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Should Free Speech Protect the Japanese Video Game RapeLay? RapeLay is a Japanese video game that has been around since 2006. You can read about the details in an incredibly disturbing review at HonestGamers.com. Although the game has never been for sale in the United States, it's existence became news last month when an individual put a copy for sale on Amazon.com. After receiving complaints, Amazon.com removed the game from it's Web site and eBay followed suit. Last month, a New York City Councilwoman made a public plea for people not to buy the game. In Poughkeepsie, they held a small protest. Rightwing blogger Kevin McCullough even weighed in at TownHall.com, comparing what happens in the game to the stimulus package. But I'm not linking to that because he's an absolute nutter. So, should this game be for sale in the United States? After all, rape is depicted in literature, in film, and even on television. What's the big deal if it's also part of a video game, right? Wrong. In the video game, the player isn't trying to avoid the rapist or even passively witnessing rape. The player is the rapist, and the point of the game is to rape as many women as possible. That's not just offensive, it's dangerous. There are people who suggest that violent video games lead to anti-social and even criminal behavior. Although I abhor the violence in games like Grand Theft Auto, I tend to dismiss these arguments because even if there is a contributing factor involved, a person is still ultimately responsible for his or her behavior. But rape is different. In some cultures, rape victims are still shunned. Rape is used as a systematic tool of war around the world. In our own country, rape is still underreported and while it is no longer acceptable to abuse and sexually assault women, it is still acceptable to objectify and demean them. There is no place in our society for a game like that. American men know better, but not because each and every one of them came to the independent conclusion that women are equal and deserve to be treated as such. Games like RapeLay threaten to dismantle decades of progress by legitimizing rape, and that is not okay. Dag? Nab it! Subscribe to the latest from your favorite topic, blogger, or entire site. Copyright © 2009 dagblog. All rights reserved.
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oooh. this is a tough one. i see your point of view but im going to disagree here. its my libertarian instincts coming through.
adults have a right to indulge in whatever fantasies they enjoy as long as they don't harm other people. i dont think a video game can make a rapist any more than it can make a serial killer. could it push someone who's inclined to commit that crime over the edge? Perhaps. but so too could probably a hundred of other activities that other people enjoy without any negative repercussion.
where do you draw the line? a lot of people think basic porn degradates women and leads to sex crimes. or what about all the sex on TV?
btw, this doesnt mean im against banning sales to minors or that I have any problem with retailers like Amazon being morally persuaded by market forces to remove the software from their shelves.
i guess i just don't buy your main premise that glorifying rape is somehow different than glorifying shooting police officers. they're both sick acts of violence, and saying one should be legal but not the other seems contradictory and starts dragging you down that fuzzy line.
and while i agree that rape is still underreported, i disagree that it is acceptable to objectify and demean women in this country (though perhaps we may just disagree about what exactly that means).
I know it's a tough call and I'm grappling with the first amendment issues as well as the causal relationship, or lack thereof, to playing a violent video game and then committing a violent act.
In general, I think that market forces should be left alone to determine what people do with their money, and, therefore, their leisure time. But have you stopped to think about why there isn't a video game about men raping men? What about priests molesting little boys? I'd argue that these games don't exist because very few people would buy them. "Normal" people wouldn't have a lot of interest in playing a video game as the protagonist due to the stigma attached to the behavior, even from a playacting standpoint.
A slightly more incendiary example would be a video game where the player is a WWII Nazi concentration camp guard and the goal is to lead as many prisoners into a gas chamber as possible. I'm guessing there's more of a market for this kind of game because there are more people who would find it acceptable (i.e., NeoNazis). But can you imagine the uproar if that sort of thing were introduced to the market? It wouldn't make it very far and I think maybe only the Klan and the ACLU would publicly support a company's right to make a game like that.
Of course, the same sort of uproar would be, and to some extent has been, heard over a video game glamourizing rape. But is there the same kind of stigma attached to playing a character who goes around raping women and girls? I just don't think so. Until there is, I'm hoping not only market forces will keep games like this out of the market but that also our government leaders will speak out vocally against it and if that includes drafting legislation that makes it ridiculously hard to buy the game, so be it. We make people register to buy sudafed, for crying out loud. If you have to be in a government database so they can track whether you buy the medicine to stop your nose from running or because you have a meth lab in your basement, I think they should at the very least track who is buying these sorts of violent games.
I found this write-up about the game to be pretty fair. I also had an interesting conversation with my girlfriend on the topic this morning. She echoed your sentiments, but like you found it difficult to draw a hard rational line.
The Slate article makes a few very valid points. First of all, this is something that is reflective of Japanese culture. Indeed, it seems that the theme of the game is inspired by a real phenomenon in Japan and not the other way around. It's also worth noting that the game is not new. It was published several years ago. It also isn't being published or distributed for video game consoles. It has already essentially been relegated to underground circles on the Internet, so legislative efforts are probably a moot point.
While I share you general sentiments about the game's content, I find your suggestion that this is a reason for draconian measures to be lacking. While increasingly realistic computer simulations may present a challenge to ethics, do we really want to start judging this kind of behavior as criminal? Who judges? Who draws the lines? Putting someone's name on a list because they played a computer simulation with objectionable content seems to drift dangerously close to pursuing a person for crimes of thought.
Whenever topics like this come up, I always end up thinking of something that Frank Zappa said about music:
A few things.
First, I wish I hadn't read that Slate article you linked to because it makes me even more sick to my stomach. I'd known that there is a problem with men groping women on public transportation in Japan. I was actually a victim of it in South Korea when I lived there. I didn't know there was an association that helped these men plan which routes and which times will be most beneficial for their task.
Second, I'm not suggesting that buying the game or playing the game should be considered criminal behavior. But I do think that there should be some way to empirically measure any causal relationship that exists between playing this sort of game and committing rape. Frankly, if that means extending the same practice to any violent video game, fine. Then, we can put to rest the "Yes it does/No it doesn't" anecdotal evidence.
