Search Results for sarkeesian

Men’s Rights Redditor: Beware the stealth Sarkeesians infiltrating our industries!

Sneaky Anita Sarekeesian, trying to hide behind a stack of video games.

Sneaky Anita Sarekeesian, trying to hide behind a stack of video games.

So Angry Harry, the dotty old British uncle of the Men’s Rights movement, has a post up vaguely warning that the virus software company Symantec just might soon have some sort of shareholders revolt on its hands because it dared to put a bunch of men’s rights sites on a “hate sites” blacklist, blocking access to them for some users of Symantec’s Rulespace software.

That’s kind of an old whine at this point, but what captured my fancy was this recent discussion about Harry’s article in the Men’s Rights subreddit.

imbeddedsarkeesian

Oh, where to begin with all this? I’m charmed, of course, by the idea that feminism is just ruining things — ruining things! - for all the nice ladies in the tech world. I mean, it’s not like feminists have anything to complain about with regard to sexism amongst male techies. They’re just complainy complainers. Ladies in tech are doing just fine, thanks! Don’t take their word for it. Take the word of some random dude in the Men’s Rights subreddit for it.

But the real treat here is Hamakua’s nightmare vision of an army of secret “imbedded” Anita Sarkeesians infiltrating major corporations and … doing what, exactly? Secretly making videos about sexist tropes in video games in hidden compartments underneath their desks, like that secret nap compartment George had built under his desk at work on Seinfeld?

Beware the stealth Sarkeesians!

(Found this through the AgainstMensRights subreddit.)

Man Boobz Contest: Find the Whiniest, Most Entitled Response to Anita Sarkeesian

From "Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games."

From “Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games.”

So Anita Sarkeesian, who apparently didn’t run off with all her Kickstarter money to found a Misandist Gynarchy in the wilds of Canada, has released the first video in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games project. (I’ve embedded it below.)

Naturally, this is causing great consternation in certain corners of the Internet (*cough* Reddit *cough cough* everywhere else that misogynistic nerds congregate *cough*). In the Man Boobz forum, Katz has started a contest to see who can find “the whiniest, brattiest, most entitled response” to Sarkeesian’s video on the Internet. So far Katz and Myoo have found a couple classic comments from irate Sarkeeianaphobes:

[H]ow does one go about stating that genders and gender roles are social constructs? I mean is evolution nothing to her? Does the patriarchy make male peacocks dress provocatively?

Yes. Yes it does.

And:

I’m gradually losing respect for the opposite sex. I’ve unfollowed people on tumblr who talk about how great she is, because it actually causes bile to rise in to my throat.

Yeah, that’s a totally reasonable response to a woman making a video about video games.

So anyway, I’m thinking we should bring the contest over here.

See what you can find! Consider it a sort of scavenger hunt.

Here’s my contribution, from the Men’s Rights subreddit, complaining that Damsels in Distress are the truly privileged ones:

mrsarkees

Amazingly, this acutally got called out on r/mr as being pretty damn stupid.

Also, I have another question, to add to the stack of other questions I’ve been asking lately: Just why do you think so many guys get so angry when girls and women invade what they consider a male sphere, like gaming? (Also, why do they consider gaming to belong to boys and men?)

Oh, and here’s the video that’s causing all this hubbub:

The wit and wisdom of the guy who created that “beat up Anita Sarkeesian” game

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

Friday links: What About the Men: The Book, and more harassment of Anita Sarkeesian

Longtime Friend of Man Boobz Ozy Frantz, cofounder of the No Seriously What About teh Menz blog, is writing a book with fellow NSWATMer Noah Brand about men and feminism titled, naturally, What About the Men. The first chapter, written by Ozy, is up on the Good Men Project web site, NSWATM’s (sort of) new home. It’s even got footnotes, and illustrations by Barry Deutsch!

Ozy explains the book’s central aim:

We live in a sexist society, one where gender programming starts at birth (though the advent of the sonogram has allowed parents to get a head start by painting the nursery pink or blue and stocking up in advance on gendered toys and clothes) and is so pervasive as to be inescapable. Feminism has done an excellent job analyzing and challenging the ways that these assigned and enforced gender roles damage and deform the lives of women. The same tools of analysis can be applied to the damage and deformation that men suffer. And that damage, sad to say, is severe.

Yes, that says “CLICK TO HIT HER!”

Meanwhile, over on The New Statesman, Helen Lewis looks at the continuing harassment of Anita Sarkeesian, the women who dared to ask people to donate money for a video series on sexism in video games and thereby unleashed a misogynistic shitstorm.

One of the most disturbing examples of harassment: an online game in which players are invited to “beat up Anita Sarkeesian.” Lewis censors some of the images, but not others, so let me just put a TRIGGER WARNING for depictions of violence against women, including a grotesquely photoshopped “beaten up” Sarkeesian. Anyone who thinks Sarkeesian and her supporters were making too big a deal of the harassment needs to go look at these images in Lewis’ article here. (The game itself, posted on Newgrounds.com, has now been removed.)

Again, this is all because Sarkeesian asked people to donate for a video project. If they felt like it was worthwhile. That’s all she did. And this is what she got in return: someone so angry that Sarkeesian was pointing out sexism in video games that he literally sat down and made a game inviting angry internetters to “beat this bitch up.” Irony doesn’t even begin to cover it.

On Think Progress, Alyssa Rosenberg underlines why we need to take this kind of harassment seriously:

[A]nyone who thinks that feminists who push back hard against online harassment are being oversensitive needs to understand that we’re all trying to keep ourselves from becoming Anita Sarkeesians. No matter how strong you are, and no matter how much support you have, this kind of concentrated campaign of harassment affects the targets of it. And the goal of these campaigns is to terrorize people into silence. It’s not disagreement. It’s not creative trolling. It’s deployment of a weapon.

