@109

After reading these ridiculous tirades by the aptly named failry.unblanced and SRoTU I will firmly state that I do think they should kill themselves.

Yes. You heard me. Both of them. Kill yourselves.

I don't take suicide lightly so I say this for three reasons.

#1 They are insufferable halfwits.

#2 I have no evidence they are actual human beings. In fact, judging by the inanity of their posts in this thread, I suspect they are software designed purely to generate Markovian random words that approximate total idiocy.

#3 In the off chance they ARE humans, then they are idiots, and they DO kill themselves? Then that means I have the power to will people to kill themselves over the internet. Their sacrifice is worth that knowledge and I will soon rule the world.

So you should report me to the relevant authorities. Though I would then will them to kill themselves so fat lot of good that would do.

@110: See now this awkward. f u is almost certainly going to point to your comment as an example of him being threatened with murder.
You aren't of course but there you are.

So, even though you are not threatening to kill him, to show that freaky unbalanced little robot my good faith, I'm going to have to say that telling some one to kill themselves is not cool.
Not cool at all, and I really wish you hadn't done it.
One, because it's mean, and two, you're fueling his persecution complex, and we will NEVER get him to shut up now.

Which is not to say that I don't understand the impulse on your part, I do. I really. Really. Do.

@109
"That's a negatory good buddy."

No it's not.
Because you are claiming that when people post things like "kill yourself" they really do not mean what they post.
When you disagree with the target of their post.

You are claiming that if someone posted that Anita Sarkeesian should kill herself because she dared to post her opinions you would be defend that because the person posting that did not really mean that Anita Sarkeesian should killer herself.
It is just what that people post on the internet.

Anna, do you need any more evidence?

@112: Nuh, uh uh!
As you can see from my post @111, I just finished calling out tkc for telling you to kill yourself, because it is mean.
I totally see why he did it, but it still wasn't cool.

@82

I love how Anita Sarkeesian is always harping on about the objectification of women while in EVERY one of her videos she has to be wearing her low-cut flannel, hoop earrings and massive amounts of makeup.

Sarkeesian dresses in a perfectly ordinary fashion in her videos. The fact that you are sexualizing her perfectly ordinary appearance, and using it to discredit her, makes you part of the problem. That is textbook misogyny right there.

@112: Are you going to report him btw? Kant and Venomlash?
You know, by clicking on "report this" under the offending comments.
Do let us know how that plays out.

@106: It was probably the second shooter on the grassy knoll.

@111 As you tried to explain Sarkeesian isn't anonymous. She is a real live verifiable person.

So me telling this unbalanced character to kill him self is utterly inert because he isn't a real person. He, it, or she, is analogous to an internet personae or construct at best. A collection of anonymous ones and zeros. Nothing more.

So, with out real world context, analogous-to-a-human me telling this douchie drama queen to throw himself into a wood chipper is merely a rhetorical flourish.

No matter how much I really wish he would throw himself into a wood chipper the meat-space him is not going to do it. Unfortunately.

And if he did that's his problem. Or I have mind powers. Which would be awesome.

Is it mean? No "meaner" that martyring and comparing yourself to a real person who is actually getting real threats to her real person, real home and real family. He is disqualified him self from being treated civilly by being unwilling to distinguish this obvious distinction.

And frankly by entertaining his fantasies you are encouraging this nonsense. M advice? Focus your mind powers on visualizing him walking into a wood chipper — and then ignore him. You will forget he exists five seconds after hitting the send button.

Oh that is tempting, but I am too tender hearted. :)

@116 people who don't care about the truth puzzle me.

@119: Perhaps you should come up with something other than "Some anonymous dude on a web site says it is a hoax." The burden of proof at this point is not on Lissa or Ms. Sarkeesian. It's on you.

@120 It's not just "some dude"--or rather it is, but that "dude" pointed to specific facts about the information Sarkeesian released that look very fishy. Annotated version of her screenshot from twitter here: http://imgur.com/zHPLIan

In addition we know that
1) Sarkeesian has a history of acts of dishonesty,
2) She stands to benefit financially-recall that her original kickstarter netted her over $150,000 after she was threatened and became a cause celebre;
3) it wouldn't exactly be the first time a social justice warrior has gotten caught in such a hoax.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/wo…
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arch…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/04/20/…
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/…

Look, it either is a hoax, or it isn't. I don't know for sure. But it seems suspicious to me and a lot of other people. If you can make a persuasive case that lays my suspicions to rest, isn't it to your advantage to do so? I think I've made a prima facie case. If you want to sit back and play legalistic games about burden of proof, I can't stop you. But I would like to see someone at least try to explain the fishiness.

