Anita Sarkeesian and Video Game Journalism

But and I got to be on an episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You. That's right, you came you were our expert on trolling, not not because of your trolling. I kept that past locked up. Yeah, yeah, we didn't talk about that. It's just my expertise on the subject of trolls. And we're going to be talking about something that very much involves trolling today, although that's not the

focus of this conversation. We're gonna be talking a lot about Anita Sarkisian and her tropes against women, tropes versus women's series, specifically the troops versus women in video games. Uh, And because we're gonna be talking about a really serious subject that has had a lot of attention devoted to it from all quarters of the Internet, including some of the darkest ones. I think it it's important to let all of you guys know out there, we're gonna be

talking about some heavy stuff. Uh, it is not all sunshine and roses. There's some really unpleasantness going on here, So trigger warnings out there. I mean, a lot of the stuff we're gonna be talking about is specifically things like violence or implied violence, or threats against women or anyone who actually supports them in their their quest to just be heard. So keep that in mind because we

don't usually explore those sort of things on Texa. But it's an important conversation and it's certainly one that's dominated the tech world. I mean, if you are on Twitter and you're following any uh folks in the technology sector, you're going to have seen stuff about Sarkasian at some point. Yeah. I have a feeling that for a lot of your listeners, her name probably rings a bell, whether they've seen a

Tropes Versus Women video or simply heard about her. Because there's been so much conversation and critique, and not even critique, just trending into outright hatred. There have been there have been some attacks that have nothing to do with any of her work, as at least the attack itself has nothing to do with her work. The attack would just be a nasty, terrible thing to say. I mean, you read some of these attacks and you think, when would

you ever say this to another human being? I mean, well you wouldn't you think It's see, the chances are if some of these people would see Sarkasian face to face on the street, they would not say the kinds of things that they would say online, which is something that we talked about. Actually when you came on stuff. I've never told you to talk about trolling, just how the anonymity of the internet can sometimes fuel the sort of vile because it's easier to type something out than

to say something to someone's face. Well, you don't have the social pressures that you have in real life. Right, in real life, I have the social pressure It is socially unacceptable for me to rent and rave against somebody, to threaten somebody. That is not acceptable in society. But online there are a different set of rules and or or sometimes just a complete lack of rules, depending upon what areas of the internet you're talking about. But to really dig down into this, first we need to talk

about who Anita Sarkisian is. And she's a media critic. And while the recent conversation has all been about her work in studying women's roles in video games, that's not the only thing she's ever done. The Troops Versus Women is actually a series that pre day. It's the video

game critique. Yeah, it's It's been interesting too and startling to to see the development of Sarkasian's career around this video games project, because when I first came across her work, it was with a series of six videos that she produced looking specifically at a trope surrounding female characters on film and in TV. So the first video that she put out, for instance, was about the Manic Pixie dream Girl.

She clearly did not receive any death threats for talking about the Manic Pixie dream Girl, but then didn't say, you know, I built my career on this. Yeah, she was gonna smash her over the head with her ukulele

or anything like that. And she also devoted videos to things like women in refrigerators, which does tie into comics the smurfet principle, which comes up again in her video game series The Evil Seductress Mystical Pregnancy, and then finally the st a feminist, which for people unfamiliar with this trope, it's essentially hyper feminist character used in shows or movies

too at the same time lampoon feminism. And it's a little ironic that this was the last video I'm aware of that she made before she started in on this video game project, because she has now sort of been treated as a straw feminist by her haters. Well, well, yeah, this is one of those things where you start to attribute arguments to someone that they have never personally put forth as their own, and then you go forward and

knocked down that argument and say, see this person was wrong. Well, if the person never made that argument in the first place, no they're not wrong. That's that's the whole straw man argument from the beginning. So for those of you out there who may be confused just by the term trope, we're really talking about a figurative use of some concept

that tends to become sort of common currency. It's not quite the same as cliche, although the two can be related, but a trope is something that, uh, you know, it's an element that you see within a work that you can identify and say, oh, I also saw this in this other thing. And it may be a completely different medium. It doesn't have to be the same medium. So here's an example, Jump the shark. That's a phrase everyone has heard.

