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
Even if this description of your teacher and what she said is factually correct, had you never been in a bookshop or a library? You know, those places lined with thousands of volumes bearing names on the spine, a huge proportion of which are certain to be male?
My kids are still in single figures, and they’re well aware that men write books. If you told my nine-year-old son that a writing career was out of the question for him because he was male, he’d just laugh. Either that or wonder what happened to the punchline.
(Modification indicated by [ ]) QFFT – more than that, that just for being born with a vagina instead of a penis means I’m a dirty whore who deserved to get raped and molested from a young age because hey, dirty whore. Despite the fact that I have only ever had sex with one man – my husband.
You know the SteeleMan’s dirge reminds me of one of my favourite stories, which I’ll happily mangle here, now for your pleasure.
So there was this young guy (the story takes place back when artists were apprenticed to “masters” in order to learn trades, so for me it’s a guy. Or it can be a genderless android, if you want) who loved playing the violin. He played a mean violin and it made him happy to do so, so he though “hey, I should go pro with this violin-playing shit, I hear classical music is totally kicking Baroque’s ass!”. However, being a cautious young man (or genderless android, if you prefer!) he thought “Hold up homie, better find out if this shit is legit first” so he goes to this master violinist, the most revered violinist in all of Vienna, and tells him of his plans to Hit the Big Time.
The master, being very, very famous and very, very revered, listens to the passionate young man (or genderless android). At last, the youngster asks “So please, master, let me play for you and you can tell me if I’m good enough and worthy to attempt to fulfill this dream”.
So he plays his heart out. Seriously, he plays to make the Devil who went to Georgia weep and take lessons in violin competition asskickins: a how to. He gives it his all and when he’s done, he’s out of breath, breathlessly awaiting the master’s verdict.
The master squints at him and spits on the ground. “You don’t have the fire”, the master says and walks off.
Youngster’s world collapses. He gets depressed, he gets angry, he gets enraged, but what can he do? The master said he lacked the fire, and obviously the master knows his shit.
So he went on to become ye olden tyme’s version of the CEO of a large company – you know, something respectful and gender-stereotype fitting that mom and dad can be proud of.
One day many, many years later, the former youngster runs into the (now very old and almost expired) great master again. Delighted, he stops the master for a chat, reliving that epic day that changed his entire life. “You know,” he says. “That shit you laid out to me was downright cold, but you saved me from wasting my life on something I just wasn’t that good at and instead focus on making lots and lots of moolah. Right on righteous, thanks, dogg. I respect you coz you keep it real.”
The master squints at him and goes “I have no fucking clue who you are, whippersnapper, but get off mah lawn”.
(Former) Youngster is aghast. “You changed my life, way back in the (fifteen) fifties, man! You know, that day! I came and I played my heart out and though the truth was hard, you laid it out straight as a mofo and said I didn’t have the fire”.
The master snortles and says “Kid, I get kids coming to me all the time to judge their competence with the violin. I say that to all of them.”
“What, ALL of them?” (Former) Youngster is really shocked, you see, because this shit changed his life, yo! He could have been great! He could have dethroned Stradivarius! Fuck Mozart, he could have… well, but now he didn’t, because he gave it up! Because this old piece of shit has a form answer to discourage youngsters! What an asshat, amirite!?
So he gets ready to lay into the old (and soon to be severely hurt) grand master, but the master forestalls him before he can get his fighter mojo on.
“Son,” he says, before walking way. “If you had the fire, nothing, nothing I said could have made you quit your dream.”
SO yeah. Long story short: Dood didn’t have the fire.
Here are all kinds of goodies on our “hero”:
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Bendilin
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/bendilin
Newgrounds:
http://bendilin.newgrounds.com/
Steam:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Bendilin
[rest of info redacted by DF]
QFT!!
Might I also add that “the role of The Man to lead and to have power and agency, and the role of The Woman to accept that power and do what she’s told” is a societal belief not only reinforced by the secular system but is also bolstered by the major religious institutions. Thus if a woman does prove herself capable of leadership, we always have the “God says women are not to have authority over men, just because, so we have to go with God” to fall back on. Whatever it takes to keep those nasty women in their place.
