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
Johnny, you didn’t address what I said. You just made up some bs about what a straw feminist would say about a Honda Civic. Good job tearing that straw feminist down.
So let me explain this to you again. Ben Spurr could have made a logical argument why he didn’t think Sarkeesian’s project is necessary. Instead he tried to shut her up with a threatening game about beating her up. Men that think they are entitled to threaten and beat women for expressing different opinions are misogynists.
“If you’re “not up on the latest happenings in feminist circles”, then WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU IN A FEMINIST CIRCLE TRYING TO ARGUE WHAT IS OR IS NOT UP?!?!”
I dunno. Too hot to go outside?
This guy does know that a woman named Kim Swift was deeply involved in Narbacular Drop and its successor, Portal, yes? In fact, I think she was the project lead on Portal or Portal 2.
Portal is one of the few games that really make me regret my inner ear and its reaction to first person games. It looks like a ton of fun, but not quite worth getting sick for.
“he tried to shut her up with a threatening game about beating her up”
Why are you so convinced it was an attempt to “shut her up”? It obviously didn’t work too well.
Oh, I didn’t see this before. How adorable that you try to come in here and argue about this when you don’t even understand the issues.
Indeed not, but Sarkeesian is unusual in that she’s going public with the abuse she’s been getting. Many people in her position would indeed shut up.
As I suspect you know perfectly well, but are disingenuously pretending otherwise.
@Magnesium
“I wish there was a “Send to poster’s mom” button on Twitter sometimes.”
I guess sending mom a your daughter’s acting like a drunken animal in heat twitter wouldn’t be all that effective when odds are mom’s tanked up and stripped naked at the nearest slutwalker shindig.
Female empowerment; from promises of legislating moraity with their votes to druken ladette slutwalkers. You’ve come a long way baby!
I guess Anita was in, “I’m a chaste vigin mode,” at that moment in time. Tommorow she might be in, “the do’s and dont’s of fisting mode,” blog. Funny how the same woman can swing from snowflake to slut depending on which is advantageous at any particular moment in time.
“I dare you to come up with an actual point rather than puff up about whose turf you want to fight on.”
I would, but you’re intimidating me, what with being so tough and brave with all your buddies backing you up.
First comment in the thread is on Tale of Genji? W00t.
FYI, most Designated Great Works of Fiction from medieval Japan were written by women; since they were discouraged from writing the socially privileged genres like theology and in the socially privileged language of Chinese, they dominated fiction and poetry in Japanese until the early modern period, as far as I know. (Most fiction writers were women, and while poets were about evenly split between men and women, so far as the secondary sources I’ve read know, the big setters of fashion in poetry were women.)
So we’re talking about their culture’s version not just of one or two great artists—to whom one might point as outliers, like misogynists do—but entire schools, entire genres, entire worlds of writing.
Seriously? It was a classic, textbook case of shut-up. You think nobody’s seen this kind of shit before? The fact that it hasn’t worked THIS TIME does not mean it wasn’t an attempt to shut her up.
These words… You keep using them, but I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Yes. The framework of contemporary feminist theory supports punching a woman to a bloody pulp. Dworkin’s rolling in her grave. =_=
“Indeed not, but Sarkeesian is unusual in that she’s going public with the abuse she’s been getting. Many people in her position would indeed shut up.
As I suspect you know perfectly well, but are disingenuously pretending otherwise.”
My experience has been quite the opposite, a single perceived-as sexist or misogynist statement is enough to send certain groups into a frenzy. In fact, I’ve never heard of trolls getting anybody to back down this way.
“Yes. The framework of contemporary feminist theory supports punching a woman to a bloody pulp. Dworkin’s rolling in her grave. =_=”
About as much as a game about shooting catcallers explores “the problem of and responses to street harassment”, yeah.
Johnny_M80:
OK, explain how it does that. How is a video game where you punch a woman in the face for being “annoying” informed by contemporary theory, feminist or otherwise?
Jeez, as someone who studies philosophy, I can say that I encounter this kind of flip dismissal of theory all the time, and it’s always annoying. PROTIP: “theory” refers to a strain of modern philosophy which ACTUALLY SAYS THINGS AND CONTAINS IDEAS, it’s not just a right-wing strawman for “whatever dem dere academics’re doin’ up in dat fancy-palace university place.” Christ.
Is Johnny STILL so sensitive and offended that someone criticized his precious attack game? Cripes, he’s a whiner. Can’t take a fuckin’ joke, that one. Can’t take a little bit of spirited criticism.
Those people are always so humorless, aren’t they?
He says that women are so emotional, but look at the game he made. It’s based on a very negative emotion. Oh yeah, I forgot, these guys don’t count male rage as an emotion.
By Jove, I’ve been given a taste of my own medicine, and it sure tastes bitter. You people are too clever for me by half.
A negative emotion, Ruby? Like thinking rape is A-OK?
@Johnny:
Yeah. As in not at all. Luckily we agree on this. Meaning that your original point was bunk. Sooo… hooray? You’re wrong?
Man, I’m having trouble following all the deflections and derailing… Why can’t people just stick to one thing, try to defend it, and if they can’t just admit they were wrong before moving on? Why do you have to stack about 20 different arguments together before answering a single criticism of your original point?
“OK, explain how it does that. How is a video game where you punch a woman in the face for being “annoying” informed by contemporary theory, feminist or otherwise?”
Well, you see, the subject is interpolated into a cultural paradigm of narrative that includes sexuality as a totality. Therefore, Lacan promotes the use of Sontagist camp to analyse society. Many discourses concerning Sontagist camp may be discovered. However, Foucault promotes the use of cultural neotextual theory to modify and read sexual identity. And so forth.
Maybe Mr Spurr should create a game in which the player has to rape evil people in prison, but loses points if they’re either not evil at all or if their sentences are overturned on appeal.
I imagine it would get at least one fan.
Johnny seems to not like the Hey Baby game. Weird. I thought he was trying to defend that sort of game and explain why it was harmless.
Dude’s all over the place and all he’s sure of is that we’re WRONG, even if he can’t quite work out what we’re wrong about or why.
kirby: “meaningless string of words therefore I win!”
Good job, slugger. Go take a nap or something.
Indeed. And so forth.