A response to my previous post

This is in response to this
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s125/sh/2c8b8a53-a314-4858-a61b-ca2d8f683a4c/f1569bdf0daf6d9fcc3f7db2583f7d0d
 ...which is a response to my previous post.

"- disable comments: Really? I mean, can you blame her? This accusation is just silly."

Yes. Yes I can blame her. As a blogger and as a youtuber. Who cares what other people say? It's comments. People obviously disagree with her. Why can't they talk about it? So we have no open forum to express ourselves, or argue with others. Thus, we're forced to go to other places to talk about it, or, the only place we can talk to her and others: twitter.

Does she listen? Does she care? Nope. Great job Anita. A critic who can't even listen to criticism on themselves. Pathetic.

Oh, and she's disabled ratings on the majority of her videos. So we have no idea who has actually watched her stuff and disliked them. Why even disable ratings?

I have some popular, controversial videos and I have rating counts that are nearly 50/50. What's she scared of? (Oh right. Dissent.)

And don't give me the death threat nonsense. She's a pro-victim profiting on being a Damsel. The very same thing she's arguing is bad, because feminism. She is the very thing she denounces.

"- steal footage: This accusation is so representative for the whole conflict; While I agree, that you should credit your sources, technically she did NOT steal. Was it unprofessional to not ask for permission? In my opinion, yes it was. Did she steal? Nope, Fair use."

While I'm the first to uphold anyone's ability to use the Fair Use clause to take copyrighted material for criticism (I am the first youtuber to have sued another for Misrepresentation under 512(f), to my knowledge), it's an issue I've talked to my lawyer extensively about this. The whole thing is a legal quagmire as soon as she started raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

1. She didn't ask for permission.
2. She didn't credit or cut deals with those people (video and images.)
3. She raised money.
4. She didn't play the games she supposedly said she did.

(I can't back 4 up, but it seems pretty obvious that's what happened when she simply stole so much footage of retro games; additionally, considering her knowledge of games in general. After $150k and 2 years, she's had plenty of time and no excuses to play the retro games she supposedly bought.)

As soon as the money goes passed a huge threshold, like, over $200, a civil case can certainly be called up. I've heard of stories for much, much less than $150k+, for things as simple as selling photographs on t-shirts.

"- not responding to critics may be frustrating for critics. But not responding to critics can also seen as professionalism. Many artists choose not to go down the rabbit hole and adress critics. It's a personal choice, we have to respect."

It's your opinion that it's professional to not respond to criticism? For 2+ years?

It is hypocritical and disingenuous for any artist, or critic, who, when given legitimate criticism, for their continued work, over the years, to not respond to it. You make it sound like she's untouchable, when all she's doing is releasing feminist opinion pieces about a media that people of all ages, creeds and backgrounds love, and insinuating they're sexist, without being a lover or expert in the field.

#GamerGate is largely about the sanctity and professionalism of journalism in the gaming press. I don't know how the hell -- or in what Orwellian city you live in -- it's somehow seen as professional to not respond to criticism. You may as well give up freedom of speech, debate, and property rights while you're at it. Nothing to see here citizen. Everything I said is perfect. I don't need to respond to you. I'm perfect (I'm being sarcastic, in case you don't know.)

She's not the next David Bowie releasing a controversial video enraging religious groups.

She's a biased, lying, opportunist. Ms. "I'm not a fan of video games/they're gross" Sarkeesian produces videos that incense her audience using high school level analysis and cherry picked data, and you're telling me she's professional for being beyond reproach?

Next I'm going to start hearing "ignorance is strength" as your SJW slogan, and you'd be okay with that.

Just go here and tell me how many you think are critical and how many are trolling.

