Why I’m done with Anita Sarkeesian and the Gamergate debate

This is an opinion piece. Do not take it for gospel.

I had a friend tell me today that "America does violence well. Sex? Not so much." With sex and sexualization, we take something natural and we twist it, condemn it, and freak out if a 16-year-old sees part of a nipple on TV.

Since I write for a gaming website, I don't stray into sex all that often. I wrote some commentary on Kate Upton in the Game of War ads, but that was more to do with how a publisher was forcing sex into their game to make it more popular — not really anything to do with Kate Upton as a sex symbol. I've also ventured into GamerGate pieces on Doxxing, ethics in journalism, how GamerGate isn't unique to gaming, and I even covered Anita Sarkeesian's interview on the Colbert Report.

After all of this, I had to take a break from covering social justice issues in video games. There are too many opinions, loud voices, insults, drama, yelling back and forth, and threats. It's very taxing on all parties involved. I just want to write about games and movies — two things I love. But it's a disservice to readers and gamers — no matter the race or gender — to not report what's being written and said about them.

And now we get to sex. When ABC News puts together an eight-minute piece on Anita Sarkeesian (video below) and what it's like to be a target of GamerGate, of which I have no affiliation with, I hope for a balanced report. A report that shows both sides and a little journalistic investigation. That's something you might not have to do at a site like GameZone, but at ABC f*cking News, it should be a requirement. Instead, we have people that were in ABC's video saying "I don't think it was balanced. They interviewed one of the girls that were here that night and that didn't even make the piece."

The piece, titled "What It Feels Like to Be a Gamergate Target," follows and covers Anita Sarkeesian and the threats made by boy gamers in their basements. It covers the harassment that she's faced, the very real death threats she's had to deal with, and the terror inflicted onto her. But there's no mention of any of the women that don't agree with her views. There's no mention of people on all sides of the Gamergate fence that have been harassed, had their personal information leaked, or received knives in the mail.

I think it would be fair to say that 99 percent of male gamers don't view the gaming space as belonging to their gender. Sure, there is a certain sexualization placed on women in some games — mostly mature titles — but sexualization is part of history and culture, from and literature, to film and music. Have you seen most classic Greek art? Or Titian's Venus of Urbino? There are some parts of gaming culture that should be changed, but mostly it just needs to be clarified and portrayed properly, instead one person's account propped up by media as the true state of gaming.

It's all too easy to use the argument, 'OMG you can have sex with a prostitute in GTA V and then kill the prostitute! That's sexist and misogynistic!' Anita herself describes it as "The sense of violence against women being used as almost background decoration, as texture to make an environment more gritty, more real." My problem with this continued argument centers around the fact that Anita Sarkeesian is more interested in criticizing developers and gamers for having prostitutes as a sexual background decoration, than she is in actually helping, you know, real prostitutes — or even funding female developers to make games more suited to her liking.

I have friends of both sexes that are gamers, and we don't ridicule the types of games people play, the art style, or the gamer's gender. And for more serious topics in gaming — because gaming shouldn't be immune from social commentary — we have intelligent conversations (mostly). But that's the problem here. There is no conversation taking place. It's Anita giving her criticism and then refusing to have a conversation with the portion of the audience that disagrees, all because some as*holes online threatened her. There's not even a conversation with other women that disagree with her. That's why I'm fed up. Not everyone that disagrees with her statements is a misogynist, and blanket sterotyping is dangerous.

Gaming used to be an escape from the problems, where I can opt in to a play a game that addresses a serious issue. There's room for every type of game because gaming has so many different types of people, each looking for something different. No one is denying Anita variety in the types of games — most of us embrace that. But I'm tired of games most people enjoy coming under attack simply because Bayonetta is a male sexual fantasy, or GTA has you kill prostitutes, or Dragon's Crown's characters have large breasts.

If you have a problem with how people (it should be people and not just women we are concerned with) are portrayed in some games, or that things are too sexualized, then you probably have a problem with most art mediums from the beginning of time.

As off as the criticism in her videos were, it would now be refreshing to just see Anita producing Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. You know, the Kickstarter that promised completion date was between August-December of 2012 and that raised $158,922 of its $6,000 goal.