Anita Sarkeesian is a name that should not be unfamiliar to anyone who was in the gaming sphere around 2014. She was an outspoken feminist who made a video series about women in video games, and ended up being one of the various targets of the GamerGate scandal. (Scandal is putting it nicely, moreso “harrassment campaign.”)

To those who don’t know of GamerGate, here’s the first line of its wikipedia page:

Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture.

When this was going on, I did not know much about Sarkeesian other than she was a “feminazi” and out to destroy my precious video games. She seemed silly, and everything I saw online seemed to reaffirm this idea, so I didn’t really bother reading more into it. In my defense, I was 12.

Well, it’s been about a decade since, and the name popped up once more in my feed - she was hired as part of the dev team for Slay the Spire 2.

Gamers spotting this decided to start reviewbombing the game on steam (barely made a dent so far, but I’m making this post hours after the “discovery”), and I brought up the topic to friends, realizing I never actually watched anything by her. So I did. I opened up a video that a different friend of mine recalled as being an example of her making a very silly point - Strategic Butt Coverings. Where she talks about butts.

I went in expecting some sort of passionate, radical feminist, and came out absolutely gobsmacked by how benign this criticism was.

Like seriously, this is basic feminism. It’s not even radical or jaw-dropping, the video was just “female characters are sexualized while men are not.” Something that is blindly obvious if you’ve played a AAA title in the past two decades. Actually, probably even earlier, considering Tomb Raider is from the 90s.

This is what people were up in arms about? Basic, nothingburger feminism?

Holy shit I was stupid.