Because, see, I actually care about what is true.

@118 do you care to refute any of the evidence I linked to demonstrating that Sarkeesian is a hack, or are you all snark and no substance?

@121: Ooooooooor maybe all those sleuthy McSleuthingtons could use THE POWER OF THE INTERNET to find this guy that threatened Sarkeesian......?
If they're so smart, they'll either be able to prove PROVE I SAY, that she is a lying liar and that this man does NOT EXIST HA HA1!!!1
Or
They'll help put a dangerous man away.
Step 3 profit.
So why don't you, and old William F. Fuckley @122 ( Hi Billy!) get crackin' on that?

@122: For you? Nope, nuthin' but snark.

You and I fundamentally disagree on all things woman related.
There is nothing any one with a vagina could do or say on this topic with which you would agree unless of course it were:

"Hey Bill! After we burn this bitch on a pile of games she OBVIOUSLY HAS NOT PLAYED, could I interest you in a sandwich and/or blow job?"

Well since that's never going to happen (not even if you hope and wish and pray reallyreallyREALLY hard) I suggest you join your brothers in arms and try to find this dude and prove your thesis.

@87
First, for every woman and man with anorexia, there are thirty obese people. Why is it feminist say nothing about countless women eating themselves to death, but have plenty to say about a comparatively small amount of women who starve themselves?
Second, the sex symbol of the 70s was Burt Reynolds...he was kind of hairy, in shape but not an Adonis, and not that far from average. He would never get work as a model today. And yes, using men with airbrushed bodies is on the rise:
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-b…
And boys have body image issues that are getting worse as a result: http://mediasmarts.ca/body-image/body-im…
So if you want equality, why not address men and women's body issues? And the reason men don't have eating disorders is because they want to be BIGGER (as in more muscular) not less. How many women suffer from this: http://time.com/2865172/bigorexia-and-th…
And rape and sexual harassment by women is under reported, so of course the statistics are going to be skewed.

@92 & 93
As opposed to Andrea Dworkin... (rolls eyes)

@122 (and @82) - Maybe I should know better than to engage in lengthy comments-thread discussions, but I'll take you up on addressing some of the stuff you posted (in #82).

#1 - "Anita admits on video that she doesn't like nor play video games."

-- The 'New Statesman' article that another user linked to addresses this, too, but: at issue here is a very brief, out-of-context clip where Sarkeesian says that she's not really a video game fan. The clip is from 2010, so it's entirely possible that she's changed her thinking on games since then, but really, I think all this shows is that Sarkeesian feels mixed about modern video games: in the clip (brief though it is) she also says that she'd like to play more games, but she's put-off by all the violence. Since this is one of the points of the entire 'Tropes vs. Women in Video Games' series - that the male-centered and super-violent nature of so many current games alienates a lot of potential players - I don't see why that'd be such a controversial comment (well actually I do see why - because people who dislike Sarkeesian are dripping with confirmation bias when it comes to anything she's ever done or said, and will use whatever bits of information they can to try and discredit her, but anyway...).

#2 - "Anita gets caught stealing someone's artwork for her videos."

-- The link doesn't seem to work… But it seems the same basic issue is addressed below…

#3 - "Anita gets caught stealing other people's Let's Play footage from Youtube."

-- Obviously Sarkeesian uses a lot of stuff that she didn't create herself - artwork, footage, sound - in making her videos; that's standard practice for this kind of work. The linked article actually puts it well:

"There's of course a disclaimer at the end of her video to declare all the footage as fair use, but it's still bad form to hide the fact that a lot of her footage is ripped straight from YouTube…"

And, a little further down in the article is an email from the site that hosts most of the Longplay videos that Sarkeesian used footage from: they say that they allow people to utilize their videos as long as those people provide proper credit, and they claim that Sarkeesian didn't credit them.

So, there you go. "Bad form," arguably, and she may have not provided proper attribution for some of her footage. I don't think that qualifies her as a thief/charlatan/hack/fraud even a little. But, like I said, confirmation bias…

#4 - "Anita BLATANTLY cherry picks and misrepresents parts of video games in order to fit her narrative. Proves that she never actually played the games she uses as examples."

