Sorry to say, but Sterling should maybe be cancelled, because they allegedly screwed their own employees, allegedly plagiarize and genuinely said that Resident Evil 5 was not that racist!
They are already being slowly canceled (losing subscribers for over a year straight) for being visibly transfem/nonbinary. They seem to have
no problems working with others given that they work with the same people for years and years[Justin was one of Sterling's longest term collaborators so that conflicts with my original argument], and they also are a rare independent, anti-capitalist, and loudly pro-worker voice in games media.I will go and read the more recent plagiarism claim, but they have consistently called out asset flips and other industry plagiarism for years and years, so that doesn't ring true to me either.
Being wrong about whether a game was racist over a decade ago isn't really that significant, to be honest.
Edit: Does anybody have a real source for the plaigarism and treating assistants badly claim? Because a forum post (even a hexbear one) with no real sources isn't gonna cut it.
Edit 2: I have located the two sides of the story for the JSS and Justin (editor/assistant) pay dispute. Feel free to make up your own mind.
Justin's Side (sorry it's hard to read, click through to each Twitter post to see the images in full) James Stephanie Sterling's side!spoiler spoiler my opinion after reading both sides I think that JSS publicly denouncing Justin was not a proportionate or appropriate response to him telling 3 friends in confidence about a pay dispute, especially when JSS is a public figure but Justin for the most part isn't and they live in different countries now. I also think Justin's story rings true more often.!<
So, I don't doubt for a minute that them coming out as non-binary is a contributing factor, and the conflict with Justin likely hasn't helped either, but I think some of their decline in popularity is also just because their content has grown stagnant. I was a fan for a while, perhaps I still am, but I'd say about a year or so ago I began disengaging with their work, largely because it began feeling repetitive. I've talked with others fans/former fans, and they've echoed similar sentiment. They're channel is mostly just the Jimquisition now, while they're content used to be more varied, with let's plays, trailer reactions, one off videos about various topics, weird shit they just posted for shits and giggles. Also the Jimquisition itself was more varied, it used to have episodes about a variety of topics, some involving actual amateur investigative journalism, interviews with industry professionals, discussions of controversial topics. Now it's just rants about how shit the game industry is, which yes it very much is and it's worth ranting about but ranting about the same shitty thing every week gets dull.
It's an affect that happens with a lot of YT channels and podcasts, whatever their topic of focus is it become well tread ground after a while and things get repetitive. Same things seems to be happening to
, besides the hosts being Libs and Liam being a fucking piece of shit, their episodes are starting to get a big samey cuz they've covered almost every genre of engineering disaster at this point, now only the weird off topic episodes are fun. It's easier to avoid this with media coverage cuz there's always new media but for whatever reason I think Jim is losing their passion for it, seems they just wanna focus on wrestling. Which is fine but I guess the channel is also their income so they wanna keep it going.I kinda stopped watching them around 2019 for similar reasons, having followed them since I randomly started watching Jimquisition on the Escapist in like 2013. Hearing about how much the game industry sucked just got sort of depressing and I didn't really care about the latest horrible gaming news. They also kinda stopped doing a lot of the funny side content I used to tune in for, like Let's Plays of awful Steam games.
For the past few years I've been watching a lot of Matt McMuscles for my weekly gaming slop
Being wrong about racism (being racist) is significant to me. You sound about white saying that it has a statute of limitations.
I don't think racism has a statute of limitations, but I do think that a decade of positive activism can make up for previous reactionary writings.
I have read the above linked Sterling Destructoid article, which is a reactionary response to legitimate concerns about racist themes in an early RE5 trailer. I also read JSS's 2009 article about RE5 in which they claim that RE5 is actually anti-racist and the people calling it racist are the real racist. This article is clearly racist, reactionary content complete with an R slur in the first sentence. I have not found an apology for this.
However, their video right after the 2020 George Floyd protests began--in my opinion--shows they have grown a lot since their review of Resident Evil 5 in 2009. The most relevant section begins at 8:25 of this YouTube video. In the video, they acknowledge systemic racism, racist police brutality, and the inadequacy of most corporations' somber jpeg responses to the police murder + mass peaceful protests without specific, actionable policy promises. They also touch on intersectionalism and relate it back to class struggle and provide links to support anti-racist orgs.
