Anita Sarkeesian Helps Author Website on Cyber Security

If you know anything about the gaming community--other than the fact there are games involved--you’d know we have a rather strange situation when it comes to our females. And by ‘strange’, I mean ‘wavering between outright abusive to painfully sexist’. Unfortunately, of those two, the former is more common, and because of this many famed feminists within the community and around it find themselves the subject to a lot of harassment, attacks, and other undesirable treatment.

So many of the most experienced women in gaming, who have waded through the muck of threats and hatred despite the best effort of the range, have come together to create a website specifically for would-be feminist critics: Speak Up & Stay Safe(r), a guide that is for, and I quote:
 

“Anyone who fears they might be targeted, or who is already under attack, for speaking their mind online, but is especially designed for women, people of color, trans and genderqueer people, and everyone else whose existing oppressions are made worse by digital violence.”

So, no, not specifically for video games, but one of the author is famed gaming boogeywoman Anita Sarkeesian, who knows a thing or two about the subject.
 

“It should not be our meticulous labor and precious funds that keep us safe, it should be our basic humanity. But that has proven heartbreakingly, maddeningly insufficient more times than we can count. So below are some of the things that we’ve learned that can help, even though we shouldn’t have to do any of them. While we fight for a just world, this is the one we’re living in, and we want to share what we know.”

You can check it out here if you want. It’s pretty useful, from what I’ve gleamed, not that I’ve ever been the target for such a thing, with some real-world solutions to the more practical side of threats made online, although most of them just amount to common sense internet security. Useful? Probably. There will be those who claim it’s just an effort to draw attention to the authors, but then, if they weren’t being attacked in the first place they wouldn’t have had the materials to make the website, so, that’s not much of an accusation.

Regardless, this is the kind of world we live in. You have to get used to that, but at least you can get used to it safely.