Swell AI Transcript: Anita Sarkeesian is doing just fine

It's the latest development in what has become known as Gamergate, an online culture war.

Tig: Hello and welcome to Episode 8 of Neutral Good. I'm your host, Tig. The whole first season of Neutral Good is about hashtag Gamergate. If you haven't gone back and listened to the previous episodes, I highly recommend them. I will admit that I'm a little biased because I did write and produce all of them, and they took a ton of time to research. In the previous episode, I covered some of the effects that Gamergate had on gaming, gamers and games, even leading into this year, 2024. Normally, in this part of the intro, I'd go over some of the stuff that I covered in the previous episode, but there's just so much that I'm honestly asking you to just check out the last episode for yourself. Okay, in this episode, I'd like to revisit Anita Sarkeesian in 2024. And don't worry, she's doing just fine.

Carl Benjamin: 2012, May 2012, she starts this Kickstarter, and within the first few days, she starts posting updates on that. I'm being harassed. It's like, well, yeah, people generally react negatively to phenomenal bigots on the internet. They don't like it. People don't like it. I mean, when you say men are oppressing women, and everything she says is a variant of men are oppressing women. The male gaze is highly oppressive to women. Toxic masculinity is highly oppressive to women. It's like, OK, when can men legitimately look at women and eat her? No answer. What is non-toxic masculinity? There's no such thing. So what you're saying is masculinity and men checking out chicks is just bad and you hate it and the men are all bad for doing this and they're oppressing the women when they're doing this.

Joe Rogan: Well that's why I said it seems like she's a bit of an opportunist. She's got an angle and she realizes that there's a lot of attention that goes towards that angle and she runs with it.

Carl Benjamin: I mean if I turned around and said all women are a bunch of manipulative slags who will take your money and run, they'd be like, you're a fucking misogynist.

Joe Rogan: But I gotta stop you there because I don't think she's ever said all men. I don't think she said that.

Carl Benjamin: She just uses the term men.

Joe Rogan: I don't think she does. I mean, I really don't think she says.

Tig: I chose to tell Anita's story for the very first episode of this podcast, and that was for a few reasons. For one, I thought that she'd done good work and that due to Gamergate, a lot of what she produced had been written off. If you searched Anita Sarkeesian on YouTube, there was as much a chance of seeing her feminist frequency videos as there was of seeing somebody spreading easily debunked lies about her or the series. And I would bet that a lot of the YouTubers making content about Anita had never watched her videos, but probably had seen other videos about how Anita was single-handedly destroying video games forever or some crap like that. Another reason was that I felt like Anita's work really embodied, like, an enemy for proto-GamerGators. She launched her feminist frequency website in 2009, a full five years before Adam Baldwin gave GamerGate a name and a hashtag. She released her first series of videos, Tropes vs. Women, focusing on common tropes in depictions of women in science fiction media, shout out Wikipedia, in partnership with Bitch Magazine in 2011, still three years before Gamergate. She began her Kickstarter campaign for the video series Tropes vs. Women in video games in 2012. And after a very successful run, earning just under $160,000, she puts the extra money into production and releases her first video March 7th, 2013. We're still a year away from Gamergate. And Anita has already produced a lot of content that many gamers do not want to hear.

Anita Sarkeesian: So when games casually use sexualized violence as a ham-fisted form of character development for the bad guys, it reinforces a popular misconception about gendered violence by framing it as something abnormal, as a cruelty only committed by the most transparently evil strangers. In reality, however, violence against women, and sexual violence in particular, is a common, everyday occurrence, often perpetrated by normal men, known and trusted by those targeted. The truth is, the vast majority of cases are committed by friends, colleagues, relatives, and intimate partners. The gendered violence epidemic is a deep-seated cultural problem present in the homes, communities, and workplaces of many millions of women all over the world. It is not something that mostly happens in dark alleys at the hands of cartoon villains twisting nefarious-looking mustaches. I should also note that the problem cannot be solved by simply finding the bad evil men and killing them all, as these game narratives invariably imply again and again.