Finally, your Zappa quote is a little off the mark. Everybody is in the world seeks to be in love. That's why there are so many love songs. If you extrapolate that to simulated violence, I'm afraid it hurts your argument more than it helps it.
Zappa's point is precisely that there's no empirical evidence that objectionable music makes people do things any more than love songs create more love in the world. In the context, he was addressing Congress about the very allegation that this causal relationship exists. In asserting such a positive causal relationship, the burden of proof must be on the asserter. I don't think it's at all apparent that music or movies or video games make people violent. The emprical evidence that this causal relationship exists doesn't appear to be forthcoming.
Short of establishing such a relationship, the argument has no more substance than mere subjective takes on what people do or don't find to be offensive, YMMV. I think you're right about the reason for love songs, but I don't think that contradicts what Zappa was saying at all. The desire for love precedes the song, not the other way around. So it likely is with other desires, even if they be negative. In other words: Ugliness was here first. This video game is a symptom of it, not a cause of it.
O, I share Deadman's concern about inconsistency. His comparison was shooting police officers, which Grand Theft Auto and, to a lesser extent, countless gangster movies do glorify. According to your measure, we have a higher tolerance for glorification of cop-killing than we do for glorification of rape, though both crimes are horrific. So why take steps against one but not the other?
But to D, there are and have always been limits on speech, and they are inherently fuzzy, which is why standards have changed over time as society has become more tolerant. There are recognized obscenity and incitement exceptions to the First Amendment. So you could ban the videogame if you could prove that the game was either obscene or incited criminal behavior, and if you could draft a law that wasn't unconstitutionally vague.
There are some problems with comparisons to violence in film and literature. Watching and reading are passive activities where the participant is not pretending to engage in the activity he or she is watching or reading about.
Also, I didn't know that Grand Theft Auto glorified cop killing because I could only stand to watch it being played for about five minutes during which time I only saw the protagonist pulling drivers out of cars and beating the crap out of them. However, there is a distinction between the two game premises. Cop killing is not, in our society and I suspect in Japan, acceptable. There are severe penalties and cops themselves expend, rightly, enormous time and effort bringing to justice anyone who kills one of their own. Does society and the justice system spend as much time and effort caring about bringing rapists to justice?
I said in the original post that sexual violence against women was no longer acceptable in this country. But that's not entirely true. We've come a long way from when rape of your wife wasn't considered as such. But we're not yet to the point where there is the same kind of group outrage expressed as when a community loses a police officer to violence.
It's heartening to see such outrage about this game, but the fact that there are men who think it's fun to play rapist is sad and disgusting. I know rationally that we can't stop the dissemmination of this game. The internet makes that impossible. But I disagree with the Slate article that politicians are grandstanding when they express support for a ban. Somebody has to.
Two things:
That's a very valid point that doesn't bear any necessary relationship to the video game. It's more than substantive enough to stand on its own.
I think it's fair to call it grandstanding in the political sense. As a legislator, there is next to nothing that could be done. This game has already been relegated to the absolute fringes absent any kind of legislation. As leaders within society, there is a place for them voicing objections on moral grounds, but if it extends into unrealistic political promises then it probably deserves to be labeled as hot air.
I think the point about justice for cop killers vs rapists does bear a relationship to the video games in that there's a certain level of tacit validation for real rapists that real cop killers don't get and that's what makes this type of game more dangerous to me.
My point is that the problem you're identifying is not with the video game. It's the apparent disparity between the contempt that we have socially for a cop killer and for a rapist. The video game didn't create that rift. Whatever popularity it experiences on the margins might be an expression of that rift, but the real danger for women was present before anyone began coding this game and it will be there once people have forgotten about it. I honestly feel like the debate about video games is a distraction from these points, which I think are powerful and important enough to be made on their own.
OTOH, this game may even serve to better highlight how real that rift is. In any case, American sensibilities seem to have rejected this game.
I do understand your point. But my point is that it doesn't matter if the problems existed before the video game did. If the video game exploits and exacerbates the problems, society has a reponsibility to address it. And yes, American sensibilities do seem to have rejected the game, which would suggest that we're further along in the so-called liberation of women. I think that means we now have a responsibility, along with other like-thinking countries, to raise awareness and lower incidence of sexual violence in other parts of the world. It's so appalling that rape is used as a tool of war that I can't really be articulate in a discussion about it. I feel almost the same about the idea that there are people in the world who think that this video game is perfectly acceptable for wide distribution.
I fully share your sentiments about it. The problem comes when trying to decide what you're going to do about it.
I can't seem to find it, but there was a video on YouTube of a guy who went and interviewed a group of pro-life protesters. The theme of the video was that he kept asking everyone the same two questions:
1.) Do you think abortion should be illegal?
2.) What should be done to women who have one anyway?
Well, the first question was a no-brainer for most of them, but the second one had them stumped. Several of them looked like they had never even considered that aspect of it before. The trouble is, that's the germane question when you talk about a responsibility to address it.
The same problem exists here. It's easy to object to it, but harder to determine what exactly should be done about it. Do you ban it? On what grounds? Do the grounds you specify set the stage for the erosion of the freedom of speech? Would you be prepared to incarcerate someone whose only crime is playing the game? Are we willing to make sexual fantasies, even those that seem abhorrent, illegal? If not, what possible purpose is there to banning the product or other similar legislation?
If these questions were easy to answer, then perhaps we would already have such solutions in place. And none of this goes any further toward addressing whether creations like this game actually do exacerbate the problem to begin with.
Ban it. Don't even think about it.
For men, you really can't drive the point home unless it's a game with them as the victims. Make it a game where Arab men hunt down white guys, make them have oral sex, anally rape them, mock them, come all over them, gang rape them with their buddies, make them want it, etc. Then we'd BEGIN to see some of the anger. And we haven't even suffered through that in the real-world.
