Skimmed video. This is standard Sarkeesian fare. She starts with a valid but pretty specific point, argues poorly for it and expands the argument well past the boundaries of the issue she is apparently intending to discuss and thereby undercuts a lot of the validity of her position as a whole. She then uses a ton of example footage that is completely unrelated and edits it in a way so as to appear more sexist than it is in context.
This video, she includes a great deal of footage of prostitutes in games. Does she have a problem with the presence of the prostitutes themselves in the game, or is she trying to say that the prostitute's dialogue is inaccurate to women of that trade? "Love you long time" and so forth is more of a racist quotation than a sexist one. That line is a reference to vietnam war and the veteran's accounts of their experiences with local prostitutes while in country at the time, made famous by Full Metal Jacket. Normally when I hear that phrase used, it is intended as a racist dig at a person's limited grasp of english. If you're going to have prostitutes in your game, they're going to have some corny dialogue because, well, prostitutes do actually talk a blue streak of the most offensive shit possible when speaking to people they are targeting as potential customers. That's fact. So, does Sarkeesian want no prostitutes, or equal measure male/female ratio of prostitutes, or prostitutes with unrealistic dialogue?
As always, there's no position for change here. Does Sarkeesian have any ideas about what should change and how? Do you want a gender equal paradigm or would you prefer skewed one where female characters must be treated with extra fluffy kid's gloves so nobody gets offended? Or perhaps a matriarchal where women must be shown as equal to or better than men in all instances? Because when I watch the videos, that is frequently my takeaway.
I also continue to argue that there is mass confusion between definition of sexually overt depiction and sexist depiction. They are not the same. Sexually overt is generally agreed on. Sexist, in this case, would be sexual depiction while also implying that the sexual aspect is the only quality that characters possesses. Puritan ideas about sex (the act and things related) keep bleeding in to topics of sexism where they do not belong, somehow twisting the argument toward all sexual depiction is bad because sexist because sexy = sexist apparently and that pisses me right the fuck off. If you think a depiction of a female character is sexually overt to the point of disrespect or sillyness, the word you are looking for to describe that is crass. Crass also does not automatically equal sexist.
@freedo: I consider Bayonetta to be an excellent and pretty complex character who is, at worst, a neutral depiction if viewed as representative of her gender. She's an intelligent and highly capable person, member of a sect of women who essentially manipulate the strings of reality God Emperor style. She patronizes the male characters she interacts with, with cutesy nicknames and general condescension. The only thing you can point to about her that could be sexist (on a different character) is the fact that she's sexy. See previous paragraph for me opinion on that.
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