Oh, man, OK. So, this link is to a video by a YouTube user named thunderf00t, who posts a lot of anti-Sarkeesian stuff. The video is meandering and smug and annoying, but let's cut to the chase: basically thunderf00t is claiming that Sarkeesian "cherry-picks" scenes from games in order to prove her point, and he argues this by pointing out two specific scenes among the dozens that she's featured…what was that about cherry-picking, again? His first example involves the game Watch Dogs, where he implies that the game isn't sexist because part of your objective is to shut down a sex-trafficking ring. thunderf00t ignores (or just doesn't get…?) that the game shows exactly the sort of degrading and reductive imagery that Sarkeesian is talking about; at around 2:00 in the video, he says "How can you possibly portray that as objectifying women?" over footage of a scene in the game where naked women are being presented for-sale on a stage (does he not know what 'objectification' means?). Most of the rest of the video is about the game Hitman: Absolution: the scene Sarkeesian highlights is one where your character can kill some helpless strippers and then drag their scantily-clad bodies around to further your in-game objectives. thunderf00t's point is that this is only one small part of the game (which, OK, but that doesn't have anything to do with Sarkeesian's argument), and that most players would choose not to kill the strippers. He says absolutely nothing about the simple fact that the option to kill and drag the strippers was deliberately and carefully built into the game by the developers. Actually, you know what? That 'New Statesman' article deals with this, too:

"The video is specifically referring to Sarkeesian's discussion of women as background decoration - that is, they don't have any influence on the narrative, and their existence is entirely predicated on their usefulness or otherwise to the player. Hitman: Absolution does penalise the player (slightly) for killing the exotic dancers, just as it does other civilians, but the crucial point is not whether the player chooses to kill them or not. It's that the game presents it as an option at all."

So, yeah. Basically, these links all provide bits and pieces of evidence, but that evidence doesn't actually prove much of anything.

@91
I do like men, their asses, cocks etc and like looking at them like a piece of meat while jerking off to them and/or trying to fuck them and never seeing them again. I also do the same thing with women (but less often) The difference? I admit it and am fine with it. I don't actually believe there is anything wrong with having idealized images of human beings in media, video games etc.
I'm saying objectifying is fine no matter who is doing it. Feminist say the objectification of women is bad because it's sexist...but objectifying men is fine. It's the hypocrisy I take issue with.

Just as I would be completely against a white nationalist who lives in the wood away from minorities and hates them, but respect him more than a white nationalist who sleeps with an Asian escort every weekend, I could respect someone who is against all objectification and talks about it equally, while I have contempt for people who say a commercial showing a woman in a bikini is horrible, but have nothing against that very fuckable black guy in the Old Spice ads.

But I am not a hypocrite: I objectify men and women equally.

&126: Why don't you lead by example and stop objectifying men yourself there c_s? You know, stop treating them like "holes for you to fill" I believe was how you put it? I could have that quote wrong since all your awful misandrist graphic comments got deleted and all.

You are such a tool. And breathtakingly stupid.

Wow. Your explanation makes you look even more stupid c_s. I honestly didn't think that could be possible.
Bravo little pinhead. Bravo.

@89
Actually, men in leading roles have gotten more and more Adonis esque over the years: http://time.com/2865172/bigorexia-and-th…
Would Christopher Reeves had made a convincing Superman today? No.
And of course my arguments are surface because this is just a message board. But I have read a bunch of feminist books and was pretty horrified by most of them, but agreed with others. The whole idea of "cultural transformation" and how everything on Earth is sexist that you get from people like Dworkin and Brownmiller is absurd.
Unless one reads about an ideology and studies it, one should not be talking shit about an ideology. That's why I've read the Turner Diaries and the White Man's Bible by Ben Klassen despite being half black, so at least I know what I'm talking about when I say things against white nationalist. That's why I've read Marx, Engels, Bernstein (father of Social Democracy) Keynes and that dumb Rob Reich book.
But if you really want to know what Libertarianism is, I recommend "Markets, not Capitalism" by Gary Chartier, "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman, and "The Revolution: A Manifesto" by Ron Paul.

@130 & 131
*Sigh*
Let me make this a fable: A white man and his black girlfriend are walking down the street. A white nationalist yells at them, standing next to his Asian girlfriend. The white nationalist accuses the white guy with the black girl for "betraying his race." Is the white guy with the black girlfriend justified in calling out the white nationalist with an Asian girlfriend over his hypocrisy, even though he's race mixing himself? Yes. Why? Because he has no problem with race mixing, but would at least expect consistency from those who do.
So, I see a woman fuming over the objectification of women, but has no problem with the objectification of men. I am not against objectification, but I still call them out for the hypocrisy. If you can't understand that simple common sense, then you are a hopeless cause.

