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
“I’m done. Not like last time, this time I mean it. In fact, you might say I’m overdone. Overdone to the point of absurdity, even.
Also, misandry is a real thing, because I say so, and my anecdotes are important. And with that, I’m done. For now. Maybe.
Signed,
The greatest talent that the world of literature never got to know, because of misandry, which means that one teacher who was mean to me. Also, once again, I’m done.”
Sir Bodsworth:
I’m afraid in the interests of scholarly accuracy, I have to confirm that ‘misandry’ is in the longer Oxford English Dictionary, where it’s defined as “[mass noun] the hatred of men (i.e. the male sex specifically).”
But that doesn’t come remotely close to proving that it’s a widespread problem, and the fact that it’s not included in the shorter edition of the dictionary (which, despite being ‘shorter’, is still pretty comprehensive) speaks volumes in itself. The OED is not renowned as a bastion of feminist dogma.
Equally revealing is the fact that Steele had to make up a scenario and then go puce-faced with outrage that we didn’t show any sympathy for a wholly imaginary child.
Where do these people come from?
Wetherby — thanks for that OED answer, I was wondering how it didn’t have the word, considering it is English, and has been said more than once, and thus kind of belongs in there (I wonder if Steele has any idea how dictionaries work…) Is refudiate in there?
No, but I suspect it was coined much too recently. And it has to pass a minimum test of usage in the real world to be included.
Oh, and another little scholarly nugget thrown up by the dictionary: ‘misogyny’ has been recorded as part of the English language since the mid-17th century, whereas ‘misandry’ wasn’t coined until the 1940s.
Imagine is every women stop doing everything once ONE person (even unsupported by society at large) told them their gender is not good at doing it. There would be not one frigging female driver, not one woman working in hard sciences, not one woman playing sport. (or just the ‘feminine’ ones, like dance)
But there are!
Steele, if you want to talk to a group of people that don’t recognize your use of a specific word (and even the dictionaries don’t all agree on the matter), the only sensible thing to do is to move on. If by misandry you mean ‘individual hatred of men’, just say that. It’s really not that hard.
I looked up “dragon” in the dictionary. Does that mean they’re real now? :O
If by misandry you mean ‘individual hatred of men’, just say that. It’s really not that hard. – Kyrie
Even better than that, we already have words to use (“prejudice” and “sexism”). MRAs must know these words exists. It’s totally not about words though, they just want to imply that there’s an equivalent to misogyny.
Though if misandry and misogyny were equivalent, wouldn’t that just make them both redundant as a term, since then society would just be misanthropic? o.O
That’s not to say that MRAs would accept “misogyny” as a problem to go with their “misandry”. It was just a little thought experiment. 😛
“Though if misandry and misogyny were equivalent, wouldn’t that just make them both redundant as a term, since then society would just be misanthropic? o.O”
Either that or pro-non-binaries, which um…it ain’t.
Steele: I think the actual usage theory to be correct. And I’m working to keep that usage to the fringe group you belong too.
I’m a linguist. I care that words are used well, clearly, and with a relevant purpose.
Nope, you’re wrong. I did not make up the term “critical theory”; it is a term to refer to the sociological usage because, in fact, it is not the only usage.
I never said you made up the idea of critical theory. I said you were talking out of your ass when you said: You consider the critical theory approach the only valid use of either word.
Again, that teacher, probably did you a favor. You are not good at reading, you are not good at writing, and you are shit lousy at framing an argument. Hard as it may be to believe (I have a hard time believing it, and I have 17 pages of comments worth of evidence staring me in the face) you are worse at making arguments than you are at framing them.
Because there is some kernel of an argument in you idea of misandry (small kernel), but things like this, where you attribute ideas, motives and intent, to people, and then insist on those ideas, motives and intents, when they have told you otherwise… fruitless to the point of idiocy.
I never said, for example, that misogyny is only for “highbrow, monocled ‘systematic injustice’.” I said that a single instance of rape/abuse isn’t, prima facie misogyny.
I never said that it’s impossible for a person to hate men.
What I have said is your bobbing and weaving, twisting and dodging, lying and gaslighting aren’t persuading me of your honest motives, honest intent, nor honest intentions.
Which means I’m not going to give you support in your campaign.
Yes,I do think you are fringe member, of a fringe group. Show me the hordes of MRAs working (in practical ways) to get laws changed? You can’t.
There is “Register Her”, a site dedicated to harassment of women Elam doesn’t like.
There is r/mensrights… a wankfest of woman hating.
There is AvFM… much the same as r/menrights.
There is the Spearhead, a cesspool of woman hating.
The was Tom Martin’s lawsuit. I have to give it to him, he actually tried. Lost, terribly, but he did try.
The thing is all they have to scream about (and they do) is how nasty women are, and how they ruined it for everyone by getting the vote, and demanding to be treated as equals.
For daring to say she was going to look at tropes in the video gaming industry another member of your fringe made a game where she gets beaten to a pulp.
This is the start to which you’ve hitched your wagon. A group the SPLC has said is full of misogyny, and has the earmarks of a nascent hate group. What it doesn’t have is (thank God) the organisation.
If it did, then not just the Lépines, and the Sodonis, and the Thomas balls but, and the Virginia Tech Shooters, and the guys who shoot up hair-salons to kill their wives; and the people around their wives (because she was daring to ask for more time with the kids, and refusing to make him the sole decider of everything), would all be on the slate. That would make it a hate group.
So be glad you are in a fringe moment, it’s what keeping you from being lumped in with the Klan and The Order.
