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
@Sharculese:
Oooh ooh, pick me pick me! I know the answer!
This is resembling watching Daleks talk to Cybers —
http://youtu.be/EaPFQjRmCV8
“Let’s just keep repeating ourselves!!”
what’s your excuse for all the dudes in this thread who dont buy into your little pity party?
Manginas, exist, as do intelligent women who see the truth, like GirlWritesWhat.
“Oooh ooh, pick me pick me! I know the answer!”
If you’re thinking “mangina” this one seems just smart enough to realize that’s a slur against men and thus misandry. Here’s your big problem Steele, all actual examples of misandry seem to come from the MRM and other men.
And you continue to lie about the ToySoldier debacle, afaik no one said “he wasn’t raped because he was a boy” — what people said was “he wasn’t raped because of feminism” (both these statements seem so bloody obvious that I’d rather watch Cybers “upgrade” people, at least they’re only following their programming)
I stand fucking corrected!
Steele: <iPeople have explained to you over and over again why they don’t like the term “misandry” — and yet you have to ask why we’re so dead set against the word?
Okay. That’s your opinion
What’s our opinion? That people have been telling you why they object to using the word?
Since you had to make an intermediate step of defining “misandry” to most people
This is the problem, and why there is an MRM. It’s not argument against using the term (?) it’s an argument to double our efforts.
It’s why misandry is inefficient; when your argument a moment ago was that it’s virtue was how much more efficient it is. Pick one, stick to it. Then you might be able to convince someone that teacher was being misandric, instead of trying to save you from a life of disappointment.
It’s also (nice of you to finally admit it) why you are so dead set on taking a largely null-value word, and pushing it.
You have an agenda; facts and arguments against it be damned.
What about those men who were killed by women, for being men. You owe us three instances.
You also should say something about Vietnam, even if it’s to call me names. I put so much work (five or ten minutes, I did have to look up some stats, and write down some equations). Kirby gets insults, I get ignored.
Then again, that means I’m in the same camp as polliwog, so I’m in good company (either way)
@Argenti:
I loved that scene!
Tangentially, Dr. Who x Nightwish. A crossover I never realized I needed.
m/ ( ^_^ )>
I love that someone who’s spent the last few days arguing about an obscure word with people who were clearly never going to agree with him has the gall to call anybody “inefficient”.
Steele – get away from the computer. Go buy some timber. Build a tree fort and paint ‘no girls allowed’ on the front. You will then have singlehandedly accomplished more than the entire MRM ever has or probably ever will.
“Mangina” = effeminate men aren’t men (this is exactly what the aforementioned friend thought I meant with “misandry”); trans* men aren’t men; men who disagree with Steele are effeminate; insults against men imply their female, and that that’s bad, implying being female is bad (we’d call that misogyny Steele).
Anything else?
Question: What if a woman kidnapped a boy and repeatedly raped him over a period of, say, a year, damaged his internal organs, put him in a mental hospital after he was rescued. What if the motive was just “because he was male”?
Is she a misandrist?
ahahahahahahahahaha, this is why i love you, kiddo.
i dont believe for a second you dont realize what a lazy cop-out that is. i thought actually putting ‘excuse’ in there would shame you out of going with an easy, convenient excuse that didnt require you to do any work, but welp, i probably should have known better.
you might just as well declare that everyone who disagrees with you is doing it to be a big meanyhead. i mean, if you hadnt already.
I’m bored with Steele, so I thought I’d share a picture of my cat Buster. When they were still kittens, Buster and his sister Hazel pretty much shredded my sheer curtains. Since then Buster has been slowly enlarging what started as a small hole in my regular curtains, and now that it’s big enough she likes to sit on the window side with her head poking through into the room so she can see what’s happening indoors. Best of all possible worlds.
It’s a good thing she’s so cute, that
vile scumbaglittle dickens.@Argenti:
Awesome timing! But no, I was going to bring up that his thing that men are feminists, and therefore their opinions are naturally going to be skewed.
But wow… Amazing timing.
So… The MRM exists to convince people to use the term “misandry” when describing someone who’s an asshole to a man, even though the asshole behaviour is not caused by misandry, because it’s not really a thing, just some isolated incidents of people who are not men being assholes to men.
Well, golly, my respect for the MRM as a social movement just knows no bounds.
it depends on how long is left on the ticking time bomb
@pillowinhell Please, pretty pretty please.
“Steele – get away from the computer. Go buy some timber. Build a tree fort and paint ‘no girls allowed’ on the front. You will then have singlehandedly accomplished more than the entire MRM ever has or probably ever will.”
First, research some designs, or you’ll only hurt yourself…oh wait…”safety girl” is misandry…right. Nevermind then, feel free to use tools in unsafe manners like a Real Man (per NWO anyways)
it depends on how long is left on the ticking time bomb
You wouldn’t. Disgusting. Vile. Sickening. Evil. You would rather play your roundabout rhetorical hobbyhorses that mean nothing, than express unmitigated sympathy for this hypothetical child.
You wouldn’t call it what it is. A hate crime. A misandrist hate crime.
Goodbye, Man Boobz.
bear in mind we are potentially talking about a dude who spent like a month painstakingly searching for snippits of text from this website to weave into breathless pseudointellectual ejaculations before a single accusation of sockpuppeting caused him to flip the fuck out and abandon the entire project
assuming this is mikey, proportion is not his strong suit
Steele: Question: What if a woman kidnapped a boy and repeatedly raped him over a period of, say, a year, damaged his internal organs, put him in a mental hospital after he was rescued. What if the motive was just “because he was male”?
Is she a misandrist?
No.
Not any more than a man who rapes a girl/woman, because she’s female is a misogynist.
Not all crimes against women are misogyny.
Rape culture, that’s misogynist. A serial rapist, is probably misogynist.
A single rape, or even a long-standing repetition of rapes, isn’t, ispo facto misogynist.
And misandry still isn’t a thing.
Goodbye, Man Boobz.
‘night, kiddo!
“Question: What if a woman kidnapped a boy and repeatedly raped him over a period of, say, a year, damaged his internal organs, put him in a mental hospital after he was rescued. What if the motive was just “because he was male”?
Is she a misandrist?”
Question: What if a man kidnapped a girl and repeatedly raped her over a period of, say, a year, damaged her internal organs, put her in a mental hospital after she was rescued. What if the motive was just “because she was female”?
Is he a misogynist?
You know, I’m pretty sure “sick fucker” works in both cases here.
Pecunium — we have a ticking time bomb, please please do your thing!
kirbywarp — I only wish I had typed faster and managed to post that at the exact same time he proved me wrong. But whatever Daleks and Cybers! (I was trying to find Amelia apologizing to the penguins earlier, but failed)
Goodbye, Man Boobz.
That was posted at 0016 EDT. Can he stick the flounce (since he’s active in other threads the timing is important).
@ Steele – You wouldn’t. Disgusting. Vile. Sickening. Evil. You would rather play your roundabout rhetorical hobbyhorses that mean nothing, than express unmitigated sympathy for this hypothetical child.
LOL! Won’t someone please think of the hypothetical children?
Not any more than a man who rapes a girl/woman, because she’s female is a misogynist.
Well, I certainly here, and I can assure you the mainstream press would as well. I also think it makes you a bit of a monumental idiot.
I don’t agree that the sociological definition is the only one. Most here, in their limitations neuroses, disagree. There’s nothing more to argue.