The wit and wisdom of the guy who created that “beat up Anita Sarkeesian” game
Yesterday I wrote about a vile online game in which players were invited to “beat up Anita Sarkeesian,” the feminist cultural critic who’s faced endless harassment because she had the temerity to ask for donations to fund a video project looking at sexist tropes in video games.
The game, which (happily) has been removed from Newgrounds.com, where it was originally posted, was put together by a young Canadian gamer named Bendilin Spurr. On the game’s page, he offered this explanation as to why he created the game:
Anita Sarkeesian has not only scammed thousands of people out of over $160,000, but also uses the excuse that she is a woman to get away with whatever she damn well pleases. Any form of constructive criticism, even from fellow women, is either ignored or labelled to be sexist against her.
She claims to want gender equality in video games, but in reality, she just wants to use the fact that she was born with a vagina to get free money and sympathy from everyone who crosses her path.
That doesn’t really explain much, as asking people for voluntary donations to a video project is a far cry from “scamming,” especially since she’d asked for far less, and that the misogynist backlash to her project began long before she’d collected anywhere near this amount.
It also doesn’t quite explain why Bendilin felt that a Sarkessian-punching game was the best format to make this, er, critique.
Last night, after learning from the comments here that young Bendilin had a profile on Steam and a Twitter account, I decided to peruse both to see if I could find more clues that might explain his foul game.
On his Steam profile, he’s set forth his basic philosophy of life, video games, and how much women suck:
I think it’s just adorable how absolutely no girls are any good at video games, just like how no woman has ever written a good novel. They are nothing but talk and no action, probably because girls are such emotional creatures and base everything they do on their current feelings and then try to rationalize their actions later. How pathetic.
You know what’s priceless? When a gamer girl posts a pic of herself looking as slutty as possible and then throws a fake fit when people talk to her like she’s a whore. What did you think was going to happen, you dumb broad? Lose thirty pounds.
Sadly, these aren’t terribly rare or original opinions for a young male gamer.
Over on Twitter, Bendilin has offered a number of conflicting explanations for why he felt so much hostility for Sarkeesian and her video project that he felt justified in creating a video game devoted to punching her in the face.
There’s the fiscal argument:
There’s the laziness argument:
There’s the rather strange argument that Sarkeesian is not taking the proper time to research the subject, although she has not yet started the project. (Also, one of the reasons she was asking for money was so that she could take the time to research the subject properly.)
The “nuh-uh you’re wrong” argument:
The “she won’t listen to me argument.” Part one: The Lego Incident
And Part 2, in which our hero explains that making a video game about punching someone in the face is a great way to open a dialogue with them:
Naturally, Bendilin, like most misogynists, fervently denies that he’s a misogynist:
Yep, that’s right. The guy whose Steam profile claims that “absolutely no girls are any good at video games” and that “no woman has ever written a good novel,” and who decided to express his criticism for a video project that hasn’t even started by making a video game in which players punch the woman behind it in the face, is angry that anyone might conclude that he hates women.
Well, Bendilin, if you wanted to defend video games and the gaming community at large from charges of sexism, you’ve done a bang-up job of it.
UPDATE: Bendilin is also an artist! Here, Virgil Texas takes a look at Bendilin’s erotically charged Sonic the Hedgehog art.
That last paragraph and the update contained
Posted on July 8, 2012, in antifeminism, bullying, harassment, irony alert, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, narcissism, oppressed men, pussy pass, vaginas, violence. Bookmark the permalink. 1,286 Comments.
At least a humanities degree will tell you how many Americans died in the Vietnam war, which is apparently a datum that isn’t taught in MRM-academy.
Of course men can have a hard time! No one here would ever deny this!
What we’re saying is that men do not face systematic oppression because they are men.
Pay attention.
@Steele:
Hold up, you were inclined towards writing? When did you incline away from it?
They’re all IN THE MRM.
The people who ridiculed me weren’t.
They were feminists.
Meh, he’s not even trying any more. Bored now.
Steele: I believe you were damaged by a FEMALE AUTHORITY figure.
(The first time a man made a pass at me, I was 14. It was at my father, the Dean’s, faculty party, He was a faculty member. People laughed it off, oh so cute. That sort of thing didn’t stop until I was in my forties). I cannot even be bothered to count/remember any but the most extreme cases of male authority figures behaving in sexist ways (like the English prof who gave all the women in his classes B grades and all the men A grades–we tracked it for two years, and got evidence, but the dept. head couldn’t do anything).
