What an awful thing...
There is a lot of controversey about a Japanese game called "Rapelay" which, among other things, allows the player to rape and molest theoretical women in the game.
Now, before I go any further in this line, I don't want anyone to even THINK I condone this kind of behavior, nor do I want to see or touch this game.
What I want to address actually isn't the game at all, it's our culture.
It worries me that people want to villify Japanese for this game... No one villifies people for shooting virtual people, no one villifies people for stealing virtual cars (Okay, Grand Theft Auto got some heat... but it was never really bad until they had a SEX scene!)...
Sometimes a fantasy is just a fantasy...
Why is it that when a person fantasizes about raping a woman, it's instantly deviant behavior and everyone KNOWS that they WILL rape a woman at some point...
But when a person fantasizes about a new car no one expects them to actually STEAL one...
Is it because "normal" people don't have drives to hurt women?
That might actually be so; Though I have never entertained even the smallest notion of hurting a woman, I HAVE entertained the notion of hitting someone with a long stick...
And, really, hitting someone with a Japanese long staff... or even worse (And I have done this), shooting someone with an arrow from my Kyudo bow (Yeah, very un-zen of me...), this doesn't make a single person worry that I really WILL hurt someone with my bow...
In fact, people would probably laugh, pat me on the back, and say "Yeah he/she IS a real jerk!" As if they understand...
But, people, I am still (Technically) fantisizing about killing someone, which is still a fantasy just as morally corrupt as fantasizing about rape... isn't it?
Again, I certainly won't kill anyone with my bow (It's VERY uncool... and not so good for the other guy), I will resolve my issues with him/her in a normal professional way, only imagining about the arrow piercing various organs.
So, what is it about rape that makes this fantasy so much worse?
Is it the fact that the fantisizer is imagining hurting a person? Or is it hurting a woman?
As opposed to my fantasy which only involves the targets' life oozing away? (Actually, in this hurty fantasies, I end up being such a wus, the targets of my agression never actually hurt or die... they just go "Gee I wish I had known you were so awesome with a bow... I'll let you do your project now..." I usually am so cool, the arrow does this wicked Robin Hood thing and pins their clothes to a tree... But for the sake of this argument, pretend that it's actually violent and bloody...)
What about fantasies that do NOT involve rape, but involve something "perverse", like public nudity (Has any male out there NOT watched a tv show and seen some gorgeous starlet on the red carpet and mentally undressed her, leaving her exposed?)... if you worried that every man who had that fantasy was going to jump over the ropes and strip some poor actress naked... you'd just lock all men away...
So, is it a combination of violence AND perversion? Public nudity is pretty perverse, and shooting someone with an arrow is pretty violent...
Well, here's a test: what if I made a game where people shoot naked women with arrows?
(Okay... Actually, that sounds awful!)
Either way I think the point is: most people fantasize about all kinds of things, and they never, ever do them... only a very small percentage fantasize about doing things and they actually DO them... And honestly, that percentage doesn't need help acting out their terrible fantasies...
I think that just because I envision some cute girl without her clothes on ( I AM male)- I think you can still safely sit near me if you are female...
And perhaps, just perhaps, this goes for those who fantasize about nastier things (Naked women and arrows!)
-Me (No really, I'm imagining arrows sinking into that persons.... *sigh* okay, left sleeve... )
Labels: ponderable
posted by Aabh @ 2:51 PM
2 Comments:
Some thoughts, though not really completely formed:
As a someone who has been raped not once as a child but a second time as a young adult, I think I have a little perspective on the situation.
Its not that fantasies are horrible. After all, I've spent a considerable amount of time in the BDSM scene and have seen the most depraved of the depraved. And with consenting adults, I encourage it. It can be cathartic.
But I personally feel like the outrage comes from the lack of legal protection of such an non-consenting act. When I started to address what happened to me I literally had people shushing me and people had the audacity to ask me if I was sure that I had been raped and if I had egged it on somehow.
While our legal system says its wrong, you don't have prosecution like you have in murder. There's a he-said-she-said aspect to it that gets morphed into some pretty awful things.
And then the fact that there are no men being raped in this game makes for an interesting perspective as well. Why are only women targeted?
Think about it in a biological sense-not in a modern day feminist sense: these people aren't just having rape play, they are specifically men targeting the other half of the species that they are supposed to be protecting (again, biologically speaking here). Murder in video games is impersonal. They are the shaved headed Jews of the internet. When you start focusing on one sex, what's next? Celebrity faces? Uploading your ex girlfriend's picture? I think you see where I'm going.
You can also throw in that most people aren't exposed to sexuality in a healthy way. Everything sexual is taboo in America and so they don't understand that there can indeed be fantasies that are socially unacceptable played out in a safe consenting way. And on the flip side, there isn't a lot of systems in place to make certain that people who are irresponsible about their play are held responsible for unacceptable behaviour. In the states, there's just consistent catering to those niche markets for profit.
So yeah, that's all I've got.
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