The R Word

[Helmholtz Watson]

Why are you assuming that those who have survived attempted murder can get over hearing the word "murder" online, but a person who has survived attempted rape can't get over hearing the word "rape" online?

Let's be fair here. There are a LOT more people who have been raped than have come close to being murdered. In terms of offense/hurt/whatever per word usage, you're getting way more with the word ?rape?. Whether that inspires you to use the term more or less in a personal choice, but don't be surprised if people grade you on it.

If your trying not to hurt the feelings of others, why not be considerate to everybody? I assume there are not nearly as many Japanese-Americans as there are African-Americans on Xbox live, but that doesn't mean that if I'm trying to avoid hurting somebodies feelings I should just avoid saying "******" but feel fine about saying "Jap".

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Of course not, that would be a dick move. But then, I wouldn't expect you to offer the same tenderness and sympathy to the friends and family of a rape victim as I would expect you to offer to the victim themselves.

Why not? Why would I treat their friends and family with less care than the victim? Both are suffering.

In the same vein, I'm not going to offer you the same sympathy I would to somebody who personally suffered such a massive loss. It still counts, it still deserves sympathy, but I think we can agree that the wound is not quite as raw, and requires a little less care.

No we can't agree. If you wouldn't tell my grandmother a holocaust joke, then don't tell me one.

But does he have the responsibility to make sure he doesn't offend somebody?

No, why would he have that responsibility? I don't have to like his joke, my grandmother has the right to curse him out in hebrew, but he still has the right to say it.

 

[adamselene]

If your trying not to hurt the feelings of others, why not be considerate to everybody? I assume there are not nearly as many Japanese-Americans as there are African-Americans on Xbox live, but that doesn't mean that if I'm trying to avoid hurting somebodies feelings I should just avoid saying "******" but feel fine about saying "Jap".

The problem with "trying not to hurt the feelings of others" in some absolute sense is that it's actually impossible. People keep coming up with new terminology they want changed. And, e.g., I was at a LGBT* conference where the keynote speaker spent a few minutes trying to specifically recognize every particular group he could, and people still took offense. And in any case, how do you differentiate between someone who is actually hurt, and someone who's just trying to make a point?

The solution for this is for both sides to rethink the way they interact. In the networking world, we might summarize this as: "Be conservative in what you say, and liberal in what you accept."

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

The problem with "trying not to hurt the feelings of others" in some absolute sense is that it's actually impossible. People keep coming up with new terminology they want changed. And, e.g., I was at a LGBT* conference where the keynote speaker spent a few minutes trying to specifically recognize every particular group he could, and people still took offense. And in any case, how do you differentiate between someone who is actually hurt, and someone who's just trying to make a point?

The solution for this is for both sides to rethink the way they interact. In the networking world, we might summarize this as: "Be conservative in what you say, and liberal in what you accept."

I understand that it is hard to make everybody happy, but again then how do you choose who you appease or not? Do you appease the majority and ignore the feeling of the minority? Or do you do something else?

I mean surely you can agree that the feeling of those who have lost family members do to gang related violence are people who's feelings should be considered if we are going to care about the feelings of others. Correct?

 

[Imrix]

Actually, the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have been shown to elicit symptoms similar to those of the individuals who went through the events, including PTSD. Obviously it's not identical to going through it, but the psychological trauma wrought on the child can be very severe.

Similar, certainly, and I have nothing but sympathy and respect for what the people who grew up at the knee of such stories must have gone through. But of equal intensity? I'm unconvinced.

The precise point at which I abandoned this ridiculous debate.

Don't be a drama queen. Mars is smaller than Jupiter, that doesn't mean Mars is small. Something can be important without rendering less important things insignificant.

 

[axlryder]

Actually, the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have been shown to elicit symptoms similar to those of the individuals who went through the events, including PTSD. Obviously it's not identical to going through it, but the psychological trauma wrought on the child can be very severe.

