Death threats and rape threats are not responses from being concerned about unfettered artistic expression. They're responses from people who hate women. Freedom of artistic expression is not a major part of the current online discussion being reported on.

Has Sarkeesian made a "call to end any kind of specific artistic expression", though? Last I heard, she just wants to make a documentary or two exploring the treatment of women in video games.

If she's trying to highlight a disgusting trend of misogyny in gaming culture, I would say she is doing an excellent job.

It will probably just end up like her last Tropes vs Women series where she banned all movies and television and forcibly castrated every male director and screenwriter. How do we keep letting her get away with this stuff? /s

I think that you're demonstrating the problem: you're reacting to actions that you think she is demanding, instead of reacting to what she is actually proposing.

You're saying that any form of call to end a specific form of artistic expression is rightly going to be met with resistance and derision. Whether that be sex, swearing, misogyny what have you. Ok. Then let's push it a little further and imagine a video game scene where Blacks are almost always portrayed following certain negative tropes. Or Jews. Or imagine a video game scene where sex is always between adults and children. I'm not saying that when these sort of thing are occasionally present in a game, then we should freak out and ask for a ban of everything. But when a whole genre is dominated by something like that, when someone stand up and ask for change in the way "art" understand people most of times, I don't think it's right to enter in resistance mode being ridiculously outrageous about it, and violent.

Same applies for any form of art who's also a form of massively popular entertainment. Like movies. If women or blacks where always represented like dumbasses with big boobs or big dicks, even if it was art, a call for change would be welcome.

I think the reaction to Anita's Kickstarter campaign has gone WELL beyond resistance and derision, and into scary hostility. I don't get what motivates people to respond in this way—why does the accusation of misogyny in video games kick up a more vicious and hateful response than some many other topics? Is it just a defense mechanism of sorts?

If I had to guess, it's part defense mechanism, part exasperation. Defense mechanism because misogyny is a pretty insidious thing, and like racism, it's also percieved as harsh to accuse someone of it.

Exasperation, because, for me at least, you see more and more of the label being thrown around, and the response turns from "Hmm, this is a bad thing, good to know!", to "Jeez, I GET IT ALREADY. Sexism is bad! Enough!"

To use TVTropes terminology, anvils are falling from the sky like raindrops. One of my favorite webcomics, Sinfest (http://sinfest.net) has been beating this drum non stop for the past month or two.

Holy crap I'm just reading those (Sinfest comics) now, they're awesome! Thanks for the link!

It's a poor headline, the goal that's earned her all the hate is this:

"This video project will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games. The series will highlight the larger recurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders."

We already have that. It's called TVTropes.

Speaking of the worst offenders...