I don't get it. Violence, good. Sex, NO NO NO WE CANT HAVE THAT!!!

[ManutheBloodedge]

Yeah, but the way it was presented suggested that it wasn't even wrong in absract, but the norm everbody expects to happen.

I don't see how those two are mutually exclusive, though it takes a little doublethink.

Fair enough.

And sadly, there are enough people who argue seriously against manspreading, and at the same time support a womans right to wear whatever she wants or go topless if she so desires. Double standards is all I'm saying.

Taking up to much space is not quite the same as wearing what you choose, though.

One, there are enough feminists declaring it a sexist display of male genitalia and a power act, and two, I don't see any posters shaming fat people for taking up more than one seat.

 

[Thaluikhain]

One, there are enough feminists declaring it a sexist display of male genitalia and a power act, and two, I don't see any posters shaming fat people for taking up more than one seat.

A power act, yes (in that people choose to take up more space than they need), but not seen anything about displaying genitals.

Shaming fat people for taking up more space is shaming fat people for existing. It's not the same as positioning one's body to take up more space than in another position. And while usually not on posters, that sort of shaming of fat people isn't uncommon.

 

[ManutheBloodedge]

One, there are enough feminists declaring it a sexist display of male genitalia and a power act, and two, I don't see any posters shaming fat people for taking up more than one seat.

A power act, yes (in that people choose to take up more space than they need), but not seen anything about displaying genitals.

Shaming fat people for taking up more space is shaming fat people for existing. It's not the same as positioning one's body to take up more space than in another position. And while usually not on posters, that sort of shaming of fat people isn't uncommon.

When I say power act, the way feminists use it means something akin to believing everyone who does it thinking: "Ha ha! I am gonna deliberately spread my legs AS FAR AS POSSIBLE to prevent women to sit where they want and force then to stare at my crotch. That will learn them!"

i.E. exercising the power men have over women in society in the subway train.

Look, I have nothing against sitting appropiatly, it is the percieved deliberatness of the issue I don't agree with. If someone takes up too much place, you can tell him to scoop over and let you sit too, and when he/she disagrees, he/she is a jerk. There is no need to make this a gender issue, no need for posters, and all the fuss reaches levels where it becomes as ridiculus as the fat people comparison.

 

[renegade7]

Because media depictions of violence are usually fanciful and rather divorced from reality whereas sex, even Hollywood sex, is closer to what people experience in their actual lives and thus hits closer to home?

Or to put it another way, I'm pretty sure if a TV station started broadcasting footage of actual clearly visible murder it would make people just as upset as a stray penis. After all, there's a reason those militant execution videos are always cut out before any actual blood is spilled.

I 'unno.

I generally just default to blaming thousands of years of more-or-less puritanical religion for society's assorted sexual hangups. Then again, I default to blaming religion when I stub my toe too, so I could be full of shit.

I think this is it. Comparatively few people experience violence in their lives so the subject of violence remains entirely one of fantasy. On the other hand, virtually all people will have some kind of sexual experiences in their lives, so it's easier to make comedy out of.

And really, you just can't make an epic final confrontation with the hero's arch-enemy a sex scene and have it be taken seriously.

Also, the violence in media is usually very unrealistic. It's heavily cleaned up to make it seem heroic and dramatic rather than brutal and horrifying like it is in the real world.

 

[Thaluikhain]

When I say power act, the way feminists use it means something akin to believing everyone who does it thinking: "Ha ha! I am gonna deliberately spread my legs AS FAR AS POSSIBLE to prevent women to sit where they want and force then to stare at my crotch. That will learn them!"

i.E. exercising the power men have over women in society in the subway train.

Look, I have nothing against sitting appropiatly, it is the percieved deliberatness of the issue I don't agree with. If someone takes up too much place, you can tell him to scoop over and let you sit too, and when he/she disagrees, he/she is a jerk. There is no need to make this a gender issue, no need for posters, and all the fuss reaches levels where it becomes as ridiculus as the fat people comparison.

As I understand it, the posters about it were part of a series of posters about bad behaviour, I think there were others about littering and so on.

The way I've seen feminists talk about it is as an example of how men are taught they should take up more space in order to be manly. I was flat out told this was the case when I was at school, and I've read that trans men are often told to do this as part of transitioning.