And no, I don't look at men as "holes to be filled"....I look at them as pegs made to fill my holes :)

I'm a dog, with no interest in relationships, but just interested in sex. But at least I'm honest about it.

@113
"As you can see from my post @111, I just finished calling out tkc for telling you to kill yourself, because it is mean."

Yes I do see that.
After I have specifically pointed out that your rationalization would result in you defending someone who told Anita Sarkeesian to kill herself for posting her opinions, you said you agreed with the sentiment.

"Are you going to report him btw? Kant and Venomlash?"

Let us first see if you can post any links to you "calling out" them about their posts.
But you won't be able to.
Maybe you should review your post #99 in this thread.

If you disagreed with her, you would defend someone telling Anita Sarkeesian to kill herself for posting her opinions because, to you, that is just something that people do on the internet and you know that they do not mean it.
And you think that that is acceptable.

"Which is not to say that I don't understand the impulse on your part, I do. I really. Really. Do."

@134: Well are you going to report them or not? If you feel they have threatened you, which you say you do, then you should report them.
What I do, or don't do, shouldn't influence your decision, if you feel threatened.

@135
"Well are you going to report them or not?"

As I said before, you will not be able to post any links to where you are "calling out" anyone for posting "kill yourself" prior to my Anita Sarkeesian reference.
That is because you believe that it is an acceptable response to someone posting an opinion that you disagree with.

When Anita Sarkeesian posts a video about her opinion of of misogyny in games and someone tells her to kill herself for that, you would defend that response.
Because you know that they did not really mean it.
It's just something that people post.

Well do you feel threatened or not? If you do then you should report them. If you don't then don't.
You do what you need to do to feel safe. If that means packing up you and your family, and hiding at friend's house, you should do that. But if you have never believed that what the boys said to you was anything more than mean, then you need to stop comparing yourself to some one who is under actual threat of violence.

@133: Good for you, baby. Good for you.

@f.u you still aren't grasping the huge difference between your harassment and Sarkeesian's. She is presenting herself as a real person. You are not. Only a few of us on Slog do. If you went by your real name, then it'd be much more similar - still not the same, but enough that it would be intellectually honest to compare.
Until the details of the real you become involved, these 'threats' only exist within quotation marks.

@128: Thanks for doing your best to keep the comments on topic. (You're doing what most of us can't.) I'm glad at least a couple people read that article too. I had a lot of confrontation bias toward her too, and I'm a big fan of thunderf00t for his anti-creationism videos, so that article helped me put things in proper perspective.

@139: That's the problem: he has no interest in being intellectually honest. He never has. If he had a shred of integrity, he'd reverse his support for politicians who publicly advocate using "Democrats [and especially their GOP allies] as bullet backstops," apologize for the blatant hypocrisy of his comments here, and resolve to stop hijacking threads to put on the martyr routine.

But he won't.

Further evidence of fraud: Kdobbsz apparently issued just enough tweets to fill one page/screenshot. And stopped tweeting as soon as Sarkeesian took that screenshot. How did he know? Why would someone who in the midst of a twitter rant, who tweeted 10 times in 3 minutes, suddenly stop?

If Sarkeesian was really concerned enough about these death threats from someone who knows her home address, I sure hope she's having them investigated by Twitter and/or the FBI. I won't be holding my breathe for the results of that investigation though. I doubt she wants anyone digging into this.

@137
"Well do you feel threatened or not? If you do then you should report them. If you don't then don't."

I will explain it to you again.
There is a type of person who believes that it is appropriate to post "kill yourself" on Anita Sarkeesian's site because they disagree with her posting her opinions.
You are that type of person.
As are the other people here who have defended that behavior.

If Anna wants to know what kind of person would post that on Anita Sarkeesian's site then Anna only needs to look at the comments in this thread.

@141: She did say that she had contacted the authorities, so let's hope they can get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, out in the blogosphere, is anyone trying to find out who this guy is? Or are they all just sitting around spinning theories like the one you mention? If ya'll think that digging is going to turn up the truth, then dig !
Oh! And have you read the unregistered comment @123? You should, they address some of the questions you have.
@140: thunderf00t is kind of a problematic person. His anti creationist stuff is really good, but when it comes to anything having to do with women.......well he got booted from Pharyngula for a reason.

@133: A sensible and principled person would call out the white nationalist for trying to disenfranchise interracial couples. Just saying.

@142 until you address the point I brought up in #139 you're arguing offsides at a baseball game.

