Jimquisition: Rape vs. Murder

[ReiverCorrupter]

snip

Good point. People are mixing "use common sense" advices with insensivity. Not surprising considering the theme.

[...snip...]​

My points:

1. Good manners seem to have be the central theme here, and the videogame and online worlds seem to be lacking it. You simply don't made heavy jokes with people you barely know, and even when you really know a person you just are aware of which toes you can or cannot step on.

2. The ESRB is usefull. It presents the themes to you. Also previews and reviews. Don't play the games that make you feel bad. Encourage genres, themes and characters that you think are under represented.

3. My fear. Censorship. A human brain is a scary thing. Sometimes I just want to go crazy, in a game or in daydreaming. I think the people who are over defensive about their right to use the R word think that they are being considered bad people or even outright rapists or murderers for simulating and thinking violence.

4. Murder and killing are power plays also. You hold power over the very existence of a person. Being a fight only proves that you were the "superior one". Being "justified" is a free pass to enjoy a nasty instinct.

Really people. The executions of Poseidon and Zeus in God of War 3 aren't heinous just because Kratos didn't stick his dick in them? The despair and screams of the beatings are really nasty.

Well, you should make a distinction between mere violence and sadism. I take the latter to be far more problematic than the former. Killing in a war game generally isn't that big of a deal. In games like CoD or Battlefield it is much more of a competition than anything else. Especially when you're playing online and realize that your enemies are just other players who re-spawn just like you and are concerned with getting points.

What you seem to be focused on is depictions of violence that seem to be intentionally designed to display pain or suffering that the player is encouraged to enjoy. But even in God of War the enemies are hardly innocent. As I said above, if you want to compare a violent game to a rape game you should compare it to the school shooter games. But when you do that you'll see that people have an almost equal aversion as they do to the rape simulator.

I too share your fear of censorship, but free speech, paradoxically, also allows people to complain about the content of other people's speech which they find offensive. It's only when they start trying to block people from speaking through SLAP suits or by passing legislation that it becomes problematic. As far as saying "rape" and other offensive things online goes, it's up to the company. You're paying for a service, which is a privilege, so your speech isn't protected.

 

[mjc0961]

Well hang on. If someone who has been raped would feel upset or damaged by playing a game full of rape... Why would they even play that game in the first place? I don't think "rape victims will feel bad if they play this" is a good reason to say those kinds of games shouldn't exist. That sort of thing comes down to personal responsibility: for the same reasons we shouldn't ban violent video games because lazy parents might buy them for their kids and complain when they see what's in the game, we shouldn't ban rape games because a rape victim might buy it and complain when they see what's in it. Especially considering that such games aren't something you're going to pick up in Walmart by accident: that's something you would have to specifically seek out if you wanted it. So as big an asshole as this will likely make me sound, I would have to look at any rape victim who goes and buys a rape game and then gets offended by it with the same scorn as I look at parents who buy their kids GTA or Call of Duty and then complain about all the violence. Sorry you went through such a traumatic experience and all, but next time, simply don't buy a game about rape if you don't want to play such games.

I don't know if i understood you right there but did you say rape is something
"Women just can't physically do", which is just wrong, of course they can force someone to sex as much as a men can do it.
Your next point however, that for the most part only women fear being raped and that it happens a lot more to women is true though.

Also, this. Women most certainly can physically rape both other women and men. Is it as common as a man raping a woman? Most certainly not. But that doesn't make it impossible.

That said, I would have figured that it's painfully obvious why rape and murder get treated differently in games. Obviously rape is far more taboo and cannot be justified like murder can. It's okay to kill those dudes in Call of Duty because they're the enemy soldiers. It's okay to bury that guy alive in Saints Row because that asshole killed your friend's girlfriend and then came to start shit at the funeral. It's okay to rape that person in that other game because... Oh wait, shit, it's not okay. You can't make that okay. Even if that theoretical victim was the most evil person on the planet, you still can't make that okay.

That said, not that I ever want to play such games, but I still think they have a right to exist. Like I said above... Just don't fucking buy them if you don't want to play them. If other people out there want to buy and enjoy Rapelay, let them. It's not going to hurt you in any way.