 

[Trunkage]

And regarding Mrs. Sarkeesian and Mr. Thompsons underpinning philosophies, my understanding of them is as following

Jack: Violence in Video Games causes real world violence.
Anita: Sexism in Video Games causes real world sexism.

so you can maybe understand why I drew a parallel here.

PS: I read Rain too . Glad to meet another fan.

I think Anita would say sexism in the world causes it in games which reinforces the sexism in the world

Jack thinks that violence starts from video games as you said

In Anita's regard, I partially agree with her. She focus on the negative affect of troupes on women and dismiss anything on men. Which is wrong because she's doing a troupe herself - men's issues don't matter because women's are more important. Like we can't do both at the same time.

Anyway, how about we start making real characters instead troupes irrelevant of gender.

 

[Trunkage]

Here's a different theory. We accept violence because we have to kill everyday.

To eat we must kill animals and hundreds of plants, including their younger and foetuses (i.e. eggs and fruit)
And we do this at least 3 times a day. We can't survive without killing

Sex on the other only propagates the species, which in and of itself is a weird concept to our individualistic selves. We usually talk more about how it fun. But it not necessary to our individual survival.

Killing is.


P.S. I know fruit isn't actually a foetus. I'm being dramatic.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I think Anita would say sexism in the world causes it in games which reinforces the sexism in the world

Jack thinks that violence starts from video games as you said

In Anita's regard, I partially agree with her. She focus on the negative affect of troupes on women and dismiss anything on men. Which is wrong because she's doing a troupe herself - men's issues don't matter because women's are more important. Like we can't do both at the same time.

Does she dismiss men's issues or is it just not what the show's about? Isn't that like complaining a show about Italian cooking doesn't bring up French cuisine?

I'd be all for a "tropes vs men" style show if the last one wasn't a blatent scam. I'd do it myself, but I'm not particularly interested in taking shots from the "video games are perfect and can't ever have any toxic qualities and I'll kill you if you don't shut up about it" crowd.

 

[lacktheknack]

I don't particularly like either one. How's that?

My favorite games at present are Big Pharma, Myst, Mini Metro and the economic campaign of Pharaoh. All of which have either no or very-turned-down depictions of those concepts. Big Pharma deals with erectile dysfunction, I suppose...

 

[Redd the Sock]

Many have gotten to the puritanical roots of things, but this is an old conversation, so I think there are more mitigating factors, or rather a single one: NIMBY (Not in my back yard) syndrome. I've gotten grief for my opinion that people are more sex negative than they wish to admit, but this is something based on a level of observation. No one is trying to put women in burkas or tell them how to dress, and when the slutwalk or topless protest is just a news article, we're fine. We also don't wish to dictate adult sex lives or sexual preferences for actual sex, or even masturbation. Then, put a character like Quiet in a mainstream game, or include some fetishy mini-game in a tactical RPG and suddenly people squirm and resist. Heaven help it if one of those protests were held in their town, and filled with friends, or even family.

It's not that we really hold the old values dominantly. We always think we'll be cool with these things, but when the real consequences of an ideology pop up it's a lot harder to accept than when it's an ideology alone. Then the excuses come out. Hence, sexual attitudes change at a slower pace, if at all, because we inadvertently struggle to maintain an older status quo based on biblical edicts to maintain personal comfort.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I agree that it is weird when we have games with oversexualized female characters and normal men, but my solution would be to sex up the men as well, not ban the sexy women. I am all for more male eye-candy and romance options, again, variety is a good thing. I know sex sells, that was not the point. What I essentially asked was if you are okay with them existing at all, not because you can't do anything about them. Basically, if you were in a hypothetical position of total control over the Game Industry, would you ban them or let them be? There are some character types I hate, i.E. the slaps of rage, armor and muscles most Triple-A shooters generously call protagonist, but I wouldn't want them GONE, because I know some people like them, and who am I to take someones fun away? I just don't want them to be my only option. Important here: I also don't excisting game series to change, I want new ones that provide the variety. If some Game wants to cater to archetypes I don't care about, more power to them, that is okay, I can play different ones. Again, variety. Dragon Age Inquisition has a trans character, but he is not romancable.

