Anita Sarkeesian is popular because she makes strong arguments, not because she's a woman pandering to other women.

I agree and I don't think there is anything wrong with what she stands for as far as bringing attention to sexism in video games, but at the same time I can see why her opinion is so controversial, because a lot of time it looks like she it talking about a subject without really putting much time actually playing the game and knowing about the subject matter. For example,

-Claiming that the Game "Dying Light" uses the "Damsel in Distress trope". People who have played the game argues that the character in question, Jade is a strong character and there really is no Damsel in Distress narrative.

-Anita complains about E3 badge being sexist, but she does not realize that the voucher is not actually part of the badge. Even people r/girlgamers, who are mostly pro-femisnist are troubled by Anita's reaction, as the character in question, Riise is wearing appropriate attire as a Japanese pop singer.

-She made a video on Bayonetta where she says the only positive thing worth noting about the game was that the protagonist is a single mother. AFAIK, it's revealed pretty early in the game that Bayonetta is not Cereza's mother, and people are suspecting that Anita came to that conclusion based on screenshots of Bayonetta and Cereza together. Anita took the video down but it raised a lot of doubts on people's mind as to whether she actually played the game before making that video.

I really don't expect her to finish every video game she talks about, but these things do bother me because a lot of these errors could be avoided by a simple fact check. When you take this into account + her use of fanart/let's plays without giving proper credit, I can understand why a lot of people see her as not being honest.

Having said that the kind of backlash she is getting is totally undeserved, and it's big part of the reason why both sides of the argument are just so entrenched in their camps right now.

As others have said, Anita's criticism are very much Feminism 101, and the problem I see is that it seems like that's the only thing she is got going for her and she is taking that to the extreme. In fem101 classes you are going to get a lot of video/literature/lecture about how x is example of sexism in the media in black and white terms, but you soon realize that what they are presenting are for "beginners" and you realize feminist criticism is actually a lot more complicated than that.

But Anita doesn't do that, and she kind of doubles down on her fem101 and say "this is problematic" and stop there. I don't know if this intentional, but judging by her criticism of "The Witcher series" and her video on Kayne West's "Monster", it seems like she has hard time distinguishing when a piece of work is inherently sexist vs when a piece of work is about sexism(as a parody, theme..etc).. and I find this very problematic as a media critic.

Bottom line is, I think the topic she is discussing is actually important, but I feel like a lot of better, more legit feminist criticism gets tossed aside because of the media coverage around her. One of the best thing I've read was by an no-name feminist blogger who talked about how feminists in video games are only concerned about portraying women in positive light, and how video game developers aren't willing to portray women negatively as villain and show how they can be just as vicious and brutal as men.

/r/Negareddit Thread