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
Steele, since you’re back, can you please substantiate or withdraw this claim?
I withdraw the claim. The comment was posted quickly. It should read:
And of course this is assuming I even agreed with your feminist view that hating men is less worthy of consideration than hating women.
VoIP:
And modern America does not have a draft. Your point?
If we’re talking about America, the draft existed long after women won the right to vote. The most costly use of the draft (that is, Vietnam) was over fifty years after the Nineteenth Amendment.
I don’t hate men — I am mostly indifferent to them in my personal life and affairs, work collegially with a few of them.
I’m not making an accusations, nor have I in this thread. My contention is with the idea that it is hypothetically okay to be a misandrist.
You, Steele, are not important enough to hate.
The feeling is mutual.
“My contention is with the idea that it is hypothetically okay to be a misandrist.”
As far as I can tell the issue is not that it’s hypothetically okay to be a misandrist, but that misandry itself is hypothetical and doesn’t stand up in a real world setting with *actual* social structures in place.
Steel of troll: Hating men “as a group” will eventually, in most cases, result in hating individual men, which will likewise, in a much smaller number of cases, result in violence toward men. This is not rocket science.
No, it’s not rocket science, but it is misogynistic.
Why? Because you have this shit-headed idea that feminism=hating men (have you READ what MRAs say abot men)=LET”S KILL THE MENZ.
So you’re here fighting the brave fight against the man-hating feminists who are about to become violent toward men (in the context of a post about a woman being the target of horrendous verbal violence and harassment and incitement toward offline violence) when in fact the main perps of violence against men are MEN?
Can you cite, and by that I mean give us fucking links, a man who has received the equivalent of what Sarkeesian has online, from feminists?
Can you cite examples of women mass murderers?
If you’re so worried about violence toward men, go back to the male dominated sites and spaces, online and off, and preach at them.
Your withdrawal of your original claim is noted and welcomed, but I’m afraid I’m now going to have to ask you to substantiate or withdraw its replacement:
(addressed to Steele, obviously)
@Steele:
I see. I don’t count because I’m not a real man, just a feminist one. I guess I’m also not a real scotsman?
I see you’re quick and ready to speak for my classmates instead. I also see that, while I would have to personally interview each and every boy in my class, you simply need to wave your hands and reference all the stories about actual oppressed groups playing along, and infer that men must be doing the same thing.
Eh screw it. You have my story, you have Kyrie’s, and all you’ve got are assertions and insinuations. If you wanna keep believing that you can hold your beliefs without evidence, but be hyper-skeptical when it comes to other peoples beliefs, feel free.
Boring Troll is Boring. Talk about a one-note Charley
So, Steele, how do you feel about hard chairs oppressing men?
Wow, Steele just lurves him some false equivalencies.
Yeah, I would rather hear his thoughts on hard chairs.
Steele:
Holy shit.
Holy. Shit.
holy shiiiiiiiit
The spam filter has been acting up today and snagged a bunch of comments, mostly in this topic and mostly from steele, for no good reason. I’ve let them all through, though you’ll have to scroll back on the last page to see them.
HOLY SHIT
@Ithiliana
“But I’ve seen great changes in the last 50 years”
And over the next 5 years all the entitlements will disappear. Entitlements for the ladettes costs mucho dinero
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
“Even the attacks on Sarkeesian”
Slight to womans feelings = attack.
“You, Steele, are not important enough to hate.”
Man is so marginalized he’s unworthy in importance to even hate.
@Not for Steele who is an asshat, but when I started teaching, I soon saw a pattern in some of my classes where the non-traditional age women students (many of whom were divorced) would on occasion group together and some out with some really passive-aggressive shit about men–and in the groups (smaller groups for discussion), sometimes younger men (a number of whom had been raised by single mothers) were singled out for bullying by several of these women. I had to act to stop the bullying. I’m in a rural area of Texas, the state with a high incidence of teen pregnancy (and a high incidence of teens having second babies, *headdesk*), and a HIGH divorce rate. Add in the fact that the majority of majors in English in my department (and nationwide) are women, and the lack of any real help for women in that situation (many of them raising children, going to school, and working fulltime), I can understand their anger–and it was, oddly enough, never directed at any one person, just an on-going barrage of “men are always trash.” And always and only at the very young men, traditional age students, who for multiple reasons did not have many tools to deal with it.
CLearly, as a feminist, I provided all the women with clubs so they could beat the young men senseless!