"-lying: the whole 'I don't like games' – 'I love games' stick again? The footage of her in college is seen as 'proof' of her being deceitful, but actually it is possible to have a love/hate relationship with games. I can certainly relate. I played videogames all my life, but I'm not a gamer. I'm in love with the games I played as a kid, but I'm frustrated with how conservative the industry today is. Sometimes I hate games and then I stumble over an interesting indie title and I'm in love allover again – relationship status: It's complicated. Maybe Sarkeesian lied, I don't know. For me, it's not important. Her points are still valid."

She doesn't have a love/hate relationship with games. She's a straight up liar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW-69xXD734

That totally destroyed her credibility, but SJWs apparently have no standards, or reasoning, on what a hypocrite is.

Well guess what, Oceanian? You think that's okay. Why? Because she doesn't respond to that. She's professional.

And to say her points are still valid at the end of your sentence? Prove it. Cause all I heard was a lying, biased opportunist, who said a bunch of bullshit. Who isn't an art or game critic or advocate, and was so overly sensitized to her philosophy, she had to cherry pick responses to make it seem like games are sexist and misogynist.

"biased: I think this is a misunderstanding. She uses feminist theories (obviously) as a basis of her analysis. That is a completley valid approach for critics and scholars alike."

No.

Bias, or revealing a bias, does not make an argument valid. It makes it less valid. The more bias you have, the less truth there is. The more one sided, narrow minded the understanding becomes. We're looking for accurate depictions of sexism in video games, and she screwed that up. Why do I know this? Because she's a sex-negative feminist. She couldn't handle a few comments and down votes to her videos before she went to Kickstarter, and removed such videos. Aww, poor Anita.

There's plenty of feminism out there. I'm sure an actual feminist could give a better account of it in video games. But Anita ain't it.

And, if she's not a video game critic, journalist, art critic (visual, audio, animation, etc.), then she has no business what so ever being an outsider. Being an outsider doesn't make her more objective or clear headed when discussing art. This isn't a legal battle. It makes her less credible. She's giving an opinion on aggregates of video games, that show patterns of whatever, without making sense of it.

She literally just went through a page of tvtropes.org, saw what she thought was relevant to her biased agenda, and started cherry picking. And she still screwed it up.

In her Damsels in Distress part 2, regarding Borderlands 2, she entirely misses the characterization of Angel, and her integrity within the plot, claiming she's a damsel, when she's not.
http://essays.ajs.com/2013/06/borderlands-2-and-damsel-in-distress.html
http://victorsopinion.blogspot.ca/2013/06/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRtoLYKbZ_8
If she played it, she might've known better not to use that as an example...
...or she did play it, and didn't understand a damn thing in that part of the story (media critic?)...
...or she did play it, and realized most of her audience wouldn't have played that game, and ran with it...

But because she took it out of its narrative context, and because it showed the player character shooting her, clearly she was an example of the trope (and the Mercy Kill trope.) As if Angel asking the player character to kill them is some "male fantasy", and not, instead, of the powerful female character, choosing to take control of her life.

That's also observation bias. Everything is misogyny.

In her latest video, she cherry picks more examples, this time of Bioshock, saying that impaled women are somehow sex objects for being dead bodies (even though there are male bodies also dead in the same areas) in Siren Alley. Yet, she completely forgot to mention the entire level of Fort Frolic, where only male bodies were murdered, held in poses, and covered in plaster (a la Sander Cohen, a homosexual), who are literally ornamental parts of the "background decoration."

I'm sure there are more, but I don't care to listen to her nonsense.

In storytelling, context is king. Something Anita has removed from her aggregate of examples. (Or, again: she lied to us about actually either playing the games, not understanding the games, or just being stupid and lazy and not caring what the audience knows is right.)

"- profiting off victim hood: Sorry, but now you're being a dick. She is a victim of harassment. Saying she is profiting off her victim hood is belitteling this very serious fact and sounds a lot like victim blaming."

