When we look at these historical women and what they've gone through, it's shocking to recognize some of our own experiences in theirs. When you look at someone like Ada Lovelace who is the first computer programmer, during her lifetime doctors said that was really sick because she was trying to use a masculine kind of brain that she didn't have. Today, her legacy of being the first programmer is stil disputed.
Anita SarkeesianMy writer and I sat down and wrote a huge list of names of women to consider. It was really important to us to have a broad range of women from across generations and cultures. We didn't want to make it Western-focused, we wanted to make sure it was international and that it had an intersectional lens.
Anita SarkeesianI want these to be names that young girls and boys and kids of all genders grow up knowing. It shouldn't just be when you take a feminist class in college, if you happen to do that. I hope this is fun and engaging for folks to watch.
Anita SarkeesianI came back to this idea of telling the stories of women who aren't in all of the history books. Their names are not up there next to male names that we've know since we were little kids. Ching Shih, for example, was a pirate commander from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. She was one of the most fearsome pirates, why is her name not included when we list the names of great pirates like Blackbeard?
Anita Sarkeesian