A Modest Proposal For Anita Sarkeesian’s Consideration

I am sure that I speak for all gamers when I say that the appalling current state of affairs in gaming surely cannot stand. We see the hobby that we love torn asunder by such rancour and hatred as would give pause to even the most mindless Myrmidon in the throes of battle-lust. And what, indeed, is the source of all of this rage and hate? This is happening because gamers have had the audacity, the bare-faced cheek, the utter gall to suggest that perhaps gaming journalism has an ethics problem, without any evidence whatsoever to back up such an outrageous claim.

As our faithful readers here at Reaxxion know all too well, in recent months we have felt a great disturbance in the gaming zeitgeist, as if a thousand voices suddenly cried out in fury, and were suddenly heard for the first time silenced. As #Gamergate grew and developed, our friends on the Left, who in no way hold a hammerlock on the gaming journalism establishment as they are so often accused, and who certainly do not command the attention of the equally leftist mainstream media, responded calmly and rationally with carefully reasoned counterarguments and calls for moderation.

Shunning efforts to demonise and vilify us as hate-filled spergy lily-white twenty-something virgins in need of mandatory corrective brain surgery—for that would undoubtedly be uncouth in the extreme—the gaming establishment and its supporters have heeded the calls by the righteous for gentle rapprochement and detente between us, the gaming community, and them, the self-appointed arbiters of all that is Right and Just in gaming, with alacrity and good grace.

Surely, my friends, in an enlightened society such as ours, such calumnies and falsehoods as have been heaped upon our gentle and gracious Social Justice crusaders cannot be allowed to pass. Surely, in the spirit of human kindness and rectitude, we can find it within ourselves to cease these terrible and grievous attacks upon their frail and fragile egos.

And surely we can all agree that there must be a middle ground to be found between such paragons of feminine chastity and virtue as Zoe Quinn, such exemplars of honesty as Anita Sarkeesian, and such pulchritudinous examples of femininity as Mr. Brianna Wu.

After all, are not the non-cisgendered, non-heteronormative, intersexual/pansexual members parts followers of alternative views human too?

Healing Feelings

And then, as if the answer came to us from Upon High, Ms. Sarkeesian, whose opinions on gaming must be taken with the utmost seriousness, gave us mere mortals the perfect way to begin bringing our beloved gaming community back together. She provided a list of eight points that game developers must address, immediately, to make games more realistic and to improve the experience of the average gamer, especially with regard to female characters.

My esteemed colleague Sam Roberts responded in succinct and precise fashion to Ms. Sarkeesian’s eight-point manifesto. However, I know that our friends on the Left and among the social justice set are busy people, and as such may not have time to fully appreciate Mr. Roberts’s pithy bon mots and witty turns of phrase.

Therefore, I humbly take it upon myself to provide a simple summary that provides the essence of his response in a format that our gentle friends may more easily digest:

However, I do believe that, despite my colleague’s most thorough and detailed response, it is worth exploring two points of Ms. Sarkeesian’s manifesto in greater detail, for I have good reason to think that by doing so, we can give her and her supporters an opportunity to prove their quality, which I have no doubt whatsoever will be of the very highest.

I refer specifically to points 6 and 7 of her manifesto, namely:

Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move,

and of course,

Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic

Ms. Sarkeesian, in honour of your enviable contributions to the world of gaming, and so that you may have an opportunity to test your theories out in the real world, I am prepared to make you an offer which I ever so humbly hope that you will accept.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

I had this idea shortly after reading the response of Voxemort, Supreme Dark Lord of #Gamergate and a Person of Colour, like your good self (and me), to your original manifesto. In his response, Lord Voxemort makes the following offer:

We will implement her point #7 in First Sword if Anita Sarkeesian volunteers to submit to a physical but non-sexual beating and have the painful sounds she makes in the course of that beating recorded. Solely in the interests of verisimilitude and making games less shitty for women, of course. That’s not a threat, it is merely an offer.

This is a noble gesture indeed, but I believe that I can top it.

Ms. Sarkeesian, I hereby grant you the opportunity to engage me, personally, in direct hand-to-hand sparring while wearing motion-capture suits and voice-recording harnesses, at any time between the publication of this article and six months hence.

