USU Speaker Cancels Due to Threats

Anita Sarkeesian is a feminist speaker that has become well known by her blog videos: "Feminist Frequency." In her videos (I've personally only seen one), she discusses how women are portrayed in video games. I believe she had really good points that showed that women are highly sexualized and that they usually play the damsel in distress. In fact, this video made me think of the one we watched in class about the portrayal of women in movies.

This past fall she was invited by Utah State University to be speak on her thoughts, research, blogs, etc... on women in video games. However, the week before she was to speak she received messages from a USU student saying that he would kill her if she spoke on campus. I read through the article and he has many more explicit, gross and violent things to say to her. In response, the university added more security, but after more and more threats came in Anita cancelled.

I looked her up online and she is the target of much hate mail, memes, youtube videos, etc...
In fact, it's really the only thing that pops up when you search her name. It's crazy how hateful people can be towards anyone sharing their observations of video games. Does she make a great point? Yes! Do I agree in every example she brought up? Not necessarily (which I've discovered is how I feel about a lot of radical feminist ideas). Nonetheless, no one should ever have to experience such backlash! People need to be respectful, even when they disagree with an opinion.

With the increase of video games and their popularity, I hope that more research on how women are portrayed in them stems from this woman's ideas. I hope that in the future we can make changes that will influence how we see women.