A Woman's project and it's Dramatic Online Justification

I was just listening to a fascinating interview on CBC Radio One's The Current with a media critic blogger, Anita Sarkeesian and the harassment she encountered online by misogynistic gamers when she announced she was preparing and fundraising for a new video about the depiction of women in video games. The interview will be available on show's website either later today, or tomorrow if you are  interested.


I have not personally directly seen the specific examples of the harassment as of yet, but what I have heard makes me embarrassed to be a man who likes video games. I will be the first to admit that the imagery can get really consistent, although I think the sexism was worse in some regards in the earlier decades; for instance, the standard damsel in distress cliche was in full force as the sole preserve in many video games like Donkey Kong in the 1980s.  After the Street Fighter series with its various playable female characters and the Tomb Raider one going, at least there were active female figures who don't need any man's help, even if they are all idealized as super models.

Furthermore, a major reason why sexuality was relatively downplayed  back then was because the graphics were not refined enough for a home system to make anything sexy in the games with any believability.  If you want, just take a look at this video of the notorious game, Custer's Revenge, to see how pathetic porn on the Atari 2600 could be.

For myself, I like playing games when operating a pretty girl in it is an option and I think sexuality has a legitimate place in video game when handled with creativity and grace, but the overbalance of sexual content pertaining to women is not wrong either.  Alas, addition is always more difficult than subtraction and so balancing the scales with more gender equitable material is going to be a challenge for some time.  However, proper decorum is not much to ask either and the idiotic bigots have no excuse themselves.


At least there is some satisfaction that the attention from this ill treatment probably helped Sarkeesian exceed her Kickstarter goal of $6000 by 2,648% to raise $158,922 and raised her profile.  I intend to read her blog as regularly as any other and I look forward to reading her observations.