Anita Sarkeesian is shutting down Feminist Frequency after 15 years
Anita Sarkeesian is tired.
It’s been more than 10 years since Sarkeesian first released Tropes vs. Women in Video Games on YouTube; it’s been 15 years since Sarkeesian’s oldest video and the start of what’s now known as Feminist Frequency. Over the years, she and her team created several groundbreaking YouTube series, hundreds of podcast episodes — done with dozens of collaborators — a games industry-focused support hotline, and a Peabody Award-winning nonprofit organization.
It’s the sort of work that’s both essential and draining — work that’s so meaningful it’s easy to feel an obligation to continue, even in the face of exhaustion. That’s why it’s time for a break. “I’m ending Feminist Frequency because I’m extremely burnt out,” Sarkeesian told Polygon. “I can’t vacation that off. I can’t offload that anymore.”
Sarkeesian’s work made feminist critique of the video game industry impossible to ignore. And developers listened: Yes, the video game industry has a long way to go — not everyone listened — but Feminist Frequency’s criticism helped bring the language of feminism to a space that was often ignorant to it. Though Feminist Frequency started on YouTube, it grew into an organization that made a tangible impact on the industry through its work with studios and developers.
Though some of Feminist Frequency’s initiatives, like programs manager Jae Lin’s accountability group ReSpec, will live on in different ways, the organization as a whole will disband by the end of the year. The Games and Online Harassment Hotline, which the team spun up in 2019 as the industry reckoned with systemic sexism and harassment, will run through the end of September.
It’s not the first time Sarkeesian has considered shutting down
Read more on polygon.com
