Yesterday, we covered feminism advocate Anita Sarkeesian’s latest video in her “Tropes vs. Women” series. This series, in particular, takes a critical look at the role of women in video games and their overall portrayal across the medium. Many of her videos have sparked angry controversy from a particular segment of the gaming community, but her most recent video has reignited a pervasive flame that has seen her attacked on social media with harassing comments and threats of physical violence.
One of the most extreme perpetrators of these attacks seems to have created a brand new Twitter account for the sole purpose of harassing Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian has said herself that she is no stranger to the backlash that her videos have caused, but that this particular series of threats included her personal information (likely her address) as well as the address of her parents. The threats range from sexual abuse to murder.
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Her response to these threats has been to contact the police and stay with friends. She indicated last night on her Twitter feed that she was safe, but would not give up. “The harassment of women in tech must stop,” she tweeted.
Many of Sarkeesian’s hate-mob seems to focus on another YouTube user, Thunderfoot, and his response to her previous video in the Trope series. He called Sarkeesian out for “willfully lying” and misrepresenting Hitman: Absolution. Sarkeesian argued that the player is encouraged to punch and abuse a pair of women in a strip club in order to advance the game. Thunderfoot disputed this, before oddly seeming to argue that this single example was evidence that there was no problem with female representation in gaming whatsoever.
Regardless of what people think of Sarkeesian, it’s sad that so many seem to think it appropriate to send death and rape threats to her on a continual basis. The phenomenon isn’t unique to Sarkessian - Depression Quest developer Zoe Quinn and Fez creator Phil Fish are two other recent high-profile examples of industry figures being subjected to abuse online; in fact, the problem has become widespread enough for Twitter itself to get involved, urging people to use the hashtag #welovegamedevs to tweet positive messages about the developers they love.
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