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
Steele: Read for comprehension, please. That post wasn’t mine.
Yep, sorry. I was in error. It was hard to tell the two of you apart, and 10 pages of dreck confused me.
Mea culpa.
@cloudiah:
I tried a couple times before to bring it up… But yeah. He really hates that I’m a man and don’t agree with him. I’m a “disgusting sack of shit” because of that.
You know, I even asked him outright whether I thought that what happened to Anita was “epically disgusting” in comparison, and his response was basically “yeah yeah, that’s bad. Now let me continue on about how you are a terrible person for belittling your male classmates’ obvious abuse and torment.”
I guess that to him, I’m like what a misogyny-denying woman would be, if that woman were to say that misandry is actually a good thing and it helped open her eyes to the cis-male burden. MRAs do love that sort of woman, but only until the next round of all women are whores and should be tortured into servility.
@Sharculese, Good point on the “vile.” David, can we get an IP check in here, when you’ve got a second? It may just be that these are standard overwrought MRA phrases, but their constant repetition is making me wonder about our already-proven sockpuppet.
But, you unbelievable dunderhead, the opposite IS NOT TRUE. It IS the culture. As many, many people have said, over and over again, in a multitude of ways.
Way to completely ignore the rest of my post, you vile scumbag.
This is what keeps cracking me up. He goes on and on and on, as if he’s trying to make a valid argument, and he includes in his very statement the acknowledgement that his case isn’t justified.
Well, no. I don’t think it’s justifiable to hate men. I’m not clear on how this acknowledges that my argument isn’t valid?
@Steele:
I know you read my post, because you’ve quoted bits of the beginning and the end. So I’m flabberghasted how I’m a “disingenous scumbag” for making an argument as to why you can’t just assign words meanings willy-nilliy like you’re trying to do. That was my entire freaking point!
It’s like I’m arguing that evolution is a valid concept for a science class and creationism isn’t, and you go and call me a “disingenuous scumbag” because evolution is just one framework and creationism is another!
This is such a basic concept that I’m having trouble putting it into words. *shakes head*
it should be noted that desperate pretentions to academia is also one of mikey’s signature traits
can’t just assign words meanings
I say again- it is you who have a specialized meaning for “misandry”, not me. I am putting forth the layman’s definition. You are putting forth the specialized sociological definition.
Who’s “assigning words meanings” again?
Seriously? BWAhahahahaha! All the irony! Again!
This equivocation thing is another one of Steele’s fine attributes. Equivocating as valid concepts of misogyny as isolated random events and of misogyny as a systematic thing. They are not equivelent definitions (or denotations) of the same word! There is widespread evidence for one, and none for the other. I know you disagree, Steele, but don’t act like the dispute doesn’t exist!
You are perfectly willing to assert the equivalence of the two, and yet whenever you’re asked directly you say backing up your point would be a waste of time. And then you go on and assume you are correct in that debate in order to dispute definitions! Gah! This whole convo is so screwed up that it’s taking this long to start unpacking all the things that are wrong with it.
Dude, I feel pretty justified in my anger towards misogynists, because being held back and hated on just for being a woman is a pretty shitty way to treat anyone and has a huge impact on my, and every other womans life.
I’m not generally angry, because the best revenge on assholes is to live a happy life despite the assholes worst efforts.
fukkin lol. did your monocle pop off as you wrote that?
By the “widespread evidence for” thing, I mean this: misogyny as a systematic thing has explanatory power, misogyny just as a (frankly astounding) number of individual events does not. The events happen, but treating them as distinct misses the big picture. Again, something Steele is very good at.
I feel like Steele thinks that if misandry were defined as a social phenomena (which he believes it is), and that were proven wrong (he belives it is correct, don’t know why he would fear that it was wrong), then that would prove that nobody anywhere is ever especially nasty to men. There’s no way else to justify three days worth of pedantic crap (mixed in with abject refusal to discuss the important core of that pedantic crap).
Oh, shit, yeah, it DOES sound like Mikey.
yeah, kirby but youre both delusional and somehow also lying about it so…
Who’s mikey?
Steele: <iThere are successful women who overcame obstacles- would you feminists tell other women that “It’s not the system, bucko, it’s you”?
That would depend on why they weren’t successful. If they were shit writers, then yes, I would.
That’s why it’s not ironic. You are projecting.
So if the opposite was true- that is, one misogynist teacher- would you say the same? What if she specifically pointed to this teacher- not “the culture”?
If she said it was one teacher, not that she had been told, again, and again, and again; and it was something which one couldn’t actually master without help (or talent so far above and beyond that which application to craft could overcome, say the arcana of particle physics and string theory), yes, I’d say the same.
I’ll bet you didn’t notice that there was a common element to the books I mentioned; nor did you have the wit to think I might have included one, and that looking them up (there is this thing called “google”) might have revealed it.
At this point, apparently, “misandry” means everything and anything, and it’s misandry to try to use only one definition.
I had some misandry for dinner with my misandry. It tasted misandry! For dessert we shared a misandry. Then we all sat down around the misandry to watch some misandry on the misandry.
Haha wait, is Steele actually Mikhael Varpole? Maybe I’m just missing antimanboobz after it’s pathetic collapse but he sure does seem to use the word vile a lot.
Varpole, Kirby. He would totally come back and sock now that Dark Lord Futrelle shut his blog down.
I’ll finish catching up here in a second, but Steele, FFS, pick a different insult! You’ve called us “vile scumbag[s]” about a half dozen times now!
misandry = marklar
They are not equivelent definitions (or denotations) of the same word!
Of course not. Depending on the context in which the word is used- ie, if you’re speaking on a macro (sociological) or micro (individual) level, the word will mean one or the other. If you want to argue there is no basis for “misandry” on a macro level, that’s fine. Don’t use it in that context. But it still exists on the micro level.
It’s pretty dang simple. But again, you have a bizarre hang-up about it, so I wouldn’t expect you to act rationally.