Her latest video actually resulted in credible death threats naming both her own address and that of her parents, that caused her to move out for her own safety. Frightening.
This video is NSFW.
But in more positive news, her campaign is having an effect.
Saints Row dev admits ‘failures’ in portraying women, calls on industry change
The games industry needs to alter the way it portrays women in video games, a senior Saints Row developer has said.
Volition studio creative director Steve Jaros has said be believes Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian was right to include Saints Row content in her latest Tropes Vs Women in Video Games installment, and that the entire games industry should work to improve on it portrayal of women.
“This is something we all should be better at,” he said, speaking on Twitter. “Yes, the original saints Row is listed here. Yes, it should be.”
Gamespot reports that Jaros also told The Escapist that the use of abuse against women as background content in games should stop.
“I think that we shouldn’t be portraying senseless abused women and I think that if I could go back and hop in a time machine I would have done things differently,” he said.
“I think it’s fair to be called out on your sh*t. I think that it’s a sad man that can never be self-reflective. I think that we tried to go and carry ourselves with respect, and try to respect sexuality and respect gender as much as we can, and sometimes we fail but hopefully we’ll do better and continue to get better.”
Jaros added that the Volition team is now mindful of sexually objectifying women in the Saints Row games.
It was confirmed over the weekend that both Saints Row IV for PS4 and Xbox One and a standalone co-op game, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell, will hit in January.
On Tuesday, games critic and Feminist Frequency host Anita Sarkeesian canceled a planned speech at Utah State University after receiving a lengthy death threat.
The threat, which Sarkeesian and other USU officials received early on Tuesday via e-mail, was later published by Ogden, UT newspaper the Standard Examiner, and it warned officials to expect "a Montreal Massacre-style attack," referring to the 1989 shooting spree at a Montreal university involving a killer who railed against feminism. Similarly, Tuesday's threat used anti-woman slurs and repeatedly mentioned feminism, including such claims as, "Women like Sarkeesian want to punish us for even fantasizing about being men."
USU officials initially responded to the Standard Examiner's report by claiming the speech would go on as planned by the school's Center For Women And Gender, complete with security precautions like not allowing backpacks into the venue. However, that changed with USU's announcement later that day claiming that Sarkeesian herself canceled her appearance after learning that "if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue."
I'll watch it tomorrow - evenings are not the best time for me to watch material that is disturbing.
The responses to her truth-telling are so horrifying and frightening.
There really are some very sick people (men, in this case) out there, and it raises the question of how well we (the generic societal we) are bringing up boys. I hasten to say that many young men - most young men, probably - have positive values, with appropriate self-respect and healthy egos that don't need to subjugate women. We have to do better, and that young woman is so courageous - but she shouldn't have to be.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
It gets worse then even that as several women in gaming have had death threats made against them as part of a bizarre "Gamergate" drama that has been going on recently:
I'm genuinely scared some of this stuff is going to escalate into real violence at some point soon. I don't understand where this kind of hatred comes from.
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
I think it's simple: testosterone drives people to behave in ways society does not allow. For most, containing those impulses isn't horribly difficult or traumatic, and it's not really a big deal. For others, either because the drive is stronger, because it's new, or because they're not that well-adjusted to begin with, things are different. These people need outlets. Sports are one, but those have a high barrier to entry and an exclusive culture, and as a result are only open to a few. Video games are another, and they're open to almost all. So there are a bunch of teenage boys (and a smaller number of older ones) who see "that kind" of video game as the only place they can go to act violent and womanize without getting in trouble for it. Then they see a woman come along and try civilize the whole affair. They get angry, and the worst of them go over the top. They're not right, but I think they're comprehensible.
Yeah; to you or me, it seems absurd. But I doubt the people getting worked up see it as games--they see it as their last refuge in a hostile world. And it follows from the definition that they're not well-adjusted people, so they deal with that threat even more poorly than you or I would under otherwise comparable circumstances.
But I speculate. Maybe they're just bad people and that's all there is to it.
"The problem with feminism is that there is equality these days (in western countries, at least). The battles have been fought, the war has been won. Women have equality with men."
*sigh*
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
