....This article lost me when they claimed that Anita Sarkeesian was 'respected'. Outside of her fellow extreme feminists, she's a joke.

The people who write these articles need to grow up. The real world is not as "misogynistic" as spending all your free time on Tumblr would have you believe.

ohh another article about sexism and misogyny, NEXT PLEASE

We don't need to confront anything, because the 'issue' is way overblown. It's simply because they have nothing else to attack. Gaming doesn't need to bend over, just because someone has a virtual problem.

You have a problem with rights in the real world? That's fine, but don't pin that crap on a industry that creates fictual entertainment.

And please, grow a thicker skin like the rest of us. Don't take what people say seriously.

A real journalist was beheaded by a British man, I guess it's time we crack down on the British people as a whole and change their culture so it doesn't happen again...
Another religious terrorist attack happened in a Muslim country, time to change the entirety of Muslim culture because that will fix the problem...
Over 90% of car salesmen in the US are male, seems like we should change cars to make them easier for women to sell...

I wonder if strippers would feel disenfranchised if they were no longer allowed in video games, or how women that take pride in showing of their bodies due to being secure with themselves would feel if bikinis or'sexy' clothes were taken out of games. I find it hilarious that Anita seems to think she is such a leading authority that she can speak for what women want in video games when all she is really pushing is her own agenda, her own view of how things should be on a majority of people that could honestly care less about her viewpoint, be they make or female.

I say we as a community of gamers should do more to help with the real world problems that women face (bodily mutilation,low pay, sex slavery, arranged marriage, voting, etc.) and leave artistic representation to the artists that make the content.
No one is making a fuss over sculpted muscle men, violence loving insane men, a lack of male stripers in games, or how men are represented in gaming in general and I don't remember the last game I played that showed a shoeless, stay at home mother of 12 being beaten by a protagonist for a better high score. This is all just getting blown out of proportion, it's time to put our focus on more important REAL WORLD issues.

These feminazis are like weeds, they do talk once about how games are misogynistic and like a million articles pop about why she is wrong or right. We should have just left this woman alone when she first popped up so we wouldn't be dealing with her right now sigh.

Anyway to just dismiss and discredit this jack off, anonymity is the reason why these people do what they do. If it was some live conference or them just bumping into her trust me they'd be singing a different tune but because they are able to sit behind a monitor screen and be just an anonymous name among the millions they feel they can get away with anything.

Hell I could spout some offensive slurs right now to a whole race of people and propose a genocide of them and it wouldn't bite me on the ass. No one here knows me, where I live, how I look or anything so I could get away with it but because I have some common decency I don't do those things.

STOP trying to make video games political you retard bastards. Thanks

I'm sure that the 'trolls' are awful.

But why is 'feminist' regarded as some kind of badge of honour in academic circles whilst 'masculinist' isn't necessarily?

What she does and what I do by writing on here are only differentiated by her mode of presentation, the support she has garnered and the angle she decides on.

Omg lol this is my last post here, Jesus Christ. Fucking n4g.

Need to confront it... By simply ignoring it and moving on.

No one cares about Anita.

How about companies make whatever the f they want and if people buy it then they can make more like it.

My predictions for the to ten selling video games in NORTH AMERICA // DESTINY , new COD , MARIO CART , new ASSASSINS CREED, WATCH DOGs, MADDEN 15, new NINTENDO SMASH game FAR CRY 4 , LAST OF US remast. , GTA5 from 2013 and some kinda DANCE game maybe? My point is, their will always be these types of tripleAAA games, as long as us gamers buy them . That is why i feel, ANITA S does not have really big impact on the industry, like people believe . So, we will a few more indie games, that are influenced to make stronger female protagonist and new types of stories . Or a few more tripleAAA games, to have the choice, to use a female protagonist .

Is it any less sexist or bigoted to indict then entire male game playing demographic for the action of a few guilty people?

If you take issue with the games developers choose to make, don't support them with your money.

People who are pushing this "Shame to change" agenda are just chumming the water hoping for some a**holes to take the bait, so they can point at them and say "Look here's proof that you're all awful people".

Just keep making games. If people stop buying games for purported sexism that will decide the fate of the industry single handed. No need for anything else.

But something tells me nothing will change because most people don't see the rampant sexism that supposedly exists in the industry or they simply don't care.

I've already said my peace on a youtube video, regarding this idea that it was 'misogynistic trolls' that chased her out of her home. No it wasn't, it was 10 tweets from a dummy twitter account that mentions NOTHING about gaming. Let the law take its course and bag these guys. HOWEVER. Just cause she's got legit threats doesn't mean she's above reproach. No one deserves death/rape threats. But it sure as hell means we can't criticize her. Or any person, man or woman, for doing something in the industry. It's not the 'culture's misogynistic problem' just because a couple of people (men AND women) are assholes to each other on the internet. Don't act like I'm enabling people's bad behavior by not condemning it. If these people were sensible, good people that were open to reason, then they wouldn't do the horrible things that they did. So just stop; stop trying to spin this as a male vs female gamer thing. And stop acting like badly written female characters equal a misogynistic trend. Yeesh.