While I would prefer a clear, specific apology, I think they are firmly now a force for anti-racism when they speak on the matter, but they seem to avoid the topic to let others who are more informed speak on it.
Meanwhile, they are consistently anti-terf, anti-transphobia, anti-homophobia, anti-capitalist, pro-worker, pro-union, and call out injustice wherever they see it, in addition to amplifying and sometimes publishing whistleblowers' claims.
I will be the first to call them out if they say or write something racist, but I've been watching their channel since 2015 and I've never seen them do so since that point.
Edit: I wrote the above before I was able to read about Justin and JSS's pay dispute and dueling abuse/exploitation accounts. Links in comment above.
It is odd how people demand an apology from someone who's more than made up for an edgy past with actions that show which side they're on. Usually an apology will end up getting written off as disingenuous anyway.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I found the links to Justin and JSS's accounting of their dispute. The links are in the comment above yours here.
Google is just giving me people complaining about her coming out as nonbinary and being too woke.
https://www.destructoid.com/resident-evil-5-is-so-racist-the-idiocy-begins/
https://hexbear.net/post/263500
What they did to their employee was very shitty, but I'm confused as to why you'd go back and randomly pick this Resident Evil 5 article from 2007. By their own account they used to be a gigantic edgelord piece of shit around that time and were already apologising for it like 10 years ago
The more recent stuff is definitely worthy of concern but this isn't worth bringing up when criticising them IMO
I have located the two sides of the story for the JSS and Justin (editor/assistant) pay dispute if you haven't read them yet. Feel free to make up your own mind. Justin's Side (sorry it's hard to read, click through to each Twitter post to see the images in full) James Stephanie Sterling's side
I'd heard of this before and yeah, it makes Sterling look like a giant abusive hypocrite (especially for someone who regularly rails against how workers are treated in the gaming industry). I just think their posts from 15+ years ago shouldn't be brought up in the same conversation.
I picked that Resident Evil 5 stuff, because I have not heard them talking/apologizing about it. Did they specifically apologize for being anti-black?
You may have not heard them apologise for it because it was so long ago. Sterling was initially known as an egdy gamer shitlord, and when they eventually became more left-wing and outspoken on political issues, they apologised a lot for how awful they used to be.
The thing is, this was like 10 years ago and they don't really bring it up anymore since they've been known as a queer left-wing voice for far longer than they ever were a chud. You'd probably need to go back to their Escapist days to find where they talked about the political turn
I have not heard them apologize for their racism, because it was so long ago? Come on, dude! If they would really be a person against all kinds of oppression, they would rewrite and or apologize that stuff they wrote!
They probably did, 10 years ago! They also haven't been working for the Destructoid since 2013- it's not their personal blog that they can go back and edit. The nature of the Internet is that as a public personality, all of your shitty old stuff is immortalised for all to see, forever
Edit: I did some cursory googling, and found this Reddit thread from 2018 where people were discussing Sterling's horrible past words and deeds
[]https://old.reddit.com/r/SocialistGaming/comments/a9higf/jim_sterling_threw_in_a_trans_women_are_women/As you can see, they're essentially having the same conversation we are now having in 2023, with people demanding an apology for their past views. In response, someone posted an interview Sterling did for a website in 2013 about their views having changed... but the website no longer exists:
"They probably did, 10 years ago?" They did not! Come on, doublepepperoni! Sterling has to be cancelled!"
I found the interview on the Wayback Machine. It's focused specifically on the sexist things they used to say, but they do explain how they had changed as a person
An interview with Jim Sterling about sexism in game culture by wundergeek • June 21, 2013 • People & Events • 7 Comments
Jim Sterling, a staff writer for Destructoid and weekly video blogger for The Escapist, is a pretty big name in the video game blogosphere, as someone who has been doing it for quite a while and one of the few professional video game bloggers out there. He has gained quite a bit of influence as a reviewer for pushing back against game companies who want nothing more than shills for their games instead of real, honest reviews. Sadly, Jim Sterling also had a pretty unfortunate history of saying really sexist things1.
To be honest, I’d pretty considered Jim Sterling a bit of a lost cause, so I mostly stopped paying attention to him for the last year or so. That is, until two of his recent Jimquisition videos caught my attention: This video about the creepy cull of female protagonists in video games and this video about the objectification of women being inherently unequal to the treatment of men in games. (They’re both really good, and if you haven’t seen them, then I urge you to go watch them.)
