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
Tulgey Logger wins today’s internets.
Cliff, stop white knighting, you mangina.
No cookie for Cliff.
@JohnnyTroll: apparently, since she deleted his comments and did not immediately reply to him, he had to make a game to let many men beat her up–he wants her attention.
Pretty pathetic.
But he’s gotten a lot of attention now, hasn’t he?
Why didn’t he do the effort and research to debunk her videos (either the existing ones, or the ones she began to produce)? What is he so afraid of?
@cloudiah:
It then continues digging, digs too deep, and unleashes the Balrog on Maryland.
@Johnny:
Swing and a miss, my desperate friend.
Just for lulz here’s his youtube account. I found it on his steam profile.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Bendilin
Hmmmmm, I wonder if those are the same reasons that Paul Elam receives money following his incessant requests for donations.
What in the game says that they deserve death? What communicates that message? Considering as it’s an equally valid option to literally say “thanks” to all the catcallers, I’d say that it’s a game about “the problem of and responses to street harassment.” More quotes from the interview with the creators of the game you obviously did not read or listen to showing why one would not consider them dangerous or problematic to hire:
lol pick your battles, fool
Johnny here seems to be an old, banned friend of ours from Eastern Europe with a new identity. So he will no longer be a part of this discussion.
Of course, it may just be that everyone in Romania is named “Johnny” or some variation thereof, and that they all happen to pick nearly identical fake email addresses when they register.
Kirby – no problem, I was unclear in my post. I did mean the pledge system that donates money to PP for every protestor who shows up.
@Tulgey Logger:
Don’t you know that famous corrolary of Poe’s law? “No matter how over the top and extreme something is, there will be someone out there who takes it seriously.”
Ahahaah HI ION!!!
Are you afraid of women? I don’t mean afraid we’re taking over the country, or afraid we’ll spermjack your false accusation for alimony Title IX, but, like, personally afraid?
If you sit down at a bus stop at night, and the other person there is a woman, do you hope and pray she leaves you alone? If you stay over at a date’s house, and she’s a woman, do you always have to remember to tell a friend where you are and make sure you can get home on your own if you need to? If a woman says “nice buns” to you on the street, do you have to worry she might start following you and trying to corner you?
I don’t see how this is exactly relevant, Cliff. Of course you have a point in a very general sense- indeed, it’s true that men are usually stronger than women, and this has real-world consequences- although it’s worth noting that men are victimized far more often than women. By other men, of course, but nonetheless, women don’t have a monopoly on the
“fear” you describe.
Regardless, are you somehow suggesting that this makes misandry acceptable? I’m not following you here.
Why do they always think they can sockpuppet?
@Cliff: How is a game depicting violence against fictional threatening men worse than a game depicting violence against a real, non-threatening woman?
Silly glrl–all men, even fictional, are more important than [fill in the blank with typical mra slur]!
Because: WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ?
Steele, you dolt. You mrms and your “misandry” are a joke. In order for misandry to be a reality, there would have to be real, long-standing, systemic oppression of men. There isn’t, just your vague hurt fee-fees that you’re not always gonna have the privilege you take for granted.
Or if the word “misandry” is a sticking point for whatever reason, let me rephrase- does this mean hating men, or being nasty toward individual men, is okay? I’m honestly not following the thought processes on this forum. But then I rarely do with feminists.
@Troll’o’Steele: you do know that the VAST MAJORITY IF NOT TOTALITY of street harassers are male? (Not panhandlers, street harassers).
Very few women have ever had another woman sexually proposition them on the street.
Therfore, FUCKING REALITY.
A lot more real, I suspect, than the World of warfare games (if you’re talking historical reality) or any of the other war types games.
Heh.
( the point ) ========—– *woosh*
( ) – steele
/|
|
/
(There is nearly no way this will work out properly)
(There is nearly no way this will work out properly)
Stick-Steele has an Escher Girls spine.
I’m suggesting it makes “misandry” not a real thing.
An individual can hate men or do violence against men, just as an individual can hate or do violence against people with hats, but it’s not a common and pervasive pattern in society. Misogyny is something you see on TV, in video games, all over the Internet even when you’re on a damn cooking forum. “Misandry” is a couple of carefully mined quotes and relatively isolated incidents.
Anyway I really don’t see how shooting men for sexual harassment is killing them “for being men,” unless you’re saying that sexual harassment is inherent to maleness.
ben spurr, johnny and steele just made Ms. Sarkeesian another 200 bucks. And it wasn’t no husband’s money. Also, I do not have rabies.
As a native Londoner, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with the “totality” claim – it really isn’t hard to find a woman yelling something sexually objectionable at you if you happen to be in the right/wrong part of London on a Saturday night in an environment where the average blood alcohol level is likely to be quite high – outside a pub or a club, for instance. It’s certainly happened to me, and on several occasions.
But I completely concede that this happens considerably more frequently to my female friends.
To hellkell: “Misandry” is a word that, to my knowledge, describes antipathy toward a specific group of people. So obviously it can exist. If you want to argue that institutionalized misandry, in a sociological sense, doesn’t exist, I’d disagree (I am an MRA after all), but that’s a case that could be made. However, saying “misandry isn’t a thing” just makes you look like a damn fool with an axe to grind.
Wrong. Only the catcalling men in the game are killable. There are men on the street whom it is not possible to kill (or to say “thanks” to).