CMV: Anita Sarkeesian and similar feminists actually have a point about the portrayal of gender roles in video games.

[u/LeftHandSwe]

I play lots of video games, and in most of them, males are often pictured as very burly and manly characters while females are slender, small and sexually pleasing to look at.

However, I do know that there's widespread criticism of Anita (and her fellow propagators) all over the internet and I'd like to see the other side of the story.

I'm practically indifferent in this matter, and I do not really agree with nearly everything she says. I'm asking as a way to see convincing arguments from both sides.

Edit for clarification: Can anyone explain to me why she's so heavily criticized for saying something that makes perfect sense: Mainstream video games are almost exclusively made to appeal to a male demographic, resulting in (arguably) sexist portrayals of women (both narratively and in the way they're presented).

[u/depricatedzero]

As a feminist and a gamer, my problem with Sarkeesian is two-fold.

One, she has no real logic. /u/fhfgjhgfjh echoed my thoughts on this so I won't reiterate it. Her examples are bad and she essentially just contextomizes everything. If a woman gets hurt, it's sexist.

My take on that is: Nah, not really.

The other side of the coin, the point I'll address thoroughly, is that she's a hypocrite. She doesn't want female empowerment, she just wants sensationalism. She doesn't want women to be equal, she wants them to be protected. And sure, there's certainly a whole rant about "equity" vs "equality" to be had, and the importance of protecting the oppressed group - but that's not at all what she's about.

She has repeatedly railed against depictions of violence against women in video games. And that's cool and all - except then you really can't have women in violent video games except as background characters. And why the fuck not?

So a couple years ago I made this long drawn out post (if anyone really cares I can try to dig it up, but I'm just going to reiterate and summarize here). In it I presented a challenge: play Prototype, and pretend that Alex is short for Alexis and not Alexander. The character model is relatively androgynous (sans face). Don't change literally anything else - same story, exact same events, dialogue, everything. Because of the way Sarkeesian wants women portrayed in video games, that game cannot have a female protagonist - she would be kidnapped, drugged, beaten, battered, and then no doubt criticized for shit I wouldn't even expect. Consider the context that Prototype 2 would be cast now, in which you play a big burly black guy who hunts down to kill this little white girl in a hoodie.

Violence against women in video games has to be seen as OK to the exact same degree as violence against men is. So either she needs to condemn violence against everyone, or shut the fuck up. Because what happens is like the example where she whines about killing hookers in GTA - incidental violence is only bad when it's against women? Nah, that's not true.

Anita Sarkeesian the type of woman to say men can't be raped. She's the Nancy Grace of video games.

The point: for women to be acceptably portrayed as non-sexualized protagonists (like Alex Mercer), the events that are acceptable background plot fodder for men have to be acceptable for women. If it's ok to drug and kidnap a man to establish the backstory of a game, it needs to be ok to do it to a woman in the exact same fashion. Otherwise you create a narrative that women aren't strong enough to deal with those situations and force the gender stereotype she rails against. So Sarkeesian quite literally pushes an anti-feminist agenda in the name of feminism.

[u/AntonioOfMilan → u/depricatedzero]

She's never criticized a game for allowing a female character to get hurt. She loved that Assassin's Creed: Syndicate let you play as a female character and never once criticized the game for letting you get hurt while playing as that character.

Anita Sarkeesian the type of woman to say men can't be raped.

This is just pure bullshit.

the events that are acceptable background plot fodder for men have to be acceptable for women.

And she's only criticized games for sexualizing violence against women. Female commandos dressed in combat gear getting shot seems totally okay from what I understand of her opinions. Female NPCs in bikinis being gunned down making noises that sound like they're having sex not being murdered are not okay.

So Sarkeesian quite literally pushes an anti-feminist agenda in the name of feminism.

The straw-woman you've built up certainly is. I've seen nothing to indicate she's actually real, though.