Steele, feminists are the ones asking that selective service requirements be extended to young women as well. They are also arguing for women to serve in more capacities in the armed forces. The people arguing against these demands are male supremacists.
Then other male supremacists (eg, you) turn around and argue that it is unfair to men that women are not subject to selective service. We are not participating because we have been forbidden to.
This is like that time (WHEN? OH, JUST THE PAST SEVERAL HUNDREDS OF YEARS) when women were prohibited from higher education and then called stupid because there were only a few female physicists.
We all see what you did there.
But why am I talking to you, you think the Vietnam war is history’s costliest example of draftees getting killed.
Hatred of men is a problem—hatred of men for being dark-skinned, muslim, hindu, poor, gay, trans, effeminate, mentally ill, and even (to a smaller and much less systematic extent than the others) atheist is all awful and pose huge problems.
What doesn’t make my list is hatred of men for being men, because that poses a tiny problem, especially in comparison to misogyny. Yes, the teachers discussed above should have, at a minimum, been confronted and made to change their behavior, but when there are congressional panels about birth control that don’t even include one woman; when more and more states are passing laws restricting access to abortion services; when “Feminazi” is a word that doesn’t refer to actual feminist nazis; when even the potential existence of a critique of sexism in the media is enough to touch off a firestorm of male privilege, drawing graphic threats of rape and assault, I’mma have to say that plain misandry is pretty low on my list of things to be worried about. It’s less worthy of consideration than misogyny, than racism, than classism, than imperialism, and a whole lot of other things because it is not a systematic problem.
PS No, it’s not okay. Duh.
(Incidentally, in history’a actual costliest example of draftees getting killed, women also served at the front lines.)
Boo-urns, here’s the link.
@Ithiliana
“Can you cite, and by that I mean give us fucking links, a man who has received the equivalent of what Sarkeesian has online, from feminists?”
Every man whose had his children kidnapped and pays to not see them. But, but, but princess had her feeling hurt.
“when in fact the main perps of violence against men are MEN?”
Don’t you mean the feminist State is the greatest perpetrator of violence against men?
“Why? Because you have this shit-headed idea that feminism=hating men”
SInce it’s been almost a hundred years since womens vote, the last roadblock to equality, everything since then has been hatred. Oh that’s right, men are commanded not to ridicule the ridiculous.
@Not for Steele who is an asshat, but when I started teaching, I soon saw a pattern in some of my classes where the non-traditional age women students (many of whom were divorced) would on occasion group together and some out with some really passive-aggressive shit about men–and in the groups (smaller groups for discussion), sometimes younger men (a number of whom had been raised by single mothers) were singled out for bullying by several of these women. I had to act to stop the bullying.
I don’t mean to sound snarky, but I’m not going to give you a cookie for doing your job. If we want to exchange anecdata, I didn’t go to college straight from high school and was one of those “non-traditional age” folks you’re talking about. I was in one class where the lecturer thought it was awfully clever to open the first session with a crack about it was nice to see the front row filled with “bored housewives and unemployable divorcees.” When I went up to him after the lecture and said I didn’t think it was really appropriate cue the usual “gee, get a sense of humour” privilege-denying dudeism. Nor was I particuarly surprised to see one of these “bored housewives” in my tutorial group consistently being marginalized from discussion and condescended to both by the tutor and other students.
Now, what does this prove beyond assholes will be assholes regardless of gender, and teachers should provide a safe and inclusive environment for all students regardless of age, gender or irrelevant assumptions about their marital status?
VOIP you have successfully made me laugh through a long and tedious spoonfeeding of an over privileged troll.
Thank you.
Also, where do you find that stuff? I play on the internet all the time and I hardly ever find the funniez…
I actually googled “fuck shit gif.”
I see you’re quick and ready to speak for my classmates instead.
Am I? I merely stated that you cannot know the feelings of your classmates. It is you who presumed to make a blanket assumption based on your own reaction to the situation. All I did was point out the inherent fallacy.
I don’t claim that all the boys were damaged by your teacher’s misandry. I merely dispute your groundless assertion that none of them were.
[..] you simply need to wave your hands and reference all the stories about actual oppressed groups playing along, and infer that men must be doing the same thing.
So do you dispute the existence of peer pressure? It’s not something that selectively applies to “oppressed groups”, as you put it.
Men are just people, and people have feelings. I don’t know why it’s hard for you to understand that some men- not men, boys– would be hurt by being singled out and attacked. I was in a similar situation, and I know I was.
@Steele:
Well, it’s not surprising that an MRA would read persecution into a situation where there is none.