Jump the shark. Is this trope about a moment in a series that changes the the tone of that series enough so there's no longer what it used to be. It is lesser than what it used to be, and we view it as something negative at that point. Uh. The the woman in the Fridge trope that you mentioned

comes from Green Lantern specifically. That's that was a comic book where the hero Green Lantern comes back and finds that his girlfriend had been murdered and shoved into his refrigerator, and the whole purpose of it was to give Green Lantern a a story arc. Had nothing to do with the female character she was. She was just the kind of the launching point for his story. And that's sort of where a lot of the criticism comes in from Sarkasian towards video games and and different types of media

as well. She was specifically focusing on video games for this project. Now, it's a project that she sought crowdfunding for. Back in two thousand and twelve, she launched a Kickstarter campaign. She had a goal of six thousand dollars to produce a series of videos where she would critique video games and she would look at a broad spectrum of games and see how women's roles were depicted in these various video games. And it wasn't it wasn't a crusade to

go and destroy video games. She makes a point that video games are designed to be fun, and you can enjoy a video game while still applying critical thinking and saying this game is the gameplay is great, I really enjoy elements of the story. This one thing really bothers me, though, And she also is very careful to say a trope is a trope. It's not. It's not the definition of

an entire game. But the presence or even the ubiquity of certain tropes in the video game industry can be troubling because that is a reflection of and a reinforcement of certain cultural ideas that can be harmful not just to women, but to men as well. And so the thing is that I think a lot of people don't

pay enough attention to the actual arguments. They have a knee jerk reaction of you are attacking something that I love, therefore you need to be destroyed, which is it sounds dramatic, but that's very much what's happening, absolutely, and I mean it's it was notable that she wanted to dig into tropes and video games at this point where it is important as a media critic that she is to look into video games considering just how widely their play, and

I mean in the same way. I mean she started out with film and television, which you know, again another thing that so many people are consuming. And to say that what you see on screen, the kinds of tropes that are on screen, the portrayals of different people, not just women, but people of color or men, people with disabilities, et cetera, the way that they are portrayed on screen

certainly does have an off screen impact. And with that Kickstarter campaign, she initially just you know, like you said, one six thousand dollars take five videos, and she immediately as soon as the Kickstar video went up, people started just making so many vile comments and attacking her and essentially trying to. I think her Wikipedia page was hacked

at one point. Vandalism, Yeah, like all sorts of incidents happening to where everyone, like a lot of other people came to her aid and she ended up raising almost one fift nine thousand dollars and with that money, since it was so overfunded, said okay, well guess what, haters instead of five videos and making twelve right, So the and of course a lot of the haters ended up saying that she was conning Kickstarter. That's not how kickstarter works people. All right, let me let me just break

this down for you. Um, there are a lot of things that you can criticize people for. I mean, I think I think criticism of arguments is important, but you have to make sure that you're actually criticizing the argument. Conning Kickstarter, No, she put forth exactly what she wanted to do and people decided to support her. Kicksterter has nothing to do with that. Kickstarter has an interest if a project does well, because that's how they make money.

But Kickstarter is not being conned. They had a platform, she submitted a project, the project was approved, and the project did really really well. It was quote unquote overfunded, This is not unique to Sarkasian. We see it all the time. I've been part of Kickstarter projects, you know, I've can tributed to some that got crazy over funded too, and you never hear anyone complain about those. Um it's

it's so, let's let's set that aside. There's also, like you said, this crazy uh flurry of insults and attacks against sarkasi And before she's ever produced a single video. Now, back in two thousand twelve, before she had ever even scripted out the first video, she was already becoming the target of attacks. And this pretty much to me says the goal is to silence her. There's no you can't criticize an argument that hasn't been made. You don't know

what the argument is yet. Well, she has a website called Feminist Frequency, and I think simply by virtue of the title or word feminist being anywhere near her name, that's going to attract a lot of negative attention. And I also find it kind of hilarious that because of that swarm of attack with the intent of silencing her, if that hadn't happened, Jonathan, I have a feeling she

wouldn't have gotten so much attention. Because of that, maybe her Kickstarter would have funded, but maybe that maybe it would have been a series that a handful of people would have seen and it never would have gone beyond that. But because of this intense focused hatred, it ended up grabbing a lot more attention, which also, to me, tells me that it's a much more important issue than a

