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
@Polliwog:
*rant-five*
I woke up half an hour ago, read the last few pages of this thread and nearly went right back to sleep again.
Steele is our most boring, navel-gazingly solipsistic and persistently intellectually dishonest troll since B_____don, and that’s saying something.
Say what you like about Johnny_M80/Ion, but he was actually on topic throughout. When was the last post Steele made that had anything at all to do with the OP?
Imagine if SAAs started saying that sharks only attack because of those damn cancer fighters, that cancer research is the worst thing to happen since world war II, and actively fantasized about people getting more cancer while arguing that cancer can actually be a good and necessary thing.
And then, when someone starts a kick-starter to make a series of videos examining the long history of opposition to cancer research, suddenly they got a huge flood of drawings of them with tumors, calling them a cancer-nazi, making a game that simulated them dying of chemo-therapy, and countless death threats.
How stupid would that be if that happened?
Apologies in advance, I was reading over the comments front to back and I really want to comment on this one, even though it’s old.
“@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.”
Ithiliana’s post.
You know, I can’t presume these women weren’t feminists, but I would wager it.
Feminism actually brings things to light so that hidden anger doesn’t erupt to the surface in inappropriate ways. I’m sure most feminists would be conscious that the clueless guys in the group are clueless guys in the group, and subjecting them to undercurrents of hatred is not very instructive about privilege.
The biggest man bashers I’ve met in life are far from feminist sexists that benefit in minimal ways from the status quo and so would be afraid to challenge it or give it up, but their passive aggressive attacks speak volumes about how (not) useful and beneficial the sexist status quo is The “men do this and men do that” bunch are usually traditional females in my experience.
Why was the Mrs. in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf so angry? That kind of shrewishness is due to a sublimation of one’s own talents for traditional gender roles. MRAs in these comments often argue to go back to a time when that type of shewishness would be inevitable and alimony would make sense.
Silly ppl.
@BBK:
I’m willing to put down money that you believe Rebecca Watson is an absolutely terrible person who called all men rapists and deserves the vast firestorm of scorn she got.
How close am I?
Pretty damn stupid!
Although, on the upside, sharks that only attack because of cancer-fighting implies that they might be RADIOACTIVE SHARKS. Which sounds like a highly entertaining premise for a B-movie. Also possibly a superhero with one arm and the proportionate crime-fighting skill of a very large fish. So there’s that!
BBK:
Which ones?
Thanks so much for clearing that up, now everything he said is OK! Dude, are you high or just stupid? I play video games, my boyfriend plays video games, everyone we know plays video games how dumb are you to think this refutes what i said
Not wanting some random dude to make a video game where he punches a woman in the face and not wanting some other dude to make light of that = sperging out.
Nope, not seeing it.
And if the only reason you can give for not threatening a woman with death and maiming is that she’s your mom, then I can’t help you because you obviously have no idea what ethics even are.
WOMEN
WHY U NO TAKE JOKE
But the only reason Sarkesian is getting death threats…is because she’s famous right now. That’s why this is happening, and that’s why the video game got made.
How dumb are you, really? Do you also have a sob story where you’re gently guided away from writing anything on the academic level, ever ever again? BECAUSE LEMME TELL YOU, IT’S NOT THE HUMANITIES: IT’S YOU
To be fair, though I’m grateful to Steele for giving me what will probably be the biggest laugh of the day – namely, his notion that he didn’t become a writer because of OMG MISANDRY!, and not because of, say, his inability to construct a coherent argument, back up his points with checkable evidence, or write mellifluous and engaging prose that retains readers’ attention and interest even if they’re out of sympathy with the subject.
indifferentsky:
lol wut
indifferentsky:
No, really. What the hell are you saying.
In “Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf” There is a wife that is extremely unhappy. If she had her own career, which she was perfectly capable of, she would not be so unhappy. That was my take on it. She was an abusive drunk.
@VoIP:
I think zie’s saying that the male bashers zie knows are not even close to being feminist sexists, and that traditional gender roles produce “shrewishness,” and MRAs want to go back to times when those gender roles were common, thereby justifying alimony.
I think.
I am quite tired.
Also in the first comment, I needed a comma.
“Far from feminists, sexists”
Those are the man bashers I have met.
lol wut?
DAMN, and no S on feminist
“far from feminist, sexists”
The clarification should be clarifying, not more confusing. Whoops.
OK cool. I thought you said “feminist sexists.” I ‘m tired too. It’s anime and beer time. Good night.
Some feminists are sexists, to be fair. But they tend not to congregate round these parts.
Polliwog: You might need shark-repellent bat spray.
Completely off topic, but does word press have PMs? I’ve apparently recieved two (according to e-mails) and I have no idea how to check them…
Nope, never mind. Wrong website. My bad.
Check the forum, Kirby 🙂
@Magpie:
Yeah, I just noticed. 🙂
Did I mention I was tired? Because I am. Tired, that is.
kirby, your mum says if you are tired, go to bed! 😀
But I don’t wanna go ta bed! I’m not all that tired anyzzzzzzzz
…
…
*snrk*way.
I already told him to go to bed but he didn’t listen. Why is my magical vagina power not working? Would it work better if I went and sat in the street and cried?
@CassandraSays:
Now you’ve got me thinking of a .gif I saw on ShitRedditSays of a flying naked girl firing lightning bolts from her crotch.
I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a hallucination.