You gotta be kidding me. Ban this crap.
I think that it's certainly reasonable to point out that these realities are different for men than they are for women. However, I don't think that means that men aren't capable of understanding or feeling outrage themselves when it comes to these issues. That isn't to say that they feel the same things, but to say that only what you describe can be the beginning of anger or outrage is patently ridiculous. Why are they Arab? Could we possibly confuse this issue a bit more?
Outrage is all well and good, but what do you with it? Fine, ban it. It's already effectively banned. I guarantee that no legislation you could possibly pass will be more effective than relegating it to the fringes of the Internet. The video game becomes the simulacrum for your outrage, but how does your outrage manifest? Does it manifest in ways that actually change reality or not?
You have to stop merely being outraged and start thinking at some point. Forget sexual assault in war, what about sexual assault within the ranks of the military itself? Should we ban the military? These issues are more complex than simply banning a video game that is already effectively banned from North American markets.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that banning a video game solves the issue of rape. I'm certainly not. What I'm suggesting is that it trivializes and makes into a game an issue that serious people are trying to address.
It seems fair to me to say that the game itself trivializes it, although I question whether it's already trivial in the minds of those who would seek out and use such a product. I don't know that it's a question that is easily answered.
OTOH, banning it, while being satisfying to moral outrage, won't get rid of it and won't change anything in the minds of those who find it trivial. Not only that, but it opens up a whole host of difficulties in terms of implementing a defensible policy to do so. So what's really gained in banning something that can't really be further supressed other than satisfying a sense of moral outrage?
It doesn't just express a sense of moral outrage. It sets an expectation of socially acceptable behavior. Lots of things are banned. Drugs, kiddie porn, snuff films. Can we stop them completely? No, but we can stop them from being traded in the public marketplace and we can make it clear that the majority of society views them as unacceptable.
I think banning or criminalizing ideas or psuedo-creative endeavors should be approached very carefully. I would never suggest banning books or adult pornography. But if it's illegal, I think we should set a different standard, and I suppose that does include games like Grand Theft Auto as well.
Also, karaoke. I wish we could ban that. What the hell is wrong with the Japanese?
From a policy perspective, I think prohibitions are generally problematic. They are difficult and expensive to implement and the results are often dubious, to say nothing of the unintended consequences of certain prohibitions. I don't think there's a choice when it comes to something like child pornography. Of course, it still exists even in the face of prohibition, but the penalties are severe. Worse still would seem to be the stigma that goes with it. This is something that society accomplishes without legislation.
There is also a difference between child pornography and this video game, or even Grand Theft Auto, which is that in the case of the child pornography there is clearly a victim. Someone playing this video game is arguably acting out a fantasy by themselves. We might easily judge this as repulsive, but it's hard to say that someone has actually been harmed in this act. Similar arguments are made against the elevation of homosexuals to a status of equal rights in our society. Not so long ago, the homosexual lifestyle was considered criminal in many places in this country.
The difficulty comes in judging what is or not acceptable and what kind of price someone ought to pay for engaging in the unacceptable. Rape itself is a crime, but what about fantasizing about rape? What about rape role play between consenting adults? That arguably trivializes rape as well. What if someone is writing stories about rape or painting pictures about rape? Are we ready to cleave the illegal to the taboo in all of these cases? Do we say that we ban it because it depicts an illegal act or because it trivializes it? Do we reserve certain depictions as being tasteful or otherwise in conformance with social norms? Who decides?
The peculiarities of Japanese culture are also of interest here. This isn't the first such game to come out of Japan. It probably won't be the last. For instance, this was a popular comic in Japan and even in the US. There seems to be something going on there, whether it's the interplay between sexual repression and extreme expressions of sexual behavior or something else entirely. This story seems to confirm that this is not merely a fetish or cult art phenomenon, but rather something that may be more deeply ingrained in the culture.
Of course, we've always got the Church.
I'm torn on karaoke. It can be sublimely hilarious or dreadfully tragic. I was in a bowling alley once that had some karaoke going on in the bar. There was this one woman who was there by herself, drinking alone. Every once in a while she'd get her turn to come up and sing. She was so earnest. Really pouring herself into it. Then back to drinking alone. Somehow I had the sense that she was there every week. One of the loneliest things I've ever seen.
I think it's important to think through all of these issues, but those issues seem rather esoteric when things like this are happening in the world.
WARNING: Before you click, it is wild understatement to say that the story is graphic and disturbing, but I'm at a loss for words.
So, yes, I suppose I do think that rape role play and rape fantasies trivialize rape. Obviously, we can't stop, and shouldn't stop, what happens between consenting adults. But suggesting that it is okay to play rape contributes to a much larger problem.
I've no wish for anything like this to occur ever, but changing this reality has everything to do with very difficult economic and political choices that may make possible more justice in the world and very little to do with banning video games in North America. It makes me wonder if all of the blood and money now lost in Iraq could have been better used elsewhere.
It's all related, moreso now than ever before.
I realize that getting rid of a video game is not going to stop a rape in the Congo. But if our views on sexual violence against women backslide as a result of the trivialization, then those who work in this area will be forced to expend more of their efforts here and less working in areas where rape is a systematic tool of war, where their efforts are desperately needed.
You can't get rid of it. You can make it illegal, but that will do little to change that it exists or its availability. Meanwhile, the social norms that exist here have already been as effective as any ban could be. The solution lies not in impotent legislation, but in more speech.
another fascinating debate, and there is no doubt that this is a tricky, tricky issue. in general, though, i dont think i could put my thoughts and words any better than DF has.
orlando, mainly all i keep hearing from you is outrage and indignation that rape is in some areas of the world used as a tool of war and generally trivialized as a crime in many others. that anger is certainly understandable, but it is not in my opinion a sufficient reason to restrict personal behavior that does not clearly harm others.
