#feminist frequency

[madame-helen]

[gamer2002]

Bye, and never come back.

[videogamesincolor]

“I do think her work has informed the industry,” Mark Chen, a lecturer at the University of Washington Bothell, said. “I mean, part of the reason we keep hearing about harassment or sexism in the industry I think is because of her efforts and others like her who (forcibly) made space for others to follow.” Her work also continues to be referred to in academia, where it influences students who may go on to develop games. Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is a staple on digital media and video game class syllabuses. Marc Santos, an associate professor of English at the University of Northern Colorado, used Feminist Frequency in an undergraduate English class that’s focused on research writing on video games. Santos said he uses Sarkeesian’s work on Feminist Frequency because it stands up to this day, but also as a way to show students how to research and present analysis and criticism. In a recent project, students used videos like “Lingerie Is Not Body Armor” and “Strategic Butt Coverings,” which analyze the male gaze in video games, as a basis of analysis of clothing in the first 100 role-playing games that pop up on Steam. “I think there’s a lot of students — both men and women — who sort of realize that the portrayal of women, and all marginalized groups, in video games is bad. But Sarkeesian’s work helps focus their attention,” Santos said. “She provides a lens through which it becomes almost impossible to deny or ignore the extent of the problem.” Tropes vs. Women in Video Games continued until the end of 2017, and through years of abuse and harassment that one could simply call hell. The harassment Sarkeesian and her team experienced is unconscionable and included dangerous levels of violence, like bomb threats made at events Sarkeesian was attending. Sarkeesian’s first work predated the period of time now called Gamergate — a movement that is now considered a watershed moment in the rise of far-right extremism, a channeling of decades’ worth of bigotry and hatred embedded into systems, platforms, and communities both online and off. When Tropes vs. Women in Video Games continued through Gamergate, that hatred was channeled toward her and others who advocated for better representation in games.

Around the time she started uploading videos critical of media like Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, I had my first come-to-Jesus moment with the gaming community and just how violently racist and misogynist it was in the Left 4 Dead [2] and Resident Evil 5 fanspace.

Nothing has changed about the L4D[2] and RE fanspace, or gaming, in that regard (they just moved to Reddit). But when she started uploading videos critical of gaming culture and the toxicity of that space, I was grateful to see the pushback, because it gave rise to other voices that occupied areas she either missed or weren't her focus.

It wouldn't be a stretch to say that Sarkeesian, Not Your Momma's Gamer, and I Need Diverse Games, were all a big part of why the dudebro-to-Ggate culture that was once so acceptable in gaming magazines and other gaming spaces, don't have mainstream games culture by the throat any longer, and why this blog exists.

[questioningespecialy]

SiCKtM: the horrors of time travel

post migrated to pillowfort (May 2024) archive: dashboard | blog

[removed non-image content for reasons]

[ai-yo]

Anita Sarkeesian chose to end Feminist Frequency after 15 years and I've had the displeasure of seeing some people who used to harass her back in the day celebrate as if they accomplished something. As if they got rid of her.

Anita chose to end FF because she has done all that she could and ended it on her terms. Feminist Frequency was one of the first people that I saw making decent video essay type content on YouTube back in the day. She pivoted from YouTube into podcasting quite smoothly and was like "I'm burning myself out too much I'm done" and good for her.

[higherentity]

[tachyonblu]

Christina Hoff Sommers tried to understand Anita Sarkeesian. "Do you remember her critique of a game with Bayonetta? Bayonetta was a video game with a very powerful but sexualized, sexy protagonist, and she accused it of being sexist because it appealed to the male gaze. What she neglected to care about was that it was created by a Japanese woman. This is where I see a distinction between an equality feminist and a victim feminist. She was offended that the character was sexy."

[omercifulheaves]

Well, with Anita Sarkeesian announcing she’s shutting down Feminist Frequency after 15 years, I felt like poking the hornet’s nest and asking if after all this time, it ever sank into the skulls of any of the trash nerd gamergate chuds out there that their own personal Anti-Christ would have probably never have been as well known or lasted as long if they hadn’t decided to all have a collective shit hemorrhage over what was ultimately the most basic-ass Feminism 101 takes imaginable. ...oh what am I sayin’ of course it hasn’t.

[ayakho]

Sad to hear that Feminist Frequency is closing its doors but its been a good run. I can imagine the folk there, especially Sarkeesian who has been slandered by bigots for the whole run, are super tired after all this time. I wish them well on their future endeavors!

[krissiefox]

https://www.tumblr.com/techturd Lots of cool video game gifs and images.

https://acornfriend.tumblr.com/ Cute video game art

https://bsptourist.tumblr.com/ Scenery from Source Engine Games

https://www.tumblr.com/didyougaming Weird video game things.

https://alpha-beta-gamer.tumblr.com/ Learn about new indie game alphas and betas you can try!

https://www.tumblr.com/have-you-played-this-ps1-game Polls about PS1 games! Good place to discover new titles.

https://www.tumblr.com/videogametatts Video game tattoos!

https://www.tumblr.com/gogcom Official GOG tumblr blog (inactive)

https://gamespot.tumblr.com/ Not sure if it's an official Gamespot blog, but it is a blog about video games!

https://armorgames.tumblr.com/ Blog of game dev team Armor Games.

https://didyouknowgaming.com/ Video game trivia fun!

https://gaygamer.tumblr.com/ Video games from a gay perspective.

https://nintendometro.tumblr.com/ Nintendo gifs and videos

https://snesanctuary.tumblr.com/ Super Nintendo gifs!