What happened to you was wrong.
BUT, that does not excuse YOUR behavior here in claiming a false equivalency, and doing all the denying you are doing about misogyny and, like most MRAs, blaming FEMINISTS.
It just doesn’t.
Block quote fail… Further proof that men are inferior!
Either that or further proof that misandry exists…
Hmmm, yase, high schools are indeed hotbeds of feminist theory.
Prove it.
“I wonder if the extremist feminists here can bear to admit that a man (even maybe a white man?!)…”
Yes in addition to hating all men we’re all horrible anti-white racists as well. You got us.
“…can ever have a hard time, ever, or be treated unfairly.”
I can admit you’re certainly having a hard time here.
I call bullshit.
Dude, do you just call every women who doesn’t bow down to your very existence a feminist out of spite?
Wait, I thought that was our principle platform
i’ve been skipping meetings tho, perhaps the program has changed
@Cranapia: Thanks–I was a bit on edge myself and snapped back.
I have seen the problem you describe (a colleague and I tore my hair for years over who the male grad director would admit to the program–non traditional age women did not have a chance!).
It is horrifyingly frustrating.
Leaving aside murder and death threats, how many feminist school administrators have done anything like this to boys?
WHAT ABOUT THE MOONZ!!! (This must now appear on every page of this comment thread, by order of the feminist hivemind.)
You could take off the descriptor “misandrist” and come away with a situation that doesn’t involve non-existent things. A female authority figure being abusive towards boys is not, in fact, by itself evidence of misandry (treating “misandry” as the equivilant to “misogyny). Misandry would be a part of a larger pattern in the culture.
Repeating yourself doesn’t make you right. Even if you disagree with the concept of institutional misandry, the feminist worldview still allows for episodic misandry. Which it was.
And episodic misandry simply refers to the existence of someone who hates men, or an isolated denigration of men qua. I don’t feel like I have to “prove” the existence of such a phenomenon, especially considering you yourself have referred to such an incident.
And while you’re at it, asshole, you can go tell Toysoldier that his aunt raping him with a strap-on to “teach him a lesson” is “not misandry”. I read his post. I know how you minimized and mocked him. Disgusting.
THESE ARE GENDER ROLES! FEMINISTS ARE AGAINST THIS! THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE MEAN WHEN THEY SAY “PATRIARCHY HURTS MEN TOO!”
Interesting that when you can’t deny that men are discriminated against, it’s suddenly all about how women have it worse. I was never told that math was more important than humanities; if anything, it was the opposite.
Apparently the signs for a female heart-attack are very different than that of a male heart-attack. So much so that many women don’t even know they’re having one. And medical science didn’t figure this out for the longest time because they just assumed that both genders were the same, and had so far only examined men.
A source, but not where I found out about it.
More fun stuff about people not really considering women (sort of).
Complete and utter TROLLSHIT: we’ve gone from a female authority figure treating Steele badly to widespread feminist mocking of him for wanting to be a humanities major.
He was no doubt dragged into the public square every FREYAday and mocked publicly by feminist choices singing mocking choruses about him.
Because feminists are evil……..
You’re not doing men any service here, you know, TrollSteele. Men as individuals can be horribly hurt–and the more they don’t fit the hegemonic masculine ideal, the more they can be hurt and harassed–and while mostly by men (gender policing is often done most intensively in the gender group), I won’t exclude women from hurting men.
But you know, THAT IS FUCKING LIFE.
My brother got beat up in school until he got big enough to beat back. It fucking sucked, and nobody did anything about it. (I was more verbally harassed–at least in my experience ni small town Idaho back in the 60s, girls did not physically fight so much.)
But that is not proof of misandry.
*sits back to wait to see what escalation next comes up in the narrative of the FEMINISTS vs. MAN OF STEELE*
**regrets not mail ordering some kryptonite when it was one sale last March*
Dude, “misandry” is supposed to refer to a kind of bigotry, and “bigotry” is a structural condition, a large-scale generalized social phenomenon. That’s what all of you have been saying it is.
There is no such thing, by definition, as a phenomenon which is structural and episodic at the same time. Because of what bigotry means, what you just said does not exist. (MUCH LIKE VIETNAM’S POSITION AS THE COSTLIEST CONFLICT THAT INVOLVED THE DRAFT)
Perhaps you and the humanities should have stuck around each other a little longer.