I'm a victim of harassment, and DMCA. You don't see me contacting the authorities or backing down from said harassment. She is a professional victim. That's how she gets the money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fyF3xWz8vA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSoDEA6yw24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPQlTqcQJI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2sNUhskwlI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwX8-jfDGpk

I'm sure there are movie and music stars out there who get way more death threats, but you don't see them freaking out or asking for money.

"- obviously art is an important part of culture. Her main focus just happens to be the role of women in popculture, especially video games"

Which is completely nonsensical. The time of "culture critics" is long over, even if they were ever relevant in the past.

"- Another misconception (imo) as she has never said, creators of games are misogynists. She's looking at pieces of art – in this case games - and highlights parts that can be seen as misogynistic, like a film critic criticizes a movie for being misogynistic/homophobic/racist without saying the director is a mysoginist/homophob/racist. Sometimes a piece of art/ certain parts of a piece of art can be problematic (e.g. reenforce stereotypes) and the creator was oblivious to that fact. You don't have to be a self-identified racist/homophobe/misogynist to (accidental) reuse racist/homophobe/ misogynist tropes."

So what?

Why would anyone consider things, when taken out of their various contexts, as misogynistic?

I can take things in their context, of how dreadfully violent, painful, and sickening video games are. Who cares if a bunch of video games have women being victimized? Same with the male game characters (only multiply that violence several times.) Now I don't personally care if all the soldiers I shoot in an FPS are women, but I don't see how that's relevant.

There's nothing problematic with stereotypes. None. Nothing. They're just stereotypes. Patterns that have emerged.

You don't know if the creator was oblivious to that fact, or whether it was intentional. Who are you talking about? Show me examples, because you're making stuff up.

Remember: tropes are neither good, nor bad. Which means, they're neither misogynist or misandrist. Unless you think misogyny is neither good nor bad.

"- The way I understand it, the problem is not the trope in itself. The problem is the constant usage."

When did Anita say this? She wasn't talking about it's frequency. That's a whole other argument than "these tropes are so unoriginal in storytelling!" You see, you're inventing the narrative that Anita is trying to tell you. It's like you're not paying attention. See what happens when she doesn't respond to criticism? You have to "make up" what she's trying to say: probably because she's spouting nonsense.

"Sarkeesian speaks out for more diversification. Nothing wrong with that in my book. I also think that it is highly problematic to tell women/People of Colour/Homosexuals/Transsexuals etc. that it is THEIR problem, that THEY are oversensible when they speak out about the representation of their gender/race/sexuality or whatever."

That's because they don't stop whining about it. Wah! I'm not being represented! I can't identify with this hooker. Why, game, why?

Boo-hoo. Go feel entitled elsewhere. Don't like a game, because it doesn't fit into your world view? Go make your own.

When I criticize a game, I criticize it for what it is, and what it was trying to be. I use critical analysis of storytelling and art, because that's what I was trained in, and that's what games are. (I went to school for video game design and dev, and took various classes in the arts (philosophy, fine arts, digital art, creative writing, etc.)) Remember: context is king. Anita? She throws it away, because she wants to create her own biased narrative.

"We should at least consider the validity of their arguments because more likely than not we don't know what it feels like to be sexually harassed or discriminated against because of gender/skincolour/sexuality etc."

As soon as she makes valid ones. (Not exactly holding on for this one.)

And any writer worth their ink can write about any topic or conflict. If all you're arguing is "stories in games are too X and should be less X, and more Y". Well guess what? That's not what Anita is saying, at all.

"Even if we think we know what it is like to be bullied or discriminated against, chances are, we don't know it the way they do"

Bullshit. Everyone has been bullied or faced social pressure in some manner throughout their life. However, considering Anita's reaction to dissent, maybe she's the one who never had a healthy  childhood.

"Let's say – for the sake of the argument- she's not a gamer."

I don't have to. She said it herself.

