Anita Sarkeesian quickly made a name for herself online with her series on gender stereotypes in video games, particularly the objectification and sexualisation of women in digital media. More than ten years have passed since Tropes vs. Women in Video Games was first launched and became the starting point for the organisation Feminist Frequency - which has produced numerous videos, podcasts and talks around the world. But now it looks like she's reached the end of the road and according to one report, Sarkeesian is planning to shut it all down, for the simple reason that she just can't take it anymore. In an interview with Polygon, she said:
"I'm ending Feminist Frequency because I'm extremely burnt out,"
"I can't vacation that off. I can't offload that anymore."
Her and the organisation's work aroused a lot of emotion, on the one hand there were those who praised what Feminist Frequency was doing, and the positive effect it was actually having on the industry. But there were also many critics, and in the wake of the successes came threats and harassment. This took the focus away from the message the organisation was trying to get across, not least during interviews where the press often chose to focus on the online criticism and persecution. This quickly became tiresome for Sarkeesian.
"I was so over talking about abuse, the dog and pony show of trotting out my abuse,"
"At that point, at my talks about online harassment, I started to be like, 'I'm not talking about my experience anymore. It's online. You can go and check it out. I'm not retraumatizing myself for the sake of this audience anymore.' And that's when I started realizing that I'm just really fucking over this."
The full interview can be read here for those of you who are interested.