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Professionalism, Anita Sarkeesian, Women and Gaming

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Introduction

Born in 1983, Anita Sarkeesian is a Canadian-American feminist media critic, writer, and public speaker whose work focuses on the representation of women in popular culture, particularly in video games. She is also notable for being the founder of Feminist Frequency, a platform that hosts videos and written commentary analyzing topics of popular culture through a feminist lens. Trained in communication studies (CSU Northridge) and social critique (York University), Sarkeesian has approached media not merely as passive entertainment, but as a powerful cultural force that shapes social norms, identities, and expectations. [1]

Sarkeesian rose to international prominence in the early 2010s through her critiques of gender tropes in gaming, a medium that had historically been insulated from feminist analysis. Her work challenged the assumption that games are politically neutral or culturally inconsequential, arguing instead that repeated patterns of representation both reflect and reinforce broader societal inequalities. While widely praised by scholars, developers, and advocates for diversity, her work also provoked intense backlash, revealing deep-seated tensions and surrounding gender, identity, and power within gaming culture.[2] As such, Sarkeesian’s career provides a critical lens through which to examine how technical systems, creative practices, and online communities intersect to produce and maintain gender bias.

The Problem

The video game industry and its surrounding ecosystems perpetuate gender bias through both cultural practices and technical infrastructures. These biases are not incidental, but structural, emerging from the historical foundations of the industry itself. In its early decades, video game development was overwhelmingly dominated by men; by 1989, women comprised only approximately 3% of game developers. This demographic imbalance shaped the assumptions embedded in game narratives, mechanics, marketing strategies, and technological design, privileging male perspectives as default while marginalizing or stereotyping women. [3]

Gender bias within gaming manifests across multiple layers. At the representational level, games frequently rely on reductive tropes such as the damsel in distress, the hypersexualized side character, or the expendable background figure– that limit the narrative agency and complexity of female characters.[4] At the community level, these representational norms are reinforced through player behavior, online forums, and multiplayer environments that often normalize harassment, gatekeeping, and misogyny. At the technical and institutional level, development pipelines, hiring practices, and platform moderation tools have historically failed to address inequities, allowing hostile cultures to persist with minimal accountability. [5]

Initial Project

Sarkeesian, a fan of games and pop culture, had become disappointed with the way women were represented within the media, often being depicted in limiting and problematic ways. Given her professional and educational background in the topics, she sought to bring public awareness to the concerning patterns within the industry. Recognizing the cost of such effort, Feminist Frequency would launch a Kickstarter campaign "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" in mid-May of 2012. Their goal was to raise $6,000 to fund the creation of a video series dedicated to exploring and criticizing the video game industry's prevalent use of female stereotypes. This goal would be far surpassed, achieving its funding goal in 24 hours and ultimately raising $158,000. This funding led to additional stretch goals being announced and achieved, upping production quality, increasing the number of videos published, and expanding the number of tropes addressed.[6]

Content and Ideas

The first season of the series would be periodically released from March 2013 to March 2015 spanning a total of 9 full-length episodes and 2 mini-episodes. Throughout the series, Sarkeesian likes to remind the viewer that while she enjoys video games, many of which utilize these problematic stereotypes, she remains critical of the media in order to strengthen its uniquely interactive storytelling value. She acknowledges further that enjoyment and criticism are not mutually exclusive, arguing that it is the moral and ethical obligation of both her and fans of the media to remain vigilant of these issues. This recognition and awareness highlight core tenets of professional behavior and even further encourage the development of these attributes within the general public. The following sections highlight core tropes and stereotypes discussed throughout season 1.[7]

Damsel in Distress

A widely used stereotype in which a female character is captured and unable to free themselves or contribute meaningfully to their escape. This is typically used as a means of plot progression, simplifying what could be valuable female character representation into little more than a ball being passed back and forth between the good and bad guys. A slightly darker version of this trope, "Women in the Fridge" acts the same, but instead using the death of a close female to the protagonist to often spark revenge plots. Examples: Princess Peach (Super Mario), Krystal (Star Fox), Pauline (Donkey Kong), Princess Whats-Her-Name (Earthworm Jim).

Ms-Male Character

The tendency for female characters to be 'marked' with female characteristics (eyelashes, bows, pink theme, lipstick) and often be tokenized with only a single character. Female characters usually have little more than 'being a woman' as part of their identity and design. Typically, games with both female and male protagonists promote only their male protagonist, enforcing that male is the default.

