Jimquisition: Rape vs. Murder

[Aardvaarkman]

So, what about non-lethal, non-sexual physical (and emotional assaults)? Those also leave the survivor to deal with a lifetime of physical and emotional scars.

When I was in high school, bullying was extremely common. In fact, I'd say that nearly every boy was subject to it at one time. Yet it was dismissed by the culture and authorities as "boys will be boys". Males were basically considered acceptable targets for brutality in a way which females weren't. If someone beat up (or raped) a girl, they would be considered a monster and punished harshly. But boys were fair game. Especially when it came to rape, which is generally considered even more shameful, and more of a "blame the victim" situation when it happens to males.

Also Jim, it is certainly physically possible for a woman to rape a man. Or do you consider forcible anal penetration or oral sex not rape when it is not performed with a penis?

I think a lot of the gender and "sexual" issues around this area just muddy the waters. I have yet to understand why non-sexual violence against men is so easily brushed aside by society. After all, violence is violence, right? It's not necessarily the case that rape is always more traumatic than other forms of violence. Some people survive rapes relatively emotionally intact, while others may suffer from non-rape violence that basically destroys their lives.

Putting rape in its own special, exceptional, category seems like a way of avoiding the issues around violence and the terrible ways humans treat each other. You even mention a bit of torture being OK to you. I can't understand what would make torture categorically more acceptable than rape. Often the two are intertwined.

 

[disappointed]

That was about as good of an attempt at the subject as you're likely to find on the Internet.

There are different levels of portrayal. In Populous, for example, the little people die in wars, earthquakes and volcanoes. The exact nature of the deaths and of your godly responsibility in them is not always clear. They also reproduce in little huts. Again, the exact nature of the congress that produces the new people is unclear. Yes, I realise that's a massive, tenuous stretch.

In CoD, the nature of every death is very clear, but in the multiplayer game, no one really dies. They respawn, and their corpse disappears. The depiction of a violent death is there but it is typically fleeting and distant, as opposed to the lingering slo-mos of Sniper Elite.

It's nuanced, and the simple word "murder" is not entirely helpful in resolving questions about the subject. On the other hand, I've never encountered a game in which rape was presented ambiguously. What is presented is always clearly something undesirable, which is why games in which it is an objective are so abhorrent.

Then again, I've always struggled with games like Hitman which present ostensibly abhorrent objectives and then crowbar a justification onto them via a crude narrative.

I've lost my train of thought and am rambling now. I should stop.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

snip

Listen, I'm not interesting in debating this really, but I never said annythiung about what's allowed, I believe in free speach, I'm talking about ME and I will never think rape jokes are OK (and even this is sayinga bit too much, I've laughed and been okay with jokes concernig rape, but there are very, very few and there is a thin line there that I cannot express excatly) but killing jokes are. Yes, there are out of taste jokes there too, but generally speaking I hvae no problem with murder/torture/grevious bodillyharm-jokes. Think about it, have you ever laughed at a Darwin Award? can you even imagine a similar rape-situation? No, because even real-life deaths can be funny, but rape can't.

I wasn't really trying to debate you so much as I was confused about what you were saying and was asking you to clarify your position, which you just did. I can't say I disagree. You have every right to find rape jokes offensive. But one should keep in mind that different people probably have different lines that they wouldn't cross. Pro-lifers probably feel the same way about dead-baby jokes.

I'll agree that that I can't really think of a specific scenario where a person was actually raped that would be funny, but that's quite a bit different from abstract jokes. Actually, I lied, I find the idea of Jerry Sandusky getting raped in prison to be freaking hilarious. So perhaps that is a counterexample.

 

[Iron Lightning]

My point wasn't to say that in-game killing is ALWAYS justified, more to say that, unlike rape, it at least CAN be justified within the fiction. I was simply drawing a distinction between the two concepts rather than presenting that first point as an absolute.

Actually, rape can be justified in a number of situations.

-There was battle tactic occasionally used in real medieval battles wherein the invading force would covertly capture the enemy's queen and publicly rape her outside the city walls to demoralize the enemy. Sometimes this worked so well that the city surrendered. Thus, as a result of rape, thousands of lives were saved.