Tig: That's a clip from Women as Background Decoration Part 2, one of many awesome videos in the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series that Anita published on the Feminist Frequency website. I think I first watched some of these videos in 2020, and I will admit that I was in a good space to process the claims that Anita made. I wasn't in a good space per se, but with everything going on that year I was already doing a lot of introspection. For those who discover this podcast in the far future, in some sort of time capsule, 2020 was the year the COVID-19 pandemic began and that summer George Floyd was murdered. There were obviously protests along with many more dramatic events that I can't possibly do justice by listing them here as bullet points. Needless to say, there was a lot going on. I was consuming a lot more content that was critical of things I loved as a sort of growth process for myself. My thought process went like this. Maybe, if I could understand things more objectively, I wouldn't be so devastated when they were critiqued. Maybe I'd be able to separate my identity more from the things I love and therefore feel less threatened when their flaws are exposed. For context, I've been seeing a therapist for like over a decade by this point, so I was privileged to have already established a set of tools to help me process this kind of information that I used to find threatening. In this particular case, it was more a sense of realizing that video games were one of those things that I obviously held dearly, and I was unaware I was still being protective over them when first consuming Anita's content. Watching some of the videos from Tropes vs. Women in video games for the first time, my initial reaction was reluctance to agree. I'm like, yeah, I guess. Sure. And then she would show a segment of the actual games where you can't ignore the actual scenario she's talking about being acted out by the protagonist. And with enough in-game examples, eventually I'd be convinced. But I can't deny that I didn't want to believe these things the first time I heard them. It's a tough pill to swallow, but sometimes just a reminder to be objective is all I need. Anita's work through feminist frequency has, according to Polygon magazine, demonstrably made a difference. Quoting their 2017 article here, which I'll link in the show notes. Since she began her work, video games have seen a rise in the number of positive women and minority protagonists and a decrease in the tropes she discusses, such as weak, sexually attracted damsels in distress. Her work has brought serious feminist ideas to a broad audience of gamers, including people working in the game industry, many of whom were previously ignorant of such notions, end quote. In 2015, Intel even partnered with Feminist Frequency and others to invest $300 million into a new diversity and technology initiative promoting career opportunities and positive representation for women and minorities. Brian M. Kurzonik. I have no idea if I just butchered that man's name. I'm so sorry. Intel's chief executive is quoted in a New York Times article here, which I'll also link in the show notes. He says, I have two daughters of my own coming up on college age. I want them to have a world that's got equal opportunity for them. In 2016, Feminist Frequency formally partnered up with Zoe Quinn's Crash Override Network, agreeing to serve as its fiscal sponsor. I'll link to their website in the show notes, too. In 2020, Anita and a team of passionate folks formed the Games and Online Harassment Hotline. And instead of trying to explain in some slapdash fashion, I'm just going to read from their about page on their website, which I will also link in the show notes. He sent a theme here. Established by Anita Sarkeesian in 2019, the games and online harassment hotline emerged in the wake of gaming industry's first Me Too wave. when brave survivors share their experiences of harassment and abuse. Sarkeesian teamed up with Christopher Vugandan-Leigh and Jay Lin to design the games hotline in 2020, launching officially on August 3rd of that year. As the hotline founded and led by people directly impacted by online harassment and abuse in game space, we drew on a wealth of deep wisdom from our networks and communities of survivors and targets who had experienced varying degrees of hostility, threats, harassment campaigns, stalking and violence, both online and offline. From the beginning, we infused the work of the Games Hotline with our principles and beliefs around social justice and systems of oppression, abolition of police and prisons, and trauma-informed care. Users shared with us over the years that texting with us provided them with hope, gave them tangible resources and next steps, showed soothing compassion and validation, and just offered a space to talk things out and detangle all of the feelings and circumstances that have been roiling all around them. That's from their website. Now, unfortunately, I do have some sad news about the hotline about feminist frequency itself. So maybe grab a drink, a breath of fresh air, get comfortable if your space allows for it. So we'll get into this and then hopefully we'll circle back to Silver Lining so that the episode doesn't end on a negative note. On August 1st, 2023, Anita posted on Feminist Frequency blog that the nonprofit would be shutting down operations. I can't do it justice, so I'd like to read pieces to you here. Quote, With my heart stuffed full of a million different emotions, today I share the news with you that Feminist Frequency is closing. Our staff and board members have done so much to help me prepare to make this announcement today, but it still feels like taking a deep breath and jumping off a diving board to communicate this message to the countless people who have turned to Feminist Frequency, supported our work, and buoyed me up over the past 14 years. While we weren't the first voices in the conversation about inclusion in gaming, we were part of building a community that meant more to its members than we could ever have anticipated. Seeing even more people take up this mantle and continue the work has been heartening. Many people working within the industry, even people I've been critical of in the past, have supported and worked to create real change. So I know you're asking, why now? The best answer I can give is the honest truth. I'm exhausted. I know that it's not unusual for nonprofits to have a life cycle shorter than a lot of people would like, but there are unique challenges when they're so entwined with an individual, in brackets, me, who has become a symbol, in brackets, oops, for better and for worse. I'm hoping that it will be valuable to share the reality of the bone deep burnout that comes from consistently saying yes to the growth of feminist frequency, often at the expense of protecting my personal boundaries and the workload of our team. So I'm going to skip to the end here. This is TIG. You've given me strength when being the face of this thing took its toll and you've been there for each other in a rapidly changing online landscape. So please remember to stand up for those in need of an ally and keep being critical of the media that you love. And crucially, be kind to yourself. We're no good to others if we don't take care of ourselves. If you're moved to support other mission-aligned organizations, we recommend learning more about Take This, Interrupting Criminalization, and the orgs that make up the Coalition Against Online Violence." I will include those links in the show notes. I know I titled this episode, Anita Sarkeesian is doing just fine, and this announcement might appear to contradict that, but I like to frame it in a different light. Here's an excerpt from a 2021 interview Anita did with Amanda Knox, originally for Vice.