@144
I agree, and maybe I didn't phrase it right. What I am saying is that a white nationalist who makes fun of interracial (black and white) couples while never sleeping with a member of another "race" is an asshole, but at least he/she is consistent...a white nationalist who calls out black white couples while at the same time fucking Asian women is an asshole AND a hypocrite at that. The first one, while an asshole, can still get a little respect for being consistent.

Likewise, a feminist who whines and moans about the depictions of women in the media, but has nothing to say about men becoming more and more buff in the media and "hunkvertizing" in places like A&F gets lets respect than someone who doesn't care about any depictions of unrealistically perfect people in the media, be they male or female.

Jesus Christ I can't believe I just read this entire idiotic thread.

"Obviously, it's totally unacceptable to threaten people on the internet (or anywhere else)."
Like.
If you need to hate on someone, hate on haters. Bigots are the closest to fair game.

"But if anyone was hoping to demonstrate that video games are not part of a misogynistic culture that steeps women in fear and objectification and sexualization and threatens them with violence for stepping out of line—well, IT LOOKS LIKE YOU ABSOLUTELY FAILED."
Stupid lonely gamer dudes don't need to worry about women, they can order take out and wank to porn.

What #147 said

I

#43
"I'm twenty-two and a half"
Are you fucking serious?!!

@145
Either you believe that posting "kill yourself" is an appropriate response when disagreeing with someone or you do not.
You do.
Therefore, you are defending the behavior of the people who tell Anita Sarkeesian to kill herself because they do not agree with her posting her views on games and misogyny.

So if Anna wants to know what type of person does that, she can just look at this thread.

@151: This thread is not about someone telling Ms. Sarkeesian to kill herself.

This thread is about someone threatening to rape and murder Ms. Sarkeesian, and threatening to murder her parents, while providing information that suggests he knows where both she and they live.

One of these things is rude and inappropriate.

One of these things is frightening and criminal.

You cannot tell the difference between these two things.

Man, I came to this thread hoping to have a good place to comment about how quality I thought the latest TVW video was since the video itself doesn't allow comments, but apparently this isn't the place.

The arguments that she isn't "scholarly" are frankly ridiculous, in my opinion. She's not writing academic journal articles (which are often for an audience of three people, as far as I can tell), she's essentially doing vlog journalism for the masses. A lot of her points are basic, yes. But what her videos do best is point out the pervasiveness of the tropes by showing lots and lots of examples, most of which she gets from the biggest titles in the business.

@Knat: Good article. I wish that's what we were discussing here instead of all the ridiculousness in these comments.

@150: Yes.
@151: Commit sudoku.

@152
"One of these things is rude and inappropriate."

You are defending it as an appropriate response.
The same type of people who tell Anita Sarkeesian to kill herself for posting her opinions are the same type of people who post "kill yourself" here.
And you believe that that is acceptable.

If Anna is interested in knowing what type of people those are then she only has to look in this thread.

Seattle center of gaming production. Games saturated with misogyny. How is this city culpable? I would love to see a follow up story w this theme....

Many of those attracted to gaming are socially retarded. Anyone who criticizes the inner core of their sad little world poses an existential threat. Disturbing, but not surprising.

"the woman behind a fantastic web series critiquing misogyny"???? The web series is far from fantastic. It's more like a sleep aid. Sarkeesian was found to have used other players' game footage and tried to pass it off as her own, which might explain why she doesn't understand many of the games she purports to play. She just cherry picks scenes that fit into her narrative. Furthermore when Sarkeesian does actually play she goes out of her way to murder and desecrate women even though the game (Hitman) penalizes her for it. The game actually discourages her kind of behavior by lowering her score but she insists that the game encourages it. Really??? Plus Sarkeesian says many dopey things like "the more you think something doesn't affect you the more it does". Try explaining that to my wife who is forever putting Land's End catalogues in front of me hoping I'll dress better. It's just so much malarkey that's it's actually a kind of unintentional comedy. Some games set out to satirize something, like bad driving or ridiculous stereotypes, but Sarkeesian misses the satire and acts like it's all very serious.
Sarkeesian can't separate sex, sexy, sexism and mysogyny. When Boyonetta (a female fighter created by Japanese female devs) does several cat-like moves to assassinate a male bad guy Sarkeesian describes it as "forcing her into several pornographic poses". This is what she is passing off as criticism. It's just sex-negative slut shaming. If she told the truth and actually understood what she is critiquing she'd get less flak. But she just cherry picks and skims the surface of things and makes up crazy stuff.

Male videogame critics (i.e. Jack Thompson) have received even worse treatment than Sarkeesian but for reasons only a journalist can understand that is not press worthy.