It's the hat. You can't see that hat and not think this guy is 100% legit.

nothing is funnier than threatened privilege

nothing

Threatened privilege? Anita is not threatening anybody's privilege. Her arguments are shitty and she conveniently leaves out most of what the gaming industry has done right.
The gender tropes exist not because men are mean, but because games have been a male dominated hobby. Now more women are getting into games so that should change.
Jangbones just wants to have sex with Anita. You need to work on your game.

The irony being that Anita is your damsel in distress. Go save her you strapping knight!

Privilege? Dear lord man don't take this thing down that road. None of us here are Louis CK.

I'm not sure "privilege" can apply to the opposition of someone who gets paid six figures to lecture them on how uncouth their video game stories are.

Anita's argument is the same as complaining that they don't make a Robocop movie with Lewis as the main character. Only with videogames is there enough lack of self respect to take something like that seriously.

I don't think anyone can read her masters thesis and claim that there's an insightful mind going on there. She made an academic career out of rattling off examples of media that supported her thesis (and leaving out or taking out of context anything that didn't).

Then she found out she can get paid doing the exact same thing. She found an untapped criticism niche easily labeled a boy's club and went to town.

Your "opposition" has jack shit to do with her funding or her master's thesis. You're mad at her because she made a big deal out of the pervasive sexism in a subculture that you, personally, find inoffensive.

You know that wish you have that she would just shut up and deal with it? That's you, reacting to having your privilege challenged.

Feminists act like these tropes just came out of the blue. They don't have any consideration for the reality of them. The basic reality of why Mario rescues the princess is that men traditionally are bigger, stronger, and we've been the warriors. It doesn't take a genius to realize this.
Yes things have changed a little in our story telling and in some gender roles, but for the past couple thousand years who has been doing 95% of the ass kicking? MEN! I'm not trying to sound sexist, but that's the cold hard reality. I'm not against having more strong females in games, but at least I can accept the obvious reality as to why there have been so few.

Not every feminist is like that, Cena. A lot of feminists are, I'm not going to lie, and we could spend weeks discussing why this is so, but there is a "silent majority" of moderates and dissidents who both account for biological realities and reject the deeply flawed and highly subjective Continental methodology that's in vogue with some academic cultural critics.

You should read some Camille Paglia if you haven't yet: I don't know what Camille Paglia thinks of Sarks, or even if she's aware of this "controversy", but I'd like to think that Paglia would be right there in the trenches with you.

You don't see that many famous novels written in the last few hundred years where the plot is: THE MAN IS BIGGER STRONGER SO HE NEEDS TO KICK ASS TO GET HIS PUSSY BACK.

That must be what the gaming industry has done right

>>Threatened privilege? Anita is not threatening anybody's privilege. Her arguments are shitty and she conveniently leaves out most of what the gaming industry has done right.

That's actually pretty true, but that's why it's so funny. Anita's videos are a snoozefest. but that only goes to show that it doesn't take much for privilege to feel threatened.

I'm not sure if what the industry does right is relevant. If I criticize a perceived trend in certain authors, would you interpret that as a stab at "books".

>>Jangbones just wants to have sex with Anita. You need to work on your game.

Oh, here we go. When I left a comment on a TFL Bill video. Bill's response was all about how I was criticizing him so that women would have sex with me. So

(Because everyone knows the the comments section in a TFL video is crawling with pussy, and they're all horny from watching Bill)

This is the whole White Knight bullshit. No man ever defends any woman on the internet for any reason other than to have sex with her. There's a big trope against men right there. Does this ever actually work?

>>The basic reality of why Mario rescues the princess is that men traditionally are bigger, stronger, and we've been the warriors. It doesn't take a genius to realize this.

Obviously.

Not being a gamer, I had to look this up. Here's a sample.

>>In Super Mario Galaxy, Peach invites Mario to the Star Festival. When he arrives, Bowser lifts Peach's castle out of the ground and takes her to the creation of his new galaxy. Mario attempts to ride on the castle, but Kamek attacks him, sending him flying into space. With the help of a Luma, Mario sets off to rescue Peach. Peach sends Mario letters with 1-Up Mushrooms throughout the game. After Mario rescues Peach and the universe is saved, Mario and Peach wake up in the Mushroom Kingdom reunited

Clearly, this all about realism.

Five stars because the video is funny.

Or, you know Vaidency, our issues with her are that she's pretty incompetent at anything even close to resembling actual research. Ya ever think of that?

Because as often as she blathers on and on about how "we shouldn't look at these games out of context", she sure loves looking at any and all games entirely out of context to support her already preconceived notions.

Because honestly, that's my problem with her: she's butchering the facts to fit them into her her preconceived bullshit stance that "video games directly impact actual real world sexism".

As long as she gets reactions like this, I'm all for it.

"Or, you know Vaidency, our issues with her are that she's pretty incompetent at anything even close to resembling actual research. Ya ever think of that?"

No, I didn't ever think that.

Want to know why? Because there are a lot of researchers out there employing questionable methods who AREN'T subjected to a constant deluge of rape threats. It's kind of a giveaway that something other than academic criticism is at play here.

Boy, if I had a dollar for every time someone on poeTV threatened to rape Sarks!

