Like what?
I sat and watched the series the other day (I was procrastinating) and found it to be the most painfully inoffensive thing I've ever seen. The fact that this excruciatingly moderate critique that constantly feels the need to coddle the viewer (e.g. this does not make the game itself sexist, this does not make the game creators themselves sexist, enjoying these games does make you sexist etc) garnered this much backlash is a testament to how reactionary the so-called "games community" is.
Been a while since I watched her stuff, but lemme see what I recall.
1) Misrepresentation of Fallout New Vegas. The game is one of many featured in the "women as backround decoration" videos where she basically rants about how women in video games are not characters with depth, but rather nothing more than something pretty to look at. She then proceeds to rant how unfair it is to do this to women exclusively and not make women as detailed as men, and amongst the other games featured, she shows footage of the hookers in front of Gomorrah, while failing to simply walk inside the Gomorrah and say "oh look, male hookers."
She later talks about how these same backround decorations are meant to allow the player to commit violence against them as part of some male power fantasy where you can kill a woman off. She eventually offs the crier for the Atomic Wrangler after quite literally stating such actions often have no reprocussions or punishments, and the clip CONVENIENTLY ENDS with the woman's head exploding, not showing how Freeside begins to light her the **** up for commiting murder. It also fails to address the "You've lost karma" notice, or the fact that ANYONE in the game regardless of gender can be killed.
And while it's not quite in line with the video...though sort of is...the fact of the matter is New Vegas is filled with women who are anything but backround decoration. There's TONS of female characters in that game with loads of depth and character, just like the male characters. It's a game that received critical acclaim from Mormons, feminists (other ones, obviously) and LGBT alike, with all of them more or less stating "they represented my people right by presenting us as people with flaws and strengths rather than defining us solely by our gender/religion/orientation and treating that as our personality." It's blatantly dishonest to portray such a game as misogynist, and if anything all this does is highlight that Anita is NOT interested in changing games "for the better," because he's a game that does exactly what she wants and she reduces it to nothing but fodder and ammo to use in making her case rather than acknowledging it, praising it and citing it as an example of a good game that upholds values she likes.
To me it says either:
A) Check the series, it is ABYSMALLY far behind schedule according to what the Kickstarter promised. It feels as though she's a lazy college student who knows their term paper is sub par and full of holes, but is submitting it anyways just to make the grade. In her case, she's submitting it and using ANYTHING as an example just to avoid any potential to lose those donations for not meeting her end of the bargain, knowing damned well people may not check up on it, or even if they do and they're unsatisfied with the work for being inaccurate and misleading, it still meets her end of the bargain and she keeps the 160k.
B) She is so bias she is absolutely incapable of viewing things with a fair and critical eye.
C) The time she spent actually playing these games is an absolute bare minimum, and thus no actually attempt was made to research and find actual problems within games media.
On that note, I should note Thunderfoot posted a rant video in response to the very same videos, cept he was defending Hitman Absolution. As I recall Anita portrayed a Hitman mission involving a brothel as if going through the dressing room were mandatory and as if there were no reprocussions for hurting the strippers (much like there were "no reprocussions" for killing a hooker in New Vegas). In actuality the game actively discourages you from doing so and the dressing room is one of many paths the player could take, that one being considered one of the worst and least safe to avoid being caught.
2) She has a video on the Bechdel test. (I'd link, but upon searching she has like three on this) While the video itself is educational in the sense that the Bechdel Test as a concept is interesting, she proceeds to apply it in questionable and narrow-minded ways. For those that haven't seen, basically the Bechdel test challenges you to watch a movie and find a scene with two women conversing with one another where they do NOT converse about men or "cute boiz." It's meant to highlight that men in movies are often the "movers and shakers" and women are only there to admire them or be a target of a man's desires. That itself sounds cool.
The problem? As I recall she applies it...very liberally. An example was I do distinctly remember it being applied to Big Bang Theory by her. I found this a tad odd as - to me - the show is about nerds, and a staple of nerd culture is being socially awkward, and people typically imagine a male nerd who can't get a girl rather than some female nerd who can't get a guy. Why? Because while both men and women can be outrageously awkward, the fact of the world we live in is a woman will have an easier time managing a boyfriend than a guy a girlfriend. Likewise, anyone here aware of the male-to-female ratio within physics and engineering? Spoiler Alert: Many universities are lucky to have a female who studies those. To me, the male cast felt fitting to the actual theme. It was also made at a time when the Bechdel test no longer applied; maybe to the first season, sure, but by the time the video was made, female characters got as much screen time as males. She also spoke a lot about how the Bechdel test highlights that women have no character depth or personality, but Penny from the Big Bang Theory is anything but that.
In a nutshell it felt as though the Bechdel test was being applied so liberally it lost meaning. It'd be like applying the test to the Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile, which both hold settings where female characters would not really be expected, so passing the test would be difficult.
You could argue her logic is sound and there's nothing misleading there, and I suppose that's got some truth to it, but I argue that this video of hers highlights one of the reasons feminism and I don't see eye-to-eye: she's essentially asking some movies and TV shows to force female characters into settings where they feel unrealistic. It feels like feminism acknowledges "art imitates life imitates art," and thus they wish to change art in order to change reality. But in doing so, they're censoring art, and I'm not ok with that. If we were to apply the Bechdel test as liberally as she did, then we'd see a LOT of TV shows and movies with women not only being the sole characters of the movies, but also being in positions that simply feel awkward as the movie fails to imitate real life.