@Oh, well, Steele is here for Toysoldier.
Go read what actually happened here instead of just his acCount (EVIDENCE), but that’s it–gotta get to bed because workday! And you’re clearly just here for the attention trolldude.
These are not the same thing. Do they not teach reading comprehension in Boy School now?
You’re welcome to cite to evidence of a poster here mocking him for being raped. You won’t, because blatant lies are how you roll, but you’re welcome to.
Based on the evidence we have here as far as his ability to construct a logical and persuasive argument, it may be that his gender was not the reason that people didn’t think writing was an ideal field for Steele to go into.
@Steele:
Wow… ok then. If you want to say that “misandry” is just “what happens when a person hates the male gender”, nothing more, then I guess we don’t disagree that it exists. But misogyny is not just “a person hating the female gender.” So the two are not remotely the same.
And I’m not just repeating myself. If you’ll actually understand what I’m saying, I’m trying to drive home the point that what you call “episodic misandry” is just a fancy way of saying “a person who has an irrational hatred,” and has none of the meaning that the word “misogyny” does.
By the way. Toy Soldier? Yeah, he is pretty much dishonest in his summary of our interactions with him. And while his situation was tragic, it’s just a fucking awful thing that happened and not symptomatic of any larger narrative against men.
In short, if you want to have a specific definition for “misandry,” fine. But you do not get to equivocate and borrow meaning and importance from “misogyny” in the process. As soon as you do, the thing you are giving a name to no longer exists.
Meritocracy is misandry, they should just hand diplomas out to white men at the door of every college.
I might have guessed this bit of bullshit would turn up sooner or later.
Toysoldier’s post is a lie. We did not minimize and mock his being raped. What we said was that, a) we were sorry that happened to him and b) whatever her reasons were, his aunt did not rape him because of feminism.
We didn’t start mocking him until he twisted the English language into some hideous distortion of itself in order to avoid having to prove his point.
And of course- my writing skills perhaps aren’t great. This is unsurprising, considering I was forced away from the field because it was assumed I couldn’t cut it. The posters remarking over my writing ability are unwittingly making my case for me.
It was more than that, it was his insistence that feminism as a movement is in favor of the rape of little boys that caused that discussion to shut down.
This is particularly absurd in light of MRA Emma the Emo’s post about how it’s OK for women to rape little boys. Once again – it was an MRA who wrote that, and our most frequent MRA troll agrees with her. All of the feminists here think that she’s wrong and her believing that is horrifying.
@Steele:
I’m not in the field of linguistics, I’m a computer scientist. And yet I have the ability to understand what other people are saying and to express myself. Funny how that works.
Have you ever considered that the problem is that you are not very bright?
(Also, lol at how you think–or want us to think–the only place people can learn how to write is by getting a degree is writing.)
(Also, lol forever at your Vietnam war thing, holy shit that was literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever read)
*Writing, not linguistics
Oh well.. I tried.
Seriously? “OOOH, I can’t write because the mean, mean, meanies hurt my feelings when I was trying to learn how!”
Bullshit. You might be able to make that argument for a skill that you can’t learn on your own, by correspondence, via the internet, or through just reading lots and lots of books. Like, if you wanted to be an experimental physicist, and were threatened, bullied, beaten, and had people sabotaging or stealing your work on a regular basis. (Which, by the way, happens to women in male-dominated fields on a regular, systemic basis.)
In your case? Bullshit.
History PhD here, you just gotta be willing to practice a whole lot and eventually you too can be semi-eloquent. I never took a writing class, I just kept fucking up until I didn’t suck quite so hard.
However, that requires patience, humility, and a willingness to work, so I can see where an MRA might have some problems.
This hits me hard. My cousin had an atypical (for a man) heart attack; the symptoms were more like those women experience. Because neither he nor his wife had ever heard of those symptoms, they both assumed he was just having very painful indigestion. By the time he lost consciousness and his wife called 911, the heart attack was very advanced, and his brain was deprived of oxygen for too long. He lingered in a coma for about 3 months, and finally died. He was one of my favorite people, and his family was devastated since he was only in his early 50s and seemed to be in perfect health.
So, everyone, here are symptoms of a heart attack:
Discomfort, tightness,uncomfortable pressure, fullness, squeezing in the center of the chest lasting more than a few minutes, or comes and goes
Crushing chest pain
Pressure or pain that spreads to the shoulders, neck, upper back, jaw, or arms.