"Is Hitman the perfect example? Probably not. Does that mean her whole theory is invalid? Hell no. Yes, Hitman discourages you from killing the innocent. Still, her whole point, that the Creatore gives you a world, you can interact with and in way to many of these worlds you can slap around half naked women holds up. In Hitman? The Game may not encourage it, but you CAN do it like the footage shows."

Actually it does disprove her theory.

1. It's a stealth game. You lose points for a) being detected, b) killing things aside from your target.
2. Out of all the play throughs I've seen, no one has slapped around strippers except Anita.
3. Just because you can do X mechanic, doesn't mean it's good, or bad. It's merely a function of the game when removed from it's narrative context.

If her point was to prove a game can have you interact with people by killing them? Congratulations. You now know you can kill humans in a game called Hitman.

But oh no, those "people" are strippers. Misogyny. Sexism. Let me go call the sensitivity police to this entertaining piece of interactive fiction you seem to have a problem with. We should probably blow up Hollywood while we're at it. Oh, and the first amendment.

"But to see the video footage shows, there is something horrible about the way you can treat these half naked women."

No, it literally doesn't. Agent 47 kills that stripper with a takedown move. (Anita then shows off ragdoll physics because she just loves collision detection.) The same way he kills any other person in the game. There is nothing horrible about that. Why? Because this is a Hitman game. If you were so goddamn traumatized by killing anything in this game, well guess what genius? You probably wouldn't be playing.

The only thing horrible is your immature reaction to your target having a vagina and wearing skimpy clothing. (A stripper in a strip club. Wearing skimpy clothing. Oh my. Call a feminist.)

Never mind the fact that one of them was talking about being worried about her friend going missing, and how she thinks her boss caused it, and how she might be next. Never mind that brief moment of humanity -- that turned an anonymous sex worker into a person, concerned about her friends and her own life -- and how, if you cared, how you wish you could help her, just like Victoria. And how much more careful you were with not hitting those panels (that just break away when you touch them) so not to have them catch you so you wouldn't have to silence them. Although that does make you wonder: would putting them out of their misery help them from a life of pain and terror? Agent 47 has internal monologue at times of the things he does, who he kills, and why. Is it just to protect Victoria? This adds to the depth of the character and the world you're in. He isn't just some nameless, mindless killer, even though he's designed to be as such. He's trying to be a person, trying desperately to survive and escape this world, and realizes that this is what he is.

Again, this is a video game about a guy who kills people. Not a documentary on the life of strippers.

You see, you're missing the forest for the trees. Anita pulls off a twig and every non-gamer, or feminist sucker, flips their shit. "This twig means something!" But she never actually tells us what. She just has a collection of twigs from multiple trees and, somehow, that's supposed to construct some other tree -- oh wait she doesn't even do that with the twigs.

"violence against sex worker is a sad fact, these games trivialize and somewhat endulge in. To a point movies have the same problem by the way. The exploitation of women dancing and stripping as visceral pleasure for the viewer or as mere background decoration has a long and sad tradition. It doesn't get criticized enough, but it gets critized and 'the male gaze' is part of film criticism and film theory."

Yeah. So don't hurt the sex workers? Oh right, only Anita did that. Because she's a sexist, I imagine.

See, you can hurt them. Or, you can be a good player, and sneak around them. As you're supposed to. In a goddamned stealth game. If you go and hurt them, doesn't that say something about you, the player? (e.g. a1) are you a misogynist? a2) are you a sexist? a3) are you getting an erection yet? a4) did you check your privilege as a Hitman? b) are you a shitty Hitman player? c) are you perhaps reading way too much into this you over-reactive snowflake?)

These games don't trivialize death. You're literally killing people in the game world. Strippers, waiters, caddys, guards, etc. The kills are conducted in a variety of methods, tools and details. You're a killing machine. A Hitman. Hence, the title. You're supposed to kill only your targets, with stealth and silence. Women are not being exploited. They are not "just background decoration." They are people, or at least, trying to be, in the brief moment we get to see and hear them, living out their lives. Just like the men are, and boy, if you think those strippers are exploited, for the grand total of 20 seconds you see and hear them? Wait till you see the men being exploited and killed in that game. By you. The player.