Similar, certainly, and I have nothing but sympathy and respect for what the people who grew up at the knee of such stories must have gone through. But of equal intensity? I'm unconvinced.

The precise point at which I abandoned this ridiculous debate.

Don't be a drama queen. Mars is smaller than Jupiter, that doesn't mean Mars is small. Something can be important without rendering less important things insignificant.

point is that it's a serious emotional trigger. and you "ranking" the intensity of pain as if you have any kind of authority or credibility in that regard is absolutely ridiculous. That may be your subjective opinion, but it has no real bearing on the pain suffered by others, nor is it rooted in firsthand knowledge (unless, of course, you've been tortured, raped, almost killed several different ways, etc.). That is in response to the comment that Entenzahn was replying to, btw.

 

[Imrix]

point is that it's a serious emotional trigger. and you "ranking" the intensity of pain as if you have any kind of authority or credibility in that regard is absolutely ridiculous. That may be your subjective opinion, but it has no real bearing on the pain suffered by others, nor is it rooted in firsthand knowledge (unless, of course, you've been tortured, raped, almost killed several different ways, etc.). That is in response to the comment that Entenzahn was replying to, btw.

Thing is, on some level I have to rank it. I can't respond to every traumatic event as if it's THE worst thing that could possibly occur. I'm open to the idea that my rankings are wrong, but I have to make them at some point or I'll have no idea how to respond to any particular incident.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Meh. I'll throw in my two cents:

Um... good luck trying to change Xbox live. I can understand where people like the author are coming from, but if you're offended by that sort of stuff you should probably just stay in your party chat and not enter game chat.

I've got to question the sanity of someone who is deeply hurt by the term 'rape' exposing themselves to Xbox live. It's a vile place, but your exposure to it is voluntary, and it is very easy to shut yourself off from what people are saying in-game. (Aside from those who are obnoxious enough to actually send you a message, in which case you can report them.)

I'm not trying to excuse that sort of behavior. What I am saying is that it isn't going to change, and at a certain point it's up to the individual to not put themselves in traumatic situations that they have the power to easily avoid. It shouldn't be that much of an issue if you actually use the tools that M$ gives you. Unlike real life, Xbox live gives you all sorts of options to block other people's speech.

So while there is every reason to criticize people who use such offensive speech, it's hardly the threat that people make it out to be. You're the one who signs in to Xbox live, you're the one who puts in the disk, you're the one who puts on the headset. Do you have a right not to be offended? No. No one has a right not to be offended.

To be perfectly honest, I can say some vile things myself... but I'm always in a party and the only people who can hear my vile jokes are my friends who enjoy them. So in the interest of fairness, if I'm going to suggest to people like the author that they should utilize one of the many resources to block communications on Xbox live, I must also suggest to those who enjoy such offensiveness that they do so within a party where they won't offend anyone. If you're actually out to offend and harass strangers then you're clearly an asshole.

 

[IKWerewolf]

This is a really tough issue to deal with. To be able to talk about it after going through the expierience must be one of the hardest things to do. Life sometimes makes me feel sick.

Very few people ever willingly talk about an expierience like this but to put it out in public like this... every respect to this guy for talking about it.

 

[disappointed]

Take Japan for example. ITs almost normal to see pornovideos which feature rape. There are tons of games were you rape little girls in trains or school buildings. There are games and movies about rapeclubs and so on. Stuff you will never ever see in western games. Infact people arguing that these kind of openess prevents rape acts. Just look how Japan has not only one of the lowest criminal records but also less rape victims and attempts world wide.

I would say that "people [are] arguing..." is not a strong enough level of proof for a relaxing of our treatment of rape in popular media. There may be any number of other factors at play. Also, that doesn't address the issues talked about in the article, i.e. the effect of such media on victims. Assuming rape media were proven to cause a significant reduction in offending, that would have to be weighed against any undesirable consequences first. But it is something worth studying.

Actually you have crime statistics for it but people can still argue that most rape victims dont go to the police or report these crimes because shame plays a very big role in the japanese society.