lot of people would say. I mean, the fact that there is so much vitriolic hatred aimed at her tells me that even as as careful as she is to say, look, I'm not saying that video games make people go out and be terrible. What I'm saying is that it is a reflection of and a reinforcement of certain ideas and culture, and that we cannot be immune to those. Those are influences on us. Whether or not we end up, uh, you know, embracing them as our own fullosophy is another matter,

but they do influence us. You know, she's very careful to make that distinction. The fact that she's been the target of such incredible attacks says to me that maybe she was being a little conservative in that, and that perhaps her you know, it's a little it's a little bit more of an impact than she had given it credit, although she is being very methodical about this, which I think, you know, is laudable, especially considering the incredible, you know,

opposition she's faced. I can't imagine having encountered this kind of thing. It was kind of crazy. So her series started, uh and launched in March of two thousand thirteen, and the very first episode was a discussion of part one of three on the Damsel in Distress trope, and she pretty much breaks it down as the damsel in distress is the the object that the hero is trying to uh to to rescue. She she's Princess Pea. Yeah, she has princess speech, which Princess Peach. The only reason Princess

Peach exists is for Mario to have something to go after. Right. She doesn't have any personality of her own, She has no But then again, you know, you could say, oh, Mario didn't have any personality. But the thing is that this this trope extends well beyond the Mario era, but you still get a Princess Peach, right. The character uh, there's no intrinsic value to her. The only value is the fact that she quote unquote belongs to the hero, but has been stolen away by the villain or some

variation thereof. And so the first three episodes really focus on this damsel in distressed trope. The first one specifically looks at the basic trope, the Princess Peach version, and the second one looks at more recent examples, which get pretty grim. We're talking about, uh, not just a a female character who has no real agency, she has no control over her existence. She's either being rescued by someone or kidnapped by someone. She's not doing anything on her own.

But often she's also the m of some pretty nasty violence, uh in more recent ones. And this is sometimes an effort to make a video game seem darker and more edgy. Uh. The idea being that, well, if we show the villain hitting a quote unquote defenseless, vulnerable, helpless woman, then that makes him a really bad guy, and you're a really good guy for stopping him and rescuing the woman. Meanwhile, the woman has She's just there to be the recipient

of abuse. She has no other purpose. And her point is that you don't have any you know, the sort of investment that you put into the male protagonist. There's none of that in the female character. She can't do anything for herself. She's not even really a person. She's

just a thing for a character to win. If if she were replaced with some other like object of value, there'd be no difference there, except for the fact that it would be truly an object and not a person, or the depiction of a person being treated as an object.

And it really makes you think, um, for someone who like shocking news here, I'm a guy, so yeah, I know, and as a guy, the thing is that the video games do cater to my demographic, right, I'm I'm a male, and so there are a lot of things that are in video games that I may have been kind of aware of under the surface, but never really given much

thought to because it didn't directly affect me. I was I was the character that was the protagonist watching these videos in sequence and seeing sarkas and lay them out methodically and compelling lee and giving endless examples. I mean, it's it's when she sits there and says, all right, here, here's an example of uh, a character who has no power of her own. Here's another one, and here are

twelve more of them. It really starts to sink in, and I think, wow, I have been largely ignorant of this, and I think a lot of it has to do with that that being ingrained in culture overall, not just video games. That's a microcosm of where this extends beyond in all realms of life. And I think I needed to wake up a long time ago. This series really needed to happen years ago, I think. But well, and I think that that often is a point lost on a lot of people who don't want to hear what

she has to say. Um. I think, first of all, a lot of times it seems like many of her loudest hitters don't even watch the videos themselves, and also don't understand the broader point that the video game is more of the example, or more of a symptom of a broader issue of and reflection of these kinds of patterns that have been happening historically in real life are reflected on you know, big screens, small screen in or now understand or in stories in literature, and now understandably

are showing up again and again in video games as well. So it's not I think it's just often misinterpreted as her just wanting to take down video games where it's really like, no, what, what's trying. What she's attempting to maybe highlight and dismantle is that issue that we are seeing in the video game. It's having wrong with playing

