I saw one of Anita Sarkeesian's videos in my recommended and I said "fuck it" and gave it a good faith watch. I may not agree with, or understand every single point, but I remember that she got DEMONIZED for making this. I was told that she hated men, that she wanted all these sexist roles inverted to be in women's favor, and that she was some authoritarian fun police (ironically said by the ringleaders of the satanic panic).
She said some things, and people thought some of what she said was wrong. Even I did. For example, she mentioned Betty from Rugrats as an example of a "straw feminist", but she was portrayed in a sympathetic light and was not meant to imply "feminism bad". Yes, she's androgynous and she's a lesbian, but she's handled pretty well as a character. I'd hardly consider Tracer a straw feminist (I would at least assume she considers herself one since she found Mondatta "an inspiration growing up).
I know that this was just ONE video, but from the information I have, it seems like this whole thing was blown WAY out of proportion. So what gives? Why Anita in particular? Also, how did this whole gamergate thing grow into being rightoid woodstock?
Wait, was Betty from the Rugrats actually a lesbian, or is that something people read into her character because she acted masculine compared to her very passive husband?
But yeah Anita's analysis always struck me as pretty 101-level. Maybe she gets more into it as the series goes on but I remember thinking that almost everything she said was obviously true - what really made it stand out was the fact that when she started doing that series, Gamers were undeniably craving "adult" media analysis.
This was when Roger Ebert was saying that games weren't art, and when John Romero got blasted by the community for comparing video game stories to the ones in porn. Gamers wanted the hobby to be as legitimate as cinema, and when Feminist Frequency put out that they were going to do a series of media critiques it clearly struck a chord with a lot of people because their Kickstarter went viral and raised way more than expected.
Thing is, the G*mers never actually wanted their medium to be treated like a mature form of entertainment - what they wanted was for people that they percieved as being legitimate to praise gaming. So when someone who had legitimate media credentials entered the space and tried to treat gaming as legitimate media, with both the praise and critique that that requires, they lost their collective minds.
Re: Betty - In the reboot she's an out lesbian with a wife, but in the original it never confirmed anything beyond her being gender non conforming.