Raping Female Characters Is Not Sexist

[Tiddles]

Really good phrasing OP and some great points there.

I agree with the "consequences need to be shown" but this can laden a game a an "issue" game which is probably why most games obfuscate rape. What creeps me out about the trailer is the titillation it seems meant to provoke.

Rape shouldn't be a marketing tool.

 

[xshadowscreamx]

should there be a spoiler warning on the thread???? i suppose if this is blowing up big it would be to hard to avoid.

 

[Keymik]

I think what people are misunderstanding are what the scene actually means. Which they have explained. Sure it's Laura with a thug who starts getting touchy touchy and which heavily implies he is most likely going to rape her. But the attempted rape is just the spark that starts out the scene, the motivation for the bandit to apprehend Laura, and she is forced to kill a human for the first time in her life. The rape is irrelevant here, it's the killing of a human that matters.. Which has flown right through peoples skulls because they seem to not give a shit about people getting killed in games anymore.

Also on another note as some seem to be forgetting that this isn't the Laura we know from the previous games, this is BEFORE she became the gunslinging adventurer. The trailer actually says it if you listened properly. And she looks very younger than usual.

Though to talk about the topic of rape is lazy writting. I have a few words someone once told about it ''Rape is only lazy writing if it's about a raped character and not about a character who gets raped''

 

[lunavixen]

you raised some good points, sexual assault and rape (or the attempt thereof) are not sexist, they are a tragic reality, and statistically, women are actually more likely to be raped by someone they know, rather than by strangers.

Male rape is also not treated with the respect and seriousness that it should be, one thing that doesn't help with all of the stigma surrounding rape, is that victims have a tendency to be ostracised by the community (especially in rural or smaller communities, where people are more likely to know both the victim and the offender) as well as the feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability, and this leads to drastic levels of underreporting. The lack of support services also does not help the victims, especially males who have suffered from sexual assault. The psychological effects of sexual assault are huge and the effects last.

Yes, alluding to rape in games is toeing a moral line, but i personally don't think it crosses it, there are several factors in the game that have to be taken into account, the ones that attacked Lara have likely not seen a woman in years and would have socially and morally regressed (think Lord Of The Flies). Though the scene itself largely seems to be more about Lara having to kill another human being for the first time, violence has become so mainstream in games it's now largely overlooked in comparison to attempted rape, which is hardly ever seen.

The fact that the attempted rape scene has been pushed into the limelight to stir up controversy is a little unsettling, though i wouldn't call it sexist.

Before you ask how I know all this, I studied this (among other subjects) during my Criminology degree.

 

[Zeldias]

While I won't agree that rape is carte blanche a bad storytelling mechanic, I think it is true that in American culture (as that's the one I can best comment on), rape and torture are frequently just used to score sympathy points. This is a culture where women are often anxious to terrified of being out alone at night for fear of assault, or even in their own homes alone. Rape or near-rape is an assault that the story needs to revolve around, in my opinion, given it's weight and the pervasiveness of the fear of such assault.

To just have Lara almost get raped because "Oh snaps, it's dangerous and gritty," is as trite as it is damaging. It devalues the horror and damage of the attack and devalues women's fears of it. It basically makes rape a much less serious thing than normal, especially since they're using it for advertising and Lara will probably be like "Phew," then get over it.

Sick of it.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Listen feminist we are so sorry its easier to rape women than men. That the most demeaning thing a woman can suffer is to be raped and it makes for a great story arc considering the character is question is one of the most bad ass female characters in history.

Croft the bad ass I can take care of myself gets raped. Her strong female role is shattered. It makes for a great story. Now if you played a male and went around raping women I can see that as something to get pissed about, but its not.

Get over yourselves. You don't see my complaining about how my sex is slaughtered by the thousands in nearly every video game.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Add rape, instant drama. It's not sexist, it's just lazy, overdone and boring unless you're going to do it properly. And they won't do it properly because it's fucking Tomb Raider not an epic drama.

Rape is overdone? I seem to have missed that in gaming.

I forgot it was cliche to have a rape attempt in games. Oh those wacky developers!.

It is when you're attempting to make your game somewhat movie like. Even then, its obvious that rape is getting more and more airtime in modern video games compared to the last decade or so. I mean, within the last few years, we had Dead Island (In which a supporting character is insinuated to have been raped, though Techland handled that about as well as they did game, poorly and with bad dialogue), Heavy Rain (In which Madison Paige is nearly raped in almost EVERY FUCKING PLAYABLE PORTION OF HER STORYLINE IN THE GAME!...Oh, and she was nearly killed and turned into a mannequin by some dude with a fetish problem in the DLC.) Mafia II ( Vito was nearly raped in Prison), and I'm sure there are a couple of others that I failed to name, but those are just some brief examples off the top of my head. Point is, writers are abusing the idea of rape more and more and that's both good and bad.

Its good in the sense that writers are branching out and bringing up more and more serious topics like hardcore drug addiction, rape and genocidal violence, even if 75% of the very same writers include it and merely poke at the issue with a ten foot pole and don't really ever address it afterwards. Take Assassin's Creed for example, which has a character that was abducted by the Borgia and then raped in a Roman prison. When you play a level and rescue that character from the Roman prison, they just say "No, she wasn't raped."

Its also bad because it brings out some of the worst in our community and I'm referring mainly to the sexual deviants. You know the ones. The guys who go "I bet she secretly enjoys it" when they see Vette from Swotor being electrocuted with the shock collar. The ones who go "She probably had it coming" when they saw Lara about to be raped in the trailer. The ones who- you know what, you understand. Point is....well I don't really have a point, its just really fucking creepy.