video game. Yeah. She actually gives quite a few examples of games that either attempt to overturn these things and sometimes unsuccessfully so because the attempt was perhaps a poor attempt or misunderstanding of what the underlying cause of the issue was, and so it ends up being kind of a surface level way of dealing with it. Or it's there's some that just apparently have a beautiful way of treating the subject matter entirely, so you just you don't

have those same tropes that you run into. So the Damsel in Distressed ones are pretty, um, pretty tough to

get around. And she in the third episode, the part three of the Damsels in Distress, that's where she really looks at some of the video games that tried to counteract it, including the Dudes in Distress video games where it turns it on its head, and she makes a really good point that I think a lot of gamers miss out on, and that really good point is that a dude in distress is never going to be the

same as a damsel in distress. It either ends up being played as a joke, because that's not how things happen. Look at the last couple of millennia of fiction, and you have the damsel in distressed trope well and truly ingrained in Western literature and not just video games. Uh. She says. It either becomes across as a joke or

it doesn't. Even if it's not a joke, that you don't have that cultural weight, that cultural baggage behind it, right, for the damsel in distress for women, that's something that has been a depiction women in literature, like I said, for millennia. For men, it's not. So there's not that cultural baggage for men. So turning that on its head doesn't necessarily work. It doesn't. It doesn't really be like, oh,

look the tables are turned. How does it feel. Well, it's the exception, right, So it's it's like, well, that's that's weird. Well, and it's a good example too of how the how it's erroneous to think that the solution to perhaps let's say, in video game terms of violence being perpetuated toward women women being the victims of violence is to simply just switch those roles and have men being the victims of violence. That doesn't really necessarily solve things.

And she makes another good point of that in the fourth episode with the Mrs Mail video game character. Is talking about how there have been a number of video games, such as, most prominently Mrs pac Man, where you take the stock Mail video game character and just put a bow on her head and then problems solved. But it's like, no,

that's not really, that's not really what we're getting at here. Yeah, where where where, through the use of some signifiers that we associate with the female gender, you have magically equated male and female video game experiences, which is not exactly true,

and it's missing the point largely. Um. Yeah. That one I think is also very relevant for a larger conversation in technology, where you see companies that are marketing products as being meant for women, and they very often fall into the same sort of tropes in in a in a slightly different way. So example, and everything that's pink, right, like it's you know, it's a smartphone for women because it's pink. That sort of thing where it becomes it

relies on these female signifiers. This incredibly shallow and dismiss a way of saying this is for for this specific audience, because you're clearly not smart enough to be able to pick up on that or to enjoy something just as a consumer, we have to to spell it out. So this pink think, that's for you ladies. Everything else is

for the dudes. Yeah, there's even a handy marketing term for that, and it's pink it and shrink it done, and it's for it's odd little hands, twny little things and like pink and she and she points out in the world of video games, what this means for female characters is they tend to look like in a lot of video games, they tend to be a slight variation on whatever the main protagonist is, so you get a female version of that. That and she goes so far as to say this isn't the case for all video

games everywhere. She's saying, there are a lot of video games that do fall into this category. But you get one female protagonist that looks kind of like the main male protagonist, and if you have other characters you can unlock, they tend to be other male protagonists that look very differently from the original ones, so they all seem to have things that distinguish them from the main protagonist. The female, however,

is just a female counterpart to the male protagonists. You don't get dozens of different females who have looks that are informed by their own personalities. It's just a variation on the male character. So again you're talking about identity and agency and dependence, like the fact that the female character's existence depends upon the male character, because without the male protagonist version there, you don't have a female version.

