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
Don’t be silly, he can’t show evidence because your feminist worldview would just cause you to reject it. But rest assured it exists!
Steele, if you honestly believe that there’s no point in arguing that point then there is no purpose in you being here at all.
Steele, you seem mad, bro. Hug a kitten, or a manatee, or a puppy or something. You’re wrong about everything, but see no one is threatening to rape you or beat you up or anything. We’re just disagreeing with you.
And yet, even if we grant that misandry could refer to both, proving the existence of the individual case still doesn’t show that the systematic case exists.
Did I ever say otherwise?
All I’m saying is that isolated cases of misandry are still misandry. And I’ll continue referring to them as such, thank you very much.
Or maybe because you have no argument?
STEELE’S A DUMBASS NEVER FORGET
629 comments, and we finally agree that people can be shitty to other people for no good reason.
Not otherwise, but additionally. You’ve repeatedly asserted that the individual cases are fueld by the systematic case, and you’ve repeatedly refused to argue that because you believe that feminism is dogmatically opposed to the idea rather than believing it based on evidence and reason.
VoIP, you reminded me of this photo:
http://www.ecopolis.org/bernie-boston-flower-power/
@Steele… gaaaah. Yes. You think there is a systemic hatred of men. We know this. However, if you won’t put forward a single shred of evidence to support this claim, there is absolutely no reason to keep listening to you talk about what the definition of the word may or may not be, because it doesn’t fucking matter unless it actually is systemic. God damn. And I’m for bed. Y’all enjoy.
NEVER FORGET
*sigh* I look forward to the day when Steele is willing to actually debate the one thing about his whole spiel that has any relevence or consequence.
There’s simply no point. Look at what an ordeal it’s been just to get you to admit that episodic misandry exists, and you still seem to have a weird hang-up about it. Talking about institutionality of misandry would open up a can of worms orders of magnitude larger than what we’ve got already. And no one would change their position. Just a massive waste of time.
But I believe episodic misandry has very real consequences. Ignoring it or minimizing it- as you’ve done- causes very real problems. Again, it did for me.
Call what you like what you like. Call a spatula a bicycle, call an airplane a paperclip, call a aardvark a plate of paella. Up to you. Can’t stop you; wouldn’t if I could.
If you want to justify that word choice, though, ah, well, that’s where things get interesting. That can be a hard thing to do, as someone interested in the Humanities should know. And just going “I’m going to use this word, so there!” may be emotionally satisfying, but it’s not a real justification.
if i were your professor, i wouldn’t just gently steer you away from writing, i would fire you into the sun.
**only a threat once we invent intercontinental people cannons**
**you’ll probably tell the other mras you got threatened anyway**
[…] you’ve repeatedly refused to argue that because you believe that feminism is dogmatically opposed to the idea
Yes. That is exactly what I think. Dogmatic. Good word for it. And there’s no point arguing with dogma.
@Steele:
You do realize that this whole ordeal has been over you beginning with the word “misandry,” us assuming that you were referring to the institutional thing, taking over 500 comments for you to finally admit that you distinguish between individual cases and a systematic thing, and us finally saying “Oh, that’s what you’re talking about? Of course we agree there are shitty people.”
Though, you may be right. If it’s so hard for you to communicate this part of misandry, I can’t imagine how painful it would be for you to actually make a real argument.
“I have decided that this word means what I would prefer it to mean. Henceforth, I will expect everyone else to abide by that definition.
What do you mean, you’re not giving me an A?”
But..but…MY MALE PRIVILEGE *wails*
Episodic assault also has very real consequences for people who experience it. What I prefer to do is to look for patterns, and deal with those.
No doubt, upper class Guatemalans were murdered in the 1980s. There was also a scorched earth campaign exterminating campesinos and the indigenous people of the country. You are like someone who says, “Hey, but rich people were murdered in Guatemala too, you bigots!”
@Steele:
And my god, this is the very definition of WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ?!?!?
In a thread about rampant misogyny in gaming, your ultimate conclusion is
Guess what? You’re ignoring/minimizing the topic of this thread with your stubborn derail! Why must we talk about a small problem when there is a much bigger and more pertinent problem at hand? One that is supposed to be the topic of this entire conversation?
Would you expect these sorts of threads to put aside everything to talk about car theft? Or insurence fraud? Or stolen identities? No? Then why do you expect that we drop everything and talk about individual cases of anti-male terribleness?
You do realize that this whole ordeal has been over you beginning with the word “misandry,” us assuming that you were referring to the institutional thing, taking over 500 comments for you to finally admit that you distinguish between individual cases and a systematic thing, and us finally saying “Oh, that’s what you’re talking about? Of course we agree there are shitty people.”
Er, no. I distinguished between episodic and systematic misandry very early on. You refused to acknowledge episodic misandry as, well, “misandry” and engaged in frankly extremely offensive minimization and dismissal of bullying and abuse from an authority figure because it was perpetrated by a woman. I essentially repeated by position, in various forms, until you sorta-accepted it, but not really, because you still have a bugbear about the word itself. Which I will continue to use, because it’s a useful word, and an apt one, in many situations. Many, many situations. No matter how often you or anyone else attempts to deny hatred or bullying or abuse because it’s the “okay” kind of bullying and abuse.
Yes indeed that would be an absurd waste of time not like loudly and with confusing language insisting that sometimes people are assholes for no good reason and sometimes the victims of that assholery are men (or boys) therefore we should only talk about dudes or something
I like how its gotten to the point where Steele is interpreting my own experience with a teacher (which couldn’t really be accurately related in a short period of time, not just because of an incomplete memory) and has decided that my teacher was the epitome of feminist misandrist abuse. I feel special.
Ummm. I only went to bed, and NOT really for that long unfortunately.
645 comments??? wow.
Off to read them.
Where would you be without Steele to interpret your experiences for you?
@CassandraSays:
In bed, probably.
“No matter how often you or anyone else attempts to deny hatred or bullying or abuse because it’s the “okay” kind of bullying and abuse.”
Says the man who pretended his MRA buddies haven’t erected virtual monuments to murderers and bullies.