Disclaimer: This feels a bit dated as of right now because its a bit after Anita Sarkeesian's newest Damsels in Distress video. I thought I would hold off till her next one simply because the timing didn't feel relevant after a certain numbers of day, in spite of the actual subject matter being a bit timeless in retrospect.
However, somethings been brought to my attention by Timtheterrible of the Destructoid community that pushes my hand to start posting my thoughts anyway, at least where it pertains to the subject matter of this particular post. I even had to re-write some of what I was going to say to to reflect the new turn of events.
However, somethings been brought to my attention by Timtheterrible of the Destructoid community that pushes my hand to start posting my thoughts anyway, at least where it pertains to the subject matter of this particular post. I even had to re-write some of what I was going to say to to reflect the new turn of events.
Damsels in Distress: Part 2 (may be NSFW)
If you've watched any of Anita Sarkeesian's Damsels in Distress, Tropes vs. Women, video series, a series based around pointing out the flaws of videogames to the tone of feminism and sexism, then you may have done like myself, and you've written off the series opening disclaimer as being nothing more then a way to say, "You can like videogames, and still judge them." And, essentially, thats all she ever really needed to say, or maybe didn't need to say, at all (?), to cover herself before delving into the sensitive issues she presents (or mangles). But, as almost a detriment to herself, her cause and her credibility, she doesn't quite stop there and uses a word that I'll admit I wasn't very familiar with before I decided to look it up:
Pernicious:
1: highly injurious or destructive : deadly
"But please keep in mind it is both possible, and necessary, to simultaneously enjoy a piece of media, while also being critical of its more pernicious aspects."
The use of the word is a form of punctuation to a disclaimer, the thing that happens before her points and persuasion even start and should be instilling some blanketed form of, "its gonna be okay," or at least, "Look away if you get queasy on rollercoasters," before she goes on the offensive. Before attacking Peach for using emotion (or as she outs it, PMS) as a weapon, or saying Miyamoto's the greatest offender for his long list of war crimes (I mean games..), or suggesting that Ico is another brick in the misogyny wall; She attempts to cut a hole through the needles eye of our perception (admittingly, if you even know what the word means in the first place -ignorance really was bliss before I learned the meaning) and attempt to chuck a bomb over the wall and win her argument before starting it, by telling us that videogames, or really anything she ever talks about, are basically deadly or evil in some way, making them clearly ill advised for human consumption.
Ouch
This is the type of below the belt tactics that would leave a fighter without a profession. It's shocking, and has left me a little bit more disgusted beyond the normal scope that some of us seem to be with her representation of videogames. It leaves me feeling icky and in need of a long shower, like I've been watching Fox News stomping around holding hands with the religious right.
And this isn't the first time she's been this disgusting during this series, outside of her disclaimer.
Now, I know what some of you have to be thinking: This entire series sounds like a feminist Fox News fantasy, and I'd tentatively agree. It's been shoot from the hip, ill conceived; its been more conjecture then fact; and a whole load of other things that could be said to connect one pothole after another. But there was something in video two, something thrown in to scoop a hole to plant a point that, like so many other things in these videos, gets dropped before the point gets to sink in, but the implications end up being far more noxious then the tropes shes worrying herself with causing a fuss over.
At around the 18:20 mark of her second Damsels video (provided at the top), Anita starts in on some sobering statistics about real world domestic violence. It's horrible to think that anyone, anywhere, should have to go through these things on any given day, but truths are truths none-the-less, and truths are often terrible things. Well, except for when those truths are so loose, and are linked to unnamed studies on the subject of generalized domestic violence and violence against women, that trying to connect vague dots presented as a footnote to a discussion on videogames, becomes problematic at best.
They aren't *quite* the truth that matter in the occasion they're presented, and come off as a last ditch effort to yank the heartstrings down while pulling the abrasive, Fox-esque, wolf in sheep's clothing, wool over our eyes.
Anita on CNN International, talking about dealing with hateful gamers
Yes, domestic violence happens, I'm not here to dispute that at all: Its a terrible horrible no good very bad thing, and I would love to have come here to you all with a bounty of actual studies, with real names and numbers, and sink her battleship. Not because I want her defeated, her right to her opinion doesn't deserve to be treated as something to defeat no matter how dull it comes across, but because I'd like to see the faceless people who've become numbered pawns to her point see at least a little justice come of being used. However, there are so many conflicting statistics and studies floating around, that there becomes a point where they all become moot, distracting, and not worth arguing anymore. No matter which set you choose, the actual facts start to become irreparably blurred in how that person chooses to cherry pick and skew them to their will. Anita can play that game, but I really don't wish to have a part in that.
When Anita decides to talk up grim but faceless statistics, she makes a conscious decision to not acknowledge how we don't know if these studies have *anything* to do with videogames, at all, let alone if they took a deep look at other important factors, including: drunkenness; drug use; the pressures of living in a low income home or unforeseen bills; or situations of medical conditions such as depression or bi-polar syndrome, and many others. Instead, she surrounds only videogames with an electrified fence, and connects it to the battery of thousands of unrelated daily atrocities, forcing herself to become no better then an "expert" who goes about saying that the top 5 (or more) shootings in the last 20 years were perpetrated by an interactive hobby, dripping with all the muddy vitriol that trails in its wake.
Even when he's this emo, he won't result to shooting someone...
Then theres this: http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/58161053721/spider-man-recruits-the-help-of-anita-sarkeesian-to where we get to see how Anita feels about the idea of turning the tables and becoming just the same as all the people who've threatened her, by agreeing that shooting someone that perpetrates against her cause, not purposefully, by simply by doing their job, is an idea she likes the sound of; basically turning away from sense and credibility, and making herself into quite the hypocrite in one of the most extreme ways. Its really not too different from using a bunch of loose statistics that throw real, injured for life, people under a bus, simply because you want to make videogames another notch in your activist utility belt. I really just don't feel like some of the things she does is the way to fight for a cause, or at least be a very public face of it.
At the end of the day, Ms. Sarkeesian is dramatizing the suffering of others over silly things like feeding a princess too much cake so she's harder to move, or (less silly things like) a character who happens to be a female choosing to make a noble sacrifice for the sake of a greater good, with floaty, sickening, buzz numbers (as opposed to the usual buzz words) to try to drive her point around the gate of sense and credibility to cajole us into seceding to her. Because who's really going to fight the horrific visage of a battered woman, let alone thousands of them?
Also a dramatization.. Or at least just F-ing silly.
And what we're left with are what I'd like to call "true lies," because the truth is that domestic violence does happen, but we're no where close to a proven link between it and videogames existing, or very many others in that matter. Ultimately, all we have is someone sensationalizing the desired subject for their own personal gain. And thats just gross.
The cold fact here is the one she isn't making: Videogames themselves aren't picking up a man's arms and forcing him to beat, or kill, his wife or daughter, or really any other person they come into contact with. The people who do these things, male or female, child or adult, are deeply troubled individuals on a whole different level then society wishes to understand or be a part of, and would rather spend time writing off their ignorance by pointing the fingers everywhere but themselves, for not seeing this sort of thing coming. This much we can be certain: It's just far easier to blame everything but yourself, specially when scapegoats are everywhere and bandwagons are easy to ride from the second star to the right and straight on to innocence. And what truly seems to be pernicious is how we attack media, such as videogames, instead of truly, not superficially, like she's doing, take a deeper look at ourselves.
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