Gingersnaps: A fine new addition to the Manboobz spinoff blog empire!
Thanks!
I’m hoping the mockery of trolls can move there so these threads can be used for the mockery of misogyny in the OP.
lol
Oh. I never even thought of it like that.
I thought he was saying that these people ought to be thrown in jail, just as we throw serial rapists in jail. I completely missed that Steele was condoning prison rape here. If I’d realized that this was what he was saying, I would never have responded by saying that everyone here agreed with him on this point. Ugh, I feel awful now.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Steele, you’re an even worse person than I thought.
For example, “Wood” can refer to lumber or erections, for example.
Somehow, I’m not surprised that this was the first example that came to the mind of someone named Steele.
Also, if at the end of a short sentence you can’t remember what you said at the beginning of the sentence, writing is not for you.
Gen, I like that story so much imma gonna embroider it as a wallhanging!
Oh my god, is that guy still going? Did he even sleep?
Johnny_M80: 2-D Man: Interesting. Should employe[r]s exercise the same caution with feminists found to be writing violent rhetoric against men online?
Sure.
Next.
And the Beat Up Sarkeesian video game is about targeting just one specific person. So it’s even less sexist than that. 🙂
No. Actually the comparison is apt, and makes your case worse. When the subject of a violent act is specific (be it a person, or a group) the issue isn’t whom, but why.
So the first group targets a predatory group (and one which has been abstracted; one could also make a group target which wasn’t abstract; e.g. The Order); because of it’s predatory aspects.
The second targets a specific person for her specific acts. Acts which harm no one. Some of which acts which haven’t actually taken place yet.
Those are fundmamentally different things.
I’m pretty sure Steele has flounced, but just in case:
Steele, as a man who works fulltime as a writer/editor, I can tell you right now that if you still can’t get over one criticism that happened 20 years ago, you are not and never were cut out to be a writer.
Writers have to do three things: be creative, edit their own work, and take criticism. I have never written a draft that didn’t come back with red on it, and I have never cleared another writer’s work without sending it back at least once. Usually, I send it back three times or more.
Editors aren’t paid to nurture your creative soul. We’re paid to squeeze the maximum possible saleable content out of you. We are brutal. It has nothing to do with your gender, your level of seniority or even your skill as a writer. If you wrote as well as Shakespeare, your editor would criticize you until you wrote as well as Proust.
If you can’t compartmentalize criticism and move on from it on a daily basis, you can’t be a writer. It’s just as much a part of the job as using big words and complying with Strunk and White. If it has taken you over 20 years to get over that one discouraging remark, you are not cut out for a career in writing.
Johnny_M80:
Game about beating up a specific woman whom many people find annoying: Misogynist, violent and threatening to all women everywhere!
Game about killing men who catcall you on the street: fine.
Everybody on the same page so far?
Nope.
I aver they are different. I’ve not said anything about the specific merits of the second; as a specific game.
I have addressed the merits of the two styles; when it comes to inferring intent.
As I was writing this, I thought of evidence that could be offered in support of the existence of systemic misandry — or, if you’re a sensible person who regards that as a pleonasm, misandry.
I’m not going to say what it is, because at this point the positive claim is as much “Steele is talking about something with substance rather than attempting to throw words back at us” as it is “misandry is a thing”. If he comes up with something at least as debatable as I did, I’ll take that as a yes on the first (if not the second), and I don’t want him to say “yeah, that’s what I meant all along”.
Steele:
I’m confused, were you told this by one person or by all of them, plus the entire culture? Because again, parallels. If you’re claiming that this is a matter of the same cultural pressures brought to bear on women in academia (particularly STEM, but really throughout), one person isn’t going to cut it however weak-willed you are.
op. cit.:
That doesn’t explain how a woman violently raping a man because she hates men is institutional man-hatred, which is your implicit claim.