But it’s just as important to point out that Sarkeesian wasn’t silenced; in addition to helping her raise much more money than she had originally asked for, those who attacked her simply reinforced (and helped to further publicize) the argument she was making — in the case of the “beat up Anita Sarkeesian” game, quite directly indeed. The cowards and assholes who try to shut down feminists online with this sort of harassment are not only losers — they’re losing.

Jane Austen and the Rape-Threatening Men

The face that launched a thousand threatening tweets.

The face that launched a thousand threatening tweets.

NOTE: Today is Day Two of the Man Boobz Pledge Drive. If you haven’t already, please consider clicking the little button below and sending some bucks my way.

Thanks! (And thanks again to all who’ve already donated.) Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

So what sorts of things make some men so furious that they feel the need to send women they’ve never met literal death and rape threats on the internet? It doesn’t take much, apparently. A woman suggesting that it’s not such a good idea to hit on women in elevators at 4 AM. A woman making videos suggesting that there’s sexism in video games. A woman captured on video telling some men to shut the fuck up. A woman complaining about sexist jokes at a tech conference.

Add to this: a woman campaigning successfully to have Jane Austen’s face put on the Bank of England’s ten pound notes.

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The Last of Us: Has evil feminism ruined the zombie apocalypse?

lastof

A girl … in my video game?

So it’s true: Feminists have started ruining video games with all their feminism. At least according to some dude called pullupjumper on MGTOWforums who recently wrote a post warning his fellow red pill dudebros about a little game called The Last of Us, which is not only filled with zombies but, get this, girls.

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Women are Deadly to Hire: The Spearhead’s Many Misogynists Weigh in on Adria Richards

The tech sector fighting off feminism (artist's conception).

The tech sector fighting off feminism (artist’s conception).

So we’ve been talking a lot about the MRA response to the Adria Richards firing over the past few days, but (like a lot of the regulars here, I suspect) I’ve had one lingering question in my mind: what does eminent MRA philosopher Cooter Bee think about all of this? Well I am pleased to report that Mr. Bee has finally weighed in on the subject in a comment over on The Spearhead.

Always a model of thoughtfulness and restraint, Mr. Bee suggests that the best way to deal with the problem of women in technology – rightfully a man’s place – is for men in tech to go on a giant man strike until civilization starts to crumble:

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Battle of the Banned (Man Boobz trolls)

An army of miniskirted shooterers prepares to oppress men with their legs.

Miniskirted cyclists prepare to oppress men with their legs.

Feeling nostalgic for some of the Man Boobz trolls of yore? Well, head over to the Men’s Rights subreddit, where two of the greats most terrible are having a battle of wits. It all started when Man Boobz Troll of the Year 2011 NWOslave offered his opinions in a thread discussing Swaziland’s recent banning of “rape-provoking” miniskirts.

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MRA Bingo is here!

OK, folks, here we go: Here, without further ado, are the Man Boobz MRA Bingo cards!

Click right here to get your very own randomly generated card! Print it out, or just keep the window open while you argue with trolls here on Man Boobz or peruse the various sites in the Manosphere. Or if you want to get aggressive about it and get a quick bingo, use Google to track down examples to fill your squares.

Click here if you want to play with two cards at once.

If you get a bingo, shout it out in the comments – and give some details of where you found each item! Everyone who gets a bingo gets an Internet! Whoever gets one first gets five Internets!

Heck, post each time you get a hit. And give yourself half an Internet each time you get more than one hit from a single MRA comment or post.

If you want to save your card between sessions, you’ll need to make a screenshot, as there’s no way to bookmark a particular card.

You’ll notice that the squares of the card go grey when you mouse over them. If you hold down the Ctrl key and click, the square you’re on will go blue around the edges, and you can use this to mark your squares. (Just don’t click outside the card, as this will erase all the blue on your card.)

If you notice any weird glitches or typos, let me know so I can fix them. And if you have more suggestions, either for the MRA Bingo cards or for the upcoming PUA, Evo Psych, and Man Boobz Troll cards, post them below as well.

If you get “misandry” more than once on a card, don’t worry — that’s on purpose. Just mark off one of them each time you get a hit.

Let the wild bingo begin!

EXAMPLE CARDS:

Redditors: “Gamer girls” need to stop complaining about being called sluts and whores

Yeah, why would anyone want gamer dudes to modify their behavior in any way? From Fat, Ugly or Slutty. Click image for the original post.

So the top post in the Men’s Rights subreddit for a time yesterday, with hundreds of upvotes, was a post devoted to the question: “Why should male gamers change their behavior?” Yep, apparently the sacred right of men and boys to harass women and girls on Xbox live is one of the most important Men’s Rights issues of the day. Here’s how the OP, IsItRacistToAsk, framed the issue:

[G]amers themselves (until relatively recently) were a 90% male community. This goes back really far if you count non-video-game games (like Dungeons and Dragons and the like). Now all of a sudden they’re expected to just behave differently because some girls want to join?

I’m not saying girls shouldn’t be welcome in gaming communities, I’m just comparing them to someone who shows up, uninvited, to a house party and demands everyone go out and get blue plastic cups because red offends her.

Well, no, it’s more like a girl or a woman going to a public event, open to everyone, and facing a small army of creepy dudes who come up to her making sandwich jokes and calling her a bitch and a whore and a fat slut and demanding that she show her tits and when she refuses telling her “I hope your vibrator shorts out and fries your fucking vagina.”

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