History Trivia / FeministFrequency

* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: She has made so many that you can find them [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer/FeministFrequency here]].

* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: She has made so many that you can find them [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer/FeministFrequency HERE]].

* TroubledProduction: The subject of a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYvMTH_bZW4&t=26s video detailing its fall from grace]]. ''Feminist Frequency'' began extremely humbly in 2009, when Anita was still a student at York University. The initial 'Tropes vs Women' videos were literally filmed in Anita's living room, with a bedsheet serving as her backdrop. Thus she was unprepared for the instant (and polarizing) success the project would end up getting online. For context, she launched a Kickstarter for the next series of videos, with a goal of only about $6000. It surpassed its target within a day, and amassed nearly $159,000. Suddenly, what was a simple two-person operation had more money than was needed, and that wasn't helped with scores of donations flooding in during the mid-2010s. It was reported that, at one point, ''Feminist Frequency'' was receiving $80,000 a year in corporate sponsorship. It expanded to four employees, who it later turned out were on zero-hour contracts. Things were further complicated by Anita parlaying her online controversy into another career as a public speaker - and much of that additional money went into financing her travel. This meant that promised deadlines weren't met, and viewership declined. Although they did see additional revue in 2016, possibly fuelled by the election of Donald Trump as president, ''Feminist Frequency'''s mismanagement of money was all over the place; $40,000 being spent on post production for simple three-minute videos filmed in the free [=YouTube=] studio. Viewership plummeted by 2017, not helped by Anita's increasingly controversial public persona as a CausticCritic who was excessively nit-picky (an infamous interview clip made the rounds of her claiming "everything is racist, everything is sexist and everything is homophobic"). It didn't help that, despite going $200,000 over budget, Anita was found to have given herself a $10,000 raise. She grew tired of 'rage bait' videos and being known as an internet pariah, and wished to transition into other content. 'Tropes vs Women' was ended in 2017, and attempts to branch out into podcasts and newsletters didn't see much in the way of viewership. Ultimately, ''Feminist Frequency'' just wasn't creating enough content to justify the level of spending its employees were doing, and they filed for bankruptcy in 2019. Anita announced in 2023 that ''Feminist Frequency'' was shutting down entirely as entity, citing exhaustion with continuous controversy.

* TroubledProduction: The subject of a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYvMTH_bZW4&t=26s video detailing its fall from grace]]. ''Feminist Frequency'' began extremely humbly in 2009, when Anita was still a student at York University. The initial 'Tropes vs Women' videos were literally filmed in Anita's living room, with a bedsheet serving as her backdrop. Thus she was unprepared for the instant (and polarizing) success the project would end up getting online. For context, she launched a Kickstarter for the next series of videos, with a goal of only about $6000. It surpassed its target within a day, and amassed nearly $159,000. Suddenly, what was a simple two-person operation had more money than was needed, and that wasn't helped with scores of donations flooding in during the mid-2010s. It was reported that, at one point, ''Feminist Frequency'' was receiving $80,000 a year in corporate sponsorship. It expanded to four employees, who it later turned out were on zero-hour contracts. Things were further complicated by Anita parlaying her online controversy into another career as a public speaker - and much of that additional money went into financing her travel. This meant that promised deadlines weren't met, and viewership declined. Although they did see additional revue in 2016, possibly fuelled by the election of Donald Trump as president, ''Feminist Frequency'''s mismanagement of money was all over the place; $40,000 being spent on post production for simple three-minute videos filmed in the free [=YouTube=] studio. Viewership plummeted by 2017, not helped by Anita's increasingly controversial public persona as a CausticCritic who was excessively nit-picky (an infamous interview clip made the rounds of her claiming "everything is racist, everything is sexist and everything is homophobic"). It didn't help that, despite going $200,000 over budget, Anita was found to have given herself a $10,000 raise. She grew tired of 'rage bait' videos and being known as an internet pariah, and wished to transition into other content. 'Tropes vs Women' was ended in 2017, and attempts to branch out into podcasts and newsletters didn't see much in the way of viewership. Ultimately, ''Feminist Frequency'' just wasn't creating enough content to justify the level of spending its employees were doing, and they filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The project is still ongoing, but as a non-profit without the media traction it once had.

* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: She had made so many that you can find them [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer/FeministFrequency HERE]].

* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: Anita has made more than a few research mistakes. Among them:
** She listed Clementine from ''Film/EternalSunshineOfTheSpotlessMind'' as a straight example of a ManicPixieDreamGirl, even though she is an outright subversion of this trope. To the point that she actually says to her romantic foil: "I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours." In the same video she takes the time to examine Summer from ''Film/FiveHundredDaysOfSummer'' as an example of the trope. She likewise doesn't mention that the film deconstructs this type of romance and points out how unrealistic it is.
** She was accused of doing this in her ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}}'' review (which was edited afterwards, see [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17_bd03vGP0 here]].), where she made several inaccuracies regarding both the plot and the characters. When criticized for it, [[JustJokingJustification she said that it was a misunderstood joke]], leading her to edit it to remove the inaccurate statements.
** In her description of ''VideoGame/StarFoxAdventures: Dinosaur Planet'', she states that the game was meant to be "her [Krystal's] own game", and that Fox [=McCloud=] replaced Krystal, when in fact he replaced a different character, Sabre. The closest to a mention she makes of Sabre is when she says in passing that Krystal was meant to be "one of two playable characters". Krystal ''did'' have a larger role originally, however, and was a major playable character instead of just being playable for the first few minutes.
** Her criticism of Music/KanyeWest's music video of "Monster" missed the point of the song, video, and the album as a whole, which was meant to be a critique about the depravities and vapidness of Western Society in general, hence the use of sexualized dead women. In the same video, she then criticizes Music/AmandaPalmer's album "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" as being apart of this same "trend of fetishizing dead women" in media, which is especially baffling as the album title and artwork are meant to be a ShoutOut to ''Series/TwinPeaks'', and secondly she seemed to have never listened to any songs from the album itself, like "Oasis".
** ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}'' has multiple. In the eight year anniversary newsletter, Feminist Frequency acknowledges the problems. "We’ve come a long way since Anita first hung up a piece of fabric in her living room and recorded her thoughts about ''Dollhouse'' for all the world to see. We’ve all learned a lot since then about doing feminist media analysis and making compelling videos. We just keep this video around to remind us of how far we’ve come -- and remind Anita that we’ll never forget how she used to pronounce Creator/JossWhedon’s name wrong."
*** She says "''Dollhouse'' is basically a glorified brothel." For one, she fails to distinguish between ''Dollhouse'', the show, and the Dollhouse company in the story.
*** After describing how the second season would move toward the themes of the season one finale, she rants about how horrifying she found the episode "Omega". While "Omega" was the last episode aired in the States, the ''Dollhouse'' season finale was "Epitaph One", an episode available for viewing on Hulu and iTunes. "Epitaph One" is a DeadlyDistantFinale, and season two would explain how everything reaches that state. The events of "Omega" are irrelevant.
*** She mispronounces Creator/JossWhedon's name. Not knowing how to pronounce the E in Whedon is one thing, but she also calls him Josh.
** She said that ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'' has a level in which you go through a strip club solely so the player can go through the dressing rooms and use the women there as eye-candy, and also that the game encourages the player to kill the women and disrespect their remains. While the level about a strip-club is indeed true, pretty much everything else said by Anita is just wrong. First off, killing random people is not what the level is about, and that ignores the core premise of the ''Franchise/{{Hitman}}'' games, which are called that because you're a professional assassin for hire, and therefore working to kill specific targets ''and nobody else''. The game not only discourages, but '''[[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment actively punishes the player]]''' for disturbing, much less killing, anyone besides the specific mark. The target in this case was the strip club's owner, Dominic Osmand, and playing the level shows that there are no good paths through the level mentioned that takes you through to the dressing rooms without causing casual attention. Because she showed footage of this taking place, it's even possible she actively sought out footage of players killing the girls or even recorded it herself. Which makes it doubly odd that she didn't pick up on the fact that the game clearly penalises you as the player for doing it.
** In the VideoGame/Hitman2016 review, the narrator mentions that a comment one of the guards makes for not letting 47 dressed in as a fashion designer through a checkpoint comes off as bad critique of social ideas and norms, and says it fails as a critique of such behaviour, and instead says that it acts more like a piece of dialogue for the AI to say to make them feel more real. '''Which is the entire point of the voice line.'''