Anita Sarkeesian: Taking time away from it made such a massive difference. When there's a huge harassment wave that happens it hurts more now. Which is also good, because it means I feel more now. Yes.

Amanda Knox: Like, oh, maybe I am healing and getting better. I actually have the same exact thing. Like, in the prison, in the thick of it, like, I retreated into this, like, tiny little kernel of a person inside of myself where I felt like no one could touch me and hurt me, and it was, like, the last part of me that I had left, and I got numb. And one of the things that people complained about me when I got home was, look how cold she looks, look how unemotional. And I was so emotional, I had numbed myself. And so when stuff hurts now, I'm like, oh god, I'm still healthy.

Anita Sarkeesian: It's survival. Like, it's what we do to survive. The Tropes vs. Women video game series, I was so cold. I was like, deadpan. I didn't make jokes. Everything used to be so scripted, and I'm getting to a point where I'm like, **** it. Like, what else are you gonna do to me? I've been through it. Like, I am still going through it, and I'm choosing to be a human again, and I'm choosing to live again. So you misconstrue a joke that I made? Whatever. Right. It's not the end of the world.

Tig: See, I think Anita's choice to step back is healthy in this context. She's recognized that it's exhausting, she doesn't want to be exhausted anymore, and she doesn't have to subject herself to it in this case. Feminist Frequency has laid incredible groundwork for literally anyone to build upon, and there are now many more creators exploring these spaces. Unfortunately, the Games and Online Harassment hotline that I covered earlier in this episode was dependent on Feminist Frequency and had to shut down too. Here is a blog post from their website. With the decision to close Feminist Frequency, the Games hotline shut its doors as well, since the hotline's infrastructure, funding, and staffing relied so heavily on the parent organization. We considered some other organizations to house the Games Hotline, but ultimately none were able to provide the resources needed and align tightly with the values we have so thoroughly infused in the work. We are sad that some of our goals and dreams for the Games Hotline will remain unfulfilled. We also know that the help we offered to all the people who reached out to us really mattered, and we feel so lucky to have been able to do it. We believe the Games Hotline had further cultural impacts in cultivating hope for a healthier and kinder games community, modeling compassionate care and nonjudgmental acceptance and interrupting cycles of abuse and shame. We know that the seeds we've planted will outlive the games hotline and sprout in unexpected and hopeful ways." So they did try to find other organizations willing to host their services, but it sounded like nobody was willing to take them on or they didn't align properly with the values that the organization holds so dearly. I guess there's a much bigger discussion to be had there about the lack of funding for this kind of program. But there are some good things that remain. For one, there's Respec, a quote, drop in monthly meeting space for people who have caused harm and are engaged in taking ownership of our choices and behaviors and the impact they have, end quote. Respec started as a games hotline project, but it will continue even after the hotline's closure. That's a positive lasting change in the world. You can find out more about Respec on their website at gameshotline.org slash respec. That's R-E-S-P-E-C, and I'll drop a link in the show notes. It's a really neat idea, and it must take a lot of courage to run a space like that. The other piece of good news is that the feminist frequency videos, podcasts, and other media on the website aren't going away. Anita stated that the podcast, Feminist Frequency Radio will continue to be hosted by its co-host, Kat Spada. The entire Tropes vs. Women series and other video archives will remain online. And as mentioned earlier, Respec will continue. And the game's hotline website will remain online as a resource even though the service itself is shutting down. I said there'd be silver linings, gotta focus on the good. Thanks for listening to another episode of Neutral Good. Show notes, transcripts and more can be found on the website www.neutralgoodpodcast.com. We're in the homestretch of season one, and I'm probably going to switch up the format for season two. So I'd love to hear what you loved or hated from the episode so far. You can leave me a voicemail on the website or email me at neutralgoodpodcast at gmail dot com. And I might even include your feedback in an episode. I'm your host, Tig. Talk to you later.