https://mysteamgrids.tumblr.com/ Custom art for Steam games.

https://www.tumblr.com/celebgames Celebrities talking about video games.

https://kartridges-blog.tumblr.com/ Video game music, gifs, ads,screenshots, etc.

https://www.tumblr.com/chocolate-covered-portals Various games

https://n64thstreet.tumblr.com/ Blog about Nintendo 64 games!

https://obscurevideogames.tumblr.com/ Gifs and screenshots of lesser known video games

https://hiddenpalaceorg.tumblr.com/ A blog about lost games and video game history preservation!

https://videogamesskies.tumblr.com/ Skies from video games!

https://playstationgamemania.tumblr.com/ Blog about PlayStation games.

https://low-polygon-count.tumblr.com/ Screenshots and gifs of video game scenery.

https://www.tumblr.com/vgcartography Video game maps! (the visual aid kind, not the playable mod kind)

https://www.tumblr.com/naruhoudo A blog with nice video game fan art!

https://lowpolyanimals.com/ Video game animals!

https://n64retro.tumblr.com/ Pictures and gifs related to Nintendo 64.

https://fangamer.tumblr.com/ Online store that sells licensed video game merch.

https://femfreq.tumblr.com/ A feminist perspective on video games.

[shampoo153]

The tropes vs women series was one of my first introductions into feminist theory and it's place in pop culture. This was precisely BECAUSE it was introduced to me as a cultural analysis within the geek space I was in at the time.

I hate that I understand why these bad faith "gamer" spaces would focus on her, it felt like she was in the forefront of feminism in the severe "bro" spaces of gamergate and places like it.

Disclaimer: I like Anita Sarkeesian.

But also, I just saw a writeup of a Youtuber whose content has come a long way from his Gamergate days, and to explain that, the wiki says, "Anita Sarkeesian is a radical feminist who created a webseries about sexist tropes in video games"

AHAHAHAHAHA ANITA SARKEESIAN, RADICAL FEMINIST

HOO HEE EXCUSE ME THAT'S A GOOD ONE

Radical feminist. Feminist extremist. Anita Sarkeesian.

Anita Sarkeesian did her Master's Thesis in Social and Political Thought in 2010 on the trope of the "Strong Woman" in fantasy and science fiction TV shows, and produced Tropes vs Women, a series of online videos breaking down her work in a way that was accessible to a lay audience. She found a ready audience in geek feminist circles, since this was exactly the kind of thing we wanted and needed right then.

Tropes vs Women was extremely bog-standard cultural critique, what you'd find expressed in discussion between scholars of literary theory or media analysis anywhere, and exactly what 99% of feminists were saying at the time. It certainly talked about patriarchy as the complex system of sexism fused into our cultural matrix, so it's not like it wasn't radical feminism from that viewpoint, but it wasn't "radical" by way of being especially militant. Sarkeesian frequently pointed out how individual occurrences of a trope weren't harmful in themselves, but that a media landscape completely saturated with only that trope and nothing but that trope is, in the aggregate, a big feminist issue.

And the internet

HAAAAAAAATED

her for it.

Like, geek feminists got flak a lot anyway, especially when we wanted things like properly enforced policies against sexual harassment at science fiction conventions. And yeah, there totally were toxic keyboard warriors who said stuff about all men being scum - but Sarkeesian wasn't one of them.

It's probably because of her succinct, matter-of-fact, "this is not a debated issue, feminists have decades of theory and research to back this point up, sources abound if you google for thirty seconds so I won't stop to baby you through all the fundamental concepts" approach that she got such a big reach. She was calm, concise, coherent, and rational, everything feminists are told we need to be.

Unfortunately that just made her seem... attackable, I think. A good target, not actually scary or impassioned, unlikely to respond to violence with violence. The perfect kind of person to play five seconds of, and then spend the next five minutes yelling into your mic because IF ANITA IS RIGHT ABOUT VIDEO GAME SEXIST YOU MIGHT AS WELL SAY THAT EVERYTHING IS SEXIST AND SEXISM IS SYSTEMIC AND ENDEMIC TO ALL OF WESTERN CULTURE AND OTHER CULTURES TOO, WHICH IS CLEARLY RIDICULOUS, ANITA LADY BAD.

She literally spent five solid years as Enemy #1 in online geek spaces. It was completely insane. I am so sorry she had to take the brunt of it, and yet grateful that she did. She held the line and took the shit and kept doing good decent feminist work for years after, though she did admit to burnout and closed up shop on her nonprofit org Feminist Frequency in 2023. I hope to hell she's having a good day.

But even now, more than a decade later, dudes talk about her as though she were Geek Feminist Godzilla, the biggest baddest woman in the universe, off to lay waste to downtown Video Games and cut everybody's balls off.

When people (mostly dudes, but not all) talk like this, it's just very funny and unintentionally revealing because of the absolute averageness of her third-wave, trans-inclusive, western-centric, intersectional feminism. It makes them look absolutely pathetic.

Because it just makes it clear that she is probably the first and last self-described feminist the speaker has ever paid attention to.

[richardsondavis]

Lingerie is not Armor - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Holy shit! This was good! Insightful as fuck! Definitely recommend!

[tachyonblu]

GameDiviner explores his thoughts on Anita Sarkeesian, social justice in gaming and negative negative aspects of gaming culture.

[theboyonthehighcastle]

WHO STILL BELIEVES ANITA SARKEESIAN!

No one, absolutely no one.

It's a hellworld we live in, but you can still find reasons to rejoice if you look for them.