I imagine if Anita talked about male exploitation, she could devote hours and hours on Hitman alone. But oh no. Vaginas.

But let ask you a serious question: how do you know they're being exploited? Tell me that. No, seriously. Show me where in the game you know, in their 20 second brief life as a stripper, they're being exploited. How do you know they don't want to be there? How do you know they don't enjoy it? You see, there's not much depth to them, nor, should there be. Because this is a game. About a Hitman. The player character.

Never mind the fact that Anita takes this stuff out of context.

Never mind that this isn't "Hit-Tell me a story about the Strippers in a Stripclub-man."

You're Agent 47. You have one job. And it certainly isn't therapy for random NPCs who just happen to have vaginas. There's no real reason for the game designer, writer, developer, etc., to cater to your every ridiculous need just because vaginas make you cry.

"- I would call the use of sexual imagery as lazy if it's used to ponder to a certain crowd (e.g. Megan Fox in the Transformer Movies) or if used as a shortcut to establish the fictional (e.g. dark & gritty) world."

How the flying hell is that lazy? That's called knowing your goddamned audience. And delivering.

It's also called taste. And guess what? All the bitching you're saying or how virtual women are being victimized, isn't ever -- and I mean this, ever -- going to change people liking attractive things, men or women. Until gamers, for some reason, stop liking attractive things in their games (women, men, shiny objects, whatever), game developers, movie directors, comic book artists, etc., are going to keep doing it.

And they have been. And all your whining isn't going to change anything.

But hey, maybe, maybe you'll get ambitious and make your own game, with no tits and killing, and whatever. Get all your other SJW fascists and put in all the politically correct bullshit you want. Let's see it sell. I actually would like to see it do well, and you and your SJWs do well, if you succeed. Corner that market. If anything, maybe you can start producing and stop whining, cause you are writing so much crap that I have to respond to.

"I would also argue that tropes are wildly accepted as lazy in writing circles."

In the circles I know, I've never heard anyone sigh and go "oh, sexy people. So 1984." Case you hadn't noticed, all the actors in Game of Thrones, who are oh-so-exploited for taking their clothes off and having sex scenes, are drop dead gorgeous. But apparently the story is very good, so I guess they're not being exploited, right? I mean, castration doesn't bother you, cause that's one step closer to a vagina, right?

As for writers, they avoid clichés like the plague. On http://www.tvtropes.org, the homepage states:"On the whole, tropes are not clichés."

"But again, it's not about the tropes, it's about the heavy reliance on these tropes."

Again, how do you know this? Did Anita say this? Cause much like Anita, I think you're just projecting her nonsense with your own. Cause I've written and edited stories. Took courses on it, argued, edited in roundtable discussions, etc. All stories have already been told. When writers and editors make suggestions, I bet half of them are tropes: but we don't care. Aside from a handful of obvious ones, we don't ever say "oh that's so cliche." We go "how can we make this feel X?"

Anyone writing a story with sex workers and murder? That's interesting.

There is nothing wrong with using tropes, stereotypes, themes, sex, death, etc. It's how you do it that counts. And to say it's wrong just means that's your taste. And that's fine, but you don't get to tell others what to like just because you can't handle it. And don't bother telling that to artists.

"And while original stories may be rare, it should always be about what you do with the 'stock material'. As a writer, you can give it a creative twist or be lazy. The Problem wit the adverts is not only that it - as Sarkeesian points out - recreates another trope of the 'beautiful, but dead' trope, it also hints at the bigger problem of objectifcation of women in advertising."

Nowhere was Anita saying what you just stated. A poor writer can be lazy; but it's about how they write, not what they write about.

