Feminism in Focus - Anita Sarkeesian

Created for Feminism in Focus - WAM! 2011 and NIST.TV
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I'm Anita Sarkeesian and I run the video web series called Feminist Frequency.

I started Feminist Frequency because I felt like feminism was sort of trapped in academic spaces and

politically radical spaces. They talked about systems of oppression and privilege

but it was in this language that was really hard to understand and I wanted to create a

space where feminism was easy to engage with in an accessible way.

I think that popular culture is a common language that we all speak. The poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote,

that the universe is made up of stories, not of atoms and I really like that quote because I feel like

pop culture is one of the ways that we learn about ourselves and the world around us.

There's often a lot of hostility towards watching TV like it's this big, bad, horrible thing

that's going to warp our brains, but I just don't think that's true. I'm a fan and I love stories

and part of being a fan for me is to enjoy and celebrate characters and stories and programs

that I love while simultaneously being critical of the myths and representations that the media can perpetuate.

I think it's important to critically engage with video games and comic books and movies and TV shows

because it's a reflection of our society. I think that there's a lot of negative stereotypes and stories

in the media that work to amplify and perpetuate oppressive social norms.

I don't think that we should just disconnect from the media and throw our TVs out but that we should

equip ourselves with critical media literacy tools to creatively and critically engage with the media

and fan communities have been doing this for decades.

I chose a video web series format because I wanted to speak clearly and directly on some of these really

complex issues. I put my videos on YouTube because I wanted to speak to my generation about

systems of privilege and oppression and feminism and increasingly we're an audio-visual culture.

We're engaging with popular culture through remixing and videoblogging in really interesting ways and

I feel like that's where the learning is actually happening. But sadly educational institutions and

academia are pretty hostile towards popular culture.

I get a lot of support from people who really like my videos and they've even been used as educational

tools in classrooms and screened at film festivals. I've actually gotten messages from mothers who've

sat down and watched them with their daughters, which is so heartwarming to me.

But I also get a lot of harassment as do most other feminist bloggers and women on YouTube.

You might be surprised at the amount of times that I get comments that say "Get Back in the Kitchen"

or "Go Make Me a Sandwich." It's nearly on a daily basis and I feel like in order to deal with that we

also need to look at the inequities that exist in our society offline

and how that reflects in these online spaces.

But one way that I personally deal with comments is to moderate them because I really want to create

a space where people can come and engage with feminist ideas where they don't have to risk

being harassed or ridiculed.

You know I think of it sort of like my living room, so if someone came to my house and started saying

"Get back in the kitchen" I would not-so-kindly kick them out and I think of my website

and my YouTube channel in the same way.

You can check out my videos at FeministFrequency.com

and you can also follow me on Twitter @femfreq