I do agree with you (and genghis) that the US government already makes a whole bunch of decisions regarding such restrictions, and that while some of them have a clear victim (kiddie porn), others do not (drugs). I find the restrictions on victimless crimes distasteful and as DF pointed out unhelpful.
If you could make a very clear compelling case that a rape simulator video game leads to more actual rape, then i could perhaps be convinced that a ban is necessary. but i do still think the line is a fuzzy one to breach.
fwiw, i have a much bigger problem with video games like Grand Theft Auto, which is often marketed to younger audiences despite its Mature rating. I believe young minds are much more malleable and less likely to distinguish between the worlds of fantasy and reality.
I can't make a compelling case that a rape simulator leads to more rape because there are no statistics. Nor will there be if the impact of playing a game like this isn't tracked through some sort of user registration, which DF objected to upthread. And until we could track something like this, I don't know if it would. My point is that societal complicity matters. At the moment, U.S. society at large is thankfully rejecting the game.
If you're sensing indignation and anger, I guess I must be feeling it. But what I recognize in myself is both horror that there are enough men in the world, and in Japan in particular, who feel that rape is fun enough to justify making it a game, and sadness and disbelief that rape is a way of life in so many places, war torn or not.
I've refrained from the playing the "you just don't understand" card, mostly because I think it's generally patronizing and unproductive. But if you don't think that the trivialization of rape anywhere in the world impedes progress on changing attitudes in other places, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on the subject.
And then lets ban everything else that bothers us. Why don't you move to Iran or Saudi if you're worried about seeing something that offends you - or, in this case, someone else seeing it without you even being aware of its existence. Ban the thought pigs who think they should determine what constitutes morality.
I was debating about whether to write this reply here or at TPM, where there is a much different dynamic. The participants are mostly women, and the anti-banners (also women) are outnumbered.
I opted for both. For better or worse, the game probably can't be banned in the U.S. Even if you prove in court that this game causes harm it would be very difficult to write a precise law that applied to games like this while excluding clearly protected speech, e.g. books and films about rape or even an educational videogame about rape, in which case the law would be thrown out as unconstitutional.
I'm not saying it's impossible. First Amendment-skirting legislation has been upheld, as in US v Williams. But I think that it's highly unlikely and honestly, unnecessary unless the game were released and widely distributed here, which I find difficult to imagine.
That said, it's certainly fair and appropriate to publicly lambaste the game, though I think that TPMer Jade makes a good point about the perverse promotional effects of negative press. The more this story gets played in the media, the more teenagers will probably try to download some emulated version of it.
I almost didn't post it at TPM because I figured the debate there would be much more exhausting, and I was right. But I'll make a point here that I made over there. We ban stuff all the time and it's never possible to enforce a ban 100%. Some examples:
Sometimes, the point of a ban has outlived it usefulness, a la Cuba. Sometimes, I don't agree with it, a la buying weed.
But sometimes it serves to reinforce society's accepted standards of behavior and it doesn't matter if a small segment of the population will ignore it.
I wasn't taking an ethical stand on whether the game should be banned, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. My point was that I don't think that it Constitutionally can be banned. Weed, travel to Cuba, and theft are not protected by the First Amendment. Causing panic is a long-recognized exception to the First Amendment. Child pornography has also been ruled to be an exception on the grounds that it harms the children depicted. But the Supreme Court has ruled in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition and upheld in United States v. Williams that virtual child pornography, which would seem to be comparable to virtual rape, is protected.
So here's an exercise for you: draft a hypothetical law that would ban this videogame without violating the First Amendment.
That's an exercise for A-man. I'd rather write a short story about a pathetic loser who plays RapeLay and his motivations for doing so.
Fair enough, and I look forward to reading it.
But you see my point, I hope. It's one thing to say, "RapeLay is evil, ban it!" It's another thing legislate such a ban without running afoul of the Constitution. I sincerely suggested it as a useful philosophical exercise, so if you won't take the bait, I'll have to do it myself.
Suppose that Orlando's Law said something like, "It is illegal to sell interactive, electronic rape simulations." "Interactive" is the word that separates the videogames from film and video, but it's pretty hazy distinction. If a movie incorporates any user input at all, does it become interactive and subject to the ban? Most modern videogames have cinematic sequences that play when you reach certain goals. If a game incorporated simulated rape in one of those sequences, could it be banned?
And what is rape in this context? In the real world, rape involves non-consensual sex, but what counts as consent in virtual reality? You can't subpoena a virtual woman. It's certainly not illegal for a consenting couple to simulate rape in their home. Couldn't the game developer just argue that the game doesn't simulate rape per se but rather that it simulates consensual simulations of rape?
And then, you can't ban interactive, electronic rape simulations that have scientific or artistic merit. I can imagine such a simulation being used for psychological testing and treatment (shades of Clockwork Orange.) So you need some exception such that the law only applies to simulations wtihout scientific, artistic, or even therapeutic value. But while I haven't seen RapeLay, most videogames these days certainly have artistic merit, and the measure of such value is likely to be highly subjective.
Finally, to get a First Amendment exception in the first place, you would have to prove that participating in interactive, simulated rape actually causes harm. While that may be the case, it would be very difficult to prove reliably in a court of law and certainly hasn't been proven yet.
So it's not that I think that banning RapeLay is intrinsically wrong, it's just that you can't really get it done without running smack into the First Amendment. While the First Amendment protects many things that would be better off banned, I'm glad that it's there and really f-ing difficult to circumvent.
Jumping in here from the post at TPM, but I still say community standards of obscenity exist for a reason. This is not a case of Lolita or The Accused or even a porn film simulating non-consensual sex. Although these folks did just plead guilty on federal obscenity charges.
