Sights and Sounds

Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor

By: Tyler Sekula


Dropped jaws and laughter filled the room as the popular Flight of the Concords song boomed over the loud speaker. 

No one expected to hear such a vulgar song in such a quasi-conservative setting.

However, for the hundreds of students packed into Phillips Hall on High Point University's campus on Thursday night, the song was just the beginning.

In front of a standing room only crowd, guest speaker Anita Sarkeesian shocked everyone in attendance, during her hour-long lecture, as she told the story of the backlash she received after starting the YouTube series that has made her famous.
Sarkeesian poses for a picture for her website
(Credit: FeministFrequency)
"All of my social media sites were flooded with threats of rape, violence, sexual assault and death," said Sarkeesian. "The Wikipedia article about me was vandalized with sexism, racism and pornographic videos. Essentially they were using pornography as a weapon."

Sarkeesian, a pop culture critic and video game enthusiast, created a highly controversial web series, Feminist Frequency, in which she deconstructed the representation of the women in video games.

In order to get her series off the ground, Sarkeesian created a fundraising campaign in hopes of gaining support of people who might be interested in learning more about the portrayal of women in games. With the financial backing, Sarkeesian would be able to adequately research all of the topics she wished to cover in her videos.

However, soon after launching her campaign, many male gamers within the gaming community were not very excited about the project and decided to launch a campaign of their own.

"I found myself the target of a massive online hate campaign," said Sarkeesian.

In an effort to sabotage her project, the 'cyber mob' attempted to collect and distribute Sarkeesian's personal information, including her phone number and home address, through the use of online
message boards such as Reddit and 4Chan. By attacking everything that she had ever put on the internet, they hoped to silence her movement and keep gaming a largely male-dominated world.

Cyber mob viciously attacks Sarkeesian's social media accounts
(Credit: TedX Talks)
"It was really disturbing to see harassment she received just for making videos," said High Point University senior Kelsey Byrd. "No one deserves to be treated the way."

However, despite their efforts, the mob was unsuccessful in stopping Sarkeesian's campaign. With the help of over 7,000 supporters, Sarkeesian raised well over her initial goal and was able to launch her award-winning video series.

In this series, Sarkeesian displays an incredible knowledge for video games as she was through nearly every stereotype within video games when it comes to women. With the help of the money she raised from the kick-starter, Sarkeesian was able to purchase hundreds of video games that she used as examples for all of the tropes she discussed in her videos.

Sarkeesian shows off part of her game collection
(Credit: Feminist Frequency)
"I thought it was a very interesting lecture," said Eliza Albritton, a sophomore at High Point University. "Especially as someone who doesn't play games, it was interesting to see the different types of tropes that connect to video games of all types."

Perhaps the most interesting point in the lecture came when Sarkeesian talked about the Smurfette Principle within gaming.

According to TV Tropes, the Smurfette Principle occurs when a game has only one female character amongst a group of male characters, despite half of the human race being female. Sarkeesian argued that in order to avoid this principle, there needs to be more female main characters for video games.

 In order to prove a point, she showed a remix of many of todays popular video games she created featuring the song "Too Many Dicks" by the Flight of the Concords.

"Too Many Dicks" Remix

"I thought it was a really funny parody," said Bobby Robertson, a sophomore at High Point University. "Definitely not something you see every day during a lecture."

In an effort to get her message out there, Sarkeesian now travels around the world speaking about the difficulties she had to face in order to get her videos completed.

Sarkeesian was brought to High Point University to take part in the second annual Communication Week put on by the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication.

Although she still faces a great deal of harassment for her work, she feels as though her experience with online harassment is an important lesson for anyone to hear.

"I think that creating an environment where people can talk about it is really important," said Sarkeesian. "However, I don't think we will ever see an end to online harassment."

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