Steele: I’d invite you to consider efficiency and context.
I did
You didn’t pay attention.
Any more than you did to the facts about Vietnam, or fulfilling your promise to give us videos celebrating the real deaths of real people.
Steele: It is a fringe word.
He admits it!
It’s simply fringe in that it is not used at all.
He concedes our every point.
This will, of course, not change his quixotic quest, to move this fringe word, that is not used at all, to a place of prominence.
That, of course could happen. If misandry as a thing were to become a real thing.
Which would suck. It would also mean, however, some long time of actual equality between the sexes had taken place. He’s a dreamer this one is.
I’ll only say: Misandry is a word. It is defined- which I’m sure really gets your goat.
Not as much as verbing nouns does, or the use of adjectives when adverbs are appropriate, or weaselling little twits who get my hopes up and fail to stick the flounce (though really, the first two bother me a lot more).
Cloudiah: That guinea pig is no baby.
Argenti: I recommend, “In the company of crows and ravens”. There are magpies which pass the mirror test. First go.
Some other magpies can count, at least to six.
Crows manage to communicate to each other: Tey sleep in “rookeries”. At the end of the day they stream back. A farmer was upset at them (sometimes they’d come and snack on his crops enroute). So he shot a few.
The entire rookery stopped passing his field; the next day.
Crows in Japan have learned to use stop signs to open nuts. They flit down to place them where the cars will have to stop, then they fly out to eat the easy pickings.
They have created ball games at tennis courts.
They can live as long as eight, and tend to live in the 30-40 range in the wild.
VoIP: I assume the high-five was for my Korea/Vietnam comparison? He really didn’t want to talk about that, I can’t imagine why.
Wetherby: And even with the word being in the dictionary from the 1940s, in going on seventy years it’s not gained widespread usage. I wonder why that is? Maybe it doesn’t happen much.
Carp… as long as eighty years.
I am referring to the fact of the doctrine, which is objective, against simple misconceptions of said doctrine.
SteeleTroll seems to think there’s a simple “reality” that is factual out there that is labelled by language.
He is wrong.
Now, scientists/math dudes and all have developed OTHER symbol systems to TRY to describe some of the realities (gravity, etc.), I know–I’m a very small ‘p’ postmodernist, BUT when we’re talking things like social constructions of gender roles in which the “realities” are created in large part by language (first question asked about newborn: is it a boy or a girl, even if technology lets us now get an answer earlier), then, no, you cannot talk about facts that easily.
Also: “doctrine” is not even closely equivalent to “fact”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine
VoIP: What did the Frankfurt School ever do to you, man?
*spits coke zero all over the freaking place*
**mops up**
***fangirl squee at ya!***
PROJECTION AND PARANOIA!
@Pecunium That I post other peoples’ YouTube videos should not be taken as an endorsement of their metadata. 🙂
But I really logged on to report that per David, Steele and Varpole have different IP addresses and geographic locations. Perhaps there really is a MRA phrase book?
@VoIP re: Taiping Rebellion
I guess that depends a little bit on your definition of “conscription.” Bannermen were born owing the government military service, and did not have the option to opt out. Bannermen who defected from their banners would lose their hereditary privilege and also could face exile to the penal colonies in Xinjiang or Tibet. So, I would generally count them as compulsory.
The Qing standing army was entirely voluntary, but their reservists were not. It was kind of similar to the old fubing militia system: reservists were taken from middle-income families as part of their tax obligation, and called up to serve on a rotating basis. In the Taiping, they called up at least half a million reservists. Deserters were executed. Many of the “local defense” firearms corps that the Qing ordered formed in Taiping-threatened areas were also made compulsory by the local gentry, even though that wasn’t the official government policy.
I’m between university programs right now and I don’t have access to JSTOR, so I can’t really get at any sources of substance. I remember the book The Taiping Rebellion by Franz Michael was pretty good. Sorry I can’t be more specific.
Revisiting this before reading three pages of comments from overnight, because I was at the library today and have empiricism on my side.
Steele:
Also, not checking blockquotes. MISANDRY!
Now then, the fun I missed:
Steele:
By your definition, yes, by the definition in use in the world, no.
However, there are a lot of evils in the world; we don’t have to say it’s misandry to say it’s wrong.
Steele:
LOL FOREVER!
That’s how thought experiments work. I’m not sure what the “right answer” would have been if there were one. I mean, if we said “that’s terrible” you were just going to say “see, I’m right,” so how is this any different except that you didn’t win?
Incidentally, I’m still waiting for your evidence that (systemic) misandry is a thing.
Magpie:
Honestly I’m starting to wonder about the possibility that Steele is ToySoldier. In which case he’s entitled to use his suffering however he likes.
Sir B:
If he’s afraid we’re going to evicerate it, that just means he’s not confident in it. If he thinks we’re going to dismiss it, well, so what? Truth doesn’t go away when you stop believing it, after all; our accepting it has no bearing on whether it’s true.
Just throwing this out there-
If a hypothetical Dwarven Kingdom, led by the King Under the Mountain, was burned to a crisp by a dragon, would you acknowledge that dragons were involved?
Do you deny that dragon is in the dictionary, and that it means a large and deadly lizard?
I DEMAND that everyone stop talking about whatever they were talking about and acknowldge that hypothetical dragons are a severe, systemic problem, much worse, in my opinion, than misogyny.
If this seems unconvincing, it’s only because a dragon ate the part of my brain responsible for making coherent arguments. If you think I’m not making sense, you’ve just proved my point about the harm that dragons are doing to our young men.