If, as I suspect, you’re not going to answer this when it’s put in terms everyone agrees on, it is not we who are arguing semantics.
Gen:
Cool story, pal, but the natural misogynist response is to say that’s equally true of women, overlooking the difference in degree that becomes a difference in kind.
Pam:
Yeah, I was trying to limit it to informal (and thus invisible) systems of male supremacy. Qatari (etc.) women don’t suffer under a vague inchoate sexist culture, they suffer under a sexist code that’s written down somewhere.
Erm, “don’t only suffer”, “they also suffer”.
This is really my favorite comment of Steele’s, and a perfect example of “what about the moonz!”
It’s shitty you had an abusive teacher who undermined your confidence. But that in no way compares to a constant barrage of cultural messages about what girls and women “can’t do.” I know one woman who was told every day of her life growing up by her parents that women were no good at anything and she couldn’t really ever hope to support herself.
I had a really shitty, mean, patronizing Russian teacher in high school. I hate her to this day. (I think she may be the only teacher I’ve ever really hated.) But that’s not why I’m not a Russian translator today. Russian is a difficult language, and I’m shitty at languages.
Ah… Ion. It’s been awhile since we had someone try to do repeat business.
One wonders what they think they will get.
Just chiming in to agree with Ugh. Writing in your journal may be fine for sensitive souls who crumble at the first sign of criticism, but writing as a career is not. It’s like any other creative field – if you can’t handle your work being critiqued, you’re not going to last very long.
Also, I find it hard to imagine someone who thinks that he can ignore the definitions of words and use them to mean whatever he wants them to mean being capable of adhering to a style guide. I’m picturing him sending his boss lengthy diatribes about how The Chicago Manual of Style is wrong so he shouldn’t have to follow it.
Also, Word’s Track Changes function is misandry. Just wanted to point that out.
In high school, I had a very… let’s say moody teacher. One time, she refused to allow a student* because of his hair. (after refusing dozen of students for not bringing their books) What she didn’t like was that his hair was yellow. Not blond, he dyed his hair bright yellow.
Comparison time:
Is (was) refusing a black students for being black a serious and systemic issue?
Is refusing a female students for being female a serious and systemic issue? (and before you say “doesn’t happen, think of polliwog’s example of being denied a scholarship for being a girl)
Is refusing a yellow-haired students for being yellow-hair a serious and systemic issue?
Is refusing a male students for being male a serious and systemic issue? (has it even happened once?)
Is you want to answer YES to any other question than questions one and two, bring actual arguments. Not, “sometimes some women don’t like men”.
*In case you wonder, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have scar from the incident nor failed high-school because of this teacher. No student was harmed in the happening of this anecdota.
Also, I redefined MEN to men THROWING STONES AT FLUFFY KITTENS.
Guys, aren’t MEN really bad? we should stop MEN. MEN shouldn’t even exist!
Because apparently now redefining words to make them mean whatever is just fine.
Argenti Aertheri: Thanks for pointing that out – though I suspect that there will be some ragequitting in my future…
Because apparently now redefining words to make them mean whatever is just fine.
It’s not I who is claiming definitions contrary to that found in the dictionary.
Certainly, I’m not saying that the dictionary is the be-all end-all- words change, context matters.
But the burden’s on you, kiddo, not me. Because I think we can safely claim that Merriam-Webster’s definition is at the very least one of the valid usages.
Steele, now you believe in context? Fuck off.
And you’re the one advancing claims, the burden’s really on you, buckaroo. Double fuck off.
And you’re the one advancing claims, the burden’s really on you, buckaroo. Double fuck off.
Nope. You’re the ones promoting the usage of a more specified definition of “misandry”; that is, the sociological one. It’s not the layman’s definition- therefore, you’re the one who needs to provide justification for it.
Now, I actually agree with you- the sociological definition is a valid one- but I’m merely taking issue with your bizarre attempts to invalidate the layman’s definition. Take it up with Merriam-Webster.