Advertising is about making things sell. One big billboard with a chick on it with skimpy clothing. Wow. Where have I seen that before. Yup. How dare advertisers use sex because it makes them money. How unoriginal. How dare they make money on a historically proven method of selling things. If only they were more original, they could make more money. Who would ever want to look at tits. Not me. So unoriginal.

Please keep your sex-negative feminist bullshit to a minimum. I'm hopefully past the halfway mark here.

"- Objectification is used in the way social philosophy defines it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification"

Thank you for pointing out your ideological nonsense so I don't have to research it to point out it has no place in an analysis of game content. Games have their own philosophies (ludology) coupled with literary theory, for games with narrative. You don't ask a baker to make you a pair of boots.

" But that in itself caters to a (male) savior/revenge fantasy."

So what if it caters to things, in your opinion? Stopping the bad guy is the point. There's a boss. A bad guy. Stop him. Saving the girl may just be part of it, or she maybe intrinsic to stopping the bad guy, or the plot, or nothing at all. And there's nothing wrong with any of that. Again, it's how it's done that matters.

Of course, you, and Anita, would've known this, if you knew anything about games or storytelling. But because vaginas are involved, you lose all sense of what a game is trying to do; if you even knew in the first place.

"Gender theory would argue that is rooted in the male gender role."

That's because these people don't understand science, economics, physiology, the endocrine system, etc. Gender roles are just that, roles. And while individuals commit criminal acts, it's largely based on biology and economic forces, than whether one wears pants or pumps.

"In a male dominated society, men are supposed to be the strong one, not only physically, but men are also supposed to suffer silently, to be the emotional detached, rational one, the breadwinner etc."

Luckily, we don't live in a male dominated society. And even if we did, that would have nothing to do with gender roles, and more to do with biology, social and developmental psychology.

"Patriarchy hurts men as well as women."

Not a fan of the ladies, are you Trebek.

"Most critics of feminism (e.g. on youtube) ignore this fact completly."

Probably because they're busy wondering where all the women are being oppressed by not getting into all those male dominated industries of oil drilling, coal mining or porn theatre janitors. Damn you, patriarchy.

"I agree. It IS a whole other topic because political convictions do not necessarily render ones arguments invalid."

Oh right. Marx. A fellow who helped come up with creating dialectical materialism, which is the exact opposite of the dialectic process of Hegel. The very one thing you don't want to use in having a serious discussion on the validity of your ideology to make any damn sense together (synthesis.)

Welcome to Oceania, citizen. Ignorance is strength.

"Feminism strives for equality of the sexes (and not female chauvinism, like some critics claim)."

Feminism wants to create a uni-sex? Good luck with that. And all the examples of feminists I've talked to were calling me sexist and misogynists just for disagreeing with them. Sometimes, just saying hello. I'm telling you: you're making me think there's something wrong with me.

"- I don't think that's true. It's a common misconception that criticism has no merits in itself. Xou don't have to be a game developer/writer/director or artist of any kind for that matter to be a critic. In fact, more often than not, critique can be seen as its own artform. And I do think critics can make a difference. And I hope we will see a wider range of female characters in game. We already do. And that's a good thing. Just my 2 cents."

If you don't know anything about the thing you're critiquing, you're a bad critic.
If you don't know the context of the thing you're critiquing, your criticism is flawed.
If you take things out of context, you're lying to your audience.

Criticism is not an art form. Who told you this? It is analytical, empirical, and structured. It requires an experienced, critical eye. And lots of evidence within its context.

Gamers don't care if we get more or less females in games. We want fun games. And we want all ideologies or other nonsense. Game designers and developers are free to make any kind of games with any content they wish. So long as such games are fun, we care. If they're not, they're not worth playing, and the medium and reason for listening to storytelling is nearly gone.

If you want to argue stories and their composition, learn about it. Don't just say "we need females doing x in games". Until someone shows us why, then no, we don't, and never did. Anita certainly isn't the right person for the job.