Dizziness or nausea
Clammy sweats, heart flutters, or paleness
Unexplained feelings of anxiety, fatigue or weakness – especially with exertion
Stomach or abdominal pain
Shortness of breath and difficulty breathing
You do not need to have all of these. Most people think ONLY crushing chest pain indicates a heart attack. This is wrong.
Nope, sorry. While training and experience certainly help, writing ability tends to show through even in those who’re not well trained in terms of natural flow and ability to catch people’s interest. Your writing isn’t terrible, but it’s not good enough to make a career out of. Having an interest in something is not always the same thing as being good at it. I love hockey, but at 5ft2 with a small build a professional career was never in the cards for me.
But…but…bu…he’s a young white man!
How….?
NEW YORK TIMES YOU HAVE LIED TO ME
There’s also the issue of reading comprehension, and Steele seems to have some problems there as well. Anyone with decent reading comprehension can see right through Toy Soldier’s attempts at rewriting conversations to suit him.
Here is a chihuahua:
Actually, interestingly enough, the first subject I’ve ever failed in school was Language Arts in 7th grade. Make of that what you will.
In short, if you want to have a specific definition for “misandry,” fine.
It’s a legitimate definition that already exists- the more common one, actually. It is only the feminist definition that ascribes this bizarre “institutional” catch to it. Personally, I think it’s a mechanism to deny men’s issues.
Regardless of Toysoldier’s honesty- I do believe he is telling the truth about his rape, due to details he has provided that I won’t go into because it’s not my place. Are you willing to tell me that’s not an example of misandry? No matter whether you believe there is systematic bigotry against men- you won’t even grant that this is an example of isolated misandrist actions?
You’re an asshole if that is so.
And I’m not just repeating myself. If you’ll actually understand what I’m saying, I’m trying to drive home the point that what you call “episodic misandry” is just a fancy way of saying “a person who has an irrational hatred,” and has none of the meaning that the word “misogyny” does.
Only if we’re feminists (I’m not) and only if we’re using the sociological or “critical theory” definition of the word. This is simply not the only definition that is used, not even the most common one.
Secondly, “misandry” seems to me a much more efficient way of saying “an irrational hatred of men”, and I will continue using it. So will other sane people. Not my problem if you have a weird bugbear about it.
Thirdly, misandry is in fact institutional, thus invalidating everything you’ve said, but I don’t expect to convince you there.
But you do not get to equivocate and borrow meaning and importance from “misogyny”
Projection and paranoia, not good qualities. The mere existence of the word “misandry” in no way implies an equivalence to “misogyny”. It’s just what it is- a word to describe feelings of prejudice and hatred toward men.
A surprisingly useful word, I’ve found.
“Thirdly, misandry is in fact institutional, thus invalidating everything you’ve said, but I don’t expect to convince you there.”
Misandry is, in fact, not institutional, thus invalidating your entire worldview.
“Thirdly, misandry is in fact institutional, thus invalidating everything you’ve said, but I don’t expect to convince you there.”
It is pretty hard to convince people of something without actually making any arguments to support your position. Preemptively declaring that they won’t believe you so why bother is pretty lazy, and in this context also rather disengenuous.
@Steele:
Do you listen to yourself type? The first two highlighted sections imply that misandry is not an institional thing the way you use it, and the last says that it is. FFFffffff.
Welp, if you don’t expect to convince us of the bloody core point of your whole argument, I suppose we’re done here. Buh-bye Steele, nice wasting time with you.
P.S.
FUCK. EVERYTHING.
*rainbow-vomiting panda*
He can’t, feminists made him write poorly.
Kirbywarp, in the first two points- since you apparently have trouble reading for comprehension- I was operating within your feminist worldview. There would be no point in adopting an MRA worldview, because then we’d be talking past each other. I was saying that, even under the feminist umbrella, misandry is still a thing.
VoIP: “Misandry” (or misogyny) need not be an example of “bigotry”. It could simply be an isolated incident of “prejudice”.
And in Toysoldier’s case, it was a very extreme, very damaging and horrifyingly abusive instance of prejudice.
Hmmm, why am I not surprised that Steele’s representation of the achievement gap in education is not exactly the complete picture.