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS206630+11-Mar-2009+PRN20090311 )
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/view/
I don't think a scene (or multiple scenes) of simulated rape in a game necessarilly constitutes obscenity if the game is about a crime syndicate or even some kind of L&O: Special Victims Unit type game or (insert any kind of semi-redeeming factor here). But a game where the sole purpose is to be a first person RPG committing virtual acts of rape and gang rape and forced abortion? I don't see any redeeming or artistic value and I'm way liberal on most obscenity type issues. I doubt that a community - even one as liberal as New York - would judge that differently. This particular instance is not a close call for me.
The difficulty here is the question of who has jurisdiction over the Internet. This case may help establish a precedent for applying Miller to Internet content, but that still wouldn't address the global nature of the Internet. The company in question here was based in California and so were the individuals involved. Also, there's the fact that the defendants have pleaded guilty and described their own materials as federally obscene rather than a judge finding the materials to obscene.
Well, OK, I've conflated two exceptions:
1) Compelling government interest - There's no reliable evidence at this time of the harmful impact of experiencing simulated rape, so this exception would be difficult to use in court. Moreover, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition and United States v. Williams rejected the notion of a compelling government interest in stopping simulated child pornography, so it's hard to imagine that the would rule any differently about simulated rape.
2) Obscenity - This is the exception to which artistic merit is relevant. I think that it can be a tough question, but I'm not going to try to argue that RapeLay has artistic merit. If the Supreme Court rules that simulated child pornography is obscene in the Whorley case you alerted me to at TPM, then simulated rape could fall under the same rubric.
But as I implied up at TPM and will state more strongly now, I don't agree with the obscenity exception. If compelling government interest can be proven, so be it. But the obscenity exception is an awful holdover from a more conservative time. If some form of expression does not harm anyone--and the obscenity exception is not about harm--then I just don't think it's the government's business if people choose purchase it for private entertainment.
Obviously, the court doesn't agree with me on this one.
Here's the main issue for me. Porn is not going anywhere, in fact it's a thriving. If only I had withdrawn my 401(k) funds and put them in a safe investment like the porn industry, financially I'd be a lot better off today. It's gone mainstream and become integrated into our pop culture. And apparently the conservative red states are bigger consumers than the hedonistic hell-bound liberals. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Business/story?id=6977202&page=1 . So I don't think community standards under the obscenity rule is going to be a threat to people retaining the rights to enjoy a wide range of entertainment in the privacy of their own homes.
That said, with every freedom, there are limits. I don't think a brutal faux snuff film showing simulated vioelnt rape and murder should be legal and accessible. Was anyone harmed in the making of that type of movie? Technically, no it was consensual. Can I prove that someone will be harmed because of that movie? Nope. But the Miller Test allows a community to say that is obscene and illegal to distribute. Also the government usually pursues the producers for these obscenity cases (with the exception of child pornography where they go after the consumers too). If that's your fancy, you can film those type of films with consenting adults in your basement. That's not illegal and stays fully in your private sphere. You just don't have the right to sell (or publish) obscene items in the general public.
I'm all for individual liberty and freedom, but the obscenity rule as antiquated as it is still works because it adapts to the changing community standards. Unless they come up with a rule that can replace it and still prohibit truly objectionable stuff from being distributed, I back it fully (and still hope to retain my ACLU card :) )
OK, so here's my question. If it doesn't harm anyone, and you can legally film it in your basement and share it with your friends, why does it compel a special exception to the First Amendment?
(And just to clarify, I'm not arguing that RapeLay doesn't harm anyone just that if it can't be proven harmful, First Amendment rights should take precedence because I don't believe that there should be an obscenity exception to freedom of speech.)
There are plenty of exceptions to The First Amendment. Hanging a noose can be considered a hate crime in some states because of the message it sends although arguably there is no physical harm done - it's not like you are hanging someone. It is illegal to burn a cross because of the message that it send in some states. These are local ordinances that are restrictions on First Amendment rights based on what the community finds abhorrent. You can still be as racist as you want to be, but your personal free speech rights are limited in the public sphere. Why not the same exceptions for sexual violence against women?
Yesterday at TPM, DF kept challenging me to "make a compelling case." I didn't fully take up his challenge because, first of all, I think I did make a compelling case, even if it wasn't compelling to him. And second, other people were already making incredibly compelling arguments on the thread and I didn't feel the need to be redundant.
I think this is the one argument that boils down all the rest. Rape is a crime that overwhelmingly impacts one gender and is grounded in misogyny and oppression. Therefore, rape is a hate crime. I think that is why I find the analogy to a playing games about lynching or a Nazi concentration camp apt, even though DF dismissed it under the Goodwin Principle (the longer a dicussion goes on, the more likely it becomes that someone will break out the Nazi comparison). Rape crimes are more insidious than other crimes because they not only harm the immediate victims, but they also create an atmosphere of fear and oppression. You have a right to your opinion. You have a right to say, as an individual, anything you want to say. But you don't have a right to package it and sell it.
I agree, and said as much yesterday, that people can have whatever fantasies they want and that consenting adults can playact those fantasies in the privacy of their own homes. But to make money from such an endeavor is beyond that right to privacy AND that right to freedom of expression insomuch as it creates an atmopshere of terror and oppression. Which is also why, by the way, that comparisons of this game to rape as a war crime in countries that have never seen a video game are also apt.
I totally agree, but I would since you're my Indianan based doppleganger (except fo that whole Original Obama supporter thingie) :)
Way off topic, but we went out for lunch today to a burger spot and got Barack O'Burgers (angus coated in cocoa powder and elitist roqueford cheese). Twas yummy :)
I responded to you over at TPM, but your post fell off the charts shortly thereafter. I've also commented further below. I didn't just say that I didn't think you'd made a compelling case. I've been very specific as to exactly why. I also addressed each of the specific arguments that you noted from others on the thread, who in many cases were rebutted by others who were making an argument similar to mine. You'll also find that I addressed your analogy conerning war-time attrocities in my last comment on the thead at TPM. I didn't simply dismiss it under Godwin's Law, I just noted that it had been vindicated.
