Sorry if this lacks some organization or mistakes, but this is what I got from the video. Also keep in mind I started typing this while the thread was still on page 1, so excuse me if some arguments have already been discussed:
With her examples on instrumentality, she is saying that women are objects, and that you are buying and selling their bodies as objects for use to the player. Well with the examples she cited, i.e AC4, I don't agree with her. Especially with the courtesans, Kenway isn't objectifing them, and really neither is the player. He's HIRING them, as is the player, to trick and distract, not to have sex. He is hiring them for a SERVICE, much like Kenway is hired for killings. She is explicity saying the word "rented" as if they are a house or boat or something insignificant, actual objects. You hire a plumber to fix your toilet, Kenway hires a courtesans sexuality to distract, why that is a bad thing I'm not sure, it's a fact of life that men typically like women, so women or even men taking advantage of this seems realistic and even smart.
She also cited Hitman when tossing the stripper to distract the cops. You can do the same thing in many of the other missions in the same game to also distract guards but with a male body. Also, asides from the fact the woman was a stripper, how was the guard's reaction sexualized. I think anyone who saw a random dead body appear where it wasn't a "minute earlier" would be shocked. The fact that it's a woman seems insignificant.
She also explained and showcased examples of "voilability", which to me quite frankly appeared to be about as revelant to sexualize women in games as to men. She was citing things like picking up cash from dead women in GTA, she cited killing and mutiliating prostitutes in dishonored, when in both of those games you do the same things to men, if not more often. She brought them up as if they exclusively occur to sexualized women, as if the games are singling out women, which they are not.
She then brought up "testing a game's mechanics" to see where the boundaries of ability lie within said game, and brought up killing sexualzied women as if it were the goal and a main aspect of the game. She talked a lot of how once women were turned into sexual objects, violence against said objects is intrinsically permitted. If we are agreeing with the fact that sexualized women are objects in games, I don't see why any NPC isn't, particularly in open world games. All NPCs serve pretty much to be the players play ground tools, whether it be running random pedastrians over or throwing grenades into crowded areas. She cited sleeping dogs when Shen beat up that woman and threw her into his trunk, and Fallout when the player killed the prostitute and swung her body around. She is citing these as examples as if such action only and more exclusively occur to the sexualized women within said games, when really that is not true at all.
Also around 25:55 when she's talking about sexualized female npcs, she goes on about how the player can't do anything with these women besides either have sex with them or hurt them. She says the player can't experience their stories or lives other than pain and sex, while at the same time she has a picture from Carmen of from The Witcher in the background, a character who you get very well to know and take part in a quest with in a main part of the game, all without ever hurting her or having sex with her( if i'm not mistaken).
She also brought up the point that many male NPCs are not sexualized and are very plain, and uses this as the defining factor between killing male and female NPCs. Very true, but simply put, there are also tons and tons of non-sexualized female NPCs as well, all who you can equally kill and steal money from. She brings up that there are not a lot of male prostitutes in games, and cites Saints Row, an absolutely batshit crazy games that goes for laughs, as an example that does have them. I think part of the reason women and not men are typically sexualized as prostitutes in games and other media as well is the fact that such media wants to have a basis or grounding in reality. Having a more grounded setting perhaps helps with immersion or realism, a goal that many open world games seek to achieve. This in turn perhaps makes the game more fun. Are male prostitues or male stippers common, or as common as female versions? Taking further the fact that often gamers play as straight males/thugs in many of the games she cited, and for them to be in such situations with sexualized males perhaps doesn't make as much sense, but it has happened.
As she said, prostitutes/sexualized women are added into games to give them a more racy/gritty feel, and I'm not really sure what's wrong with this. Game designers have not just totally forsaken women in creating games like this, as many games, such as GTA, who seek to achieve life-like/believeable open worlds take influence directly from real life, and real life has prostitutes and women who dress very sexually, as well as arseholes who exploit these women. My main argument against this video is that Ms. Sarkeesian is seemingly calling out games and explaining their faults as if they are entirely made of them or totally constructed with the goal of having sex with sexualized women and hurting them, as if sexualized women are the only and most important victims.
She has some very good points, but too much of a poor presentation in actual information and cherry picking content to showcase her points, without seemingly being able to bring out games that illustrate her issues in a much more core way.
. Though given how Sakamoto talks about Samus and this:
