I'm actually pleasantly surprised for once, I was expecting either endless praise or condemnation, but instead, I find some refreshingly balanced perspectives on Sarkeesian's work, well done everyone. That said, I tend to view Sarkeesian as an opportunist who may just be promoting feminism with the hopes making a career out of it, though my opinion of her is primarily based on her tweets concerning the tragedy in Marysville.
Few things - To say her comments are just a few trolls is quite the understatement. Clearly we're still free to express our opinions in blog post and other medium. However it's not unreasonable to disable comments on your own videos. -Yes there is a pervasiveness of tropes in multiple mediums but that doesn't make critiquing the use of them any less valid. Perhaps she could be more unique with her critique, but choosing video games means she will stick to those issues
I admit her first few videos were rather simplistic in just pointing out examples rather than explaining it. I remember even feeling defensive when certain games were attacked. But at least on a creative level, the pervasive of certain tropes can lead to stagnation and perhaps bias. I will agree that distinctions need to be drawn between whether a game is bad, bad because it's sexist, or good but has pervading sexist tropes.
I treat all living things equally. That is to say, I eat all living things
After reading complaint after complaint about how Sarkeesian turned off comments on her videos, I went looking for places where I could direct comments to some other people who say controversial things. Rush Limbaugh doesn't even have an official youtube channel. He hosts videos directly on his website, where you can't comment. Other major commentators, such as the Daily Show, have channels which are obviously maintained by staff not the commentators. Sarkeesian is, oddly enough, under no obligation to engage with viewers directly and has no staff to handle comments. The fact that people think they need the right to argue directly with her to debate the ideas she presents is part of the problem, IMO. People are continually trying to make the discussion are her, not about the actual topic at hand. There is thriving "discussion" about her all over the internet which has not been halted by her disabling comments. Of course, half of it is complaining that she disabled comments....
I don't really see were you were going with this. The issue is not that Anita doesn't engage directly on debate with "everybody" (in this case, anyone who comments on a youtube video), but that she doesn't with "anybody". John Stewart often debates with his guess on his show and often debates on other shows as a guess himself; Rush Limbaugh goes back and fort on more indirect debates in the form of replies, and even then, both of them still often get criticized (be it reasonable or not) about not addressing/debating this particular issue, situation, person, etc. etc.
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Wasted Potential
Let me start this review by saying that the harassment campaign against her is NOT okay. No one deserves to receive death threats and rape threats. It is not okay to harass people and the culture of harassment in gaming needs to be addressed. Furthermore, I think that the portrayal of women in video games is something that needs to be addressed.
However, I find that Ms. Sarkeesian is not the one to address it.
I find that her presentation style is far too dull to actually provoke any interesting thought. I think that the examples that she gives are either reading far too much into the situation to be thought provoking, or not connected well enough to bigger picture of things. I feel that her examples are far to general to the point where I question why she went after video games when these tropes (Damsel In Distress, The Smurfette Principle, Men Are Generic, Women Are Special, Tertiary Sexual Characteristics) are just as prevalent in other mediums. I find that her research is not very well done and that her methods (not crediting Let's Players and creating a Kickstarter for what amounts to a series of inconsistently uploaded Youtube footage) to be a bit questionable.
Also, having seen several of her other, non-video game related videos, I find that I really disagree with her views on feminism. I think that she has a bad tendency of looking at the superficial elements of female characters without addressing how they are actually portrayed (something she actually, to her credit, improved in her most recent videos.) Furthermore, I find her tendency to shut out comments to be a bit strange. I understand she is getting harassed quite viciously, but I do not think that it is acceptable to shut out all conversation simply because of the actions of a few trolls.
That said, I do support her overall goal, I just do not think that she presents it in a very meaningful way. To be honest, she does not go far enough. She seems to dance around issues in video games without really making a strong point about it and she does it in a way that does not seem to be well researched. There needs to be someone who brings feminism into video games, but Ms. Sarkeesian is not that person.
The harassment campaign is a damn shame though. It makes a real discussion about the issues impossible because of tumblr feminists and misogynistic idiots that pollute it.