This is almost exactly the objection that some parents raise about homosexuals working in school. It goes beyond privacy, creates an undesirable atmosphere. Do you not see how ambiguous these concepts are? I understand how strongly you feel about this and even agree with that sentiment, but translating that into law is another story.
I even provided another example, that being a solider with PTSD. Do war-based video games likewise create an atmosphere of terror for these people? What about war movies? Is this grounds for banning those works? Do we ban all depictions of sexual violence against women? If not, how do we decide which among them are and are not okay?
Again, it's not the sentiment that I disagree with, but the failure to reckon with the implications of how you propose to deal with it.
Do you honestly think that gay teachers would be banned from teaching because their presence in the school constitutes a hate crime? The comparison is apples and oranges.
And as it happens, I understood your argument. I just happen to disagree with it. I think the comparisons you make and the examples you give aren't valid in the context of this particular game.
For sure there's a larger discussion to be had about the pervasive nature of violence in our society and I don't know what to do about war games and the potential damage they could cause to soldiers suffering from PTSD. But rape is different. I'm in no way suggesting that it somehow trumps PTSD in the trauma that it causes survivors of either category. But PTSD doesn't arise from societal oppression and misogyny. Rape does and deserves to be treated differently.
I know that if and when a game like that made it's way to the United States it would never be sold on store shelves because too many people would freak out. But for me, that's not enough. I expect that my government would formally sanction the game. By not doing so, by simply relying on the market to do the job for them, they are tacitly approving the oppression of women. That's the way I see it. You're not going to change my mind by suggesting that it would lead to the conservative movement banning Harry Potter. And I'm obviously not going to change your mind either.
Again, you're turning my argument into a straw man. Those are your apples and oranges, not mine. I drew an analogy between the structure of your argument, and the type of reasoning therein, and their argument, not the particular aims of either argument.
PTSD doesn't arise from societal oppression? Aren't men relied upon primarily to fight wars? And doesn't that responsibility also fall upon the poorest among us? These factors don't qualify as elements of structural gender and income inequality?
I can see that we won't agree on this, but again you've turned my arguments into a straw man. I didn't say anything about conservatives banning Harry Potter. Instead, I gave you a real world example of how the type of argument you are making is used to oppress a social group in contemporary American society. You don't want to acknowledge the similarites in these two arguments, but to me they're as clear as day.
This is also different, by the way, than playing the Nazi card. The implication there is that I'm not taking rape seriously enough and so I need to be smacked with the Nazi club, since no one will defend the acts of a Nazi. Honestly, I think that's kind of crappy and that's the reason for the criticism implied in the corollary to Godwin's Law. None of my arguments have had anything to do with defending Nazis or rapists or even those who would want to role play or engage in simulations of acts perpetrated by Nazis or rapists. I've continually expressed that I find the content of this game objectionable, but I think there are entirely valid concerns about how we might go about legislating what you propose. You don't seem to think those things matter, but I'm glad that there are plenty of people who disagree with you on this point.
Consider what I said over at TPM about the recent successes of Islamic fundamentalists in Europe. Newspapers are starting to self-censor because certain views might be offensive to violent Islamic extremists. As this is happening, sharia is gaining more social acceptance and more political power. This is a case where the erosion of free speech has a direct impact on increasing the oppression of women, which is perpetrated by a full-fledged culture of misogyny and the worst kinds of physical abuse. What happens if we also start eroding those protections here because we decided that making a statement in the moment was more important than considering the unintended consequences? This isn't merely a matter of cheerleading the First Amendment as you characterized it.
Legally, the Miller test is pretty weak sauce. As I pointed out over at TPM, the judiciary appears to be loath to apply it, and this after decades of floundering around the definition of obscenity before settling on Miller. I'd say they've got pretty good reason to avoid applying it, because it has all sorts of problems. As G said, it's a relic of a previous era, which I'd say is evidenced by the fact that it says no to "prurience". That's one third of the test, but I think we're well past prohibiting works that may cause some sort of sexual arousal.
I think it's interesting to note that the Miller test appears to be almost entirely focused on sex, with little or nothing to say about violence. One thing that I've observed as an American is the interesting dichotomy between sex and violence in various media. We seem to be inredibly permissive to graphic depictions of violence. There's essentially no limit to this, but sexual content is still a big no-no in many cases. Half a nipple showed up on television for a few seconds and the whole country was absolutely feverish about it. I think it can be said that this game has a foot in both arenas.
Of course, if you're going to go with the Miller test as grounds, you've already tacitly acknowledged how ambiguous the nature of obscenity is. "Community standards" sounds a bit saner, but raises questions on its own. Consider this case, one of the most recent applications of the Miller test. In this case, Miller helped clear him, but the way it happened is quite interesting. He operated a video store in Utah and was charged with distributing obscene material. Now, by any appraisal of average community standards, and remember that we're talking about Utah here, the DA probably thought they had a solid case against him. His clever lawyer obtained pay-per-view records from a nearby hotel that proved that that the "community standard" wasn't so pristine.
So, how do we decide what the "community standard" is? Who is the "average person"? Does one judge determine it? Do we base it on the public outcry? Put it to a vote? Do we define "average person" and "community standard" ad hoc or do we somehow use social science to bring the facts of the community behaviors to bear? I don't like any of these options because they start to smack of a tyranny of the majority. Do we base it on what a community is willing to cop to or do we try to use empirical data to ferret out what people are really doing in the community? What if Peterman had been convicted in this case on the basis of the Miller test and the information about the community's actual consumption of adult materials had only surfaced later?