We basically agree, there is a time and a place for characters to be sexy. Characters in over the top fighting games like Dead or Alive having sexy costumes, that's perfectly fine with me, so are sexy characters in 2D and Anime fighting games. Characters not in a combat situation wearing a sexy outfit while "off duty" is perfectly fine as well. A character in a fantasy game who has a class that requires loose fitting, or skimpy garment for it's range of motion is also fine. I don't have a problem with sexually attractive characters in games, until the context becomes: Armor for all the guys, skimpy leotards and catsuits for all the girls. Mostly because that's when "character design" starts showing off a sexist double standard.

Huh... when I looked into the term, I found meanings like "searching for the hidden meaning of a text or argument", not a bad thing. As I understood it "Putting words in someones mouth" is deliberately misconstructing someones argument to discredit them with points they nerver meant or said. "Reading between the lines" is the ability to look past the initial text or argument to point out what they actually meant or implied, even when they never explicity stated it. Something that goes on my nerves is the tendency of people online to go "I never explicitly said that". Yeah, sometimes you don't have to state something explicitly, your intentions come across in subtext, word choice and tone. It is perfectly valid to adress the concieved meaning, implication or logical consequence of a statement. You can't go around saying "I am gonna beat him until he doesn't move anymore!" and then say "Well, I never stated I want to MURDER him!". No you didn't, but it was both heavily implied and the logical consequence of what you were saying. Anyways, I neither meant nor said that you think I can't differentiate between fantasy and reality, it just was the logical consequence of some of your arguments. I was not trying to attack you, I just hate this sentiment that does exist, sorry if I came off as to harsh.

Again I think you're reading a bit too much into that initial post, because I was trying to leave it as broad statement, not to specifically target anyone. It was mostly an off-hand statement post. While context is important, remember that it's extremely difficult to read specific emotions into text posts, that's a well known issue. It's also difficult to read what was implied by a person in their post, because it could simply be the fault of bad wording. So I'll use a paraphrase of Hanlon's Razor:[footnote]Original Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."[/footnote] "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by bad phrasing." Sound fair enough?

The thing with Japan is that many men with their insane rising workloads don't have the energy left to invest in a normal relationship, so they are fine with a synthetic one. I don't think the problem comes from japanese men no longer finding normal women sexy. I can imagine that can happen to some, but that would be extreme cases.

I never said the problem came from Japanese Men, just that they tend to be an example, what's kind of sad is that while you're right in the first part... This problem is becoming more common than not, especially when in Japan the culture is that people over 26 years old are unworthy of getting married, if they haven't already. Which is more true amongst women. With more and more Japanese women working than staying home, it makes the marriage a more difficult proposition in Japan.

That's not the point I was trying to make though, because that's just a symptom of a larger issue, that's fairly prevalent around the world in general. Certain types of media, like romantic comedies, porn, video games with romance sub-plots, and more, are kind of giving people unrealistic ideas about romance and attractiveness standards for their partners. Well and sex too. Most people can get past this, but plenty enough can't and really it's damaging either way on a societal level. Though I believe this is more to do with the ease of access to media, allowing some people to shut themselves in, away from the world at large, then they get all their ideas about sex and romance from such media. Most people can still get past such things and will settle for a less than romantic comedy perfect relationship and a less sexy than a porn star partner. The big issue though is that when these unrealistic standards get a lot of exposure, it starts allowing people to damage their own self worth, because they're not as sexy as a porn star, or not as romantic as the people they see in romantic comedies. That's the bigger issue.

So we basically agree that finding someone (or some images) sexy is not a bat thing by default, and that objectification is a natural process that is not bad by default either. Great, that is more or less all I have to say about the subject.

Basically, objectification only becomes a serious issue when it's all someone can do when regarding certain people around them. By itself objectification is neither good, nor bad, it's just a thing humans do, but it can easily become a bad mind state. If you look at Roosh V. he's a perfect example of someone who sexually objectifies women to the extreme, there are a lot of people out there like that too. But I digress, we do essentially agree, the only thing is that I don't give objectification a free pass, I even will take myself to task if I notice I'm doing it.

Ok, I have to disagree with you there. Women have access to STEM fields, they are being treated favorably even, with scholarships and the like, the majority of women just don't want to study it, and that is okay. Personal freedom and all. A lot of the differences in men and women in the workfield comes from different choices people make, not structural advantages men have over women. Women have all the freedom to choose whatever job they want. Granted, they may face social pressure in some professions, but that goes for men in certain fields (childcare, flight attendant, beautican) too. Saying women have less freedom would only be accurate if some jobs would be forbidden for women to have, which is simply not true in the western world. And while women may be looked upon as less able, men are viewed by society more often as exchangeable and not in need of protection. And with offers of companies to their female employes to freeze their ovules, it seems to me the expectation of career women is to not have kids, not a shorter career (To be fair, men are not expectet or allowed to stop working to raise their children). So again, I still think men and women have it equally bad, just in different ways. I won't argue with you about the treatment of LGBT people, I think you are right in that regard, and you have far more experience than me in that field anyways.

That's not entirely true, women are actively discouraged from entering STEM fields. The majority of women I know who want to pursue STEM work, get pressured by career advisors not to pursue an education, or career in STEM fields. STEM field's also have a image of being a "boy's club" environment that can be hostile to women. There are scholar ships and aid programs that are specifically targeted at women, but that's because a lot of women simply can't get a standard scholarship, because the bureaucrats see female names and automatically go; "nope!" Yeah there is also a stigma against men being beauticians, childcare experts, flight attendants, and similar. One stigma, which only applies to child care is that men are seen as a threat to children, which is a stupid stigma based on fear mongering. The more applicable one to all "feminine" careers is that femininity is seen as a lesser, which makes expressions of femininity toxic for males.

Also things don't have to be banned by law to make them inaccessible to certain groups, all you need is enough of a social stigma to cause rampant discrimination. At which point such things might as well be banned by law to various social groups, because they have no access anyways. That's where "freedom of choice" falls flat as an argument, because the choices are limited, or outright removed, just by discriminatory practices.

Now saying men have it just as bad... I can agree with that to an extrent, because men literally can't express femininity without being considered as lesser, or gay. The problem is, men still get to control the social discourse, men constantly interrupt women and talk over them in virtually all scenarios. Women are still expected to shut up and let the men talk, which means women generally don't get to make any meaningful input. That and women are generally expected to do all of the emotional and house keeping labor in virtually every work place. [http://www.robot-hugs.com/workplace/] Work that is either unnecessary, someone else's job, costs money out of our pockets, and/or that's just assigned because it's seen as "women's work". Generally this type of emotional labor damages our ability to contribute, but when we don't do it we get told we're not contributing enough. I say this because I've experienced it first hand. A lot of guys also argued that they've had to do work that wasn't in the job description, but that's a false comparison. The work that's generally assigned to guys, which isn't supposed to be part of their job, is done so because there is no dedicated slot for said work, also the work is absolutely necessary. The emotional labor expected of women is generally something men can also do, but women get the task because of latent sexism, it's also virtually always totally unnecessary, or someone else's job.

The reason the term "patriarchy" is used in this case is because men have more control of the social narrative by default, while at the same time women and femme-type folk are always expected to be in the submissive role. That's the major privilege that men have over women in these cases, they're the ones who get control and trust by default. I'm not going to argue that a patriarchal structure doesn't harm men, because it does, just as much as it harms women, but there are certain privileges related to patriarchal structures that men cling to. So long as femininity is seen as a lesser expression and holds it's toxicity amongst men, then we have a patriarchal system. If femininity became the greater gender expression, and masculinity the lesser, then we'd have a matriarchy. What I'm saying is both are wrong, men and women are not equal, and the system we should have is one where neither gendered expression is dominate by default. Because as long as one set of gendered and sex based expression is the socially dominate one, then equality is not present.

 

[ManutheBloodedge]

Snip

Ok, you make strong arguments in some cases, but I see we disagree on some basic stuff that would make any further conversation more point throwing and less discussion, and I think we both have better ways to spend our time.

I would like to thank you for this discussion and your willingness to educate others on your points of view instead of yelling at them for not getting them. I enjoyed this exchange, and even if we disagree on the basics, I wholeheartly agree on your conclusion: equality and not-enforced gender roles are the way to go.

To make this short for once: You rock girl, carry on.

As long as you ship Rain and Emily too. Or you are DEAD to me. DEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!!

 

[Trunkage]

I think Anita would say sexism in the world causes it in games which reinforces the sexism in the world

Jack thinks that violence starts from video games as you said

In Anita's regard, I partially agree with her. She focus on the negative affect of troupes on women and dismiss anything on men. Which is wrong because she's doing a troupe herself - men's issues don't matter because women's are more important. Like we can't do both at the same time.