And something I should've done at the start of this part, watched the videos again lulz:
Check the movies she shows. Mother****ing Wall-e is being criticized by her for not featuring two female characters conversing with each other, and being included in a list of examples of sexist elements in the industry. I'm sorry, but there's criticism, and then there's being absolutely ****ing ridiculous. And like the above with New Vegas, this highlights how she has little interest in clarifying technicalities or important details behind her examples, but rather reduces a lot of things to nothing more than ammo to try and make her case. And of course, there are others. Shawshank Redemption did infact make it, and the entire Austin Powers Trilogy (which is largely a spoof of James Bond and - as a spoof - has limited say in what gender it's characters are; it's going to get funny looks if the spoof has a female in James Bond's role). The vast majority are also movies with three major characters: two men, one woman. The conundrum being that were they to adhere to the test, a similar test asking for two men to converse with each other in a meaningful way would fail. You get my point, I hope. It's a fairly neat little test implemented in a rather poor way in many of her examples.
3) Her questionable history with video games. I assume this one's known enough to not need clarifying. In a nutshell she'll say she's been a gamer since she was a kid, in others she'll claim she cares little for games and only recently (when her videos started) started looking into them and covering them. I can get a source for you if you'd like, though this one's been thrown around so much I assume it's common knowledge, and personally I must admit I'm not fond of bringing this up as many people falsely claim "she's not actually a gamer and therefore can't criticize." Me personally, I'd rather criticize the way she criticizes than the ad hominem bull****. But on the topic of does she lie and mislead the public? Oh yeah, this qualifies.
4) The same infamous Christmas song video I've cited before:
This one has two offenders in that. The first being the inclusion of "I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," the second being "Baby it's Cold Outside" which she presents as a song promoting rape, and a song that I later discovered gets covered by women as frequently as men; once happened upon a skit from a (I assume) Christmas special that went back and forth between a man singing it to a woman and another woman singing it to another man.
To me this is misleading because that detail - as well as the fact that I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus has jack all to do with gender - seem blissfully looked over. I take offense to I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus being in there as she states all over the video that this is a video about sexist songs, and while the song is never labeled sexist when it's turn comes up, it's just kinda...there. Part of my point is the presentation and explanations are often intentionally poor or left with holes for the person to fill in or for defense. It presents a tone of "this is sexist" without explicitly stating it that leaves you thinking "wtf was that about?" You may say "that's you reading too much into it," I say my point is that if she wishes to be taken seriously as a critique, it's her job to explain this stuff. It's her job to answer when I say "why do you leave out the equality-based parts of New Vegas" and it's her job to answer why that song is just conveniently dropped into a list that cites every other song as sexist.
5) She stole art, remember? Bare with me, this isn't lying to or misleading her audience, per se, but it is dishonest. I could be mistaken here as it may have been resolved without my knowing, and if it was feel free to point that out, by all means. But to my knowledge, she stole some girl's artwork for a logo of hers, the girl simply wrote a letter and attempted to reach out to her just for an apology or a statement or anything, and Anita actively ignored her while clearly being active on social media. Again, this is not a lie, but it IS dishonest, and I would personally refer to her NOT responding as a "half-lie" in the sense that she's avoiding admittance of jacking someone's artwork by simply not responding period and pretend she has no idea this person is attempting to contact her.
6) And while this is ultimately my SUSPICION with no proof, by GOD is the suspicion overwhelming: please go look at how many videos Anita posted pre-Kickstarter, now check how many she's posted after. Please note the frequency of then and now. She promised, as of June 16th 2012, to produce 12 new videos of her show. It is now November 2014 and she has produced a grand total of six videos. At this rate she will uphold her end of the bargain to her kickstarter backers presumably by 2016. What the **** is going on. Why is a little web series that used to be more frequent suddenly taking as long as a presidential election?
And just for clarity, by no means is this an example of dishonesty, per se. I simply list this as "suspicious," and given the other five points above, yes I see very good reason to be suspicious like this.
Ultimately, it's simple: she presents herself like a professor giving a lecture. And seems to want to be taken as seriously as one too. Is that so? Then act like one. Stop leaving these blatant holes in your research and presentation that may lead people to think Wall-E or Fallout New Vegas are laced with little sexist elements; claims that if anyone bothered looking into, they'd know are full of ****. If she wishes to be taken seriously and wishes for her criticisms to carry actual weight, then present them in such a way that they can stand up to scrutiny. Present them in such a way that they're true and lack any misleading presentation. Present them in such a way that counter-arguments are all but impossible, and if those counter-arguments come up, ****ing address them. She doesn't though. She sits there with comments locked screaming about all these sexist games while showing out-of-context non-sexist examples, then wonders why gamers don't take her seriously and think she's full of ****.
A true critic would be able to admit when they're wrong and dish out criticism only when justified, a slimeball interested in money is going to criticize for the sake of criticizing and for the sake of trying to validate their "job" and their existence as a critic. She's the latter, as she woefully exaggerates and hyperbolizes issues while completely overlooking examples of "success" within the games industry. Likewise, a true academic thoroughly researches their information and presents facts. She doesn't do this, and like any university student who writes a paper without a single citation, should not be taken seriously until she does so.
Look at her history and you'll see nothing but misleading presentation, blatant lies about her history or who she is, very questionable application of her little guidelines and absolutely suspicious activity. I see no reason to trust this woman.
EDIT: Just for clarity, I haven't watched her other new videos. After the misrepresentation of FO:NV in the Women as backround decoration ones, I see no reason to take her seriously and haven't watched. Will not be surprised if someone pops in citing dishonesty in another of her new videos.