She doesn't stand on her own. So these are great points again, and it's stuff that really makes you start to think, and especially if you've just been playing games and not really spending any time considering the the underlying factors there. And it doesn't mean that game designers are

setting out with an agenda to oppress women. You know, she she doesn't say that, she doesn't make these claims, which is why a lot of the attacks seem to suggest that she's got this agenda to destroy video game developers. And that's not what she's saying. Uh, you know, it's it's she's saying these are these are just tropes that are so deeply ingrained in our culture, we don't necessarily even realize that when we start to incorporate them in

our own work. So if I were to go out and write a story, it maybe after I've written it and I read over and I realized, hey, you know what I I I've committed one of those two. It's just one of those things that I associate with storytelling, which is my hang up. So I gotta really, you know, examine that and figure out, well, how can I tell a story that doesn't depend upon this stuff. I mean that that is just a crutch that I don't want

to rely upon. And uh. And so that seems to be a lot of the focus of her um of her work. Now. You also mentioned the Smurfett principle, which falls into video games as well. That's where you have a group of characters, all of whom save one are male, and then you have the one token female character. Uh. And this happens in video games all the time, where you'll have you'll have groups where one character is female

and all the rest are male. Um, that doesn't mean that it's the only the only thing that you see out there. Like again, there are exceptions, but she points out how this is a frequent trope in video games. So the Left for Dead series, you can have a you know, there's one female character and then three male characters. Uh, so you know that's an example there. There are plenty of them. And of course there are a lot of games where there's no female counterpart at all. You play

as a male protagonist and that's it. There are a couple where you play as a female protagonist. The Portal games are an example, and they're they're phenomenal, and I wish they're being more games like them. Um, and I think She points out Beyond Good and Evil as one of her favorites. Um, but yeah, that's a another trope. She she explores she also looks at women as background decoration.

This is These are a couple of her more recent videos which have really ramped up the abuse uh leveled against her, and in these episodes she specifically talks about female They can't you can't even call the characters, but female depictions and video games that are just there as background. They are not meant in any way to impact the story or to be a character. They're just there, um to to add to the tone of whatever the video game is. And they are far more frequently than men

hyper sexualized. They are sexual objects more frequently than men are. Usually, if a man is treated as a sexual object within a video game, it's for some sort of joke, whereas for women, in a lot of video games, that's the default, right. And what's telling about the how common these types of female characters are is that, you know, as we've just been talking about the past few minutes, there there's such a lack of those main female protagonists who have any

sort of depth to them whatsoever. And yet when you look in the background, oh, they're the women. They're the women being objectified or just sort of randomly disposed of. There was another one disposability and la vulnerability where you know, the sort of um, the fact that they can be destroyed, killed, dismembered, i mean tortured, uh, pretty much in the background, and that's just part of that's just part of the game world.

And they're meant to be there as a way of again creating that tone is pretty rough because again, you know, there there's they're not meant to create an a deep emotional uh impact on the player. You know, it's not there to to actually have the person ask why this thing happens or uh, what is the you know, what are the ramifications of it? Where the implications of it is just like this world is bad because of this

or this world is seedy because this happens. Um And she brings out a lot in Grand Theft Auto about how I mean, there are a lot of characters and female characters and Grand Theft Auto or female figures. I guess you could even say a lady bodies and Grand Theft Auto that are specifically meant for a sexual objectification there. There there are other female characters that are not or female bodies that are not, but a lot of them

in Grand Theft Auto are Yeah. Well, and so there's this one controversy in quotes about it was either episode five or episode six, in which she calls out the video game hit Man and a scene in which and she shows the gameplay in the Trops versus Women video of the male protagonists walking past a couple of exotic dancers and you can like shoot them in the head and they die. You can either sneak by them or

kill them. Yeah, And so there's a particularly vocal hater um user name Thunderfoot, who made this video all about how a Nita Sarkasian is, is clearly trying to you know, as a clear and complete liar because and he showed in his video gameplay, you can just sneak by them, which the argument was on his end that that just dismantles everything that she has to say, but it doesn't erase the fact that, okay, but you can still kill them.

And it's even more troubling if we think about, Okay, well, what are the real world impacts of this kind of video gameplay? That a lot of the indiscriminate violence toward

women in video games is toward these nameless women. I feel like it's one thing if you have a female protagonist and she gets really violent, and you know, she's like moving on like through a story and violence is part of it, whereas you know, a lot of the violence in women is just perpetuated toward these nameless characters, do you know what I mean? Like it seems a little more distinct where you're saying, you've got these these characters that the only reason they exist is for you

to either sneak by them or kill them. So if you know, if it were a sense where if you killed the characters automatically, your your mission failed, and it was clear that you had to sneak by them. That's one thing. That's that's a game mechanic that is trying to say, no, that's that's the wrong You're going to fail the mission this way. But giving that as an