That made me really sit back and take notice. What happened? Had Jim actually acknowledged the problems with sexism in the game industry and game culture? I was dying to know, but more than that – as someone who had voiced some harsh criticism, I felt honor bound to update the record if such a thing was warranted. I was a bit trepidatious about contacting Jim, since one never knows how these things will turn out, but he was kind enough to agree to an interview, which I feel went really well.
Wundergeek: My biggest question for you is why? What happened that caused you to change your views about sexism in the game industry? What was the turning point? Was there a specific event, or was it a gradual evolution? And what did that feel like for you?
Jim Sterling: You can hold a mirror up to a person as many times as you like, but only the person can look. The nature of online interaction is such that one can pick and choose the things they have to confront, and I simply chose not to confront the idea I was supporting sexism in any way.
I’ve taken to calling my prior attitude, as well as the attitude of other members of the gaming community, the “obviously not” syndrome. In my mind, I “obviously” wasn’t a sexist because I didn’t believe in mistreating women, in hurting women, that sort of more extreme activity the cursory glancer associates with sexism. That’s the insidious thing about misogyny and privilege — you never really think of the subtle things, the more sinister harmful things you may be perpetuating. Making jokes about feminist, being “satirical,” calling someone a “removed slut,” it was all fine and dandy, because I “obviously” didn’t mean it, and “obviously” didn’t think I was a bad person. The trouble is, when you start telling yourself it’s “obvious,” you give yourself no further cause to actually reflect on yourself or your behavior.
I don’t think it was any one thing that changed my mind, though I would strongly credit the work of writers such as yourself for putting under the microscope that which I was unwilling to. I owe a great deal as well to my wife, who has become a more vocal feminist herself over the years, and who patiently educated me in the ways of becoming a more inclusive, more positive influence on the gaming community. I’ve also been blessed with excellent friends who possess strong feminist views — a writer local to me by the name of Tom Head, as well as Colette Bennett and, more recently, Leigh Alexander. Being in the presence of such people has been of amazing benefit to me and the evolution of my career.
As far as how it’s felt, I’d have to say there’s an energizing element to it. People believe that choosing your words to be more gender-neutral, elimating words that can be uniquely insulting, is “censorship,” that it restricts how you write and speak. Far from it, it’s only encouraged me to be more creative, to seek a fresh presentation and open myself up to a whole new vocabularly. It’s difficult, and even scary, to get deeper into the gender issues that affect the gaming world — you never know who you’re going to upset, and accidentally upsetting people is the worst. However, that’s also a special kind of challenge I’ve largely been grateful to face.
This is to say nothing of how much there is to talk about once you open your eyes and stop denying there are any problems. My, but there’s a ton of it!
Wundergeek: You’ve made your feelings known about feminism in the past. What are your views on feminism (and feminists) now? Would you call yourself a feminist? Why or why not?
Jim Sterling: I’ve always tended to be a centrist, historically, never a fan of extremist thinking. Ironically, that’s led to me having pretty extreme views on movements I’ve simply decided are extremist! As far as feminism goes, I think my biggest issue was personal arrogance in assuming I could sort the “extremist bad ones” from the “normal alright ones.” It’s not exactly my place to make that call, yet make it I did.
My views now? Still forming, always evolving. I’ve leaned more liberal the longer I’ve been an atheist not-straight Brit living in Mississippi (funny how that works). I owe a debt of gratitude to many in the feminist corners of the community, though, for being among those who contribute to my growth as a writer and content producer. I feel feminism ultimately benefits every gender the human race has to offer, concerned as it is with smashing enforced gender roles and expectations. With some of the things I do falling well outside of my gender’s typicality, I can more than appreciate that!
I wouldn’t call myself a feminist, nor would I call myself an ally. Not out of disdain or contempt for the terms — quite the opposite, in fact. It’s one of those things where I feel it’s not my place to apply such terms to myself. If what I’m talking about at the time aligns with a feminist view, then great! I wouldn’t just up and say, “Welp, I’m a feminist now, everybody pat me on the back.” Not earned that distinction.
Wundergeek: What made you decide to speak out? You could have just changed your opinions and stayed quiet, but you decided to speak out in some of your new videos. What was the thought process there?
