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
Like I said—just freaking adorable.
O_O
This is literally like watching a racist trying to prove that foreign languages are just noise by saying “Ching chong ching chong” in an effort to recreate the Chinese language.
Just because you can string words together that sound legitimate to your uneducated ears doesn’t mean those words don’t actually mean something important.
This is beyond argument… this is just watching a train wreck of smug bollocks.
“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.”
Funny, I was about to say the same thing about all of you. You’ve got like a dozen people here derailing, dodging the issues, inserting red herrings and strawmen, and somehow concluding that they “won”. Not that I’m complaining, it’s fun to take a break from the serious and sane every once in a while. And yeah, I’ve lost track of what we were talking about too. 🙂
Wetherby: well, at least one person got it.
Johnny_M80: Thanks for heroically being the designated privilege denying dude today.
Ahh, now Johnny has moved on to the ever popular “Did you hear something? It was probably just the wind” method of argument.
…this is just watching a train wreck of smug bollocks.
Well I suppose this is as good a time as any for a gigglefit.. 😛
“Ahh, now Johnny has moved on to the ever popular “Did you hear something? It was probably just the wind” method of argument.”
Well, I have to work with what I’m given.
“Yeah, I can totally see how every gaming media site and blog are defending those guys and condemning her. No wait, it’s the other way around.”
You said something fucking idiotic. You got called out for it. You’re ignoring it and hoping it goes away.
Glad to help!
And now we’re up to “I know you are, but what am I?” I can’t wait to see what Johnny comes up with next.
@ShadetheDruid:
Pretty much. Better than a shocked silence and a look of bemused horror.
People didn’t donate $160k because they think Anita’s a weak helpless woman. They donated because a lot of people are getting sick of the misogynist hoard that uses rape threats to shout down women who show anything other than enthusiastic support for the status quo and they wanted to create negative consequences for such behavior – in this case giving the woman saying things they don’t like the resources to say a lot more things they don’t like.
It’s the same idea as people who sponsor protestors outside Planned Parenthood – you create a disincentive for bad behavior by rewarding people’s opponents when they engage in it.
kirby: No, if we’re to go by the comment above yours, it’s the “hey guys, let’s all make up things he said and what he’s thinking and it’ll magically be true!” stage.
But before this goes further, let’s recap:
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?
@hieropants:
I was with you until the protestors thing. Are you talking about the protestors who put sometimes-doctored gruesome photographs of cut up babies to squick people out of getting an abortion of a what is still a ball of cells? The ones who heckle and harass people so much that planned parenthood accepts volunteers who’s job it is to help people get through the crowd? The ones who are perfectly willing to shout all sorts of horrible things at people getting abortion one week, then take their knocked-up daughter in the next week to get an abortion, then go right back to protesting the next?
And you think it should be the opposite?
Honestly, I don’t see how the “kill the cat-callers” game is different from any game where you kill people. You kill a lot of men in Modern Warfare games, too. If you want to debate the morality of that it actually gets a little complicated–do you? Otherwise, I don’t see how one “kill anonymous generic bad guy” game is different from another.
Anita Sarkeesian is not an anonymous generic bad guy.
Well, if she is allowed to make her videos without any violent threats, then the rights of white male gamers will have been trampled!
Cliff Pervocracy: I think the second is worse than the first, yes.
I was totally going to try and draw a picture of a crashed train with some testicles with top hats and various mustaches, maybe a monocle or two (the best I could think of to represent “smug”)..
..Then I realised I can’t draw. 🙁
“Honestly, I don’t see how the “kill the cat-callers” game is different from any game where you kill people. You kill a lot of men in Modern Warfare games, too. If you want to debate the morality of that it actually gets a little complicated–do you? Otherwise, I don’t see how one “kill anonymous generic bad guy” game is different from another.”
I see, so now the argument is that they’re anonymous generic bad guys. Well, with the one caveat that they are specifically male who deserve to die for harassing a woman. Would you feel the same way about a game where you’re a man shooting women for telling you that you have nice buns? Something tells me you wouldn’t.
Indeed. It seems completely self-evident to me that there’s a huge difference between a game that invites you to take pot shots at a load of anonymous pixels that are essentially no different from late 1970s Space Invaders in terms of function, and one that invites you to simulate violent assault on a named, clearly identifiable individual who has already been extensively verbally harassed.
If I was to send Sarkeesian – or anyone – a Photoshop mock-up of what they might look like after being given a going-over with a baseball bat, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the cops came calling: such a communication would be considered unambiguously threatening behavior. So how is Mr Spurr’s game any different?
How in the hell do you justify that?
(I mean, I know how–you start with “violence against women is awesome and violence against men is serious business, because I hate women and also I’m kinda dumb” and extrapolate your opinions from there, making up explanations afterwards. But I’m curious what you’ll come up with.)
How is a game depicting violence against fictional threatening men worse than a game depicting violence against a real, non-threatening woman?
To be honest I don’t want to play either game? I didn’t say I was a fan, only that it’s not as bad.
Anyway, male-on-female violence is not the equivalent of female-on-male violence. The former happens a lot more in real life and is a lot more ingrained in our culture. When’s the last time you thought twice about walking through a deserted park at night, because there might be dangerous women there?
Cliff, you have to understand that male gamers are terribly oppressed! If they are not allowed to make games about beating up someone who might critique their games, the First Amendment will have been violated!
Don’t call Johnny_M80 fictional!
@Steele: Explain to me how misogyny doesn’t exist again, mkay?