It’s no news that Anita Sarkeesian has had to deal with all sorts of horrible filth aimed at her, from rape threats to an unending stream of gendered insults, but seeing only a week’s sampling in the flesh so to speak, is still something else:
Ever since I began my Tropes vs Women in Video Games project, two and a half years ago, I’ve been harassed on a daily basis by irate gamers angry at my critiques of sexism in video games. It can sometimes be difficult to effectively communicate just how bad this sustained intimidation campaign really is. So I’ve taken the liberty of collecting a week’s worth of hateful messages sent to me on Twitter. The following tweets were directed at my @femfreq account between 1/20/15 and 1/26/15.
Which is followed up by tweet after tweet of abuse. It’s hard to read this stuff even as a bystander, somebody who this isn’t aimed at, how much more awful must it be for Sarkeesian and other women who are deliberately targeted by every odious little troll with a persecution complex. What makes it all that much worse is knowing that even men with a similar sort of visibility like Sarkeesian, somebody like John Scalzi say, also noticably outspoken on matters of feminism and privilege, seem far less likely to have to deal with shit like this.
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