-Sometimes rape is an effective means of torture which can be good under the "ticking time bomb" scenario. The perpetrator might be terrified of rape but fairly resistant to other forms of torture. Methinks a single rape is justified if it prevents a packed office building from exploding.

-Within fiction there are also several somewhat convoluted ways in which rape is justified. For example, in You Can't Escape From the Heroine, a game from the same company that made Rapelay that no one raised an eyebrow at because it's a game about women raping men as opposed to Rapelay's men raping women, the women rape the dark lord as a magical ritual to seal his power. Yeah, it's a bit silly, but it nevertheless makes rape into a moral action.

Nevertheless, it makes no sense for us to support 100% and fight tooth-and-nail against anyone who is against unjustified, immoral hyperviolence against innocents and yet fully condemn unjustified, immoral rape against an innocent. Why is driving along a sidewalk and murdering 40 innocents who won't fight back perfectly fine but one instance of unwanted penetration horrible and unpardonable. By allowing this you're saying that rape is much, much worse than unprovoked, violent mass murder against innocents. That's a pretty fucked-up ethical standard.

Also, your point about rape in media screwing with victims of rape and that being a reason to not have rape in games is illogical. I have a little sister who is very afraid of violence, even in media. How does she cope? She just doesn't watch or play anything with nasty violence in it. Rape victims who are uncomfortable with rape (as not all are, I know because I am one) should simply avoid such media which is pretty easy to identify. One could even make the same argument as you on this subject in regard to victims of significant bodily injury who might react poorly to seeing someone get disemboweled. That might even trigger flashbacks of the time that happened to them. So, while murder victims can't get screwed up by images of murder victims of violence can get screwed up by images of murder.

The biggest problem of trying to not have virtual rape is that it increases real rape. This can be clearly seen through the well-known effect that countries with freer porn laws and access to porn have lower rape rates. This effect is almost certainly due to the cathartic release one gets from porn and lacking this mechanism an individual has a higher risk of committing rape because of their pent-up sexual energy. This is similar to the catharsis produced by playing violent videogames that has arguably been one of the factors contributing to the decreasing violent crime rate we have nowadays. Therefore if we allow potential rapist to express their rape fantasies in a non-destructive way then we have more potential rapists who don't become actual rapists. I mean, what else are you going to do to realistically and effectively prevent rape, tell people not to rape? Yeah, that will work really well.

One direct question for you Jim. You said that you support the creative freedom of people to make games about rape but do you support rape games being banned from the market?

 

[Nurb]

So killing in video games is OK so long as it's justifiable in the fiction, such as being the hero and defending yourself in a war game?

And "We all know murder is wrong and are secure in the knowledge we won't shoot someone"? I don't like rape, I'm pretty sure everyone here knows what rape is and we are all secure in the knowledge we know "no means no" and have no inention of drugging a woman (or a man if you swing that way)

What about being the bad guy or the villain? You really can't rationalize walking down the street in GTA games and just blowing the brains out of some innocent person, or driving down the sidewalk, slaughtering dozens before killing off hundreds of police officers trying to stop your rampage. That technically would be unacceptable by this particular argument and GTA 5 would have to be stopped. There are people that like playing an evil son of a ***** in the KOTOR games and MMO, are they bad people for choosing the bad options to execute and extort innocents?

In the end, people need to stop being outraged over the fiction they personally don't like while then playng out horrible acts in the fiction they do like because that's all it is: Fiction. It's not real, it's all the same virtual death, murder, rape, torture, etc, only our opinions on the fictional and illegal acts in the entertainment are different (which is why so many games have the 'moral choice' system btw)

So yes, it is hypocritical when someone complains about "killable children" mods in Fallout 3 and Skyrim to add realism is hypocritical when you can beat the homeless man dying of thirst outside towns to death with a pipe in Fallout 3 and don't say a word about how horrible that act is.

We're trying to apply real world morals, logic, thinking and laws to things that don't exist, which is insane to begin with and it only ends up giving a mob of people the idea they can start dictating what fictional things people can and can't create, which is already happening. I don't like rape either, but I ignore it if it isn't reality because I can, such as not going near those hentai rape games. All the complaints about those games did was advertize for them.