As for in western games. I am just saying that you should not make it a tabootopic. people need to be aware of such things. And silence about this will not help anyone. Even the victims themself. Even if its hard for these people alking about such events will help these people to to overcome thee traumas at least a bit.

I think we're basically in agreement then. I have no problem with developers taking an intelligent and sensitive approach to the issue. What's got everyone talking about it right now is the rather crass use of rape as a plot device in the new Tomb Raider. When developers tackle subjects they don't properly understand, people are liable to take issue with them. The more sensitive the topic, the more seriously they should take their responsibilities.

 

[axlryder]

point is that it's a serious emotional trigger. and you "ranking" the intensity of pain as if you have any kind of authority or credibility in that regard is absolutely ridiculous. That may be your subjective opinion, but it has no real bearing on the pain suffered by others, nor is it rooted in firsthand knowledge (unless, of course, you've been tortured, raped, almost killed several different ways, etc.). That is in response to the comment that Entenzahn was replying to, btw.

Thing is, on some level I have to rank it. I can't respond to every traumatic event as if it's THE worst thing that could possibly occur. I'm open to the idea that my rankings are wrong, but I have to make them at some point or I'll have no idea how to respond to any particular incident.

Obviously ranking it is your prerogative, but this, to me, is more about being conscientious of the feelings of others. That means that not casually flinging around words like murder and torture similarly to how you wouldn't throw around the word rape. Hell, what if you're playing a non violent game and you say "dude, you murdered that guy" or "that guy murdered you", when the guy you're talking to is a vet who's done things or had things happen to him that he never wants to think about. The kind of things people I knew have killed themselves over. I'm sure saying something like that could really hurt somebody.

 

[adamselene]

I understand that it is hard to make everybody happy, but again then how do you choose who you appease or not? Do you appease the majority and ignore the feeling of the minority? Or do you do something else?

There are so many ways to look at that question...

You could go with the strictly personal view: Does it benefit me more to do one thing than the other? If it causes harm to one person, but other people like it when I say that, maybe I should say it anyway because it's more beneficial to me? This is a pretty selfish view, but some people believe it.

You could go with the highly sensitive view: If one person doesn't like it, then I should never say it. This is actually much weirder than it sounds. E.g., I have an asexual friend who feels like she's hounded by people about the subject, and doesn't want to hear people discussing sex. Other people wince at even the mention of rape, even if it's a serious topic of discussion. It's not reasonable to prevent people from communicating at all.

I think of it more as a set of metrics:

Is someone here actually offended by this (which I might know from prior discussion or because they just said so)? Is someone likely to be offended? Is their offense personal or projected? Is it related to me, or to the topic in general? Do we have previous agreements about discussing offensive things? Is this a place/situation where boundaries are specifically lifted? Would not being able to use the term prevent me from communicating something of value? If so, what is the relative value of the potential harm versus the lost communication?

Or from the other side:

How offended am I at that? Did that person intend to offend me? Do they realize it offended me? Are they offending other people? If my offense related to that specific person, or what they're saying? Is there some agreement under which it's not appropriate to object? Will my objection interfere with valuable communication, banter, or just a stupid joke?

You can't always answer some of those things precisely, but if you think about those metrics, the answer is usually pretty obvious.

But then most people--including me--are occasionally assholes anyway. And this is why I disagree strongly with the OP. No matter how hard you try, you will never stamp that out--you'll just make people hate you for trying. If you're going to get along in the real world, you have to allow some things to bounce off. There is plenty of intentional offense to go around (have you *watched* any U.S. politics recently??) without getting in people's faces about things they didn't intend.

 

[subtlefuge]

Rape is a word just like killed, murdered, starving, beaten, and genocide are words. There is no reason why the word rape should be treated like something special while the words I mentioned get an ok.