Unless you're one of those people who wants to try that "BUT IT'S TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO DO RAPES OH NOEZ BAN IT" nonsense, in which case I'm going to say that such a thought is just as stupid as GTA and Call of Duty teaching you how to kill people. Games like this don't teach you how to do anything. GTA IV doesn't teach you how to steal cars and murder cops, Call of Duty doesn't teach you how to be the best soldier in the universe, Mass Effect 2 doesn't teach you how to make every store on the Citadel your favorite, Forza Motorsport doesn't teach you how to race high performance cars, Trauma Center doesn't teach you how to be a doctor, and Rapelay doesn't teach you how to rape girls. We as gamers will stand up against any stupid parent organization or government official that tries to say anything but that last one, and I dare someone to make a counterpoint to my "Rapelay doesn't teach you to rape girls" assertion that also can't be used to say that GTA IV actually does teach you how to steal cars and kill cops and so on.

 

[LazyAza]

As a freelance artist who prides them self on being willing to draw just about anything I guess it says a lot that the one thing I would never dare depict, even "jokingly" is rape. Not just because I find it as horrible as everyone else but because I have plenty of female friends who I would feel I am gravely disrespecting by doing so.

It doesn't stop some people from still wanting to commission me for said imagery and while I don't lash out at them for such requests I certainly give them a short speech as to why they really shouldn't treat the subject so lightly.

 

[viranimus]

Ill go ahead and disagree.

If you can justify murder, you can justify anything.

I say this as the perspective as someone literally inches away from being murdered. And its no surprise to me that the individual who tried to kill me, was also committing statutory rape on at the time my 15 year old potential step daughter.

And he rationalized trying to kill me because he thought he was doing the lords will.

I think there is a major distinction there. There are differing levels of rationalization. But if you look at real world examples you can find many rapists who would never conceive of murder, but you find a lot less murderers who would have a problem with rape.

Im sorry I do not buy the whole noble kill theory. There is no such thing. There is never a time when it is a noble thing to take a life into your own hands and snuff it out. What there IS however are mechanisms of public absolution of that crime, when OTHERS absolve you of guilt for whatever reason. But internally that stain can never be wiped off no matter how noble your intentions may have been. It will always remain with you and in essence become a part of you.


So It bears repeating. If you can justify murder, you can justify anything, including rape.

 

[Loethlin]

warning: Rape case.

Spoiler

Heard about a woman who did this to a girl using a rose.

That's revolting in the most painful, thorny way.
Can't believe I just made a shitty pun about this, I'm going to hell.

My point is that no matter what tools you use, abuse is abuse. The trauma rape victims suffer is absolutely horrible. Some of them blame themselves, too. Can you imagine that? Blaming yourself for being a victim of such savagery?

Other general thoughts...
Why we're not even flinching when we shoot mooks in some game? Or when we see an action hero wasting hordes of I don't know, mobsters, drug dealers or what have you in an action flick? Or why R.A. Salvatore's fanboys choke the chicken over Drizzt's fight scenes?
Faceless mooks. Countless opponents with no face, no personality, no nothing, just an obstacle that smells delicious when fried.
Overwhelmed with the quantity we just don't have the time to think. All we DO think is, "It's just a video game!" It's completely desensitised in all these media sometimes, we just don't have time to consider it.

On the other hand, both torture and rape are all up front and personal. It takes time. Time we actually use to think about it. It becomes more horrible just because of this.

 

[DirtyJunkieScum]

I had something to say along the lines that while I considered murder to be worse than rape there is a difference between killing (warfare etc) and murder (with some overlap and grey areas that I'm not going to go into because it'd get away from the main point), and was going to say there are very virtually no games I could think of where you straight up murder innocent people who have no will to fight you or effective means to defend themselves, then I thought of the GTA games...so I suppose I'd better take a bit more of a look at that then...

I should by rights consider gunning down virtual innocent civvies just as bad if not worse than raping virtual japanese schoolgirls, but I don't. If they happened IRL I'd certainly consider the mass murder of innocent civilians to be the worse crime but in the context of a video game it seems different.

I suppose it's partly the level of individuality that the victims have. The civvies in GTA and what have you are part of a crowd of often identical cardboard cutouts, one of many in a game in which you mow down mooks with abandon, they don't have a personality or the ability to interact with you in any way, they don't feel like people, they are just unfeeling humanoid automata. If they were given the level of detail of a major NPC in an RPG, made to be individuals with lots of conversation options, then that would personalise them and make me feel a lot worse about it. I am guessing here but I imagine the point of a rape fantasy game is that they do feel like real people to an extent, there would be no point otherwise.

