Clarkson gone!

[Ironside]

Well I said I'd respond to the rest today, and so I will:
Anonyminity on the internet means that anyone can essentially claim to be anything, but despite the claims the harassers are not a fair representation of gamers,a community in the 100's of millions of people, or even of the supporters of gamergate, whose only real criteria for entry is "want to stop the people we rely on for news and reviews colluding for cash"

Certainly. But that group exists, is very noisy and is one part of the atmosphere when talking about these issues.

We cannot gain any sense that the creator considered it "ok" from the mere fact that it is not a fail state, the points system indicates the opposite.

We can gain the sense that it's quite a bit above intolerable, since you normally don't include things you're borderline with and certainly not things you find intolerable.

Which is false because strip clubs are not bordellos, "look dont touch", the strippers in a legal strip club have no obligation to have sex with anyone.

It's in a computer game. Unless you have some super-special equipment on your gaming rig, it's only "look dont touch" there.

I admit I phrased it poorly, "get sex" should've been "get the sexy", as in making sexually titillating women in a game is intended to be sexually titillating.

The accusation of sexist is a verbal nuke. Sarkeesian and many liker have been throwing it about incessantly on the blurry, messy and outright flimsy foundation that is a selective interpritation of a wide subset of media.

It gives a similar effect as the boy crying wolf; any credibility the accusation might once have had is diminished by it's repeated utterance on such a weak platform. The point doesnt have enough proof to stick while at the same time the subject of the accusation and those who associate with them not already a believer becomes polarised against it.

That is why ms sarkeesian's arguments, above all else, are counterproductive to her very movment, when the sexism button is falsely pressed so often people stop believeing the legitimate cases.

A major issue is that people want to have things that they like to be non-problematic even when they are problematic.
Take the chainmail bikini as an example. Is it sexist? Yes. If you disagree with that part, would you say that if that's the only gear for female characters, would that be sexist? Can you find a woman in chainmail bikini attractive without being a sexist? Yes, but a lot of people act like they think its impossible (Sarkeesian doesn't, that's why she states that it's ok to like problematic media all the time). And since people don't want to feel like they could possibly be sexist (and a lot of the time they aren't), they resort to chainmail bikinis aren't sexist (because they like them).

It's a scale, yet a lot of people act like the lower scale is completely unrelated to the upper scale. Part of the problem is that the chainmail bikini is something else than simply sexy, yet the only word that are on that scale is sexist.

Trends which are neither strong or widespread enough to make concrete value judgments on a buisness sector larger than hollywood and a worldwide community with a population around that of india, yet she does it anyway and her evidence is obviously shakey.

In general? It blatantly obvious that it's there. It's not universal, but it's there. And not really sublime, unless you choose to overlook it. Take the original art for Divinity: Original Sin. It did not occur to the maker that having a chainmail bikini warrior next to a armoured male warrior is sort of sexist. It got changed after PC brigade complaints.

So, why is this theory being so clung to?

Because it's the details rather than the general theory that's blurry. The direct influence of killing prostitutes in a video game is hard to measure. But the general media exposure is notable.

Role models are an actual thing and people will take after, even if they're glorified eye candy (Italy got an issue with this after Berlusconi).
Chainmail bikinis as normal is talked about above.
Media is shown to be a major part of influencing norm behaviour.
Add in some facts that females are generally considered as less normative (thus creating that 66% male 33% female are seen as the fair 50/50) are facing a lot more harassment in general, in particular the sexual harassment.
It's coming from somewhere.

The blurriness does not excuse such a flagrant misrepresentation of the game. All her arguments are weak but the hitman one is the most objectively wrong and dishonest: the game/developer cannot be proven to want you to kill and manipulate these women, the score system is quite clear in it's opposition to that and not preventing the possibility of the player doing something cannot be a deciding indication of the devs' intending the player to do anything.

We're starting to go in circles. But this is mixing up intentional sexism and casual sexism again. The argument she does in the context she's made before is that we are on casual sexism level, even if the statement by itself would be red as intentional sexism (which I agree would be incorrect. Parts of it is intentional, but the whole is not).

To take an example. Having a female protagonist are very rare compared to a male protagonist (we'll exclude the "pick you gender" type here) and has never been equal in number. Clearly there is a selection process here, even if it is unconscious. This influences marketing. Since women protags are rare, clearly the market doesn't want female protags (this thinking is real and affects funding). This thinking creates gender discrimination, yet no single game is to blame. So without any intentional move, you have discrimination.

To show this and to counter it, it's pretty much impossible to talk about the devs' proven intentions, since each case you look at won't show gender discrimination. It's only taken as a whole and in context, it becomes obvious.