Friday, November 28, 2014

Taking Down a Privileged Feminist

This analysis is loaded with embedded links as supporting references for his claims: go the the link for better info.
An Open Letter to Bloomberg's Sheelah Kolhatkar, on the Delicate Matter of Anita Sarkeesian
by Milo Yiannopoulos

" In reality, it's not women that some gamers have a problem with: it's people like Sarkeesian and McIntosh. They have claimed hatred of them and people like them is tantamount to hatred of women. But it isn't. People don't hate Anita Sarkeesian because she's a woman: they hate her because they see her as a disingenuous, divisive, sociopathic opportunist.

Prominent feminists and feminist journalists have offered compelling critiques of Sarkeesian's work. Much of what is erroneously characterised as "abuse" is in fact merely robust criticism of Sarkeesian's ideas—ideas she refuses to debate. Sarkeesian, uniquely in the sphere of public intellectuals, refuses to subject her pontifications to critique. She censors comments not because they are insulting or distasteful but because they reveal structural weaknesses in her arguments. This is not the manner of an academic, aspirant or otherwise, worth listening to.

It is in this respect that her professorial aspirations, and those of her writer and producer, reach dizzying heights of absurdity, beyond even those of her laugh-a-minute Master's thesis. Universities are places of learning and debate, but Sarkeesian is a broadcaster, not an interlocutor. So radically anxious is she about the substance of her arguments and so vulnerable is she to accusations of sensational cherry-picking, she has not accepted a single invitation to debate her theories.

And those theories desperately need examination, not only because they relate to an $80 billion industry but because, underneath the freshman-level social studies rhetoric, they are based on fringe, outmoded theoretical foundations. Perhaps that's why veteran journalist Cathy Young says: "The fact that Sarkeesian has emerged as the leading voice in such criticism right now ensures that it’s going to be propaganda, not analysis."

To give just one example of Sarkeesian's underhand method of argument, consider the following. A central plank of Sarkeesian's criticism is that women appear as window dressing and as "damsels in distress," there to be saved by men. She says that this loss of agency in video games is somehow damaging to women in the real world.

But her examples do not support this claim. She says that when male protagonists are imprisoned or endangered, they have to escape themselves, whereas females must always be rescued by a male. Yet her example, drawn from Metal Gear Solid, is flagrantly dishonest.

At around the 18-minute mark in "Damsel in Distress: Part 1", she shows Metal Gear Solid protagonist Solid Snake escaping by using ketchup as fake blood. But what she omits to say is that a female character is also imprisoned earlier in the game. That female character escapes in a much feistier manner: by beating up a guard. This is a classic, deliberate example of lying by omission, and such dishonest manoeuvres are a constant feature of Sarkeesian's videos.

Almost every example she gives falls apart under the microscope. This ten-minute video by popular YouTuber Thunderf00t, which is nearing half a million views, shows how Sarkeesian utterly misrepresents the game Hitman Absolution in order to make ideological arguments that are simply not backed up by the evidence. Practically every academic citation she deploys turns out to be a sleight of hand.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Sarkeesian has a habit of clutching at straws: she once, hilariously, condemned file-sharing and piracy culture as too male-dominated, and—get this!—declared several classic Christmas songs to be "misogynistic." This variety of desperate grasping for controversial material is the bonkers modus operandi of the sort of intersectional third-wave claptrap that has put the public, women especially, off the idea of feminism entirely. "
When the Left produces a Cherished Narrative, it is not subject to debate: it is the new Truth which is to be accepted and obeyed.

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