Anita Sarkeesian’s Gamergate interview on Colbert fair, but not balanced

After a few tweets teasing the appearance, critic and vocal feminist Anita Sarkeesian (Feminist Frequency and the maker of Tropes vs Women in Video Games) was a guest on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, where she talked about harassment against women from Gamergate. I thought there would be a moment where Colbert acted upset at Sarkeesian because she supported #CancelColbert, but that never happened.

Colbert, as always, plays the Conservative character that pokes a little fun at the guest's view, but there are some interesting quotes in there. The piece on Gamergate started not with Sarkeesian, but with a comedic segment looking at it. There are some good jokes in there with plumbers and Sega Genesis, so I suggest you give it a watch.

Colbert then gets into the thick of it by bringing up about the harassment of women speaking up against the portrayal of women in video games. That's the stance of both the segment and interview, and one that's been repeated in all over the Gamergate media coverage due to online harassment and broadcasted threats of the "deadliest school shooting in American history" if Sarkeesian was allowed to speak at Utah State.

Colbert mentions the bullying and harassment of pro-Gamergaters with the qualifier of them being harassed "especially once the media saw what they were saying to these women."

That brings us to Sarkeesian's interview. If you've heard or seen any of her presentations, then you've likely heard all of the talking points of the interview. The interview itself has your typical Stephen Colbert humor, and it's a pretty funny interview. But here are those interesting quotes I mentioned.

Colbert refers to Gamergate as "A culture war. A sub-culture war." Sarkeesian quickly states, "There is something going on and what it is is women being harassed, and threatened and terrorized." She goes on to state that how women are portrayed in games reinforce "this cultural myth that women are sexual objects and sexual playthings for male amusement." Colbert goes on to call them Damsels in distress, asking should he let the princess die instead of rescuing her? Sarkeesian responds with, "Well maybe the princess shouldn't be a damsel and she can save herself."

Fair point. Games like Mirror's Edge is a game where Faith Connors defends herself, and Sarkeesian has spoken to DICE and EA to help shape the character and the game for its sequel. One point that I keep seeing brought up in regards to that is that Sarkeesian said the controls are too difficult in Mirror's Edge for female gamers to get into it. The origination of this I found on NeoGAF as this picture, but there's nothing I can find that is concrete evidence of this statement.

Back to the interview, she says, "In the work that I do, I look at hundreds of examples of video games –"

Colbert interrupts, "So can you think of three?"

She continues, "I can, but I think it's a bigger issue to talk about the industry as a whole and how it perpetuates these ideas of sexism and misogyny as opposed to just Grand Theft Auto, for example."

On the threats, Colbert says "Men haven't been threatened." A little research can show that, while the threats come no where close to a school shooting, men — specifically on the pro-Gamergate side — have been threatened, doxxed and have had false police reports filed on them. Anita on harassment of women gives this explanation:

"We have this wide range of games — we're seeing mobile games, we're seeing indie games, we're seeing this influx of different kinds of games. And that's what Gamergate is responding to. They're actually responding to the fact that we're saying gaming can no longer be this little boys club anymore. There are many of us women who have been playing games our whole lives, and so they're lashing out because we're challenging the status quo of gaming as a male-dominated space."

On the accusations of collusion between designers, feminists and journalists, which Colbert makes fun of, Sarkeesian says, "That is a compelling way to re-frame the fact that this is actually attacks on women. Ethics in journalism is not what's happening, in any way. It's actually men going after women in really hostile, aggressive ways. That's what Gamergate is about. It's about terrorizing women for being involved in this industry. For being involved in this hobby." Although women in the industry like Sarkeesian have been threatened because they voiced their criticisms and beliefs, many pro-Gamergaters insist that they are not involved with the threats — that it's merely a bi-product of the hashtag. There's even examples of pro-Gamergate being involved in getting harassers banned.

Another problem with Sarkeesian's statement is that there are women in Gamergate. That's a fact. And this presents the problems with hashtag movements and interviews only voicing one side. Anyone can use a hashtag. There's no Captcha to make sure you're really about gaming journalism before you use the hashtag in your tweet. There are obviously two different views as to what Gamergate is about. Are women being harassed? Yes. That's a fact. That said, women have been harassed since the beginning of mankind. And Anita Sarkeesian was being harassed and threatened well before #Gamergate (not excusing that behavior).

Do you want to know why there hasn't been any resolution yet? Because the two sides haven't sat down to voice their concerns to one another in a moderated debate. There hasn't been equal representation on both sides, so one side gets all the air time, while the other insists they're not in it for that reason. There's been a lot of interviews like this already, and it's not solving anything. It's time for the two sides to come together for discussion.

Image from FemFreq Twitter