The writer brings up Seanbaby's article about setting a woman on the train tracks to watch her die in Red Dead Redemption?

Would it have been better if it was a male that you do this to?

Not only that, but what about the very strong female character i Red Dead Redemption? You know, the total badass that ran her father's farm because he was getting too old. The one who saved John Marston's life? The one that comes to his aid, nurses him back to health, gives him a job, and defends him from enemies after he got shot multiple times? Yeah. Her.

You can make these stupid comparisons all you want, but the woman on thw train tracks was a homage to the old western films of their day. With the evil moustache twisting villain placing a damsel in distress on railroad tracks. The woman in the game doesn't even have a backstory and is just one of 10,000 people you kill in that game. Not only that, but its not even required. You don't HAVE to do it if you don't WANT to.

So whats more more important? A nameless person in an optional quest that is clearly meant to harken back to movies of the past? Or an actual female character inthe game who plays an important role and just so happens to be one of the strongest female characters ever created in all of media?

Right. Thats what i thought.

Oh by the way? Why doesn't this article talk about the humiliating and degrading way you're allowed to kill swarms of men (some of which are innocent policemen forced to do it cause their lives are at stake) in Metal Gear Rising? How that game makes humor out of amputating people? Surely that's a trigger warning for amputees who lost their limbs in war. I mean, SURELY that game is misandric for its treatment of male victims who lose their limbs in conflicts. I mean come on, you can cut people down to just their torso and then cut them open anyway. Where's the outrage for that?

Oh but putting a woman on train tracks in Red Dead Redemption? Oh DON'T DO THAT. Oh but killing NUNS WHO ARE ACTUALLY ASSASSINS out to get you? DON'T DO THAT. THEY'RE WOMEN YOU GUYS. JUST AMPUTATE AND KILL MEN YOU GUYS

One more thing to say (because this is my last conversation bubble); people who claim that Anita was just 'misguided' in her assumption about killing prostitutes in Hitman Absolution is BULLSHIT. When Thunderfoot exposed her, he hit the nail on the head. The level where she killed the prostitutes and dragged them around was like the 3rd level in the game. THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME has a long tutorial telling you how the killing and hiding system works and it warns you that killing non-targets will deduct points and make the level harder if you're seen. So in games like Hitman, you are neither ENCOURAGED nor REWARDED for killing random people, especially not random women. For her to make claims like 'the player is meant to derive some sort of sick sexual pleasure' is straight up intellectual dishonesty. In open world games, there are sick and horrible things you can do to NPCs BY CHOICE. Just because they're women or sexualized women doesn't make it anymore wrong than if you did it to the hordes of innocent men in those games. Those NPC men are hardly well written deep looks at weak men's struggle in society. So this bs about having to represent women's struggles better when they're just stock characters is irrelevant. A trope is a trope and it can be overused, but i refuse to let that woman lecture me on how it's problematic because 'real life women face victimhood'. Orly? I had no idea ¬_¬

I'm not going to say there isn't a problem to confront or anything like that. As someone who has been playing video games my whole life, I feel safe in saying that there are plenty of hate-centric problems in the gaming world, just as in the rest of the world, and these problems include and go beyond sexism.

However, I do think that people tend to put too much stock in the vocal minority with these issues, and that is on both sides. Are all "gamers" a bunch of sexist, angry, kids who spread slurs and death threats online? Of course not. Just as all "feminists" aren't all man-hating crazies, out there spewing misinformation and flipping out about the color of Zelda's shoes. With the anonymity of the internet, you are going to see the worst of all sides, and it is best not to judge the whole based on a part. That doesn't mean the problems should be ignored, just that they shouldn't be made the face of a group.

Think of it this way, tons of people support animal rights, but that doesn't mean they would want to, or should be, associated with PETA.

Stop it already. The honest truth is that whatever issue IS in the industry isn't nearly a widespread or as big a deal as people like Sarkeesian(or this author) want folks to believe.

And the more those people keep blowing things out of proportion, the more the community will push back. And the problem- the real problem- will fall by the wayside.

I'm glad this article has started an interesting discussion yet I've noticed that some are denying the problem or think its a not a real problem Unfortunately culture is a reflection of our society and as a game I like think we are morally and intellectually superior to the culture that dumbs itself down with reality TV trash and the crap of old media.

Its this same bland mainstream culture that blames rape on the victim or justifies, encourages violence against women, while declaring a political assault on their social rights (all this in America).

Regardless if one agrees with Sarkeesian or not, she has not been the only one to discuses the problem. Many gamers and in the media have spoken out against the image of women in the video games in resent years.

Also one should really read Seanbaby column about Red Dead Redemption. When an internet comedian well known for his raunchy humor calls out a game for being sexist, then you know something is wrong.