About

Feminist Frequency is a website and YouTube channel owned and operated by Canadian-American feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian with the express purpose of shining a feminist lens on gaming and other nerdcore pop culture. The site, and by extension Sarkeesian, have faced controversy and criticism during its run since launching in early 2009, notably in the mid-2010s during GamerGate. On August 1st, 2023, the website officially ended its service, prompting a resurgence in discussions, memes and media coverage online.

History

The website Feminist Frequency was started in early 2009 by Anita Sarkeesian, which included criticism and reviews of media with a feminist slant and aimed to improve the optics of women in all forms of pop culture. On February 14th, 2009, the YouTube^[7] channel was also launched.

In 2011, the series Tropes vs. Women was first created by Sarkeesian, which focused on examining depictions of women in pop culture and pitted the depictions against common female tropes that later became the subject of a Kickstarter campaign by Sarkeesian. The first episode of this series, Tropes vs Women in Video Games, was released on March 7th, 2013, on Feminist Frequency's YouTube^[1] channel where it gained over 3.4 million views in 10 years (shown below).

On April 1st, 2014, the Game Developer's Choice awards gave the Ambassador Award honor to Feminist Frequency for its work in the video game field of changing stereotypes and working to create a different atmosphere for gaming, with the award being presented by longtime fan of the channel Neil Druckmann, director of The Last of Us.

A video of the ceremony was uploaded to the Feminist Frequency YouTube Channel^[2] on April 1st, garnering over 147,000 views in nine years (shown below).

GamerGate Saga

During the entirety of GamerGate, Feminist Frequency as a channel regularly covered the topic and was directly hired as a consultant to work with game developers as a result of calling out the perceived "male power trip" found in games and how to curb that.

Due to the channel's videos and coverage of the GamerGate controversy, Sarkeesian faced criticism on behalf of some gamers for a multitude of reasons. This led to Feminist Frequency becoming more widely known, as Sarkeesian was interviewed on mainstream news outlets to talk about the criticism and the harassment Feminist Frequency had gotten, with an ABC News^[3] interview being aired on January 15th, 2015, and uploaded to YouTube^[3] shortly after (shown below).

Feminist Frequency Radio Podcast

After the initial GamerGate culture war slowly died down heading into the late 2010s, Feminist Frequency created a podcast called Feminist Frequency Radio. The podcast debuted its first episode on November 15th, 2017, on YouTube, receiving over 13,000 views in roughly five years (seen below).

In the following years after Feminist Frequency Radio launched, the podcast became the subject of memes that often disparaged the hosts. For example, on May 22nd, 2018, Twitter user @ZMABSO^[4] uploaded a graphic from the program, saying that the drawn avatars of the hosts were creating an unrealistic beauty standard of them, parodying similar language that Feminist Frequency used when talking about games (shown below).

2023 Shutdown

On August 1st, 2023, it was announced that Feminist Frequency would be shutting down, with a message being displayed on the main website and similar social media messages being posted on all affiliated accounts, as well as a blog post announcing the news.^[9] On August 2nd, the official YouTube^[8] channel posted an episode of Feminist Frequency Radio titled "THE END OF FEMINIST FREQUENCY" that discussed the closure of the organization, receiving roughly 3,000 views in 24 hours (seen below).

Shortly after the announcement of Feminist Frequency's closure, the news was quickly met with negative reactions and comments (such as "RIPBOZO") from some online, as the issues that people had accumulated with the group over the past decade were refreshed and used as a justification for its demise.

For example, on August 1st, the X user @MugenLord^[5] uploaded a video in which they went over the news and attempted to explain why Feminist Frequency was dangerous for the gaming industry and was never meant to make positive changes (shown below). The tweet received over 2,300 views and 75 likes in roughly 24 hours.

Anita Sarkeesian grifted her way into the industry and now left it a complete mess. Now it's up to us to piece everything back together.#FeministFrequency Full Video:https://t.co/0kjTmHPVyf pic.twitter.com/3mTd9dB2k2

— MugenLord (@MugenLord) August 2, 2023

The sentiments shared by many on the financial status of Feminist Frequency echo those that were talked about in an August 27th, 2020, YouTube video by the channel Ponji Ninja,^[6] which went over several of Feminist Frequency's tax returns and other supportive documents attempting to find out where the money was coming from and going to over the previous decade since the website's massive support during the GamerGate timeline, as well as predicting the demise of the channel (shown below).

Search Interest

References