The work of Anita Sarkeesian and her project, Feminist Frequency, has always been controversial. To some at least. Sarkeesian has been on the receiving end of the worst venom the internet can produce. Everything from mockery to rape and death threats have been directed at her, on and off-line, because of her feminist critiquing of cultural properties (she discussed this treatment in a TED Talk).

Yet Sarkeesian has continued. Her current video series, called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is funded by a highly successful Kickstarter Campaign. Her videos are strong pieces of criticism. She states throughout her work that critiquing one part of video games (misogyny) is not an indictment of every aspect of gaming. Her videos follow a simple formula, laying out the basis of her criticism early, and spending the bulk of the time with examples of misogyny to strengthen her argument.

After viewing her work, it’s difficult to see a way around her thesis: games portray women as objects for sex and violence, and this portrayal is reflective of our deeper cultural problems of patriarchy. Feminist Frequency has produced work on other subjects, TV and Film and broader culture, but her work on video games is particularly powerful. They’re worth the view.

Her latest video is called “Women as Background Decoration: Part 2.” It’s embedded below for those interested. Warning: It contains explicit language and graphic depictions of violence against women.

I’m not a video-gamer, and haven’t been for 15 years. As such, I’ll say that the sample violence in Sarkeesian’s videos is quite shocking. The depictions of violence in modern video-games goes far beyond anything that I encountered in my avid gaming years (essentially 1986-1998, or Mario Brothers to Zelda: Ocarina of Time, with special attention given to FF3 and Chrono Trigger).

Which means I, and a lot of others presumably, have never played games with violence of the kind she displays here. Player-controlled rape and murder of women is not something that I found in my gaming days.

Support for Sarkeesian always drives her haters crazy. Her success on Kickstarter was viewed as essentially theft. But her latest video brought a particular challenge for many of her haters when, earlier today, one the biggest of big names in geek culture, Joss Whedon, tweeted his support and admiration for Sarkeesian’s videos.

The haters, apparently unaware that Whedon is no fan of misogyny, lost it (do your own search).

I must admit I was a little surprised by the reaction to Joss Whedon’s support of Sarkeesian. Do these people not know Joss Whedon? His feminist credibility has been noted often, for some, perhaps too often. Either way, he’s a history of upending the conventions of story-telling around Men and Women.

But I should not have been surprised.

The vitriol directed at Anita Sarkeesian for the past several years has demonstrated the length many will go to in order to defend what they love from attack. And in this instance, brought about by Sarkeesian and her supporters, the haters make the same general case.

Countless hours of Youtube content exist on the subject, sometimes going through the Fem Freq videos in hyper-detail. But it all boils to the same basic argument: critics, like Sarkeesian, are outsiders and don’t understand. Anita is not a gamer; Anita cherry-picks her clips, Anita damns games by misrepresenting them.

There are endless ways to frame the same point, which is, basically: stop talking shit about our games.

Hopefully, Sarkeesian will not stop. Though, if the acts of violence and trolling she’s faced already have not convinced her to stop, I don’t know what would. Besides, and thank god, she’s winning.