Sure, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it (though it can get kind of over-used and lazy). The issue is with the sheer frequency with which it's applied to women, particularly sexualized, objectified women devoid of agency.

Not that it's necessarily any LESS lazy if, say, a male soldier or cop is shot by the…

I have watched the videos, and I'm familiar with how academia works. She didn't "silence" critics; I mean, here you are, right now, talking about it. Turning off comments on her Youtube videos (which, for god's sake, even people like TotalBiscuit have done) is not "silencing critics" in any meaningful sense.

When you…

I'm just gonna address this first:
Plenty of men in gaming are heavily designed to be sexual sex gods or extremely attractive.

His Hitman example is a perfect instance of what I'm talking about. He essentially ignores that, immediately after the bit in question, she explicitly talks about how the games she's talking about do typically offer some token punishment to the player (as in the case of Hitman), but that it's usually trivial.

He also…

The "Is she a gamer or not?" thing is...pretty much a pointless discussion, as far as I'm concerned, and is something she has addressed multiple times. Regardless, either her criticism is valid or it isn't; trying to dismiss her because she's "not a gamer" (or even because you believe she lied about it) is a textbook…

If this is going to turn into an MRA thing, I'm afraid I'm not super interested. That said, I absolutely think there's a valuable discussion to be had about violence and men and the way that we often dismiss violence against men (particularly in domestic abuse situations).

The thing is, her video series isn't that…

It's not about glorification, exactly. And I understand the argument about villains being bad guys, and all that. But...

Well, when you see writers using the victimization of helpless women (often sexually, but sometimes through non-sexual violence) over and over and over again as a shortcut to signify villainy, it…

thunderf00t is an "atheist"/anti-feminist critic on Youtube who has produced some of the most famous "rebuttals" to her work. That's why I bring him up.

Do you have any examples of her confusion between a "general" trope and a gender-specific one? Regardless, I don't think it actually really matters, particularly if…

Ah, but see, it's not simply about the fact that women are killed. It's the fact that those women are used as, essentially, props. Worse yet, they're usually sexualized props, adding a weird sexual angle to the violence committed against them. Often, it's a "kick the dog" moment, where an agency-free female character…

If her arguments are shallow and dishonest, it should be trivially easy to provide an intellectually rigorous, honest rebuttal of them. I have yet to see anyone actually do that.

I've seen some critiques take (nuanced) issue with some of her points, and that's good! That's how this sort of discussion is supposed to…

Eh...you can certainly make an argument to that effect, but there's also an argument to be made for taking portrayals on their own terms, divorced from the larger context.

For instance: the episode of Family Guy, "Quagmire's Dad", was explicitly intended by Seth MacFarlane to be a positive portrayal of trans people. He…

Presumably continue to wallow in juvenile cultural irrelevancy?

I mean, it's funny to me that people got so mad when Roger Ebert insisted games couldn't be art, but then when people started actually analyzing them as art, they got FURIOUS and demanded that those people stop.

It's almost like people wanted games to be…

Yeah, no. "Feminism" is just fine and has been for the better part of a century. Like any school of thought, it grows and changes, with different sub-schools and strains of philosophy.

And yeah, using a marginalizing, specifically-gendered insult against a woman because you happen to disagree with her IS a pretty good…

"Called out" by people who are generally either disingenuous or relying on extraordinarily shallow readings of her arguments, sure. I don't find that to be particularly meaningful.

I mean, some people may think thunderf00t is a great source of rebuttals. I've watched his videos on the subject, and they're…

But that's the thing: the presence of all that other stuff doesn't somehow negate the bits she talks about. The question isn't "Is there other stuff in the game?", because there ALWAYS is. There's always going to be some justification, some reason why X is there in the game.

When looking at larger trends, though, it…

"Cherry pick data"? If you're referring to Sarkeesian's videos, that's...not what's going on. Like, at all. Unless, of course, you want to argue that a huge chunk of academic cultural and media criticism is "cherry picking data".

And everyone has a political agenda. Choosing not to talk about this stuff is political;…

The fact that you refer to her as a "wench" pretty much indicates why people like her are needed in the industry.

Nailed it.

I mean, yeah, it glossed over a few of finer points, but it's a 10 minute segment on a comedy show. That whole segment was way better than anyone had any right to expect.

Yep. Analysis paralysis is a very real thing. I totally sympathize.

Generally, I find that I gear my characters towards those things that probably allow the most options: dialogue skills (opening various persuasion/dialogue paths) and "access" skills (lockpicking/hacking/etc.) I figure I can usually brute force my way…

Sorry, if it's there, I missed it. I read the article yesterday, but I only skimmed it when you reposted it, because I can only take so much in one week. Could you point out the specific bit you're referring to?

If you look at the actual passage in question: