Double-standards persist in seeking to make violent video games illegal

Submitted by redwoodwriter on Thu, 2010-04-01 04:16

Story here. Excerpt:

'Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- The game begins with a teenage girl on a subway platform. She notices you are looking at her and asks, "Can I help you with something?"

That is when you, the player, can choose your method of assault.
...
It is little wonder that the game, titled RapeLay, sparked international outrage from women's groups. Taina Bien-Aime helped yank the game off store shelves worldwide.

"This was a game that had absolutely no place on the market," said Taina Bien-Aime of women's rights organization Equality Now which has campaigned for the game to be taken off the shelves.
...
"It's obviously very difficult to curtail activity on the Internet. But the governments do have a role in trying to regulate this sort of extreme pornography of children, both in their countries, and through the Internet ," she said, adding that they were calling for the Japanese government "to ban all games that promote and simulate sexual violence, sexual torture, stalking and rape against women and girls. And there are plenty of games like that. "
...
A member of the Institute of Contents Culture, who did not want to give CNN his name, said restricting game themes limits freedom of expression.

"In my opinion, RapeLay's storyline went too far. However, if a game creator wants to express something and create content out of it, a government or public entity shouldn't have the power to restrain it."'

Video games depicting violence against men also exist, but of course there is no outcry against those games. There is only a move to ban games that involve sexual violence against women. Why is that?

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Comments

I agree the double-standard is glaring in that there are serious ourcries against such games wherein the victims are exclusively female. Yet in games wherein the victims are exclusively male, and in a game where one chooses a character's sex and then goes around killing only those people of the opposite sex (as can be done in The World of Warcraft, et al.), people don't make nearly as big a stink. The issue here of course is that this isn't just violence, it's sexual violence. The rapist is male and the victims are all female. Predictably there will be an outcry. So next we must ask ourselves if there was a video game wherein men were all the victims of a female sexual predator who killed exclusively and/or kidnapped and sexually abused men, would there be as similar an outcry? Actually we have seen numerous movies with this as the theme and there is little objection, is there?

Google-search on "RapeLay" and you get a lot of hits back. One is a posted YT commentary from a young woman here saying she thinks it's "not that bad" and is all in the realm of fantasy, etc., and not nearly as bad as such games as Grand Theft Auto, etc. Other video-opinions of course will have serious condemnations of it, as will other articles you find from your Google-search.

I think all these violent games are a bad idea for a lot of reasons. But as the CNN article points put: how do you control it in a freely-downloadable world and at just what point does free speech or the right to express ideas, as heinous as they are, or to interact with such ideas even in a solitary fashion, become an offense against the public or the state? And if so, what then is not open for limitation?

Can't say I have the answers here. I can say this: I really do wish we had a lot fewer of these violent-fantasy games around.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2010-04-01 16:29

Sexual violence in the form of mainstream entertainment needs to stop no matter which gender it is against.

I do recognize the double standard as many people chuckle about prison rape "jokes" (I don't accept or agree with the double standard), however usually talk about male rape is a verbal one-liner. It does not go into the graphic virtual extreme, story-line, etc. that this video or other female rape "entertainment" does. I do believe that if the genders were reversed in this game people would be just as outraged.

Are men upset that they are portrayed as rapists? If there is ever any wonder why women live in fear of being raped - this contributes to it.

I believe in freedom of speech, so I believe this game should fall under 'pornography' and should not be available to children or via free downloads, etc.

I would hope that this would not be a gender issue, but simply a human decency issue. This "game" has no value to society. I suppose someone could invent a virtual video game about kidnapping Africans and turning them into slaves by means of torture and humiliation. How about a game about a world dictator that sets out for racial domination by capturing and gassing the other races.

I agree with Matt, there is no easy answer and far too many of these violent games.

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Submitted by Kris on Fri, 2010-04-02 03:40

What about all the "torture porn" movies, like Hostel?

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Submitted by Stinger503 on Fri, 2010-04-02 23:46

I agree. When it comes to censorship, what's the real difference between video games, books/magazines, music and movies anyway?

Banning certain forms of literature, entertainment and culture is not the answer. It would be the beginning of a slippery slope. Who's interpretation of acceptability would we use? Why should some individual or group ideology supercede others?

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Submitted by the_captain on Sun, 2010-04-04 05:04

Just found a good blog post on the subject here

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Submitted by Stinger503 on Tue, 2010-04-06 19:43