The grand majority of the Western World has trivialized starving. Violent video games by their very nature have trivialized murder, kill, and beaten. Why does sexual violence need to be brought into the picture for completely unrelated reasons? It doesn't. You don't need to make the word 'rape' mean nothing, because it fucking means something to the people who have been raped, and have to live with that for the rest of their lives. If you make a joke out of it, who's going to come forward to be laughed at?

And what of the family members of people who were murdered or who starved to death?

Starvation is an epidemic, murder is a statistic, rape is personal. If you really don't see a difference, there's no hope for you.

Also, I think it's ridiculous that we use 'murder' and 'starving' so flippantly, but each of those are entirely different issues from each other, and nowhere near as big of a deal as using 'rape' out of context.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

You can't always answer some of those things precisely, but if you think about those metrics, the answer is usually pretty obvious.

What is the "obvious" answer? You seem to have given options but not really expressed what is the best procedure.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Starvation is an epidemic, murder is a statistic, rape is personal. If you really don't see a difference, there's no hope for you.

Also, I think it's ridiculous that we use 'murder' and 'starving' so flippantly, but each of those are entirely different issues from each other, and nowhere near as big of a deal as using 'rape' out of context.

Thank you Joseph Stalin [http://reason.com/blog/2009/01/07/the-death-of-one-man-is-a-trag], but murder is a personal thing that happens to people.

 

[subtlefuge]

Starvation is an epidemic, murder is a statistic, rape is personal. If you really don't see a difference, there's no hope for you.

Also, I think it's ridiculous that we use 'murder' and 'starving' so flippantly, but each of those are entirely different issues from each other, and nowhere near as big of a deal as using 'rape' out of context.

Thank you Joseph Stalin [http://reason.com/blog/2009/01/07/the-death-of-one-man-is-a-trag], but murder is a personal thing that happens to people.

Wait, so you can only empathize with dead people's feelings?

Murder is something that happens that tragically cuts a life short of its natural course. By extension, the victim is you know, dead. They generally don't have a long time to be traumatized by their death.

Witnessing a murder on the other hand could leave someone very traumatized, but that's more like torture, which brings us full circle back to rape.

 

[XDravond]

Hard to read and heavy but good.
I behave in the chat online only in the rarest of cases I use any "curse"-like word, but I admit I have used words like "baserape" on occasions but never thought about it. Now I might think about it a bit more.

Rape is something we don't need whether it's virtual or real, both are bad and we don't need to glorify it in any way.

And I also think Escapist were an interesting choice of forum for this article, and a good choice.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Starvation is an epidemic, murder is a statistic, rape is personal. If you really don't see a difference, there's no hope for you.

Also, I think it's ridiculous that we use 'murder' and 'starving' so flippantly, but each of those are entirely different issues from each other, and nowhere near as big of a deal as using 'rape' out of context.

Thank you Joseph Stalin [http://reason.com/blog/2009/01/07/the-death-of-one-man-is-a-trag], but murder is a personal thing that happens to people.

Wait, so you can only empathize with dead people's feelings?

Murder is something that happens that tragically cuts a life short of its natural course. By extension, the victim is you know, dead. They generally don't have a long time to be traumatized by their death.

Witnessing a murder on the other hand could leave someone very traumatized, but that's more like torture, which brings us full circle back to rape.

So then you would be against a person using the word "torture" on Xbox Live?

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

My opinion is that an adult would have better things to do than to judge other people's use of "inappropriate vocabulary". If I feel that somebody is trying to offend me on purpose on the internet I walk away, ignore or mock them.

I think we may be mis-communicating on the judging stance but it's close enough, I think it's tactless and often given the context not the best choice of word in the circumstances. If you believe the word is carrying a different connotation when you use it I find it awkward and would rather not hear it but not going to actively object. Except with my usual response which I've said a few times about censorship, adult, etc.

See, that's what I take issue with. I brought up "Murder", "Torture" and "Castration". Is there a threshold that determines what makes a (contextually) inappropriate word or topic? When X people say that something is a no-go it counts? Where is that threshold? Is it "common sense"? That would be convenient, since it would imply that anybody who disagrees is an idiot.

