara croft, or any fighting game characters, THEY WERE EVEN ON SOME TROPES VS WOMEN POSTERS! Also she hasn't bothered to accuse Aerith's death in FF7 of being sexist (either she's a fangirl, has been paid hush money by square, or will get around to it in the next video).

I've watched all three of her damsel in distress vids. There are some points she makes that I don't agree with, but other than that, the vids were harmless and also kinda entertaining….. But then again I don't know much about Anita, I just know she's a feminist game reviewer that everyone hates. Someone, please explain to me (without raging) why she's so hated.

I remember watching the first ever video. Didn't see anything special, and didn't understand why so many people latched onto her/banded against her. I've seen clips of other videos, but only ever saw the first from start to finish. If I have a day where I've got too much free time and literally nothing better to do, I might watch some of her stuff to get a better background on it.

While only to a tiny margin, I have genuine pity for Anita. When I heard she was going to be on Colbert, I was expecting to see her be as professional as she tries to sell herself. Instead, I watched a very nervous, very uncomfortable person fidgeting and having trouble answering questions. I figured that Anita doesn't write her own speeches.

Then there's how many death threats she gets. While it's hypocritical of her to play damsel on Twitter after waving her finger at video games for doing so, it's pathetic how many chucklefucks on Twitter harass her. Especially when she's just the speaker. Again, I'm nearly 100% sure she doesn't write her own scripts.

At the same time, my pity can only go so far, and Anita has done some questionable things. Skipping over the possible PUA scam, whether she's been a 'true' gamer all her life and the art theft, Anita is at best a liar and at worst a con artist. When she first begun the funding for FemFreq, she gradually raised the price as the money came in. 30K was plenty for her to do some decent research. She got over 150K, and the research she's done is, frankly, bad.

She cherry picks things she disapproves of yet all but ignores games that do what she asks. She claims to have done research, but she never strikes me as someone with deep insight into what she talks about. (Unless she brings up invisible elements of the Patriarchy, which seems to be the new God/Illuminati these day) I was expecting someone who was researching would bring up a lot of background information about development choices and why creators did what they did, but most of the time, it's "This girl's breasts are too big. Bad developer." Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I was hoping she'd bring up new ground instead of digging up old dirt.

That's my biggest problem with her. For how much money she got and how professional she tries look, she rarely does anything new. Most of the things she's said have been said already by dozens of other people. While that doesn't undermine the actual points she makes – gaming is no stranger to eye candy, that's for sure – I don't see why we needed to pour over 100K into someone's wallet just so she could regurgitate arguments already made.

TL;DR: Saw one vid and bits of others. Have some pity for her, but don't think too highly of her.

I've seen 2. The one where she ranted about Bayonetta and the first Damsels in Distress video. I have watched bits and pieces of other videos as part of other people's responses, but that's it. I think I've done a good job of avoiding her content since I haven't watched a Feminist Frequency video in almost 2 years.

Skeletor-sm

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