Does she dismiss men's issues or is it just not what the show's about? Isn't that like complaining a show about Italian cooking doesn't bring up French cuisine?

I'd be all for a "tropes vs men" style show if the last one wasn't a blatent scam. I'd do it myself, but I'm not particularly interested in taking shots from the "video games are perfect and can't ever have any toxic qualities and I'll kill you if you don't shut up about it" crowd.

That's my opinion. I think I've viewed 3 of them and that's a couple of years ago. I seem to remember her stating that particular troupes are used on men, but they don't matter because they don't negatively affect men. That maybe true, but like you I'd like to see a troupes vs men one, for the simple fact that she looks biased.

 

[springheeljack]

Honestly I think sex is shown or alluded to as much as or even more than violence is. I don't think sex is as taboo as you might claim. I mean some of the more shall we say "different" acts are still taboo but for the most part it is really hard to escape.
Oh and why is Anita brought up in every thread at every possible chance? I cannot for the life of me understand the weird obsession with her.

 

[CaitSeith]

You're comparing pears to apples. Violence is too broad, sex is pretty specific. You have to either compare violence and sexuality; or torture and sex.

 

[Strazdas]

You're comparing pears to apples. Violence is too broad, sex is pretty specific. You have to either compare violence and sexuality; or torture and sex.

well thats a very odd choice of example. if you think violence is sexuallity then sex would be equivalent to torture? SO biascally you are saying that sex is the worst part of sexuality?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Oh and why is Anita brought up in every thread at every possible chance? I cannot for the life of me understand the weird obsession with her.

Because people think she's an actual threat to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, that she's not only trying, but fully capable of getting games banned for having boobies in them.

 

[CaitSeith]

You're comparing pears to apples. Violence is too broad, sex is pretty specific. You have to either compare violence and sexuality; or torture and sex.

well thats a very odd choice of example. if you think violence is sexuallity then sex would be equivalent to torture? SO biascally you are saying that sex is the worst part of sexuality?

Not the worst; but the extreme or a practical use. But if you have a better example, you're free to share.

 

[happyninja42]

You're comparing pears to apples. Violence is too broad, sex is pretty specific. You have to either compare violence and sexuality; or torture and sex.

I disagree, considering that the OP's question is the presentation of those broad subjects, and which ones have the most taboos and restrictions on them. A sex to violence comparison is perfectly fine. Because it doesn't really matter the type of violence being depicted in the media, it's usually more acceptable to show, than anything remotely sexual. You can have people dying in explosions, gun fights, sword fights, pretty much you name it, if it's a way that someone can be injured/killed, it's more likely to be allowed for the viewing public, compared to something sexual.

OT: As to the question of why, it's because most of the religions of the world, have very specific taboos about sex, and what is dirty/sinful, while most of them have at least at one time, thoroughly embraced violence, frequently in the name of their god. It's a form of currency that is more familiar to just about every culture, and something that they endorse frequently. As to why the various gods people believe in are so hung up on sex, I have no idea. Though there is a book by a particular atheist (I forget his name), that delves into the subject of why gods are so interested in what you do with your nekked time. My personal theory is that since the various religious rulers used, and still use it, to control the population, the easiest way to do that, and to insure that your followers make more people for your religion, is to declare ownership of sex and procreation, and set up specific rules about it, so they do it in ways that help to foster your rule. You can't have them thinking it's ok to have sex with whomever they like, no, they can only have sex with someone they marry (in accordance with the religion), and that person also has to be of the same faith. Thereby locking in 2 people to the faith, and having a much higher chance that all their offspring will be locked into your faith too, and thus giving you their money so you can continue to rule.

This has lessened over the generations, as the cultures have evolved to realize a lot of those rules are total bullshit, but the legacy of that sexual branding is still evident in our cultures. And the fact that examples of sex in religions are usually used as a cautionary tale to avoid punishment. I can't think of an example of sex (at least in Christianity), that was presented as a good thing. Usually it was "somebody did something sexy, and got punished for it". But there are tons of examples of righteous battle in the name of god, cleansing the heathens and all that jazz. So, yeah, from the start, there is a bit of a bias to "Violence good (when it's sanctioned by us)" and "sex bad".

 

[sageoftruth]

I thought Shamus Young wrote a pretty good article about that a couple years ago.

Spoiler: Experienced Points:Why is a Bare Breast More Offensive Than a Severed Arm?

Source

This question gets asked a lot. "Why is a bare breast more offensive than a severed arm?" This question - or one like it - has been around in one form or another for decades and is usually presented as a challenge or a demand for explanation regarding the way movies are rated, marketed, and edited.

Then videogames came along and suddenly the difference is even more extreme: Games with nudity or frank discussions about sexuality are hard to find, and when they do show up they're usually very controversial. Meanwhile, games about murdering hundreds of people are so common that it barely warrants a mention. It was a big deal when Catherine came out and suddenly we had a videogame that talked about sex and relationships, but Hollywood makes a dozen movies around those concepts every year. Our fixation on violence and aversion to sex has always been seen as a kind of strange thing (particularly to Europeans regarding American culture) and gets dragged up every couple of years when one side goes "too far" with their content, or when people complain a little too vigorously about seeing something they don't like.

This question is usually framed as a criticism of the broader culture in general: "Why is it okay to cut off someone's arm, but not okay to show them naked? What kind of sick culture loves violence and hates sex?" I think this question is kind of misleading, and makes some faulty assumptions about why we choose certain forms of entertainment and how they make us feel.

Before I dig into this, I need to drag one argument out behind the shed and shoot it, because otherwise it's the only thing people will discuss in the comments: Your particular standards for what is "offensive" are no more valid than anyone else's. Everyone seems to think that their attitudes to the human body are perfectly normal, and that everyone else has these strange fixations or hang-ups. When arguing about what's appropriate for "family" entertainment or what's fit for (say) television, we usually see arguments like this:

1) Can you believe those people, freaking out over bare arms and bellies? As long as you can't see a woman's nipples, it's just fine for family entertainment.

2) Nipples? What's the big deal about nipples? Men have nipples! What makes female nipples magically offensive? It's all good, as long as we don't see anyone's genetailia.

3) What's so bad about showing genetailia? We all have them! It's natural! What is it with you religious nuts obsessing over private parts? It's not like we're showing people screwing.

4) Why not show people screwing? It's natural. I mean, as long as you're only showing two people at a time, and they're attractive, and not doing anything too kinky, I don't see what the big deal is.

5) Well actually...

George Carlin once said, "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" The same idea applies here. We all seem to think that everyone more conservative than us is a prude, and everyone less conservative is some kind of sex-crazed hedonist. We tend to classify things as offensive if they're shocking or go beyond the norms we're used to, and these norms are generally shaped by stuff like tradition, climate, and viewing habits. You can criticize American attitudes if you want to, but you likely have someone on the other side of you who says the exact same things about your culture. So for now let's set aside debates on who are the prudes and who are the hedonists and just accept that the border between mundane, edgy, and offensive is really blurry and trying to draw definitive lines anywhere is probably not an awesome use of our time.

Getting back to the main question: "Why is a bare [body part] more offensive than [violent act]?" Let's look at this in passive media (movies and television) before we consider the videogame side of it.

Most passive media is created with the expectation that it will be a communal experience. The vast majority of people go to the theater with someone. Television is often produced with the expectation or understanding that people will watch it together. Violence works for this because we all have basically the same type of reaction to violence. When something violent happens we experience cringing discomfort, body horror, or visceral satisfaction, depending on who was hurt and how they were hurt. Maybe I'm more grossed out than you, but in general everyone is feeling roughly the same thing.

This isn't true for sexual content. When naked bodies and sexual activity appear on screen, we're suddenly having very personal experiences that are probably disconnected from the experiences around us. Maybe one person is aroused. Another will feel inadequate or self-conscious about their own body. Another will feel embarrassed. Someone else will be grossed out. Someone else will find the whole thing ridiculous to the point of comedy. Someone who isn't yet sexually active can find the images scary or confusing. Another person stops thinking about the movie and begins worrying about what everyone else is feeling. We're no longer having a communal experience, we're having divergent experiences.

