Transcriber: Maïlys Grau Reviewer: Tatjana Jevdjic
I'd like to share with you a story about how I accidently became the villain
of a massively online game in real life.
For the past four years, I've been running
a video web series on Youtube called Feminist Frequency,
where I deconstruct the representations of women in the media.
I try to provide the tools to give people the language to talk about
sexism and issues of gender
using accessible language from popular culture
such as TV shows, movies, comic books and video games.
Video games are really interesting
because it's actually the fastest growing form
of mass media today.
This is a photo of me at age 10,
playing Super Mario World on a Super Nintendo.
So I've been playing games for quite a while.
And, in addition to being a lot of fun to play,
games have lots of positive benefits as well.
So again, I've been playing games for a while,
but there's someting that always kind of bothered me.
It is no secret that the video game industry
boasts some of the most sexually objectified, stereotyped
and downright oppressive portrayals of women in any medium.
So, with that in mind, I decided to launch
a fundraising campaign on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter,
where I would create a series of videos
to look specifically at the way women are represented in video games.
The idea being that if you're interested in the project, you could donate
and if you weren't interested, you could choose not to donate.
It's pretty straightforward, right?
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Yeah.
Turns out, that there were a bunch of male gamers out there
who were, shall we say, not too excited about this project.
Now, I'm a pop culture critic, I'm a feminist and I'm a woman.
And I'm all of these things openly on the Internet.
So I'm no stranger to some level of sexist backlash.
I've sadly gotten used to sexist slurs and sexist insults
usually involving kitchens and sandwiches.
But what happened this time was a little bit different.
I found myself the target of a massive online hate campaign.
Now, the next couple of slides represent just a tiny fraction
of the harassment I received
and they come with a very large trigger warning.
All of my social media sites were flooded
with threats of rape, violence, sexual assault, death.
And you'll notice that these threats and comments
were all specifically targeting my gender.
The Wikipedia article about me was vandalized
with sexism, racism and pornographic images.
There was a campaign to report all of my social media accounts
including my Kickstarter, my Youtube, my Twitter
and they would report them as fraud, as spam, even as terrorism,
in an effort to get them suspended.
They attempted to knock my website offline,
hack into my e-mail and other accounts,
they attempted to collect and distribute my personal information,
including my home address and phone number.
There were images made, pornographic images made,
in my likeness being raped by video games characters
and sent to me again and again.
There was even a game made, where players were
invited to "beat the bitch out", in which,
upon clicking on the screen, an image of me would become
increasingly battled and bruised.
You get the point, we'll move on.
What's even more disturbing, if that's even possible,
in this overt display of misogyny on a grand scale,
is that the perpetrators openly referred
to this harassment campaign and their abuse as a “Game”.
They referred to their abuse as a game.
So, in their minds, they concocted this grand fiction
in which they're the heroic players of a massively multiplayer online game
working together to take down an enemy
and apparently they casted me in the role of the villain.
And what was my big diabolical masterplan?
To make a series of videos on YouTube about women's representations in games.
Yeah. So, if they think of their abuse as a "fun game",
then let's examine this.
Who are the players?
Well, often when we talk about online harassment,
we think of teenage boys in their parents' basements.
And while I was attacked by some teenage boys,
I was also attacked by thousands of grown men.
And this isn't entirely surprising considering the average age
of a male gamer in the US is about 30.
Where is this game played?
Well, the perpetrators turned the entire Internet into a battlefield.
So in my case they came after everything and anything
that I possibly have ever had online.
They also have a homebase, where they coordinate their raids
and work together and communicate.
And this usually takes place on largely unmoderated,
largely anonymous message boards and forums.
And these are places with no real mechanisms for accountability.
So what is the goal?
Well, the immediate exclusive goal is to stop the villain
and save video games from me,
and my crazy feminist schemes.
And they try to do this by silencing and discrediting me and my project.
But the larger implicit goal here is that they're actually trying
to maintain the status quo of video games as a male dominated space
and all of the privileges and entitlements that come with an unquestioned boys club.
So what type of game is this?
Well, it's fundamentally a social one.
We don't usually think of online harassment as a social activity,
but we do know from the strategies and tactics that they used
that they were not working alone,
that they were actually loosely coordinating with one another.
And this social component is a powerful motivating factor
that works to provide incentives for players to participate,
for perpetrators, rather, to participate,
and to actually escalate the attacks
by earning the praise and approval of their peers.
It's kind of like... we kind of think as an informal reward system
where players earn "Internet points"
for increasingly brazen and abusive attacks.
Then they would document these attacks,
and they would bring them back to the message boards
as evidence to show off to each other,
kind of like trophies or achievements.
So, we have this general structure of a social game, right?
We have players, we have the villain.
We have the battlefield.
We have, you know, this informal reward system.
But the thing is –
it's not a game.
It's an overt display of angry misogyny on a massive scale.
Its not just "boys being boys". It's not just "how the internet works".
And it’s not just going to go away if we ignore it.
It's really not a game.
So what is it then?
Well, the usual terms that we use to describe online harassment
such as cyberbullying, cyberstalking, even trolling
don't adequately describe a hate campaign of this scale.
What happened to me, and sadly to other women as well,
can best be described as a cybermob.
And whether it's a cybermob or a handful of hateful comments,
the end result is maintaining and reinforcing
and normalizing a culture of sexism –
where men who harass are supported by their peers
and rewarded for their sexist attitudes and behaviors
and where women are silenced, marginalized and excluded from full participation.
A "boys club" means no girls allowed.
And how do they keep women and girls out? Just like this.
By creating an environment that is too toxic and hostile to endure.
Now, this is pretty grim and depressing stuff, I know,
but there is another side of all of this.
Do you want to know what happened to my fundraiser after all of that?
Well, first, the cybermob failed to silence me,
as is evidence by me being here today.
(Applause)
Thank you.
And it turns out that quite a few people are actually interested in a project
that would deconstruct the representations of women in games,
and who were totally outraged at the harassment
that too often plagues our gaming communities.
I actually raised 25 times what I initially asked for.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Nearly seven thousands individuals contributed to make my Tropes vs. Women
in video games project bigger and better and more expansive
than I could ever had imagined.
Instead of just being 5 videos, it's now 13 videos
plus a classroom curriculum that educators can use for free.
(Applause)
Feminist Frequency went from a part-time side project
to a full time endeavor.
I received countless messages of support and words of encouragement.
People expressed their solidarity with me and my project publicly
through videos, through fanart, through comics and blog posts.
I've even been invited to speak at video game studios internationally.
The overwhelming support that I received
is just a small manifestation
of a larger cultural shift looming on the horizon.
A growing cross-section of gamers and game developers of all genders
are fed up with the way that women are being treated in gaming culture
and they’re speaking up to demand change.
Now, this change is happening slowly and kind of painfully, but it's happening.
Everyday I'm encouraged by the women who persevere, who continue to engage
and who refuse to be silenced.
I truly believe that if we work together, we can create a cultural shift
where women, without fear of intimidation, without fear of threats or harassment,
can be full and active participants in our digital world.
Thank you.
(Applause)