Anita Sarkeesian - At XOXO Fest 2014 lyrics

Thank you. You all are going to make me cry up here. Hi. I'm Anita Sarkeesian, as you already know apparently. So I run an educational non-profit organization called Feminist Frequency, and as part of that project I host an ongoing series of long-form video essays on YouTube an*lyzing the representations of women in popular video games. Now, video games are kind of a big deal these days. Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry with an enormous impact on our larger cultural landscape. What you may not know is that gaming and gaming communities are currently undergoing a ma**ive paradigm shift. The cultural, political, and economic structures of the medium are in the process of fundamentally transforming. While women have always played and made games, for several decades the industry catered almost exclusively to a straight, white male demographic. This is no longer the case. The new reality is that gaming is becoming a more diverse and inclusive environment for everyone. That metamorphosis is happening slowly, and sometimes painfully, but it's happening. This is great news. However, I'm here today to share a little bit about the phenomenon of very vocal, aggressive, mostly male gamers who are unwilling or unable to accept this new reality. Their reactionary response can only be described as a ma**ive and terrifying a**ault directed at the female fans, developers, and critics who feel they are destroying games. I imagine they feel something like this. So as some of you may already know, my video series exploring topics such as the damsel in distress has been met with critical acclaim and positive responses from gamers and developers alike, but it has also been accompanied by a fair amount of anger. That's me. You can't see because it's so bright in here, but I have glowing red eyes. In fact, over the last two years, I've been made into something of a folk demon by some very angry men, especially those that hang out on certain parts of reddit and 4chan. They have figuratively and literally concluded that I'm some kind of Disney villain who is personally responsible for the ongoing transformation of the gaming industry. Of course, I'm definitely not in charge of this cultural shift, no one person is, but in their delusion they've decided to believe that if they take me out all will return to normal. So for the last two years they have viciously and aggressively come after me by any means necessary. These next couple of slides are pretty graphic. I've been attacked with a constant torrent of grotesque misogynist hara**ment. Everything from gendered hate speech to weaponized p**nography where they superimpose my face on p**nographic images and then spam me with them to bomb threats, rape threats, and d**h threats directed at me and my family and my colleagues. There are ongoing investigations taking place for the worst of these crimes. So those are pretty clear and obvious forms of misogyny. Today, however, I'd like to talk to you about the some of the more subtle forms of s**ism that are not as obviously recognizable as the overt threats and slurs we saw a moment ago. Specifically, I'd like to focus on two strategies that these hara**ers have used in defaming me and my project - online impersonation and spreading conspiracy theories. I'm going to deconstruct my own experience to illustrate how this works in practice, but it's certainly not unique to me. The tactics of defamation are used as weapons to try and undermine the work and credibility of women in gaming- and geek- and tech-oriented subcultures and for many women, including myself, slander and libel are the background radiation of our daily lives on the Internet. So, the first, impersonation. Impersonation is a favorite tactic employed to try and discredit women, especially feminists who are often depicted as evil man-hating femme-nazis. Because my work is straightforward, textual an*lysis delivered in a calm an*lytical tone and I don't resemble that character, detractors often fabricate false quotes out of thin air in order to stereotype me as a more familiar villain. The creating of fake social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are common practice. The impersonation accounts steal and use my logos, my image, and my name to then post inflammatory or provocative statements. Let's look at a few examples. This very poorly Photoshopped fake tweet was trying to imply that somehow I embezzled money from my Kickstarter funds for personal gain. This image was featured on reddit I think about a year ago and quickly went viral partially because it fits in nicely within this preexisting s**ist notion about women stealing from hardworking men in order to by expensive shoes. I'm still getting hate mail about this a year later. For the record, these are the only shoes I'd ever consider paying a thousand dollars for. So there's some Portal fans in here. Great game. Okay. So another example is a couple of years ago I gave a talk at DICE, the game studio in Sweden that's responsible for the battlefield series as well as one of my favorite games, Mirror's Edge. Any fans of Mirror's Edge? This was a private event for employees only. However, that did not stop some industrious hara**ers from creating and leaking a fake report about what I supposedly said. The gist of it is a completely made-up quote saying that Mirror's Edge is misogynist because the control scheme is too hard for female gamers. The ironic thing here is that, not only did I never say that, but I actually have no problem with the game's control schemes and apparently they do. Like the fake shoes tweet, this one has been widely distributed and accepted as fact in many corners of the Internet. Again, even though it comes from 4chan, I receive regular hate mail about this often. Okay, here are two more ridiculous fake quotes. One is the decrying the much beloved gaming company Valve. I don't know who would believe this is true because that is so much more than 142 characters. Just saying. The other is stating that I believe murder is somehow not that bad, combined with a photo they stole from my personal Flickr account. So these are just a few examples, but what's important to understand is how quickly they become part of what is sometimes referred to as an information cascade. Information cascades occur when people rapidly repeat or share information from others without first verifying its validity. So falsehoods about me are initially pushed by detractors who use them to spam 4chan and reddit as a way of provoking rage and rallying more people to join the crusade against me. As the disinformation spreads through social media, it takes on a life of its own. It's bouncing from Twitter to Facebook to Tumblr to YouTube and back again. Once a cascade reaches a critical ma**, it no longer matters what the facts are, it becomes a viral meme. These hoaxes work to reinforce that folk demon narrative about me, the one that I mentioned earlier because it's turning me