option was really what Sarkisian was pointing towards. She said, these are the characters who are already sexual objects because of the nature of what their profession is supposed to be and the way that they are designed, the actual character designs, they are sexual objects. And there if you have given characters the option of killing them, then that already is an issue. It's not whether or not the player does do that. It's the fact that the option

is there in the first place. That was her argument, not that you were forced to kill In fact that she never, as far as I recall, says that you're forced to kill them. She says, that's one of the things you can do. And then you hide their body so that they won't be discovered. Uh, And that's what she says. You know, that's the problem. It's it's not it's not whether or not the players forced to do it.

It's the fact that this is existing that's an issue, because violence against women is a very real, very serious problem, and to make it to gamify it is another serious problem. It again reflects and reinforces an idea in the culture that is not a great idea well, and one thing that Sarcausian doesn't get into in the videos, largely because she doesn't have time too, because there's so much to

talk about just within the gameplay. But all a number of studies that have been done looking at how video games do influence wants perceptions toward women. So, for instance, there was a two thousand twelve study which found that video games depicting sexual objectification of women and violence against women resulted in statistically significant increased rape myth acceptance i e. This idea that women are asking for it among male study participants, but also it impacts female players as well.

There was a two thousand thirteen study finding that women who played with sexualized doppleganger avatars i e. Like you know, sexy avatars that looked like themselves engaged in higher levels of self objectification and again higher rape myth acceptance. So while again the it's not the argument is not that video games or evil, but rather that it is important to consider how these on screen behaviors in lunce our offscreen beliefs about the kinds of treatment towards women and

what is and is not acceptable. Because there, I mean, there's and those were just two of many studies that I could sit here and take off finding again and again and again a very strong relationship between beating up and or sexually assaulting women in video games and just the belief not saying that it turns, you know, men into rapists, but the belief that, well, it's not, it's not terrible, it just lowers the bar. The way she

was dressed is the reason why that happened. To it's it's essentially taking the accountability off the person who commits the heinous crime and then applying at least part of it, if not all of it to the victim of that crime. Uh, that's you know, that's a terrible thing. That it's something we should strive to get away from. And Sarkasian's point is that again, these these games don't exist in a vacuum. If the game existed in a world where violence against

women was not a systemic problem, around the world. If women had true equality with men throughout the world, if people of color had the same equality as as white people do all around the world, then the video game thing, it would just be a curiosity, you'd say. You might say it's in poor taste, you might say, oh, this is this is not realistic. You might say many things, But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in

our world where these are real issues. And again, the way it's depicted can very much affect our perceptions and or at least reinforce ideas that we might already have, rather than challenge them. That's a great point she makes, is that you can make games that challenge these notions, where characters actually do make real critical thinking choices that will end up showing that this is, you know, this

is not something to be desired. But that replication of those those um those situations does not mean criticism, right, saying look how miserable this world is. Isn't saying, uh, misery, is this terrible thing that we need to fix. It's It's a different thing. So you know, again, I think, like you were saying, I think a lot of the criticism that has leveled against Sarkisian in particular, and other other female journalists and and female developers, female developers, female

uh gamers, I mean the whole fake gamer girl. Uh mean that's out there, is ridiculous. Uh. All of these sort of things are are certainly problematic is the wrong word. It's it's too big for problematic. But these are things that really need to have this kind of attention and it and it shows me that the critics in large part are not really listening to what she has to say.

And again, I think if you find fault in the arguments, then what you have to do is you have to create your own argument that addresses whatever the point is, use evidence to support your argument, and engage in a debate or a conversation about it. What is actually happening, though, is people are attacking the person, not the argument, or if they attack the argument, they also attack the person. Um. And it's really an effort to silence the person, not

to say here's why I disagree. Um, you know what is your response to that? And it's pretty clear that the people who are attacking have no interest in discourse at all. But moving away from tropes versus women, like the actual videos and what she's arguing, this whole question of how video gameplay impacts and reflects real world situations.