As a side note, I saw the study that you linked above. One thing to note about it is that they're looking at who's actually buying porn online. Given that there's a ton of free porn out there, it may just be that blue states consume as much or more, but that blue state users are savvier and know how to get it for free. Just a thought about something they didn't control for. Even so, it seems to indicate that there's a rift between what a community is actually doing and what they're willing to cop to. Knowing this, I'm even less willing to criminalize behavior on that basis.
There is another grounds for restricting acts that arguably constitute speech, and that's the time, place and manner criteria that are intended to prevent incitement. Whereas the Miller test is focused on content specific criteria, specifically any content that appears to be related to sexual arousal, time, place and manner criteria are to be applied content-neutrally with the intent of preventing violence. This creates a fundamentally different basis for restricting certain speech acts. The reason that nooses and crosses are restricted can be justified not because they run afoul of a "community standard", but because they have been prolifically employed as symbols by groups that consistently committed violent and intolerable acts. They were symbols that became the equivalent of saying, "I'm going to kill you." Such a direct threat is also not permitted, but it's because it clearly implies the imminence of physical harm.
Another aspect to Miller is that it actually goes so far as to say that works judged to be obscene are actually not speech. As I noted on TPM, I have numerous books that were onced judged to be obscene, and thus judged not to be speech. Now they're not. So did they become speech? That seems ludicrous on its face.
This is precisely the problem with codifying obscenity in law. Jurisprudence isn't built to adapt to rapidly changing cultural norms. Only a few decades later, the Miller test looks silly for this reason. It seems wiser to let community standards be dictated by free association, which is actually equipped to handle these relatively swift changes. Indeed, the market has already effectively banned this product from US shores. The Internet raises a new challenge for Miller, which is a problem of the scale of the community.
Then there's the question of to what degree acts should be criminalized if they could be banned. Barring all of the questions I've raised, what would the penalty be for violating the ban? We already have the largest prison population per capita in the world. Do we really want to increase it with more non-violent offenders? On the flip side, what good is the ban if we're not willing to follow it up with meaningful penalties?
Finally, you ask:
Of course, we do prohibit sexual violence against women. The issue at hand is whether to ban a depiction of sexual violence against women. More importantly, the issue is why and how we go about that. It's not good enough to say, "We ban other stuff, why not this?" What matters is on what basis we engage in prohibitions and how they are implemented. That kind of reasoning belies exactly the problem with starting down this path and it smacks of coming to the conclusion first and then justifying it after the fact. Though Orlando stated at TPM that she feels she's having no problem keeping upright on the slope, she's already slipped. I attempted to illustrate how these same kind of arguments are used against the homosexual community in the hopes that proponents of this ban would consider how this same kind of reasoning is being used right now to ends that may not please us so much. Disagreeing with their conclusion isn't what's material, it's that the structure of their argument is the same.
We can all argue until we're blue in the face about what's offensive or obscene, but we're better off recognizing that these concepts are entirely subjective, which is why the process of trying legally codify obscenity begins to look so farcical. Communities and markets are efficient at employing these standards in real-time. The "Adults Only" rating for video games and the NC-17 rating for movies are prime examples of just how effective these measures can be, no Miller test required.
Also, if we ban all depictions of sexual violence against women, then the Lifetime network will have to shut down.
if djamo is orlando's doppelganger, i must be DF's. just a less intelligent and coherent (and data-dependent
) one. you, sir, are genius.
Heh.. thanks, but I think genius is a bridge too far. On a tangent, I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on the Austrian School. It seems that given your expressed views on a priori reasoning verses empiricism that it might appeal to you, but the totality of your expressed views on economics don't seem to agree with them. I get the Mises criticism of mathematical modeling and data, and think it's valid to an extent, but it seems to be assumed that pure reasoning, or praxeology as they like to call it, is automatically better.
I can't seem to square that circle. The whole of modern science is based on the principle of requiring that we check our assumptions. That may be prohibitively difficult in economics, but does that automatically mean that pure reasoning gives us better odds? Anyhow, I'd be curious to know your thoughts on that question and the Austrian approach in general.
If the Miller Test was so weak, they wouldn't still be applying it in the Utah case or the Whorley case - and in both cases (in my opinion), the Miller Test served its purpose. The Utah case was an overreach by prosecutors trying to ban material that was inside community standards. The prosecution deserved to lose that case. The Whorley case was clearly a case where there is no harm to a child done with virtual child pornography, yet the Miller Test was able to declare it obscene. The gov't picked a particularly unsympathetic defendant who'd been convicted of child pornography (the non virtual kind) in the past. (plus he's Canadian :) ) This is an example of the Miller Test being used to ferret out the stuff people may have moral objections to from the truly obscene.
The Miller Test is focused on sex because it's about the free speech issues re pornography. My objection is not to sexual imagery, but to graphically violent sexual imagery.
How do we judge, who is an "average" citizen - The Miller Test has been used for 35 years and is still relevant (despite your dislike for it). I don't get your argument that the judiciary is loath to apply it? These are recent cases we are discussing, not from the 70s. Peterman was not convicted because the Miller Test was applied correctly. You need a unanimous decision from 12 jurors to be convicted. Even barring the data being available about community porn usage, I still believe he would ave gotten off so to speak.
Your argument about the time place manner exception confuses me. How is it content- neutral prohibition on speech to ban racist imagery like nooses and crosses? The imbued meaning of the imagery is precisely the reason why it's prohibited. You also assume that everyone agrees hanging a noose should be considered a hate crime and is an imminent threat. It's as up for dispute as graphic images of rape should be banned as obscene. http://www.google.com/search?q=noose+hate+crime%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=... . Let's be consistent here. If you object to community standards infringing upon the free speech of pornographers, why should racist imagery be entitled to protections?
Yes the internet provides challenges for the Miller Test in terms of community, but there are plenty of sites that are restricted based on where you live, you cannot access (or pay for services legally). The same goes for child pornography. That doesn't mean because it's impossible to fully control that we don't impose any restrictions at all.