That’s where Toy Soldier’s entire theory goes wrong, really. Since he’s chosen to interpret his aunt’s actions as a manifestation of systemic misandry rather than being about fact that she was an abusive person who as an individual had issues with boys/men (and proof that child abuse actually is systemic), the entire theory that he then built upon that idea ends up being nonsense. Saying this is not a denial of the fact that he was abused, it’s just pointing out that the conclusions he ended up reaching are wrong and not supported by the evidence.
If “prejudice” means nothing more than “at least one person has a personal hatred,” then it’s a shame our society has prejudices against people who wear hats, people who don’t wear hats, people with blonde hair, violinists, people named Kyle, and people who drive Chevys.
Prejudice has to be systemic or it has no more power than some random person who doesn’t like Kyles.
@Steele:
*point*
[...] she was an abusive person who as an individual had issues with boys/men
You mean, she was a misandrist.
It’s really a source of increasing fascination to me that you can’t just say the word. It’s like watching Feminist Scrooge McDuck, or something.
I can sum up the entire conversation between steele and everyone else in two lines of dialogue.
Steele: Y u think it’s ok to hate teh menz?
Everyone else: We don’t hate teh menz, we just think you specifically are an idiot for thinking that we do, and that it’s not ok to have a game online about beating the shit out of a woman who is already under a ton of fire systematically.
I have a deep dislike of hairy chests on men. This means that hairy-chested men have a hard time getting hired for most jobs, are on average poorer than men who are not hairy, are more likely to be arrested and sent to jail, and in general suffer from all the ills that tend to affect people who suffer from societal prejudice, right?
THAT IS NOT WHAT THE WORD MEANS, YOU TWIT.
Steele, no one is denying that there are a few individuals out there with an irrational hatred of men.
What we’re denying is that there is a systematic oppression of men.
If you are going to define that systematic, institutionalized misandry exists, you actually have to provide evidence.
No, because misandry is something systemic. We’ve already been over this numerous times.
Prejudice has to be systemic or it has no more power than some random person who doesn’t like Kyles.
If you have a record of a person who doesn’t like Kyles repeatedly raping and sodomizing someone named Kyle, well, I’d say that prejudice was pretty damned shitty, legitimate, and damaging. And I’d toss that person in jail next to a serial rapist.
Words have meanings, you monumental thickie: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ISOLATED SYSTEMIC EVENT.
THAT IS NOT WHAT THE WORD MEANS, YOU TWIT.
“Prejudice” need not include any sort of systemic element. Learn English.
Also, I have to say, you’ve done a nice job of derailing here, but I’d still like an explanation of why, if in theory institutional misandry was an actual thing that existed, it would be appropriate to derail this conversation about Sarkeesian to talk about it.
holy shit it’s like some sort of quantum theory for dumbasses here
isolated systematic prejudice is a condition/event
dudes…it’s a wave AND a particle
Yeah, and no one here is going to disagree with you on that point.
The thing is, that individual instance would not make hatred-of-people-named-Kyle institutionalized or systematic.
See, this is exactly what I mean when I say the people who use the word “misandry” are trying to borrow meaning from the word “misogyny.” To prove misandry exists, you point to the existence of people who have an irrational hatred of men. Once people agree that that shit happens, you then go on to say that his proves there is a systematic institutional misandry.
Steele, this is why feminists hate to use the word misandry. Because it by its very etymology is a false equivalence with a real thing. If you are so dead-set on using the word, nobody can stop you. But don’t expect people to assume you are talking about a different definition than the word implies, and don’t expect to try to pull the daft sleight-of-hand of saying that “misandry” doesn’t imply an instutional component, but “misandry” is in fact insitutional.
Words have meanings, you monumental thickie: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ISOLATED SYSTEMIC EVENT.
Also, this is also predicated on a feminist worldview that you have chosen to buy into. Most people don’t, thickie.
Words do have meanings. Here’s “prejudice”:
an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
Yeah, the Humanities lost a star player when this one was shamed off the team.
What the hell did I do to deserve this?
Thankyou to the historians for the information about the US Civil War and Vietnam War.
Talking about draftees in Vietnam War, do you know if the Vietnamese were drafted, on either side?
Not to mention the fact that repeated insistence of using the word “misandry” contributes to the erasure and minimization of actual misogyny, like… oh, I don’t know… Anita’s harassment avalanch in the OP.
Dude the feminist worldview doesn’t say something can’t be isolated and systematic simultaneously, the ENGLISH LANGUAGE does.