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
aaaand again with the convenient excuses!
Wow, nope, everything’s still bolded.. WAY TO GO. TYPICICAL MAN F*CKING EVERYTHING UP.
/EXTRA LARGE SARCASM TAG FOR DENSE-AS-HELL MRAs
If Sodini and Lepine are so isolated, Steele, why do so many MRAs look up to them?
@Steele:
Oh for fuck’s sake, I fucking called it. SHOW ME ONE EXAMPLE OF A MAN ATTACKING A WOMAN FOR BEING A WOMAN! Oh, you found one? Oh… well, it doesn’t matter, it’s only one example.
You dismiss any counter-examples, even ones you specifically ask for, because they contradict your beliefs.
Proof positive: this whole thing is pointless. I’m up for ignoring.
I expand on my experience in a long post on the previous page. Don’t worry, you don’t have to read it if you don’t care. But short answer is no. It was not misandry.
Then we’re back to arguing semantics. Personally, I think that “misandry” is a lot more efficient than saying “expressed contempt for the young boys in a classroom, which could seriously damage said boys emotionally”, but whatever turns your crank, dude.
Set phasers to IGNORE!
My last try to stop the bolding. If this doesn’t work, I’m out of ideas.
@Cliff Pervocracy
“Lotta conspiracy theorists are like this. You’d think that if they really believed half of what they said, they’d know better than to ever talk about it in public. You think the Illuminati/feminists/Jews/etc. can get anyone and control the world, and you don’t think they can get your IP?”
You’re slipping, you forgot to mention lizards. I mean when you’re gunning for smugness at least put forth the effort. Was today’s hatred and manipulation draining? There, there. Get a good nights rest and tommorow you’ll be as smug as ever.
There was a blog that mocked misogyny, but everything changed when
the fire nation attackedkirbywarp bolded Manboobz.It’s simple, you guys. Absence of reports of death threats means MRAs get death threats. Any aggression against any man proves misandry, any aggression against any woman is an isolated incident. You can tell feminists hate men because they say “hating men is wrong” when you ask them.
Up is down, black is white, and please forget about that woman being harassed and threatened for talking about misogyny. Because we got MAN PROBLEMS to talk about.
Steele’s fundamental problem here seems to be that when he sees a woman not liking a man he assumes that it’s because the man is a man, whereas if he sees a man not liking a woman he assumes that it’s because the woman did something to piss the man off, ie there’s a specific reason he dislikes that particular woman.
I’ve never denied the existence of misogyny- I said as much earlier in the thread. This is more projection. I’m disputing your insistence that men are never hated qua men.
I say again- all I’ve ever advocated is that feminists hold themselves to the same standard they ask others to hold themselves to. You want men to treat you fairly? Treat men fairly.
Well, guys, we have to admit that David was terribly threatening to Varpole, forcing him to take down his hard-hitting anti-misandry blog. 😉
I like this new ALL BOLD format. Don’t call David; he’ll just fix it or something.
@Cliff: Marc Lepine and George Sodini were misogynists, and their actions were motivated by misogyny. Obviously. Likewise, I think Kirby’s teacher (though to a greatly reduced extent) was a misandrist.
Hang on, hang on……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzipppppp. Just unzipped my pants and noticed I don’t have a pussy. Guess I don’t get a reward for crying the blues.
NWO, do you understand what Sarkeesian is getting that money for? She’s making a series of videos. People are giving her money because they want to watch the videos. It’s not because people feel sorry for her. It’s because people admire her and enjoy her work.
You can do the same thing! Come up with an idea for something people would like, make a Kickstarter campaign for it, and get the funding to do it. It’s easy! I’ve published three books that way!
You don’t even need a vagina. Most of the highest-funded Kickstarter projects have been organized by men. Check it out: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/most-funded?ref=sidebar
Instead of trying to tear down a woman who’s doing something cool, why not do something cool yourself?
Sorry, I was incorrect. I’m not a US historian and I’m sorry for the error.
While Antietam/Sharpsburg is the bloodiest single day of the American Civil War, it was not the bloodiest battle, and it did not kill more Americans than Vietnam did. No Civil War battle did, although total casualties in the battle of Gettysburg are roughly equal to the number of dead in Vietnam and the Civil War as a whole easily tops Vietnam as well as any other conflict Americans were involved in.
Factor duration of the conflict and especially population size in, and the Civil War is fucking insane. By far the deadliest conflict that Americans were in, whether they were drafted or otherwise (both the CSA and the USA started drafting people in 1862; the CSA was first by a few months).
Antietam/Sharpsburg: 22,700 Americans killed, wounded and missing. 12 hours (5:30 AM-5:30 PM , 17 Sept 1862)
Gettysburg: 50,000 killed, wounded and missing; of that, 7,000 dead. Three days. (1-3 July, 1863)
The Vietnam war in its entirety: 58,000 American dead, about 300,000 wounded. 19 years, 180 days (1 November 1955– 30 April 1975)
The American civil war in its entirety: 620,000 American dead, about 400,000 wounded. Four years.
Steele: Given all the cultural and institutional support boys get (including mostly from women teachers–want me to cite some scholarship showing how women teachers tend to give boys more positive support), then no, one teacher being an asshole is not misandry.
As we’ve said MULTIPLE TIMES: this is about systemic not individual behaviors.
In the US, we are not living in a culture where straight white cis men are oppressed as a group.
Princess snowflake had her feelings hurt and was rewarded with 160K
Wow, you guys were right. NWO really does just freeze and then restart from the beginning.
Shaenon – I see what you’re doing, and while I doubt it’ll happen, it would be EPIC.
I’M HIJACKING THE THREAD!!!
As a lady person and also a gamer, I’ve come into contact with a lot of misogyny in video games. I think lady gamers who have experienced it (or dude gamers who have witnessed it) should share about some instances here.
For example, on the MMO I’m currently playing is a man with the gamer tag Heywood Jablomi (not even kidding you), who insists on
(1) stalking and making sexually inappropriate comments to a female minor in my group
(2) talking about how there are no hot women in their 20’s who play video games ever because of this one girl in his apartment complex he’d like to fuck
(3) definitely just TODAy made a statement along the lines of “that’s all they want” or “that’s all they’re good for” in reference to women and fucking.
Anita Sarkeesian doing a series on misogynist tropes in videogames is a good thing, and I hope it turns out to be amazing.
we get that you want to minimize women’s problems to make your grievances seem more important. you don’t have to dress it up in this pseudointellectual nonsense.
Even the sidebar is bolded.
I am honestly tempted to leave a strike tag unclosed…
Seeing it my html worked!
Mr. Boring Troll has never denied the existence of misogyny, but when the topic is a “beat-up-the-feminist” game, the most important issue is obviously mythandry.
Obviously.
KIRBY WHAT HAVE YOU DOOOOOONE