I don't respect the numbers argument. IMO an issue isn't automatically more or less important when more or less people are affected by it. Practically speaking I know that there are hot-button issues that you have to be careful about since you run at a higher risk of causing a ruckus. At the same time people have to acknowledge that some words like "rape" and "******" are slowly becoming internet slang and are usually not intended to offend rape victims or homosexuals. Unless you stop this by force (which I would vehemently oppose) you will probably have to learn to deal with it and accept that words constantly change their meanings and usage.

I'm going to be honest, I don't think murder, torture or castration are OK things to shout at a stranger you just beat at a video-game. Murder is lowest on that as if you're playing, say, Mortal Kombat it's less a crass insult and more a blunt statement of events. I'm going to avoid saying common sense but the threshold should probably be where you'll cause emotional distress to anybody far surpassing the standard impact of that word. If you threaten to castrate someone it's unpleasent for anyone, if you threaten to castrate someone who once had (hypothetically here as i'm stretching) a bad encounter with a roving serial killer who was intent on severing scrotums with a blowtorch, that is decidely more unpleasent. If you know for a fact it's going to upset someone then don't say it, if it's just an accident then it's not exactly OK but if you just apologise for being unaware it should be fine. Violently claiming it's the offended party's fault is, at least to me, not the appropriate social response.

And... I don't know what to say to not believing the numbers argument. It's kind of just there, admittedly it isn't perfect and I can think of a number of times the Status Quo had to be changed around (Civil Rights, Suffragette's) but it's not exactly a bad benchmark, if it effects a maximum of people negatively we should avoid it. I'm also agreeing that words DO change, Gay and Marriage being two which have suitably evolved and everyone harping on at the old meaning of marriage still piss me off to hell and back since the old meaning of Gay was 'Man who slept with lots of women" so if we're using OLD versions of words no-one has a problem.

The problem is that new meanings have to supplant the old ones first, if a word has both an innocuous and criminal meaning it's first of all confusing and second of all more than a little unfair to tell victims of the criminal offence that the word has changed. If 'Rape' came to mean, dominate at a video-game, first and the crime of grievous sexual assault came to be called, I dunno, GSA then yeah, it'd have a new meaning but as it stands those two examples (Rape and Fag) were being used in the sense of their common definitions but have been worn down by over-use to have alternate meanings. Which is fine, in that context, it's just that it doesn't apply in all contexts. Case in point, Cockney Rhyming Slang, isn't all that popular state-side. Games are a lot more inclusive now so a lot of internet slang is just going to sound like regular abuse rather than an in-joke which, again, is why it needs context in whom you're speaking to.

If the words new meanings supplanted the old ones naturally I'd accept it, but at the moment the common definition is the one a majority of people (this will be tricky without the numbers argument) will be aware of and the ones most likely to be affected.

 

[subtlefuge]

Starvation is an epidemic, murder is a statistic, rape is personal. If you really don't see a difference, there's no hope for you.

Also, I think it's ridiculous that we use 'murder' and 'starving' so flippantly, but each of those are entirely different issues from each other, and nowhere near as big of a deal as using 'rape' out of context.

Thank you Joseph Stalin [http://reason.com/blog/2009/01/07/the-death-of-one-man-is-a-trag], but murder is a personal thing that happens to people.

Wait, so you can only empathize with dead people's feelings?

Murder is something that happens that tragically cuts a life short of its natural course. By extension, the victim is you know, dead. They generally don't have a long time to be traumatized by their death.

Witnessing a murder on the other hand could leave someone very traumatized, but that's more like torture, which brings us full circle back to rape.

So then you would be against a person using the word "torture" on Xbox Live?

Torture's not as pervasive, but I'm sure there are people out there who have to live with it, and are haunted by that.

Still, there's another issue of how using 'rape' on Xbox Live could contribute to people not reporting rapes for fear of ridicule, but from this point on I won't use "torture" on Xbox Live.