We need a "National Day of No Outrage". I'm starting to shut off anything that has anyone being offended about anything the last year or so.

I think the difference is that what people enjoy about games like GTA is the gameplay mechanics, the challenge, the ridiculous way they ragdoll all over the place, and unlike a rape game, they aren't getting a thrill out of the actual acts. Obviously I can't speak for everyone.

If that were true, then the developers didn't need to waste time and money using story to set the player up as an amoral criminal character or giving them a background at all. It's the fantasy of being a bad person who doesn't take shit from anyone, which makes those games successfull and there's nothing wrong with enjoying the fantasy of being a bad person because you know the difference between fantasy and reality.

 

[Emergent System]

Come on, man. Rape isn't something women are incapable of doing - they do it a lot, it's hugely underreported, ignored when it is reported, or not registered when it is reported (many definitions, such as the only recently altered FBI one, it's literally impossible for a woman to rape someone by virtue of her gender alone). They rape other women, they rape men, they rape kids... women are just as likely to be pedophiles as men, and just as likely to abuse children, but that's not something that's in the public's mind - which makes them much more dangerous than male absuers since they have a far easier time getting away with it.

Also, the chance of being raped isn't "terribly high". The chance of suffering either rape *or* sexual assault, in the US, is 0.07% [http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2224]. You're 20-30 times more likely to be exposed to any other violent crime, AND - incidentally, since we're on the topic of gender - the chance of being exposed to those crimtes is higher for men.

Wether calling a 0.07% chance to experience rape/sexual assault 'terribly high' is up to the speaker, I guess, but relative to experiencing any other violent crime it is very, very low. You're ~5 times more likely to experience the highest levels of serious assault than you are to experience either rape or sexual assault combined.

To touch upon the "most men don't fear getting raped when they're alone with a woman" - maybe not (though I've known men that have, but whatever, let's pretend that's the case). But they have a many, many, many times better reason to fear any kind of violence than women do to fear just rape, and you don't see guys freaking out about being alone in a room with another guy. Just because somebody's male doesn't instantly make them a violent offender... we remember that when we're talking about other kinds of violence, but for some reason it's considered oddly socially acceptable to say that a woman has reason to "fear getting raped" whenever they're alone with a man, even though there fucking isn't any reason to fear that.

"Most women would be right to worry about [rape], because it happens to women a lot". No it doesn't. It happens very rarely. It is a very rare crime. You are five times more likely to be beaten to within an inch of your life tomorrow than you'd be to get rape if you were a woman. Do you go around terrified of that happening to you at any given moment?

If you're gonna talk about this, at least bother to validate the claims you make, and don't just regurgitate this stupid "rape culture" dogma.

And I'm pretty sure this narrative that rape is some kind of insane, mind-blowing experience unlike any other thing that you could experience or understand only make the experience worse for those who do actually get raped. If you're conditioned your whole life by your entire culture to consider rape the most horrible thing that could ever happen to you, it just might be. In places where rape happens all the time people deal with it just fine. It's not fun, but neither is being subjected to any other form of violence; many forms of which leave far greater physical damage than rape by itself is capable of, and leave equally horrible, or more horrible, scars.

Honestly, this elevation of rape as like the greatest offense that can be committed is just symptomatic of the priorities of anyone who'd make that statement. Getting raped is worse than being subjected to what the law considers the most violent form of physical assault that doesn't result in your death? Anyone who genuinely thinks that is out of their minds, and I'd be happy to let them rape me if they'd let me destroy their body physically afterwards. I'm sure I'd get over it before they did. Heck, with the justification that rape is worse than murder because if you're dead you can't relive the experience or be traumatized by it... seriously? Because the people who get murdered don't have others who care about them, right? Who could suffer on their behalf after their death? Who can get traumatized by the experience, and carry it with them their whole lives? Whatever, buddy.

