I Just Don't Get It

I've been following Anita Sarkeesian for around a year now, since she started her Kickstarter campaign. In short, she's working on a series of videos discussing sexism in video games. While there are definitely things I disagree with her about, and I feel sometimes she does make things seem worse than they actually are, discussing sexism in video games is important. Currently it's still a pretty male dominated form of entertainment, and while it may be ok to, at times, show depictions of women that are not considered entirely appropriate, the trend of doing so in video games is somewhat concerning. This is essentially what Anita's series "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" talks about.

Today she posted this video on Facebook:

I have known that she has been harassed for her series since the start, and while the harassment was predictable, it is disgusting. I did not however, realize it carried on to the extent she talks about in her video.

My opinion of how fucked up people have been behaving aside, I just don't get why. Why are these men seeing her as a threat? Do they somehow think she's going to take their precious video games away from them? Or to take it even further, what would be so bad about having at least a few games that actually have strong, respectfully portrayed women? Sure, games are used to fuel male fantasies a lot of the time, but I'm sure games that facilitate fantasies of male strength and power will continue to be released as long as they make money, which will be for a very, very long time. So why do so many people feel threatened by Anita's video series? Or do they not feel threatened and are just using the behaviour shown in the video as a means to show off? Maybe it's both.

Ultimately, the reaction to what Anita is doing is really just proof that more people need to be criticizing our media. As has been shown, people are going to react badly at first, but maybe if enough people get loud enough, things will start to change.