into the embodiment of the most extreme irrational stereotype of feminism possible. The fake quotes also gained traction in the information cascade because they play on and help rationalize preexisting paranoid fears about feminist interlopers and women invading video games. All of this becomes a part of the mythological canon of my villainy, supposedly, proving that I really am as bad as they think, which then serves as justification for further and more extreme forms of hara**ment. Given the prevalence of these impersonation style hoaxes, it might not come as a surprise for you to learn that there are also a number of Internet conspiracy theories about me and my work floating around out there. Now, when I say conspiracy theories, I'm talking full-on, tinfoil hat, chem trails, 9-11, truthers, birthers type conspiracy theories. It's the kind of delusional belief subscribed to by those who are unable or are unwilling to accept a changing reality. So, conspiracy theory number one, Anita Sarkeesian bleached her skin to appear more white and she learned to smile like a white person in order to become popular. There's more. Then she used sophisticated neuro-linguistic programming techniques to brainwash members of the gaming industry into seeing s**ism where none really exists. This one comes courtesy of an obsessive fellow fond of ranting into his webcam while sporting a bathrobe. He has made over 60 YouTube rants about me and some of those diatribes clock in at over four hours. Yeah, I wish I was kidding. So, my family is from Iraq. I'm proud to be Armenian. There are very pernicious racial a**umptions contained in the idea that I'm falsely portraying myself as white. Though it falls under the broader umbrella of painting me as deceptive, that I'm concealing dangerous truths about myself that need to be exposed, in this case my olive skin and my Middle Eastern roots. As for the charge of brainwashing, I'm sorry to say there are no subliminal mind-control blipverts embedded in my educational video essays, but I do like to think that my rhetorical arguments are pretty good. Thank you. So this one is clearly ridiculous, but that's just the more hilarious tip of the iceberg, which leads us into some less funny and more harmful conspiracy theories built on a foundation of victim-blaming and deep-seated misogyny. Conspiracy theory number two. Anita Sarkeesian is not a real gamer or even a real feminist. She's actually a con artist who fakes and orchestrates her own hara**ment in order to gain sympathy which she uses to scam people into giving her money. It is kind of funny because it's so ridiculous. This is by far the most popular theory and takes one of two forms. One is Anita provokes the hara**ment on purpose by trolling and tricking the poor innocent kids on 4chan into hara**ing and threatening her. Version two is similar but takes it step further. Anita fakes the threats and hara**ment receives on a regular basis either by sending these threats to herself via SubPuppet accounts or by enlisting an army of feminists to do it for her. Where is that army? Seriously. So these scenarios are patently ridiculous, of course. I've been playing games since I was five years old and I have never posted anything on 4chan in my life, nor will I ever, nor should any of you because, honestly, the site is really just a cyber cesspool functioning as an incubator for misogyny. Yeah. So, as a side note, 4channers do have a fondness for impersonating me as a way to troll each other into hara**ing me further. So this is an example of someone posting on 4chan pretending to be me and they stole a photo from my Flickr account to do it. Okay, so, remember those graphic rape and d**h threats I showed earlier, after I shared a few of these d**h threats on Twitter, this is how a surprisingly large number of gamers reacted. Beyond the shocking inability to show any empathy for women who are being harmed, we see an aggressive denial of women's experiences. Notice the paranoid language of false flag operations which are commonly found in other political conspiracy theories. It is sometime easier to believe unlikely or even ludicrous distortions of reality than it is to abandon or change a deeply held perspective. These theories are born out of a desire to explain away contradictions that don't fit neatly into these gamers' preexisting worldview that gaming is and should continue to be the domain of young, heteros**ual men. The perpetrators do not see themselves as perpetrators at all. Instead, they see themselves as noble warriors fighting to save gaming from all those who dare suggest and ever change or grow up or mature. Conspiracy theories and impersonation hoaxes can often seem inconsequential or trivial, but they have the potential to shape and influence perceptions of reality and blur the lines between true and false. The constant flood of distortions has a snowball effect wherein bits and pieces of disinformation can become surprisingly sticky. They slowly become accepted as part of the larger cultural myth around me in ways that shape public perception and these theories and hoaxes pour over into every aspect of the hara**ment campaign against me. For every bit of hara**ment, every doxing attempt, every attack of p**nographic images with every d**h or rape threat I receive, you'll find these same types of conspiracy theories springing up in response, each new accusation of false flags or faking threats and abuse building on the last one in a circular feedback loop. For these detractors, it is easier to believe that I'm skin-bleaching, mind-controlling, video-game hating, scam artist involved in a masterful long con than it is to believe that the tide is turning in gaming and that larger numbers of developers and fans are challenging the s**ist status quo and embracing the ideas and critiques expressed in my work and the work of many other women doing the same cultural criticism. Conspiracy theories are often driven by an underlying fear of authority. This particular paranoia about feminists taking over video games is further fueled by a deep underlying distrust of women. There is a prevailing feeling among an alarming number of men that women with any degree of perceived power, success, or influence do not deserve their positions in male-dominated fields and that, therefore, they must be using manipulative or duplicitous means to gain and hold onto those positions. When women experience hara**ment and harm, we are blamed for the abuse we receive, and regularly told that we were either asking for it or inventing it entirely. Again, what I've described to you today is not unique to me and my experience. Every day many women voicing their opinions online deal with a similar flood of slander and defamation designed to undermine their careers, their credibility, their resolve, and their confidence. So I leave you with one simple thought. One of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they tell you about their experiences. Thank you. Thank you so much.