And isn't that basically implying that the feeling of rape victims are more important than the lives of murder victims? Considering the pretty bizzare "lol death ain't so bad" diatribe, I wouldn't be surprised if that's actually what motivates such thinking.

Anyway... rape fantasies are no different from murder fantasies: People can distinguish fantasy from reality in both cases, you're just pretending that isn't the case because it's convenient for your argument.

Also, people blame murder victims all the time, for being stupid enough to get themselves murdered.

Also, there's an incessant stream of "don't rape" commands aimed at men (and men only, mind you). Our society doesn't consider rape a horrible crime because we think it's an okay thing to do either.

Also... ah, what's the point. This entire episode was just weird. Huge amounts of time is spent literally saying that "murder ain't so bad, so it's okay to do it in video games"... fucking what? Murdering people in vidoe games is okay... because they're vidoe games! Not because murder is okay! I'm almost starting to believe that the standard argument in defence of violence in games - that we all (evidently supposedly) realize it's fantasy - maybe isn't one we'd see out of Jim here...

Was also really weird that he mentions game of thrones, then right in the next breath says that rape is a deeply personal crime that shows a desire to cause pain or whatever the exact words were (then said that torturing people, which is by definition done to cause pain, is worse than rape), even though GoT depicts rape as a very impersonal crime just as often as the other way around. At least as much as it does with the murdering.

Rape isn't inherently more EVIL than murder, and it's definitely LESS evil than torture (since rape isn't inherently motivated by a desire to cause pain). The reason it's on every "really bad"-bad guy's resume is not because "we know on some level it's some dark true evil thing"... jesus christ, man? Are you religious now?

It's on there because writers have realized that - because we see murder, and torture, everywhere on TV, and in movies, and on games, and in comics, etc, all the time - we're desensitized to it. We no longer empathize with the victims of violent crimes that are far worse than rape, because we see those crimes all the time played out in front of us - frequently glorified, at that. We very rarely see rape, and it's almost never glorified, so it hits us harder when we see a bad guy rape someone. We see bad guys killing people left and right all the time... but we also see heroes killing people left and right all the time. Heck, we even see them torture people all the time. So we don't instantly and intuitively connect murder/torture with someone being a horrible human being. But we never see the hero rape someone, so the connection is much more emotional when we see a bad guy doing it.

There's also tons of other shit like the impression that osmeone raping is doing so because they can't get it some other way, all our still deep cultural taboos surrounding sex, blah blah blah - you get the idea. Torture is much more inherently evil than rape, but it doesn't have the same intuitive impact that rape does. That's why people freaking have their bad guys do it, because they know how ot tell a story, and part of telling that story is making people hate the bad guy, and making them rape someone is an effective way of doing that.

Anyway... I spent way too long on this rant and nobody's going to care anyway, but I guess I just felt compelled to do so. Would be nice if people stopped with all the hyperbole whenever they talked about rape, or at least quit it with the outright lies, but whatever.

For the record, I think rape/whatever games are stupid, since that fantasy doesn't appeal to me at all, just like something like twilight doesn't appeal to me at all. Because it is just a fantasy. Maybe you should remember that the next time you make very creepy decidedly non-fantasy justifications for non-fantasy murder...

 

[MBurner 93]

I loved the quick reference to Gregor Clegane when you talked about horrible unlikable rapists in stories. I think he's one of the only characters in ASOIAF that no one seems to like.

 

[Bluecho]

And now to reiterate a point in the video Jim talked about but I feel needs to be repeated.

Don't rape. Just don't do it. It's not cool, bro. Don't rape people. DO NOT RAPE. Okay?

 

[Sovereignty]

I think there are a few key misunderstandings.

1 is that all parties claiming rape are doing so truthfully. I mean this just isn't true. The definition of consent is something people are notoriously fickle with. A woman could say yes now, and still a year later bring you to court claiming the yes was forced.

2 our games don't even truly depict sex yet. Of course depicting a brutal sexual event is wrong when compared to it. How did we come to a point in gaming when murder was acceptable? We grew from the days of knock outs. It's progression (even if it's not positive).



