Since the start of home video gaming in the 1970s, an image of the bespectacled, male geek sitting in his parent’s basement has been entrenched in society’s showcase of stereotypes.
As video games have grown into the 74 billion dollar industry they are today, this image has never been farther from the truth. In fact, the 2015 Electronic Software Associate’s annual report revealed that 44% of all gamers are female, and that there are more than twice as many women over the age of 18 playing video games than there are men under 18.
To some, it was a revolutionary statistic. To others, like Anita Sarkeesian, it was not only a truth already realised, but one that fuelled her passion for destroying sexist tropes in pop-culture.
INHERITING THE FIGHT
Sarkeesian was born to Armenian immigrants in Canada, but was raised mostly in California. The resulting balance between her parent’s traditional values and the influence of U.S. culture instilled in her a sense of confidence, and inspired Sarkeesian to critically consider the world around her.
In high school she joined classmates to protest for an increase in gay rights, and a peaceful solution to the crisis in the Middle East. She would passionately fight for the rights of others but, interestingly, would not refer to herself as a feminist.
That was until she studied under feminist author Lydia Sargent. Sarkeesian recalls: “Sargent spoke a lot about her experiences during the feminist and anti-war movement of the 70’s, and it connected with a deeper understanding of the struggle that my generation has inherited”.
Sarkeesian graduated with a degree in communications study from the California State University, and a master’s in social and political thought from York University, but she ended her tertiary education with more than that: she left with a desire to highlight negative social and cultural depictions of women in media, and help affect a change.
TAPPING THE FEMINIST FREQUENCY
While still studying at York University, Sarkeesian established Feminist Frequency, a website that offered a feminist criticism of media and pop-culture.
In 2011 she co-operated with Bitch Magazine on a series of videos entitled Tropes VS Women. The series marked the start of Sarkeesian’s rise to fame. She started to tour the country, speaking at conferences about media criticism and her work on Feminist Frequency.
It was a speech at the headquarters of Bungie, a game development studio responsible for the Halo series, that drew Sarkeesian’s attention to the video game industry. In May of 2012, she launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce five videos in the vein of Tropes VS Women focused on video game stereotypes.
The campaign reached its $6000 goal in 24 hours, and went on to raise nearly $160,000.
REACTION
While Anita Sarkeesian had faced criticism by those who thought she was linking the depiction of female characters in pop-culture to real-world sexism solely for the sake of profiting, she could have never expected the reaction to her Kickstarter campaign’s success.
The abuse came in many forms, from images depicting Sarkeesian being raped, to an online game that allowed players to punch her face until it was covered in bruises.
While many others in her position would have ignored such disgusting attacks in the hope that they would go away, Sarkeesian made them public in order to highlight the kind of abuse women faced online on a daily basis.
“This harassment is best classified as a cyber mob attack as it’s a hate campaign loosely organized through various internet forums. Participating harassers will share these images as a way to show off and gain validation from their peers as well as to try and recruit others to join the harassment campaign.
Needless to say, these attacks will not stop me from continuing with this project and I’m now even more committed than ever to speaking out against online harassment.” (You can read Sarkeesian’s full reaction to her cyber bullying here.)
In March of 2014 she received the Game Developers Choice Ambassador Award. After the event, organisers revealed that a bomb threat had been issued at the hall where the awards took place, resulting in police searching the area in the hours preceding the event.
GAMERGATE
As Sarkeesian had emphasised when addressing the harassment she was receiving, she continued to produce episodes of Tropes VS Women in Games.
By chance, in August 2014, one of the episodes was released during the GamerGate controversy, a misogynistic smear campaign against women in the video game industry.
Attention was turned to Sarkeesian, and she found herself barraged by hateful, sexist messages. The worst came in the form of a death threat that provided specific details of where Sarkeesian and her parents lived. She made the threat public in an attempt to track down the person responsible, but not before she was forced to flee her home.
Two months later, when Sarkeesian was scheduled to speak at Utah State University, terrorist threats were made towards her, inciting comparisons with previous college students. Shockingly, Sarkeesian was forced to cancel the event after it was made clear that police, under Utah state law, were not allowed to remove handguns from potential attackers attending the event.
CARRYING ON
Still, Sarkeesian was determined to continue her campaign for equality. She slowly continued producing content, though disabled the comments system for viewers.
She was supported by industry figures including DoubleFine’s Tim Schafer and former IGN-employee Greg Miller in videos such as 25 Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male.
In 2015, Sarkeesian was a witness at the United Nation’s ‘Working Group on Broadband and Gender’. There, she stated:
“I have been the target for 3 years nonstop of egregious online harassment in all levels. I think it’s important to recognize that harassment is, as someone had mentioned, it’s not just what is legal and illegal, right? Harassment is threats of violence, but it’s also the day to day grind of “you’re a liar,” “you suck,” making all these hate videos to attack us on a regular basis, and the mobs that come from those hate videos, etc”.
In January of 2016, four months after the last Tropes VS Women in Games video was released, Feminist Frequency posted a new episode, promising an increase of content in the coming year.
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Sarkeesian’s clash with the most extreme internet trolls is symptomatic of a much larger problem plaguing the web (as we discussed yesterday). While she may continue her work – at this stage, it seems impossible to say she wouldn’t – a fear is held in the feminist community that the attacks Sarkeesian and others like her face will give the next generation pause before continuing the fight.
We must all do what we can to ensure that is not the case.
Visit the Feminist Frequency channel here, or you can visit the official website.
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