** Sarkeesian cites Heike Kagero from ''[[VideoGame/PunchOut Super Punch-Out!!]]'' as a homophobic/transphobic caricature of effeminate men. In reality, he's nothing of the sort. Heike Kagero's appearance is based on ''oyama'', male Kabuki actors who take on female roles. Japanese culture is so different from Western culture that it's very common for Western feminists to dramatically misinterpret aspects of Japanese media as either good or bad.
** She also lists Betty De Ville from ''{{WesternAnimation/Rugrats}}'' as an example of a StrawFeminist purely based off the fact that she was a [[TheLadette Lad-ette]] who had the female symbol on her sweater. Not at one point during the series does Betty express a StrawFeminist ideal or DoesNotLikeMen attitude. In fact, ''Rugrats'' and several moments of the [[WesternAnimation/AllGrownUp spin off]] emphasise that Betty deeply loves her husband. While Betty does exist as an example of MasculineGirlFeminineBoy alongside Howard, she's not a StrawFeminist in any sense of the term.
** Her criticism of ''VideoGame/SuperPrincessPeach''. She takes umbrage with Peach's abilities, which are tied to her emotions, as "out-of-control frantic female emotions" and accusing Nintendo of turning PMS into a joke. Sarkeesian first says the player chooses from Peach’s special powers, then implies they’re out of control a la PMS. The entire point of the game mechanic, as Sarkeesian admits at the beginning of the paragraph, is that the player (and thus, Peach, since she’s embodying the player in the game world) ''chooses'' what to feel depending on what’s most fitting for the situation. So by definition, her emotions aren’t out of control PMS episodes.
*** The equation to PMS also characterizes the ability as something particular to Peach and by extension her being female, when the actual root is in the setting. The opening minigame depicts Bowser sending the hordes of enemies and the toads in Peach's castle into an emotional panic with the Vibe Scepter, and enemies throughout the game make use of the same powers, as do mooks and bosses up to Bowser himself. Even ignoring the mooks as gendered in the game, the number of male characters with these abilities equals if not ''outnumbers'' the female ones, which makes it a hard sell to sell the vibe powers as feminine in nature rather than simply rooted in unisexual emotions.
** Sarkeesian identifies Dixie Kong in ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest'' as a Ms. Male Character, referring to her as the "feminine variant and love interest of Diddy Kong." This couldn't be further from the truth; Dixie is very much an individual character with her own personality, that she and Diddy have different playstyles is a design element of the game, and her status as a playable character is even lampshaded by Cranky Kong. Furthermore, in the sequel she stars in her own title and ''Diddy'' is the one who gets damselized instead.
** Yet another from Tropes vs. Women in Video Games: In identifying to Beatrice in ''VideoGame/DantesInferno'' as a DamselInDistress she says that "In Dante’s Inferno your murdered wife’s soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her." Technically true, but this ignores the context that, rather than being a passive damsel who gets kidnapped, Beatrice actively bet her own soul that Dante, her husband, would remain faithful. Moreover, despite being trapped, Beatrice makes a regular appearances throughout ''Dante’s Inferno'' as both a helpful and harmful presence to Dante.
** In her critique of the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" she claimed the mother was cheating on her husband with Santa when actually "Santa" was really the father dressed up as Santa, which is what makes the song funny. The same video mentions "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and the infamous misrepresentation of the lyric "say, what's in this drink?" from the female part. Anita assumes the song is promoting drugging or taking advantage of someone drunk, but ignores the context of the time; that the woman wants to stay and is putting up token protests to avoid a scandal from disapproving family and friends, and the aforementioned line was her jokingly blaming the drink on poor decision making (said line was common 1940s slang for the same thing).
** Her critique of GQ's ''Series/{{Glee}}'' themed photo shoot characterizes ''Glee'' as a children's show with no sexual content in order to paint GQ's sexual portrayal of ''Glee'' characters as perverse and being potentially disturbing to child fans of the show who would see their favorite young characters acting like sexual adults. She missed the fact that ''Glee'' is a show about teenagers and teachers in high school, not children, and that often it deals with sexuality as is realistic for the high school setting. Campiness aside, ''Glee'' is a sexy show. It's about sex, singing, and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs singing about sex]].
** In her video about Mystic Pregnancies, she refers to the conception of Jesus as the Immaculate Conception. This is a common misconception, as the conception of Mary, not Jesus, was the actual Immaculate Conception.
* CreatorBreakdown: Part of the reason the second series of videos concerning video games took longer than expected to surface was due to Anita suffering attacks from {{Troll}}s and misogynists - who sent her death and rape threats, as well as making inappropriate caricatures of her online. Uniquely for this trope, this led to Anita becoming a spokesperson for cyber bullying and harassment - meaning her schedule was taken up by public speaking appearances that delayed her having time to make the videos.