The way in which each crime is carried out is also a factor, rape is by its very nature up close and personal (and I'm guessing the up close and personal bit is what rape games focus on) whereas firearms (or the general ease of killing in a videogame) in GTA can divorce you from the proceedings somewhat. Again, if the killing was much closer and took time it would make me feel a lot worse about it. If instead of pulling a trigger at a distance you had to restrain or otherwise incapacitate your victim enough to be able to get in and repeatedly knife them in the stomach, chest and throat while they feebly try pushing you off and plead for their life I think the body count would go right down. As an aside the Escapist Podcast discussion of The Last of Us sounded like the game went a bit in this direction in some places.

I suppose what I am saying is that if there was an actual game in which the main point was to go around murdering innocent everyday people and revelling in their slow agonising deaths then it probably would be looked on as badly as games like Rapelay, if not worse.

 

[I.Muir]

My opinion
1: Rape is always wrong there is no grey area and nobody does anything that attracts rapists that can justify those actions
2: Whilst rapists are overpowering one individual they still come across as being weak lesser people for some reason
3: People recover from being raped, they don't recover from being murdered so I believe murder is worse especially since I think there is diddly squat after death
4: Murder is trivialized beyond belief and should be a bigger problem than it is
5: That being said I do believe in retribution and do not regard some killings as murder which is unjustified
6: That last point is probably somewhat contradictory but there not much choice if you don't feel like becoming an activist of sorts
7: As you said rape is more personal but so can murder and that's when it gets really wrong

 

[emeraldrafael]

I think the problem is that rape isnt as tasteful as murder. now, there are games where you can just flat out unjustifiably murder someone (you cant tell me in Saints Row, GTA, even GoW only the crazies just open into a crowd of bystanders just for the fan of watching them scatter), but most of those games arent exactly making a tasteful plot.

I wouldnt mind rape in a game, as long as it is tasteful. I dont think it can be done as a protagonist though, unless youre doing one of those good evil games where you want to be evil. Then maybe I can see. Like a moral choice option where one is to not rape a person when given the opportunity, but in a tasteful sort of way (not you just grab someone off the street and have a go at it).

 

[sumanoskae]

I would generally agree. I think people have the right to make their art about whatever they want, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I don't have a problem with games using rape as part of a story, take the new Tomb Raider for example; you're not supposed to enjoy the idea, the point isn't for it to be fun, it's being used as a part of the story. I think that's fine.

 

[mjc0961]

I guess I should have finished watching before posting, because now I've had another "wait, hold on a minute" moment.

Seems like you completely missed the point of the Dave Chappelle stand-up there. He wasn't saying anything about rape victims. He was talking about women dressing like "whores" and then complaining when guys check them out and hit on them, not about women dressing like "whores" and then complaining when they get raped. HUGE misrepresentation of his joke. He says absolutely nothing about rape and is not directly or indirectly saying that rape is a rape victim's fault at all.

Here's the entire joke:

Again, can't find the part where he indirectly says that it's a rape victim's fault if they dress "like a slut"... Because that part doesn't exist. Drunk guys hitting on a girl wearing "slutty" clothing in a bar is on a completely different planet from assholes who say it's a woman's fault she got raped if she was wearing "slutty" clothing when it happened (and no, wearing slutty clothing does not make it the woman's fault she got raped; hell, it probably has nothing to do with why she was raped. it's a power thing, not "hey she's sexy now I'm horny I'm going to rape her").

And now to watch the rest instead of posting this, just in case.

... Nope, that's it.

 

[chadachada123]

I see no difference between torture and rape, making much of the video irrelevant to me.

Still, the video is pretty good and makes some good points.

 

[shadowstriker86]

The sad part is, people have to be reminded not to rape. Kinda tells you somthin aboot humans doesn't it?

 

[Steelcreed]

Well, you should make a distinction between mere violence and sadism. I take the latter to be far more problematic than the former. Killing in a war game generally isn't that big of a deal. In games like CoD or Battlefield it is much more of a competition than anything else. Especially when you're playing online and realize that your enemies are just other players who re-spawn just like you and are concerned with getting points.

What you seem to be focused on is depictions of violence that seem to be intentionally designed to display pain or suffering that the player is encouraged to enjoy. But even in God of War the enemies are hardly innocent. As I said above, if you want to compare a violent game to a rape game you should compare it to the school shooter games. But when you do that you'll see that people have an almost equal aversion as they do to the rape simulator.

