The most important thing in the article is given the least amount of coverage : Despite the threats , and the negative reception she's got all the backing she asked for and more & is going to follow through with the project. That's the way to do it. Also : if anyone thinks that 4chan represents ' the internet ' they are sadly mistaken. If no one ( not even the FBI ) took the death threats I got on the internet from scumbag rapists in Seattle what can anyone expect? She is doing the right thing - standing up and refusing to be silenced by adversity, but general assholeisim is there on the net regardless if you are a man , woman or intergender. How do you fix society? Blaming the internet for people being idiots is like blaming the phone company for obscene phone callers. Her actions, her work , and her video will help - but the change is a long way coming.

"Sarkeesian decided to leave the comments on her video, as proof that such sexism exists."

Why doesn't she just leave her own video up and prove that sexism exists? She is a feminist, and last time I checked that too was SEXIST. The author of this article is obviously pro-chauvinism when it comes to females declaring they are better than men, but they stop and declare that male chauvinism is wrong. Ignorance and hypocracy doesn't get much more obvious than this people! All I have to say is that people who attack her for being a sexist feminist (of which she has already admitted to) then they are justified. Sexism must be stopped, but from both sides.

Anita Sarkeesian if you are reading this... I am glad you're not taking this kind of garbage and I hope your get your research grant. Bless you dear.

Believe me when I say. This filth is not the gaming majority. Yes video games have been plagued with poor representations of women for as long as the industry has been big, but a majority of it's players quietly endure this misrepresentation through apathy.

Does it make it right? Hell no.

Just because a handful of sexist twerps out to get hits on their web-pages do this, doesn't mean this is the 'voice' of the industry. Anita's mistreatment is horrible but please, please, please don't damn the gaming community for it.

Sexism in games is a clumsy grab at what the gaming marketing gurus see us as. Typically they are somewhat right. Socially awkward dreamers that like idealistic situations. Tropes in games are a form of escapism. What they did to Anita is exactly what they had the audacity to call her on, Terrorism.

I, like many others above me do not agree with Anita Sarkeesian's views. The majority of modern video games are designed to be a form of escapism for a predominately male, adolescent audience. The first video games contained very few gender specific characters; Space Invaders, Pacman, Frogger, etc however there were very few girls queueing up to play these in any arcades I visited in the 80s so inevitably games shifted towards more male-oriented themes simply because this catered to the majority of the audience. Likewise, in film, there are movies which cater similarly to typically male tastes but equally female. I'm sure Ms Sarkeesian would no rather watch La Haine than I would want to watch The Notebook. If there is an interest in video games with a more feminine theme then I'm sure they will be developed. If anything, in my limited experience of recent video games I've seen a shift towards more female inclusion, e.g. Mass Effect. Obviously Grand Theft Auto and similar games fall outside this but like film, if you don't like what it says on the cover, don't watch it.

Those views aside, I am disgusted by the behaviour of certain people who chose the troll route for their response. I don't believe this is isolated to posts like Ms Sarkeesian's or even motivated by the content particularly, instead it was seen as an easy target which would generate a lot of response and give these pathetic individuals their fix of attention that must surely be lacking in their offline lives. Anita Sarkeesian raised a point she felt worthy of debate, therefore it should either be debated or simply ignored if deemed not worthy of comment. This is not an issue of sexism, it's an issue of people abusing a freedom of speech they wouldn't exercise without the anonymity of the internet to protect them.

I think a much more interesting study to do would be examining the comments made about and at Ms. Sarkeesian's project and categorizing them according to this:
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/home

Why, just in the comments here, I spied "http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem", "http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque", and a lot of "http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon".

I'd also add one that's not on the page I linked to, nor is it necessarily a rhetorical fallacy: Kill the Messenger. I've seen this firsthand - if someone hears an unpleasant truth that hits a *little* too close to home, (s)he will attack the person who uttered that innocuous truth. The attacker then tries to twist the "messenger's" original statement(s) into a claim of an attack, in an attempt to justify their emotionally-violent reaction as "self-defense." In reality, however, it's just a case of out-of-the-blue Ad-Hominem because you heard something that made you aware of something you're uncomfortable with.

P.S. - Before anyone starts letting the 'c'-word fly, I'm male. And I adhere to the following definition of feminism: "the radical idea that women are people."

It's amazing how many people here still prefer to attack this woman's character, motives, journalistic skills, rather than acknowledging how disgusting those trolls are. Hacking, vulgar messages, threat of rape and death!! No one in their right mind can justify that type of behavior.