What to me is even more telling and is worth paying even closer attention to, is how this vocal minority, and at least I hope it's a minority, It seems to be a minority of gamers who really, really really hate everything that has to do with Anita Sarkasian and want to hear absolutely nothing about any critique of this

sort about video games. Seems like if you look at the kinds of threats that they make against her that usually involve rape threats, death threats, etcetera, is really confirming a lot of what she is saying and arguing about how maybe this is, you know, this sandbox that they're playing in isn't so healthy. Yeah, I mean I completely

agree with that. I think that the the nature of the threats again, if they were if they were intelligently debating the point that she made, and if they were actually coming up with counter evidence and saying, uh, you know, I know that this is how you frame that in the argument, I don't agree with it. Here is my here's my approach. Here's why I think that what do you think of that that's the civilized way to enter

a debate. That's not what's happening. What they're doing is falling into behaviors that are reinforcing her arguments and completely reinforcing it. I mean, they're making the same sort of threats where they are showing a disregard for her as a human being and using uh charged words you know, that are based upon her gender that clearly indicate that

the argument she makes have some merit. Yeah, I mean, like after she released her most recent video as of this podcast recording, she had to leave her home because the threats against her and her family became so specific. Um, and she you know, she's been docked over and over again that she no longer felt safe in her home. And she's not the She's by no means the first prominent loud feminist leaning woman on the internet who has

gone through this. So I'm just wondering, though, do you think at some point gamers at large will turn on this subset of them who are making so much trouble Because around this time we also have gamer Gate happening, and it's just it's it's become so ugly that I'm seeing more and more articles and blog posts by other more rational gamers saying, oh my god, you are just ruining this for everybody. I think we're seeing more of that.

I think I think it's I think it took this terrible uh sequence of events of people really being just ridiculously awful. I mean, they're the words I want to use I can't use on this podcast. UM, but I think we're starting to see that. I think we're seeing a lot more people speak out against it. We're hearing podcasts like this where people are trying to actually intelligently discuss what is this the central issue and why is

there so much vitriolic anger around it. We have people making videos saying, look, guys, it's not okay to do this. We have videos saying, look, it's not okay to not say anything either. If you know someone who is engaging in this, it's you know, go ahead and just tell them, like, dude, that's that's not cool, that's not that's not okay. The same sort of social pressures need to exist online as do exist in our regular society, UH, and only through

this kind of UH. For first, you have to acknowledge that that that the problem exists and then grow to understand what the problem is is and then work to make sure you're not part of the problem, and then also work to make sure that the problem stops being a problem. There's the series of steps here. I think I'm somewhere on between three and four right now. You know, I guess this is probably my part. Four right now is contributing in this way. Um. I think we're starting

to see more and more of that. I think we'll see the industry change over time as more awareness grows. Um. It's one of those things that is going to still

take time. It's not gonna be overnight, as much as I wish it would be, UM, but it's gonna also take the part of gamers, those that minority to admit the fact that m acknowledging these as problems and addressing those problems doesn't mean video games go away, doesn't mean video games become less fun, doesn't mean that all of your video games are gonna suddenly become you know, match these cute shapes together. Stein Um goes to the library to find a copy of The Feminine Mystique. Can you

get out of the library before it closes? Jane Austin first person shooter game or something you just you throw quips at people. Um that I'd play that too, But no, I don't think that's gonna be the case either. It just ends up being something that that the industry needs to become more aware of, gamers need to acknowledge and uh.

And I think overall, the outcome of this, when people do come to this sort of agreement, which I think is going to be years down the road, I'm sad to say that the whole industry as all will benefit, will have better games, will have games designed for more people, more inclusion, and I actually think that will be a fantastic thing for games. I don't like playing online right now because of the way a lot of people behave online. You know, I find if I do play online, I

turn off my heads it. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear what people have to say, because they say horrible, horrible things. I'd like to think that if we as a culture work together to really address these issues and say, now, it's not really funny. It's not funny the stuff you're saying, it's not cool. Uh, it just makes you seem to be uneducated and hateful,

which are not good qualities. Well, and there's hope for that kind of future as well, because on the flip side of all of those kinds of studies linking sort of the terrible things on screen with the terrible things off screen, there are also an equal number, if not more, studies talking about how kids who play highly social games tend to be more social people who play avatars that

aren't exactly like them. You know, games that allow you to embody new experiences can actually have positive effects in terms of increasing your capacities for empathy and things like that. There's so much positive power within video games as well that you know, there's still so much out there to harness. Yeah, yeah, and and you know, look at some of the most amazing games out there that have nothing to do with this sort of of of problem. I mean, you can

