Misogynists on the Internet

In Dear The Internet, This Is Why You Can't Have Anything Nice Helen Lewis has written an interesting article about the abuse and harassment of Anita Sarkeesian after she wanted to investigate the depiction of women in video games:

A Californian blogger, Anita Sarkeesian, launched a Kickstarter project to make a web video series about "tropes vs women in videogames". Following on from her similar series on films, it aimed to look at women as background decoration, Damsels in Distress, the Sexy Sidekick and so on. Her pitch is here:

Sarkeesian was after $6,000 to cover the cost of researching the topic, playing all kinds of awful games, and producing the videos. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? Even if you don't like the idea - or don't believe that women are poorly represented in games (in which case, you would be wrong) - then isn't it fine for other people to give money to something they believe in?

Except some kind of Bastard Klaxon went off somewhere in the dank, moist depths of the internet. An angry misogynist Bat Signal, if you will. (It looks like those charming chaps at 4Chan might have had something to do it.)

Lewis then goes on to document some of the harassment, including defacing Lewis' Wikipedia page and abuse comments on her Youtube video.