Okay, down the rabbit hole again.
Let me be blunt, I disagree with her overall conclusions, but being intentionally ignorant just because we disagree with someone does NOT do our side any credit. Sitting here and saying there is a clear reduction in rapes in the USA is stupid, because anyone who has bothered to actually look into the subject (which I did when this first came up) will find that there are contridictory claims, with research and statistics backing both sides of the equasion. There are no clear answers because people have vested interests in issues like this. Reporting a low incidence of rape is something a politician can use to support why they should be re-elected. Reporting a high incidence of rape on the other hand has a direct effect on the funding things like rape crisis centers get, as well as the careers of the people involved in dealing with such incidents. Low rape statistics oftentimes are used to justify cutting the budgets for things like rape crisis centers.
According to the information I dug up, the USA is #9 in the numbr of rapes in proportion to the population, and #1 in the number of rapes in an absolute sense (national comparisons). Things like rape crisis centers have claimed things like there being three rape victims every minute, and then I found a paper from like 1996 dealing with the massive problems we have on the subject, which is noteworthy largely for pointing out that the problem existed before gaming was anywhere near this mainstream. You can find the links to the research I did in response to the original Escapist article on this subject.
The overall point here is that if you do a search you'll find claims that we have the lowest rate of rapes in 20 years, alongside the rest of this stuff. You have people claiming differant things, depending on their vested interests... it's like anyone else providing statistics as sick as it might be in a case like this. As gamers we want to believe in the whole "the number of rapes is decreasing" because it contridicts what one of our opponents is saying, but that doesn't mean the other side of the story is invalid, since we ourselves are loading our own arguement due to having a vested interest.
The problem with being fanatical defenders of a point of view in cases like this is that we wind up becoming just as ignorant and offensive as the other side, leading them to greater lengths, and actually turning the majority against us due to our own behavior. Back when Paper and Pencil RPGs were under fire, I think the issues persisted for so long largely because of the ridiculous behavior of gamers in response, and how aggressively ignorant we were. All of the "yeah we're Satanists, booga, booga" stuff hardly helped even if it generated some laughs, and on top of that trying to deny things like the Egbert case or the horrible way that Gary Gygax handled it was even worse. It's sad to say but as loaded as things like "Mazes and Monsters" were (based on a book that was based on a true story, distorted, and sensationalized) "we" were quite honestly worse.
I'll also be honest in saying that "Rapelay" is simply a well-known example to the public, which is why it used, if you bother to pay attention to porn games, even to the point of just seeing what's out there, then honestly your going to find that it's just the tip of the iceberg. Trying to act like "Rapelay" is some kind of rare exception is wrong, because there are quite simply TONS of rape games out there. Sites like "Something Awful" have done mocking reviews on them:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/hentai-game-reviews/
Rapelay is one of the titles they examined, but really I don't even think it's the most "intense" or disturbing entry on their list, and they haven't been adding more material for like two years now.
I think she's wrong to extend this kind of thing to all of gaming in a shotgun effect of course, but I can't disagree that kids getting their hands on this kind of material and playing it regularly might wind up becoming fairly warped by it. It's pretty much a stereotype to have female characters (oftentimes the protaganists) whose problems wind up being solved by being routinely raped. Some 13 year old who develops sexually with such material might very well see relationships in such a way where he thinks date raping a reluctant girlfriend will turn out okay since she'll wind up liking and benefitting from the experience. We can argue morality, but in general an adult can seperate fantasy from reality in situations like that, with kids... not so much, especially when these games make pretensions of being similators of real relationships in some way. Or course in the end this comes down to parenting more than any need for the games (or adult entertainment in general, adult movies cover a lot of the same material) to be banned or more closely censored and regulated. The overall message of these studies is pretty much "giving porn to kids is bad" and honestly I don't think there is much disagreement with that from anyone, on either side of the arguement.