** She also lists Betty De Ville from ''{{WesternAnimation/Rugrats}}'' as an example of a StrawFeminist purely based off the fact that she was a [[TheLadette Ladette]] who had the female symbol on her sweater. Not at one point during the series does Betty express a StrawFeminist ideal or DoesNotLikeMen attitude. In fact, ''Rugrats'' and several moments of the [[WesternAnimation/AllGrownUp spin off]] emphasise that Betty deeply loves her husband. While Betty does exist as an example of MasculineGirlFeminineBoy alongside Howard, she's not a StrawFeminist in any sense of the term.

** She said that ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'' has a level in which you go through a strip club solely so the player can go through the dressing rooms and use the women there as eye-candy, and also that the game encourages the player to kill the women and disrespect their remains. While the level about a strip-club is indeed true, pretty much everything else said by Anita is just wrong. First off, killing random people is not what the level is about, and that ignores the core premise of the ''Franchise/{{Hitman}}'' games, which are called that because you're a professional assassin for hire, and therefore working to kill specific targets ''and nobody else''. The game not only discourages, but '''actively punishes the player''' for disturbing, much less killing, anyone besides the specific mark. The target in this case was the strip club's owner, Dominic Osmand, and playing the level shows that there are no good paths through the level mentioned that takes you through to the dressing rooms without causing casual attention. Because she showed footage of this taking place, it's even possible she actively sought out footage of players killing the girls or even recorded it herself. Which makes it doubly odd that she didn't pick up on the fact that the game clearly penalises you as the player for doing it.

*** The equation to PMS also characterizes the ability as something particular to Peach and by extension her being female, when the actual root is in the setting. The opening minigame depicts Bowser sending the hordes of enemies and the toads in Peach's castle into an emotional panic with the Vibe Scepter, and enemies throughout the game make use of the same powers, as do mooks and bosses up to Bowser himself. Even ignoring the mooks as gendered in the game, the number of male characters with these abilities equals if not outnumbers the female ones, which makes it a hard sell to sell the vibe powers as feminine in nature rather than simply rooted in unisexual emotions.

** ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}'' has multiple. In the eight year anniversary newsletter, Feminist Frequency acknowledges the problems. "We’ve come a long way since Anita first hung up a piece of fabric in her living room and recorded her thoughts about ''Dollhouse'' for all the world to see. We’ve all learned a lot since then about doing feminist media analysis and making compelling videos. We just keep this video around to remind us of how far we’ve come -- and remind Anita that we’ll never forget how she used to pronounce Crator/JossWhedon’s name wrong."

** ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}'' has multiple. In the eight year anniversary newsletter, Feminist Frequency acknowledges the problems. "We’ve come a long way since Anita first hung up a piece of fabric in her living room and recorded her thoughts about ''Dollhouse'' for all the world to see. We’ve all learned a lot since then about doing feminist media analysis and making compelling videos. We just keep this video around to remind us of how far we’ve come -- and remind Anita that we’ll never forget how she used to pronounce Joss Whedon’s name wrong."