It’s always strange to see somebody in person that you only know from the internet. It’s stranger still to see hundreds of them at once. I had always wondered what a room full of Anita Sarkeesian supporters would look like, and I got to find out last week at Northeastern University’s Blackman Auditorium.
Sarkeesian, a media critic notable for her analysis of gender roles, has become a thorn in videogame culture’s side over the course of the past year. Videogame culture could use a few more people pricking it, of course, and Sarkeesian is one of many—and one unlucky enough to go viral. Yes, I said unlucky. Sarkeesian’s sudden surge of notoriety among misogynist gamers unwittingly allowed her to gain more publicity among non-misogynists hoping to see the industry change for the better. But visibility does not necessarily translate into success, since I define “success” in terms of quality of life.
Almost one thousand people attended Sarkeesian’s talk at Northeastern. I looked over my shoulder during the talk to see people smiling, laughing or nodding their heads in agreement. It felt strange. It didn’t remind me of any other videogame event I had ever attended before. It didn’t feel like a conference panel; everyone was too quiet and too polite. It didn’t feel like a college class, either; most people had shown up early, eager to enter, and I didn’t see anybody falling asleep. It felt a little like a keynote speech at a huge conference, but it’s hard to imagine PAX Prime or PAX East inviting Sarkeesian to kick off their weekend.
I expected to leave Sarkeesian’s talk filled with the same warm glow that No Show Conference had given me; No Show’s diverse set of presentations had left me with an anything-is-possible feeling. I felt, back then, as though videogames were becoming more glorious all the time and as though new faces joined the game industry every day with new ideas and easier, cheaper tools to implement them. I did still leave Sarkeesian’s talk with a firm belief that positive changes were underway, but I also felt a thick, heavy tension in my shoulders as I recalled that these changes occurred in spite of colossal efforts to stop them.
Some people just want to keep videogame culture exactly as it is, and these people hate Sarkeesian and everything she stands for. Many of Sarkeesian’s detractors accuse her of not doing enough, since she critiques the industry as an “outsider” of sorts: She plays games, but she does not make them. (The women who do make games face push-back as well, but that point seems conveniently forgotten in the heat of argument.) Others call her a liar and a con artist, citing any factual errors they can find as definitive proof that her gender role analysis is ill-researched and thus holds no water. She is accused of cherry-picking cut-scenes of violence against women without context—as though added context would help. Sarkeesian is also, according to the internet, both too academic and not academic enough in her work. Still others go the extra mile by making death threats, attempting to hack into Sarkeesian’s various web presences, or impersonating her online.
Sarkeesian kicked off her talk with several screenshots of harassment she has received, some similar to the kind that I have described above, some more graphic and specific. She went on to provide examples of similar harassment campaigns against other women in the games industry, such as Carolyn Petit of Gamespot, and former Bioware writer Jennifer Hepler. These slides were no walk in the park to see, nor should they have been.
Sarkeesian then gave a brief overview of her videogame analyses so far and went on to outline the work she had left to do. I live-tweeted the talk using the hashtag #femfreqNEU along with several others, since no video or audio recording was permitted. This made sense, given the abusive online reaction to Sarkeesian’s TEDx talk (which eventually led TEDx to remove comments from the video entirely), as well as her detractors’ attempts to get her videos removed from YouTube, and so forth.