I think rape is atrocious and Jim's points on it not being as bad as murder because "You don't relive it every day after." are spot on. Still once sex becomes more rampant in video games (the visual depiction anyway) I'm pretty sure rape will start showing up more as well.

 

[Fappy]

So killing in video games is OK so long as it's justifiable in the fiction, such as being the hero and defending yourself in a war game?

And "We all know murder is wrong and are secure in the knowledge we won't shoot someone"? I don't like rape, I'm pretty sure everyone here knows what rape is and we are all secure in the knowledge we know "no means no" and have no inention of drugging a woman (or a man if you swing that way)

What about being the bad guy or the villain? You really can't rationalize walking down the street in GTA games and just blowing the brains out of some innocent person, or driving down the sidewalk, slaughtering dozens before killing off hundreds of police officers trying to stop your rampage. That technically would be unacceptable by this particular argument and GTA 5 would have to be stopped. There are people that like playing an evil son of a ***** in the KOTOR games and MMO, are they bad people for choosing the bad options to execute and extort innocents?

In the end, people need to stop being outraged over the fiction they personally don't like while then playng out horrible acts in the fiction they do like because that's all it is: Fiction. It's not real, it's all the same virtual death, murder, rape, torture, etc, only our opinions on the fictional and illegal acts in the entertainment are different (which is why so many games have the 'moral choice' system btw)

So yes, it is hypocritical when someone complains about "killable children" mods in Fallout 3 and Skyrim to add realism is hypocritical when you can beat the homeless man dying of thirst outside towns to death with a pipe in Fallout 3 and don't say a word about how horrible that act is.

We're trying to apply real world morals, logic, thinking and laws to things that don't exist, which is insane to begin with and it only ends up giving a mob of people the idea they can start dictating what fictional things people can and can't create, which is already happening. I don't like rape either, but I ignore it if it isn't reality because I can, such as not going near those hentai rape games. All the complaints about those games did was advertize for them.

We need a "National Day of No Outrage". I'm starting to shut off anything that has anyone being offended about anything the last year or so.

I think the difference is that what people enjoy about games like GTA is the gameplay mechanics, the challenge, the ridiculous way they ragdoll all over the place, and unlike a rape game, they aren't getting a thrill out of the actual acts. Obviously I can't speak for everyone.

If that were true, then the developers didn't need to waste time and money using story to set the player up as an amoral criminal character or giving them a background at all. It's the fantasy of being a bad person who doesn't take shit from anyone, which makes those games successfull and there's nothing wrong with enjoying the fantasy of being a bad person because you know the difference between fantasy and reality.

I agree with this. While ragdolling an NPC is always fun, games like GTA are so successful because it offers a power fantasy you could never hope to reenact IRL. The fact that it is set in a realistic world only adds to its allure. Most of us are caged birds at heart

 

[ShadowStar42]

snip

I'm curious as to where you getting your numbers. As of 2011 the US Justice Department places a woman's odds of suffering a severe sexual assault in her lifetime as 1 in 6, way higher than the .072% chance you list. I suspect you may be taking from the FBI statistics on rape in 1995, where any given woman had about that proportion of women were raped, but that was in that year specifically and since we tend to see less rape among very young and very old women the percentages were high for many women in the middle..

 

[Grunt_Man11]

I disagree. If you ban rape and rape discussions and somehow remove it from life entirely, why not do the same for dentistry, dentists, everything to do with teeth? I mean, it's pretty traumatic, painful, everybody hates it... Or paper-cuts. Man, those hurt.
Death on the other hand is a final full stop, a big ending, there is nothing (as far as I know) beyond death. There are no chances to heal yourself emotionally and physically.

Tl;dr: Death-end, rape-pain, thus saying rape is NONO while death is ok is hypocrisy.

There are not enough *facepalm*s, or *facedesk*s, to cover how absurd this post is.

It is clear that you have no idea what it is like to be the victim of rape. The fact that you had the gall to take being the victim of an act so heinous that even hardened convicts are disgusted by it, and comparing it to getting a tooth pulled at a dentist and paper cuts is just plain vile!

Getting a tooth pulled at the dentist is NOT traumatic, period!
Getting a paper cut is NOT traumatic, period!