More importantly, arousal is a very personal thing and we're more particular about when and where we want to feel it. I don't mind being grossed out in front of my mom, but I definitely don't want to be aroused in front of my mom. Making something sexually titillating immediately makes it something that you don't want to see in certain situations. People aren't so much upset by what they're seeing as what they're feeling. While you can ease the impact of violent imagery by reminding yourself it's "just a movie", that's not so easy to do with sexual content. That really is a naked person and they really are affecting you on a physiological level. You can stop believing in a movie, but you can't control what sorts of things arouse or embarrass you.

This probably explains why people are so much more prickly when it comes to sexual content versus violent content. It's not that people think murder is better than sex, it's that sexual content makes them feel things they don't want to feel and turns communal entertainment into a moment of shared awkwardness. This is especially problematic in the world of television, where you look for content by surfing channels and you don't have a convenient way of knowing what sorts of content you're going to be exposed to ahead of time. This creates the dreaded "danger surf", where other people (the kids, or grandma, or your neighbor) enter the living room in the middle of your channel surf and suddenly it's your job to land on something tolerable that isn't going to shock, offend, or traumatize the other people in the room.

I don't want to make it sound like adult content never has a place on the small screen. But some people do feel that way, and I understand why. I get why they feel that television should be an inherently family-friendly medium. This problem has been made much, much worse by American cable companies insisting on selling their channels in bundles. As I pointed out above, everyone has a different idea of what is "okay", and bundles are a horrible system for dealing with gradients like this.

So that's television: A horrible tug-of-war between the family "prudes" who want to be able to channel-surf with the kids and the "hedonistic" singles who will reliably watch anything with gorgeous and sexually provocative young people in it. Throw in terrible cable service, the long-standing trend of content getting racier over time, the background culture war that's always going on, and the occasional accidental escalation of content levels and you've got a pretty good system for pissing people off and creating lots of silly moral panic.

So what about videogames? As odd as sex can be in movies and television, at least they have sex. What's the deal with an industry where massive body counts are the norm and human sexuality is barely acknowledged? Videogames don't have the drawbacks that you find in passive media. A single-player game is obviously designed for one person, so you don't have the problem of social awkwardness when you're viewing something salacious in mixed company. Their labeling is better than movies, offering details about what sort of content the game has to offer instead of a silly age rating. They're [over] marketed to young males, who are by far the biggest consumers of sex-themed media.

It seems like a marketing no-brainer: Put more titillating sex in the game and sell even more to those young males everyone is so interested in. Forget the "Citizen Kane" of videogames, why hasn't anyone tried to make the Eyes Wide Shut, Chasing Amy, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, or Porkys of videogames? (And just to be clear, I'm not suggesting these are all great movies. Also, I'm talking about games ABOUT sex, not games with sex as gameplay. I'm not talking about pornographic games, but simply games where characters have or pursue some sort of sex life.)

But rather than chalk this up to puritanical attitudes to sex or a lust for violence, I think there are a lot of really practical reasons why sex doesn't show up in videogames. Assuming you're not making some sort of juvenile stick-thrusting minigame like hot coffee, then a game about sex is probably a game about people and relationships, and we've never been good at systemizing that sort of thing. We can't do games where people talk about sex for the same reason we can't do games about contract negotiation, subterfuge in diplomacy, or philosophical debate. Computers are too stupid to act as a proper conversational foil for the player. The best you could do is have a BioWare-style conversation wheel, and that would probably be really sad and awkward.

Worse, the "divergent experiences" problem becomes even more extreme in interactive media. If we all react differently to sexual content in passive media, then we're going to react even more strongly when we're asked to participate. I might be able to sit through an uncomfortable sex scene, but I really don't want to pick up and controller and push the characters into it.

So before we condemn our society as monsters because we don't have more sex and less violence in games, let's remember that this trend is more a reflection of what computers can do and less a reflection of what we value as a society.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

While I think he did a great job at covering why sex makes less sense from a business/entertainment standpoint, I don't think it covered why people express moral outrage over sex. He clearly covered why sex might put me off a game or a movie more than violence would. However, I'm still curious about why people feel the need to shield their children from it, lodge formal complaints, and even protest against it being in certain media. Where do people make the connection that "I didn't enjoy it" = "It's morally reprehensible!"?

My first guess would be that some people see the "sex is wrong" approach as an easy way for them to justify their discomfort as being the moral high ground, but I'm open to other ideas.