Actually, think about those "realistic, military shooters" for a moment. Whether they display the violence up close or not - and they provide convenient killcams for you to do that anyway - it's still glorifying it via the metric tonnes of military hardware provided to accomplish your bloody goal, especially when you're allowed to unleash mass destruction through missiles, helicopters or nukes. That's not any the less impersonal, just further away. Would argue footage of bombing runs in the Middle East is any the less gruesome or triumphal? And are you really saying that because the enemies in God of War are monsters, that justifies the amount of pain you are clearly causing them. That's a slippery slope argument my friend.

 

[Sylveria]

This is a culture that hasn't grown-up enough to handle sex or sexuality, at all, without completely losing their shit. The idea of rape being in video games would make the majority of gamers heads explode.

Just remember, kids. Playing something like Lollipop Chainsaw or any anime/moe themed game means you're a misogynistic rapist pedophile .. but racking up 1million CoD kills is totally fine.

 

[That_Sneaky_Camper]

Where I would draw the line is where we actually control a game play section where we make the character commit rape in a quick time event, but I would be OK if rape was featured in a game as something that was dealt with in the context of the story. If rape is part of a character's backstory or it happens to them during the course of a game then I am OK with that because rape is not just something we should sweep under the rug like it doesn't happen. That is akin to the decades that we kept quiet about what sex was around our children and when it came time for them to handle it they had no model to work off to know what to do, silence is not the solution but handling the topic in a mature and meaningful way is.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

What's this? Jim's being modest?!?!

*Hmph*

Well in all seriousness, no, no rape is not as bad as killing, ever. I thought everyone knew this? Physically and mentally victimising someone, leaving them traumatised for the rest of their life, potentially giving them STD's and/or making them pregnant is worse than stabbing them in the head.

I would take the stab in the head over that other shit any day.

 

[Flight]

I think the issue with rape vs. murder is because there is never any logical reason or excuse for rape. Even killing can happen in self-defense, defense of others, or as an accident. With rape, that can't happen, for what should be obvious reasons.

 

[mad825]

Well in all seriousness, no, no rape is not as bad as killing, ever. I thought everyone knew this? Physically and mentally victimising someone, leaving them traumatised for the rest of their life, potentially giving them STD's and/or making them pregnant is worse than stabbing them in the head.

I would take the stab in the head over that other shit any day.

And yet if someone murdered you. People who were close to you would be traumatised for the rest of their life.

Remember what happened to Bruce Wayne?

 

[Yabu]

Rape and Abuse are two sides of the same coin, and playable abuse occurs in a lot of AAA titles. For example, playing the evil path in many RPG's put the player character in scenarios where they are exerting power on victims through verbal or physical abuse, sometimes even murder. I would argue that bullying like this is very similar to rape, in that it is an abusive form of dominance. Either verbaly or violently, players have the ability to abuse NPC's they come in contact with and in some cases, act that way with NPC Team mates, which escallates the abuse to a whole other category. The fact is, abusive bullying is very similar to domestic abuse or even rape, in that it can leave victims going to extreme measures to deal with their pain.

So, why are some of these Video Games so highly rated in the market? I would argue it is because you seldom find black and white problems/solutions in the real world and everybody has skeletons in their closet. Meaning, interesting characters need to be multidimensional. Lastly, I think it is because these games have excellent writers who are able to tactfully handle these issues.

Engaging in any form of entertainment that deals in absolutisms becomes dull to a very large demographic and these people seek out other entertainment that dive into the grey territory. Why do you think Law & Order was on TV so long.

So, Can rape be handled in the same way as playable abuse in a video game? I think so, but the writers would have to be very good and it would be important that it was not trivialized. To be honest, I think material that dives between black and white is usually the most rewarding if it is done correctly. I personally think that some of the games shown in the Jim video that engage in rape, deal with it in an imature way that angers the audience, rightfully so. What scares me is you can find games that deal with murder in much the same way where the audience sees no issue with it.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Well in all seriousness, no, no rape is not as bad as killing, ever. I thought everyone knew this? Physically and mentally victimising someone, leaving them traumatised for the rest of their life, potentially giving them STD's and/or making them pregnant is worse than stabbing them in the head.

I would take the stab in the head over that other shit any day.

And yet if someone murdered you. People who were close to you would be traumatised for the rest of their life.

And yet if someone did murder me, my family and friends wouldn't have felt victimised and they wouldn't have had to worry about STD's and or pregnancy either. Murder is the lesser of two evils.