Every time someone tells you to deal with it, that's privilege talking? Is that the crazy road we're going down?

Mother tells shrieking child to accept that he's not getting that toy? Parent privilege!

Homeless person rolling his eyes at a cafe patron exclaiming that they're starving? Slum privilege!

Teenager complaining about having to go to school? Conformist privilege!

This is a fun game!


But seriously, how many people have actually read her thesis and visited her channel's other stuff? I have! Her thesis is dozens of pages taking aspect of TV shows out of context to present as sexist and therefore supporting her statement. All her other work makes sense after you read that.

She thinks women in media wearing anything less than worker coveralls is sexist. She thinks every love song ever made is degrading sexist trash. Didn't somebody make the Tipper Gore comparison? Tipper made a crusade out of taking song lyrics out of context. The thing with Tipper though, I think she actually believed that those songs were Satanist trash. With Anita she's been doing this as a career for so long that it seems mostly robotic at this point.

Can you respond to any of her critics without immediately claiming that they must be monocled misogynists? What about her women critics? She has plenty of them!

Actually strike the Tipper Gore comparison. I'm seeing more of a formative William Donohue here. Give her a bigger budget and I'd imagine she would hire a staff to tell her what she should tell everyone is offensive.

>>The basic reality of why Mario rescues the princess is that men traditionally are bigger, stronger, and we've been the warriors. ... but for the past couple thousand years who has been doing 95% of the ass kicking? MEN

The trope has nothing to do with men being physically stronger. In fact, a great deal of the "heroes" in these games are intentionally wimpy unlikelies. That's the point: the trope isn't about male strength. Instead, it's a fantasy about sexual conquest, and one that puts women in a very bad spot (both as passive victims, and as sexual rewards for "good" behaviour)

Cena, if you're going to go the BS "it's just natural" route, please name a real-life historical instance where a man has rescued a woman from the perils of an bad guy of some kind and she then proceeds to "reward" the man with a sexual relationship that wasn't coerced or forced upon her. And it can't be in the line of duty, such as with police officers, soldiers, or fire fighters.

I wonder if some men realize when their sexuality is being used to fleece them. Like that hot naked elf chick in armor that barely covers her tits? That's what they were counting on. If you clicked on it and played the game, even if there were never any tits to be had, you've been had.

Now I'm seeing boob-maiden ads that have "MEN ONLY" across them with even more sexualized female fantasy characters. It's pretty insulting to everyone involved.

For 22nd century archaeologists:

These are the least sexist gamers on YouTube.

I don't know why people think sexism in video games can't have even the most minor effects on people, like video games exist in some vacuum. While you can call Anita on a few things she's nowhere near William Donahue, have some fucking perspective.

You're totally right about that. The video goes down hill from there. Hopefully he won't be as heavy handed in parts 2-69.

Still 5 stars for "Take the girls out and put more dudes in it!"

Yeah, I agree. Everything after he acknowledges the fedora could be cut and the video would improve a lot. It's maybe a 3.5 star video with 5 star reactions.

Looks like I hit the Submit button too soon. Turns out Sarkeesian finished her third video, three days ago and yes she does bring up Dudes in Distress. As I was watching it something occurred to me, did she ever mention Portal or Final Fantasy X-2?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjImnqH_KwM

You haven't met many women's studies grad students have you?

Those are two great examples that I really wish she had brought up. When I played Portal I just assumed I was a guy until I accidentall saw myself in a portal ourborous, which played up her "men as default characters" idea. And Final Fantasy because Lightening just got a boob job and fox ears. Do game designers just assume that no women play games?

That's FFXIII (and XIII-2). FFX-2 is that amazingly shitty one where all the character classes are different ridiculous dresses and the world is united via pop concert. No, really.

As someone who hasn't played a FF game since 7 (and only got through the first disc before a glitch in the PC version I had made it impossible to finish) I am so bewildered by the bits and pieces of the later ones I occasionally get exposed to.

The fuck happened?

I blame the fans. 7 did very well, so they tried to make the next one with an even more apathetic main character, only to have it backfire. Then they tried to 'go back to their roots' with 9, which was equally poorly received, and since then they've just been trying shit with no real discernible pattern to try and recapture their glory days, while their entire fanbase collectively claims each new entry to be either 'the best one EVER' or absolute shit, with no middle ground. They can't figure out what the fuck they want, so Square sure as hell can't.

X-2 is at least better than FFX (a low bar to clear, I know), largely for the overall lack of Tidus. The combat system was pretty great, even if a few classes were crazy unbalanced (hi Alchemist, Dark Knight!) and I really liked having a job system-based FF where I didn't have to haul around a dozen extra weapons and armors because oops, I really need dragoons for this one gimmick fight!

That said, there are only two good things to say about VIII: 1) it's a fun and addictive card game disguised as a severely boring geopolitical high-school drama, and 2) Selphie.

It wasn't actually that carefully created unfortunately, but I still laughed.

I thought it was intentional too at first, but looking at it alongside a few of his other videos, I've got my doubts.

MEOW!

Sorry about that. I don't care for games myself, but I know many intelligent people who do.

Wait, what? A game where you can beat up Anita?!

What's this game called? I am so fucking there, thanks John!