Changes: Feminist Frequency Kickstarter backlash

Latest revision as of 06:25, 26 March 2017

The Feminist Frequency Kickstarter backlash was a widespread harassment campaign directed at Anita Sarkeesian and some of her supporters and defenders. It followed a fundraising project launched by Sarkeesian in May 2012 to fund her Feminist Frequency video project.

Harassment

The goal of the Kickstarter to raise funds for Sarkeesian to produce videos outlining tropes about women in computer gaming.

Sarkeesian documented widespread harassment on her blog in response to the fundraiser. Sarkeesian was the subject of a torrent of hostile Youtube comments, and of manipulated photographs portraying her as a victim of physical violence.

Eventually an amateur video game was produced allowing players to simulate beating Sarkeesian. The game, called "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian", was discussed in the Huffington Post. Since the username of the creator Ben Spurr was the same as his Twitter username (@bendilin), feminist Steph Guthrie confronted Spurr on Twitter and subsequently received death threats.

Documentation

Sarkeesian's harassment

Sarkeesian documented harassment on her blog:

Other coverage:

Guthrie's actions against Spurr's game

Threats against Guthrie

Funds raised

The Kickstarter campaign was enormously successful, raising its initial goal of $6000 inside 24 hours, and eventually raising nearly $159000, allowing Sarkeesian to work on the project full-time.

Videos

See Feminist Frequency for details of Sarkeesian's project and videos.

External links

Feminist Frequency homepage
Kickstarter campaign page
Sarkeesian's TEDx Women talk in late 2012 (Sarkeesian has provided a transcript)

@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 == Funds raised ==
-The Kickstarter campaign was enormously successful, raising its initial goal of $6000 inside 24 hours, and eventually raising nearly $159000, allowing Sarkeesian to work on the project full-time so that the gaming community wouldn't be so pissed about her doing nothing with 160,000 of money on video games.  These people have edited all the right articles, making this into a feminist adgenda: it is not.  The problem arose when she didn't get online, do anything, even check in with the entire online community that bought into her idea.  Now she's making them, probably out of fear of being kicked in the genital region by sweaty non descript nerds.
+The Kickstarter campaign was enormously successful, raising its initial goal of $6000 inside 24 hours, and eventually raising nearly $159000, allowing Sarkeesian to work on the project full-time.
 ==Videos==