Jim Sterling: There’s a number of reasons. As a “not straight” person, I’ve always cared deeply about LGBT issues, even when my vulgar turns of phrase and use of ignorant language may have made it appear otherwise. From some of my older videos and articles on the topic of gay issues and homophobia, there was a natural step toward examining sexism too.
Another reason would be the aforementioned looking into the mirror, and being of a frame of mind to finally see how much there is to talk about. This has gone hand in hand with many other games writers highlighting the problems, so many more now than there were a few years ago. It’s reached a point of exposure to where no reasonable person could deny sexism is a problem in game culture.
The third reason is personal. I’ve been a fairly prominent speaker in gamer culture for a fair few years now, and in turn have contributed to the form it’s taken. My earlier work was harmful in ways I never thought about, and in the years since examining that work more closely, it’s something I feel obliged to help make better. I want to be a more inclusive and positive voice for everybody in gamer culture, and that’s one of the biggest driving factors in my work, especially Jimquisition, tackling such topics with greater regularity. I don’t want to be Angel, fighting demons in LA to atone for my wicked ways, but I certainly don’t want to be a poisonous force in our culture.
Wundergeek: Have you experienced any backlash from the gamer community over your recent videos expressing concern about industry sexism? If so, do you think it has been comparable to the backlash Anita Sarkeesian has gotten for her videos tackling industry sexism? And if not, what are your feelings about that?
Jim Sterling: Some, sure. It’s a very odd thing to be called a “misogynist” and a “vagina warrior” in one day, but these things happen. I kind of get it from both sides these days. Through absolutely my own fault, I have many of people in feminist cicles who still feel alienated by me, while those in the camp of the bigots or the gamers who “don’t care about this shit” view me as an annoyance who was “gotten to” by the brainwashing feminists. These are the things I should expect, and more or less deserve.
It is, however, nothing compared to what happens when a woman dares tackle the same issues I do. Nobody threatens to rape me. Nobody says I “must be stopped.” The worst I get is an accusation or two and the obligatory reminder that I’m a fat fuck — not the most thrilling of engagements, but far better than consistent hate campaigns and utterly vile personal attacks and threats. Whenever I do a video on sexism, at least one comment will always be congratulating me on how better than Anita Sarkeesian I was. There’s an obsession with her, and I don’t understand it. Compared to my characteristically combative videos, Anita’s work is downright restrained. Yet I’m told I’m the reasonable one and she’s the radical. It makes no logical sense!
For me, confusion is the most dominant feeling over this stuff. I honestly do not get why Anita has been so especially marked.
Wundergeek: Some people are going to see this and assume that you are changing your tune out of personal interest; namely that you are turning your back on your sexist writing because of career and financial motivation, not out of genuine desire to change on your part. What would you say to those people? Which is the real Jim Sterling?
Jim Sterling: What could I say to that? There is no way to invite one into my brain with a flashlight to have a good old poke around, so there’s really no proof of sincerity. These accusations come up regularly enough, though funnily it’s not usually from feminists, but from angry male gamers who link to old blog posts about me to try and shut me up. That is yet to work.
I’ve been tackling more and more feminist issues, gradually attempting to evolve my work for maybe a year or two now, and I don’t believe it’s been a sudden 180, but a gradual change, which I welcome everybody to go and check out for themselves if they care enough to. However, it’s not something I wish to go out of my way to prove. I’m an unbelievably fortunate person to have the job I have, and the position I have, and I want to use that position to be a good element in the gaming community. It’s an element all are free to embrace or ignore.
I resolved never to say “I’m not sexist.” To echo a phrase I used earlier, it’s not my call to make. It’s up to the individual to decide, and if anybody decides I am, then I can only acknowledge that as a fair assessment and continue to work. It’s not as if I didn’t willfully contribute enough evidence.
Who is the real Jim Sterling? He’s an idiot who tries to be less of an idiot every day.
Reddit links were detected in your comment. Here are links to the same locations on Teddit and Libreddit, which are Reddit frontends that protect your privacy.
Link 1:
Link 2:
I have located the two sides of the story for the JSS and Justin (editor/assistant) pay dispute if you want to read it. Feel free to make up your own mind. Justin's Side (sorry it's hard to read, click through to each Twitter post to see the images in full) James Stephanie Sterling's side
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