Women as Background Objects

In leu of thoughtful worldbuilding, games often brutalize women as a means to communicate a cruel game world. Frequently, women set in strip clubs are nothing more than game objects that may be murdered and brutalized with no recourse or exploited for gain. This representation leads to the reinforcement that women are meant to be used, a commodity to be traded, are interchangeable, easily violated, and disposable.

Women as Reward

Achievements may be tied to abusing or harassing women, incentivizing player behavior. Players may receive costumes or pictures of women in more compromising situations as rewards for better performance. Sometimes game mechanics would have multiple players fight one another for the damsel's love, supporting the idea that women have no input on the decision and reinforcing the idea that men deserve the right to the damsel after winning.

Examples of Positive Female Representation

Sarkeesian concludes the season by offering 2 positive examples of female representation within the industry: 1) Jade from Beyond Good and Evil who breaks traditional damsel tropes and whose design strays from the typical female markings and 2) The Scythian from Sword & Sworcery who's design lacks traditional 'marks' and presents a noble and venerable character who sacrifices themselves and is honored by those she protects.

Reception

The nuanced intersection of popular culture and professional knowledge and ethics in Sarkeesian's work earned her praise as well as speaking engagements. Her popularity also led to many criticisms of her work.

Gamergate

Sarkeesian started to receive mass online hate from the time that she announced her series in 2012. In 2014 she became one of the chief targets of Gamergate, a harassment campaign that purported the ethical cause of bringing ethics to gaming journalism (other targets included Brianna Wu, game developer, and Zoe Quinn, game designer).[8] As threats escalated, Sarkeesian and others experienced death threats, bomb threats, swatting, and doxxing, forcing them to leave their homes.
The FBI became involved after numerous victim reports. The eventual FBI report of the Gamergate case was released in 2017. Per the reports, the FBI identified a few of the individuals involved and interviewed them, acquiring full confessions. One individual stated that the threatening emails they sent were just “a joke.” [9] Another was reported to have “understood that it was a federal crime to send a threatening communication to anyone and will never do it again.” Despite the full case against the harassers, none were prosecuted.
The law proved ineffective at combatting online hate groups. Danielle Citron, professor of law and author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, details some of the reasons for this in her work: “Some of the problem when you have a huge collective of people targeting a specific person is that it may be that any given person in the mob may contribute a little to the abuse, but not one person is responsible for persistent, targeted abuse.” [10]
Cases like Gamergate drove social media platforms to make changes to protect their users. Dick Costolo, former Twitter CEO, affirmed his dedication in the following statement: “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.”[11]

Gaming Industry

At CES 2015, Brian Kraznich, Intel CEO, announced that the company had set aside $300 million for increasing diversity in tech. [12] Intel planned to partner with a variety of organizations in game development, such as the International Game Developers Association and the E-Sports League, along with Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency Series. Kraznich emphasized that "Without a workforce that more closely mirrors the population, we are missing opportunities, including not understanding and designing for our own customers.”
Developers expressed their intent to keep Sarkeesian’s observations in mind while working on upcoming games. In an interview, Arkane Studios creative director Harvey Smith discussed his efforts to change the roles of female characters in RPG Dishonour 2: “Would the game be worse if we took action on this or would the game be better? The game would be richer and more interesting…and from our DLC forward…which fans really love, that’s the first appearance of Deli.” [13]
Sarkeesian was a recipient of the 2014 Game Developers Choice Award. The reward was presented by Neil Druckmann, creative director of the 2014 GDC Game of the Year, The Last of Us. He was also influenced by Sarkeesian: “I know for me, Anita’s work was highly influential in my approach to writing for The Last of Us – greatly improving its story.” [14]

Potential Political Influence

There are many similarities in the rhetoric of Gamergate and the far-right political movement, the “alt-right.” This applies to the intense misogyny, anti-intellectualism, and incitations of violence that were frequently displayed online by these communities. However, the connection goes further: Former Chief Strategist of the White House, Steve Bannon, was known to have ties to one of the biggest proponents of Gamergate at the time, Milo Yiannopoulos, through his time at Brietbart News.[15]

Implication for Professional Ethics

Sarkeesian's commentary on games showed that the line between personal and professional life can be thin when it comes to online media and entertainment. The online hate against Sarkeesian demonstrated the need for protections for professionals who reach a wider audience via the Internet.

References

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Wikibooks. From “Professionalism” on Wikibooks, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changed here: set as a page; navigation and edit links left out; each image under its own licence, credited in its caption.

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In these publicationsProfessionalism

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