I offer you the chance to work against me in five two-minute rounds, with full protective gear as you require. You may spar with me for as many of these two-minute rounds as you feel capable of doing. I will even let you pick your preferred style of fighting—I strongly recommend that you use a ground-based art, such as judo or jiu-jitsu, as my groundwork experience is relatively limited, but if you prefer muay thai or kickboxing, that is just fine by me too. I will abide assiduously and honourably by the rules of unarmed combat and will do everything in my power to ensure your safety within those rules.

Please note, my dear Ms. Sarkeesian, that like Lord Voxemort’s offer, this is NOT a threat. Threats, whether physical or otherwise, are completely contrary to the Reaxxion Code of Ethics, and as I abhor physical violence committed against women, I assure you with all the sincerity that I can muster that you are under absolutely no obligation to accept.

This is an OFFER, extended in the spirit of friendship to a fellow gamer who claims to want nothing more than for gamers to play great games. Knowing, as I well do, that people of your background and disposition tend to get a little nervous when asked to participate in physical exertions like this. I assure you that you are free to turn me down.

If you accept, just think of the great benefits that you will experience in the process. You will get a chance to personally contribute to the cause that you feel so passionately about. Be assured that I will do my utmost to help you find voice lines that depict pain in a realistic, not orgasmic, way. You may rest easy in the knowledge I have, in fact, sparred with women before, and have found the experience to be… enlightening, to say the least. Also, given that I am 177cm in height, weigh roughly 83Kg, hold a personal powerlifting total well in excess of 1,000lbs, and practice kickboxing with great regularity, you may be assured that your experience will be entirely authentic.

I should be back in the USA in roughly a month’s time, which means that you have plenty of time to contact me using the details noted on my author’s page to arrange this little experiment—for we are indeed doing this in the name of science, are we not? And note also, this is NOT about “winning” or “losing”—I know that such concepts are hurtful to you, implying as they do that you are weaker than me one of us is somehow “weaker” than the other. After all, do you not agree, as most of your feminist friends surely do, that there are no differences whatsoever between the genders that justify the existence of different standards of physical exertion?

Moreover, note that the use of motion-capture technology during our sparring session will enable you to deliver to game developers actual footage of a woman in a realistic combat situation with a man. This will directly address the 6th point of your manifesto. I do not doubt for even a moment that this will be of great interest to game developers everywhere, who are surely sadly bereft of such footage, given that there are no examples online at all of women taking on much larger male opponents in full-contact sparring.

The Hard Truth

All right, that’s about enough dancing.

Ms. Sarkeesian, if you refuse my most generous offer above—which I know that you will—then the world will know you to be the cowardly liar, hypocrite, and shameless self-promoter that I and my colleagues here at Reaxxion already know you to be.

If you refuse, or refuse to acknowledge this, you will demonstrate that your commitment to your cause pales in comparison to that which we have for ours, and we will once again show the gaming community that it is we, the gamers, and not you, the loathsome self-appointed spokesperson for the supposedly “disenfranchised” and “underrepresented”, who will decide what we want to play and how we want to play it.

If you accept… well, I must say I’m going to have an awful lot of fun at your very painful expense. It has been far too long since I sparred properly with anyone. I don’t expect you to last even two minutes against me, but I am willing to give you every possible benefit of the doubt to prove me wrong. Not, of course, that you will.

And if you go running to the mainstream media bawling about how I am “threatening” you with physical violence—which, again, I fully expect you to do, given your mealy-mouthed and utterly dishonourable nature—then I will merely point to what I have written above to show that I gave you several ways out, and you took them.

Ms. Sarkeesian, I call you what you are: a contemptible ambulance-chaser of non-existent moral panics that you use to peddle your worm-tongued, malicious lies. Your “suggestions” about improving games I reject outright—you have no damned business telling me, or anyone else, how to design games and how to play them.

And if you don’t like this, then do something about it—by designing your own game, in line with your supposed “principles”. Create something unique and new, instead of trying to tear down what we love.

We have been pushed by your despicable kind for too long, and we will not tolerate it any longer. We are strong, we are numerous, and we will never allow the likes of your pathetic kind to tell us what to think ever again.

Don’t Miss: A Response To Anita Sarkeesian’s Demands Upon The Gaming Industry