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
Casting my vote for WHAT ABOUT TEH MOONZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! as one of the best comments evah.
That poor man in the moon, faced by the misandry of Gaia!
*sobs*
“But we don’t see it that way.”
We know the MRM is full of racist assholes, too.
We enjoy making fun of it.
Fine, but then you look pretty moronic when you’re groaning about how ubiquitous it is. It’s not, in general. You choose to obsess over the one place it is.
One death threat. One.
and evidence that you have picked up and read an introductory military history text
or touched it, poked it really, that would expose you to more knowledge that you’ve shown evidence of here
“I wish I had such an easy option when it comes to feminism.”
Don’t read feminist blogs?
Then he couldn’t share his opinions with women, and then where would we be?
we’d probably know more abt the vietnam war, for starters
We know the MRM is full of racist assholes, too.
Much like the feminist movement, then.
One death threat.
Misandry: a bit more widespeard discoursively than Steele recognizes. Of course, he didn’t realize that MRA sites celebrate International Marc LePine day (his google fu is clearly fubared).
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ARAB_enUS452US452&sugexp=chrome,mod=8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=misandry
And although the term may not be known that widely, the idea that straight white men are suffering more because WOMEN! or FEMINISM! or AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, is all over the mainstream media.
As usual, Steele Troll, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!
@Steele:
Your very first comment on this thread was calling someone an extremist that makes women martyrs. Your next was complaining how feminists think misandry was not comparable to misogyny. You continue to complain about how terrible misandry is and how non-ubiquitous misogyny is.
If you really thought what happened to Anita was much much worse than what happens in normal “misandry” cases, you would not have brought misandry up. You would have talked about how terrible Anita’s harassment was.
There is, however, a portion of the feminist movement that recognizes intersectionality.
Unlike your guys.
Hey Steele, can you respond to Kirby now? He was nice enough to link and everything, since you can’t be arsed to hit ctrl f.
Where’s the feminist equivalent of register-her.com? Where’s the feminist equivalent of “the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection” huh Steele? Where’s the feminist equivalent of this? (Note: Site endorsed by the oh-so-moderate-and-reasonable A Voice for Men.)
You can’t deny that yours is a “movement” (loosely defined, since you don’t actually do anything but troll the internet) with a hell of a lot of violent, anti-women rhetoric.
@Steele: yes, the feminist movement is full of racists.
So is every single fucking group in the US (I cannot speak of other countries, although a number of British sf fans talk about racism in the UK too).
So what?
INTERSECTIONALITY dude.
White men as a group have male and white privilege; white women have white privilege, but not gender privilege (straight white women have straight and white privilege).
NOT NEWS to anybody who’s read/thought/done feminisms for a while.
Go read bell hooks and we’ll talk.
BUT as VOIP said: One death threat. One.
VoIP, I’m not doing your research for you. Email a prominent MRA blogger. They likely keep quiet about it.
@Ginger Snaps: HIGH FIVES!
Oh, speaking of false equivalencies: did you see NWO claiming that every man who loses custody of children is the equivalent of the attacks on Sarkeesian????????????????///
This isn’t my research, moron, you brought it up so the burden of proof is on you.
And considering all the whining they do about a single tiny Swedish theater group, they probably wouldn’t shut up about it.
@Steele:
You made the claim dude, it’s your responsibility to back it up. Pick up after yourself like an adult, alright?
No one here is saying that MRAs and their whining about misandry are ubiquitous. Misogyny is ubiquitous. MRAs seem to exist only on the interwebz.
This is a great standard of proof, though. I haven’t heard about a thing so it must be EVEN WORSE THAN I SUPPOSED OH NO THE HORROR
hey Steele, do they teach logic in those schools that boys can’t be bothered to do well in?
I’m going to make baseless claims with NO evidence whatsoever, and then refuse to DO YOUR RESEARCH FOR YOU.
Steele, if not for us, then do your research for yourself.
@Steele: What makes you think they’d keep quiet about something that they could smear feminists with?
Why do they have to make do with Solanis (Solanas? sorry, tired, lazy, spelling blah), and the THEATRICAL production of the SCUM Manfesto, if they had real true actual death threats from feminists?
Why would they keep quiet when they cannot keep their flapping mouths shut about anything else on the planet?
WHY?????????????????????????????/
Or, let me guess, you’re a member of the “if there’s absolutely no evidence, that proves CONSPIRACY!”
let me introduce you to NWO–you dudes could conspiracy share!
Don’t worry. I’m sure that expecting Steele to actually back up the claims that he makes is misandry too.
because that is the reason they are failing, it’s not misandry, it’s a combination of two things, (1) buckling down and following orders is coded female so young white men no longer do shit in high school and (2) the real problem, which is that young black men are discriminated against in high school, which the MRM, thanks to its happy happy handshake with Internet Racists, refuses to recognise as a thing