Minecraft is an example I like to think of. It's it's I'm you know, you do have an avatar, and you can choose what your avatar looks like. But since I play, and since most people I know play in first person mode, they're not even the avatar is meaningless. Like, you know, you're just a pair of hands. Occasionally you're holding something and really the game is more about an expression of creativity. It is wildly popular, is one of

the most popular computer games out there. A game can be really tons of fun and it's not sacrificing anything in terms of game play, and you can still have gritty games and these sort of things that give you this ability to live a heroes life. That's another issue is that a lot of the games are catering to the juvenile male power uh fantasy. You know, this idea of women to No, I'm not I'm not arguing, it's just that this is a particular flavor meant for juvenile males.

You know, the idea of you're the big brownie guy who gets to rescue the incredibly attractive lady who is completely helpless unless you rush to her aid. Hey, listen, John, if some women want to rescue other women too, I don't know. You know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna, you know, judge them or anything. I'm just saying the games are tend to be made in that vein. So you know, it's I want to see this conversation continue.

I want to see people really really take a critical look at video games, use critical thinking, don't just have a knee jerk reaction, and don't equate criticism with a desire for an entire industry to go away. These are you know, I think Bernie Burns of us your teeth. He said this on a podcast not too long ago. He said, the way he sees it, video game players often see the world as either winning or losing. There's no in between. So it's either a win or a loss.

So that's why these these things that fall in between, and uh, you know, get lost in the in the mix. So any criticism against the thing they love, that's someone who's saying video games are at a loss and the only way to combat it is to go full guns at the person who's making the critiques so that you can be back in the win category. Uh. And I

think there's a lot of truth to that. So I'm hoping that the conversations that go around show that, no, there are degrees here, and there are things that we need to really take a hard look at and say, uh, you know, why is this a thing and does it need to be or if it needs to be, what's your justification for it. So yeah, and anyone who's scared that their video games are going to be taken away. Video games are not going anywhere. Just look just based

on the money. No one's letting video games go anywhere, right, Yeah. The only question is what is the you know, what's the tone going to be? How are how are women going to be treated in those games? Will it be an inclusive sort of culture where we actually are being nice to one another? I mean, you can be nasty to those those uh video game enemies as much as you need to be to make sure you get to that end of that level and go to the next

one so that you get another onslaught of enemies. But be nice to people and make sure that when you're creating characters in the game, their characters. Yeah, and not just not just you know, a decoration on the background. Um. Yeah. And there's so much more to say. Obviously, Sarkasian's work is not done in this regard. She has more videos to make. Yeah, she has what six more to make? She's only halfway through? Yeah, I think so. And so we're gonna keep an eye on the rest of those.

If you have not watched the feminist frequency page and watch the tropes versus women in video game series, I highly recommend it. Uh. Sarkisian does again make a point at the beginning of nearly every episode that critiquing something doesn't mean you can't love it. Uh and uh, and just keep that in mind. Really, that's that's the important thing to take away, and then you know, just take a nice critical look. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for joining me on this episode to talk about this

incredibly important topic. Jonathan, thanks so much for having me on. It was a pleasure. I'll be sure to ask you back in the future for for things that may not be quite so emotionally charged this is, but this, I feel is one of those discussions. It's very prevalent on in the text circles. It's an important one to have.

It's an important one to think about. I am a big advocate for compassion and empathy, and so for people who are not familiar with your work and shame on you you all should be let them know where to go to find more. You can go to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com, which has all of our blogs, videos and podcasts, which includes a two parter on women in video games, which might be a nice addendum to

this conversation. Jonathan yeah, if you want to get you know, you further into this and really really get involved, I think it's it's important to you know, listen to those sort of things, make sure you're informed. So guys, thank you so much for listening. If you need to get in touch with me while, I've got an email address tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or draw

me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The handle at all three is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics because it has stuff works dot com