Read this article, read about what it is like to be a victim of rape, and shut the f*** up!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9766-The-R-Word.3

 

[heavystorm]

I think that murder is worse then rape because as many before me has said, it's the end, game over.

yes, maybe you don't feel anything after being murdered but you never get the chance as a rape victim to get over it, i mean people don't seem to understand what they are really talking about when they make that argument, death is THE END, you can't get over and learn to live with death, it's absolute and that is why i think murder is worse.

And the part of rape being being prolonged so it equal to torture and there for being worse then murder is complete bullshit, people don't die instantly as they do in games and movies, just think about this, being stabbed several times by a sharp object and then feeling how your life pour out of you over several minutes, where you have time to think about everything you wont do, everyone that you will be leaving behind.

Yes some murders are instant, but some rapes happen when the victim is under the influence of drugs and can only reflect on what happened after because THEY ARE FUCKING ALIVE.

Also isn't really any game out there that compares to rapelay in therms of murder, a game that would compare would be where you play a character planning to murder an innocent person in a way you choose.

 

[Loethlin]

1. He states that Women are unlikely to rape men. While based on definition this is true based on the FBI standards of Rape( Forced Penetration Sex). That does not remove women from doing never molesting or forcefully erecting a man. Women have and are capable of molesting and sexually violating males, but Women can not rape. They don't have the tools to do so.

I do have a tool for that. I keep it in my bedside table's drawer. It's pink, latex and I call it MIGHTY MAN NOODLE.

Of course, the point I'm trying to make here is that this definition of rape is silly and it should be changed, because, as you rightly say, women are perfectly capable of sexually violating men and other women alike.

So, apart from that, I generally agree with Jim. So yay. And all that.

(snip!) why not do the same for dentistry, dentists, everything to do with teeth? I mean, it's pretty traumatic, painful, everybody hates it... Or paper-cuts. Man, those hurt.

You... You MONSTER!

 

[saintdane05]

Completely off topic, but what's the game in the video thumbnail? I want to play that now...

 

[Lilani]

I think there are a few key misunderstandings.

1 is that all parties claiming rape are doing so truthfully. I mean this just isn't true. The definition of consent is something people are notoriously fickle with. A woman could say yes now, and still a year later bring you to court claiming the yes was forced.

2 our games don't even truly depict sex yet. Of course depicting a brutal sexual event is wrong when compared to it. How did we come to a point in gaming when murder was acceptable? We grew from the days of knock outs. It's progression (even if it's not positive).

I think rape is atrocious and Jim's points on it not being as bad as murder because "You don't relive it every day after." are spot on. Still once sex becomes more rampant in video games (the visual depiction anyway) I'm pretty sure rape will start showing up more as well.

1. By bringing up false rape claims, you are simply avoiding the real meat of the issue. The problem with bringing up rape isn't the people who made it up, it's the people who wish they made it up. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9766-The-R-Word]

2. What is your definition of "truly depict sex?" Subtle depictions like R-rated films, or full-on 3D porn? Because I'm pretty sure there are games that have done both.

I don't really see graphic visual representations of sex as a growing trend in games, though. Because like with movies, there is a point where things go from "rated R" to "X-rated." But no matter how gory a video game is, it will never be rated higher than M, just as movies which are simply gory are rated R.

I'm sure we will be seeing more of sex in games, perhaps not with full-contact polygon-on-polygon action, but rather just shown enough to fulfill the goal of the narrative (like Mass Effect). Though I think games still have a ways to go before being able to work with the topic of sex as consistently well as films. And I am certain rape is never going to be a casually represented thing in games, and neither should it be. Because as Jim pointed out, someone raping someone else is neither redeemable nor justifiable. You can justify murder, and you can even murder without a "victim," like in zombie games. But rape always has a victim, and it can never be glorified.

There's just no reason for it. There is no serious story you can tell with a protagonist who unapologetically rapes people, because if they rape people they will not be the protagonist. Perhaps there is a story in someone who does feel bad for what they did, but it would have to be a very compelling character and story, and depicting the rape outright would be the wrong way to tell a story like that.