Words matter. These are the best Anita Sarkeesian Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
As others have recently suggested, the term ‘gamer’ is no longer useful as an identity because games are for everyone. These days, even my mom spends an inordinate amount of time gaming on her iPad. So I’ll take a cue from my younger self and say I don’t care about being a ‘gamer,’ but I sure do love video games.
We can be critical of the things that we love. That is possible.
We are witnessing a very slow and painful cultural shift. Some male gamers with a deep sense of entitlement are terrified of change. They believe games should continue to cater exclusively to young heterosexual men with ever more extreme virtual power fantasies.
There’s a toxicity within gaming culture, and also in tech culture, that drives this misogynist hatred, this reactionary backlash against women who have anything to say, especially those who have critiques or who are feminists.
The time for invisible boundaries that guard the ‘purity’ of gaming as a niche subculture is over. The violent macho power fantasy will no longer define what gaming is all about.
Online harassment, especially gendered online harassment, is an epidemic. Women are being driven out; they’re being driven offline. This isn’t just in gaming. This is happening across the board online, especially with women who participate in or work in male-dominated industries.
Game studios, developers, and major publishers need to vocally speak up against the harassment of women and say this behavior is unacceptable.
Game creators aren’t necessarily all sitting around twirling their nefarious-looking mustaches while consciously trying to figure out how to best misrepresent women as part of some grand conspiracy. Most probably just haven’t given much thought to the underlying messages their games are sending.
I love playing video games, but I’m regularly disappointed in the limited and limiting ways women are represented.
The power of pop culture stories should not be underestimated, and there is an enormous potential for inspirational stories that can have a positive, transformative effect on our lives.