I've argued that the game should be banned legislatvely on the local level. Vendors who choose to violate the ban should be hit with hefty fines. I am anti-imprisoning folks for victimless crimes, but repeat offenders and folks who traffic the most obscene materials like child porn should face jail time.
Reasonable people can disagree on this issue. I would argue for legislative action and the video game company could argue their free speech in front of a jury filled wth 12 people from the community that may or may not agree with me on RapePlay. But are you seriously aguing the porn industry should be left to the free market to police itself? There should be no obscenity laws at all? I don't think tht with the restrictions we have now people are lacking for choice in adult entertainment options so I am less than convinced by that argument. Remove the restrictions and those options wil expand. You haven't commented on the faux snuff film scenario, but that's something I think most people would agree is obscene and should not be legal. Under your scenario items like that and virtual child pornography would now be legal and without the legal risk, porn producers would be eager to fill that free market need.
Talk about a strawman. Above I stated:
But if going all Anita Bryant will help bring down LMN, I may reconsider and advocate banning all simulated sexual violence against women. I freaking hate the Lifetime Movie Network.
Yay, boys against girls!
Furthering DF's point: burning crosses were offered a (controversial) exception because of intimidation, not obscenity:
Certainly, if a man were to send a woman a copy or RapeLay in order to intimidate her, that would not be protected.
Since racist imagery does not fall under obscenity, it's not a poor example for the importance of the obsenity exception. Snuff films offer a better example for you, but I don't agree that they should be banned unless the actors are harmed, or there is clear evidence that they directly encourage criminal violence.
Bottom line: You can make a case that RapeLay does harm people by encouraging violence against women, and I may find such a case plausible, even though I'm skeptical that there's sufficient evidence for such a case to hold up in court. But I don't believe that the government has a compelling interest in keeping people from engaging privately in activity that doesn't harm others, regardless of how obscene or disgusting the activity. If people wish to buy or sell obscenity, that's their business, not the government's. And if there is no compelling government interest, then there should not be an exception to the First Amendment.
The point you all are arguing about appears to revolve around the legal question bound up in the Indianapolis antipornography ordinance, drafted by feminist legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon (who is credited with originating the notion of sexual harassment in the law as a form of gender discrimination) and New York feminist Andrea Dworkin. The ordinance, supported by a coalition of feminists and conservatives, tried to restrict the sale of pornography on the theory that it injured women by causing violence against them and by what was entailed in its production. It's interesting recent American history.
The ordinance was held to violate the First Amendment in an opinion authored by current Seventh Circuit Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, I think around 1986. And Orlando's arguments are largely those MacKinnon made. I'm just trying to point you to the decision you might want to review if you want the current law on point. All of this is subject to the correctness of my memory.
Thanks for the reference, A-man. It's interesting to me that no one is actually making McKinnon and Dworkin's point. Orlando suggested it, but refused to get into Constitutional detail. Dij took up the Consitutional argument, but she's argued obscenity, not harm. From the decision:
The court interestingly accepted the premise that pornography could harm women but argued that harm alone was not sufficient to compel an exception to the First Amendment:
For me, that last paragraph, and particularly that last sentence, sums it up nicely.
No, Orlando is making the harm argument, right up in the post. I'm not weighing in evaluatively, but descriptively, it's very clear she's taking the MacKinnon point of view. I've read enough MacKinnon on this, and O has both the rhetoric and the harm argument down cold.
BTW, I once attended a debate between Catherine MacKinnon and columnist / civil libretarian Nat Henhoff on pornography. MacKinnon did not come off well. The debate took place in Pittsburgh in 1996, not long after an infamous report by a Carnegie Mellon undergrad, Martin Rimm, alleging that the Internet was being used extensively for porn, an apparently shocking revelation in those innocent early years of the web. Time Magazine picked up the story, but it soon came out that Mr. Rimm's methodology was unreliable and illegal--he hacked private computers--and his advisor reputed the work.
MacKinnon presented Rimm as a courageous whistleblower who was being smeared by the "pornography industry." In the Q&A, several CMU professors stood up and spoke personally and in detail about Rimm's deceipts and the flaws in the report. I was left with the sense that MacKinnon didn't know what she was talking about, was prone to conspiracy theories, and was distorting the Rimm case for her own agenda.
The problem with the Miller test is the problem with defining obscenity. Go back and look at the case. The judges who came up with the test couldn't even agree on what was obscene. I know that people think that things are obscene, but I don't know of any definition of obscenity that is anything more than a subjective judgment. As far as I can tell, there isn't any such thing.
Here's a description of the kind of perverted reasoning that can result from following Miller to its logical ends:
Judges aren't still applying Miller because it's a strong legal precedent. They're applying it because it's all they've got to work with. That's the standard. Exactly how many works are currently prohibited because of Miller? That's what I mean when I say that it seems the judiciary is loath to apply it.
Peterman wasn't convicted because the Miller test failed after his lawyer found a way to use the test in his favor. Again, I think it's reasonable to ask what likely would have happened to him if the concept of "community standards" had been applied in absence of the data that his lawyer dug up. This arrangement flies in the face of the traditional application of due process. From the same source as above:
So another issue is why Peterman, or anyone else, has to prove their innocence against these sort of charges at all.
Did you read the link that I included about time, place and manner? I think it explains it pretty well. Time, place and manner restrictions provide a framework for restricting speech when it may be a direct precursor to harm. Under these guidelines, the racist symbols in question are not being banned because they are racist, ie because of their meaning content, but because they have been used consistently as a precursor to organized violence. As I stated above, it is because they have become the speech equivalent of a direct threat. This has nothing to do with the Miller test and is not at all inconsistent with my other arguments as you suggest.
I'm not sure what this sentence means:
I think both deserve speech protections with regard for their content. I think I've been pretty clear about opposing content-specific speech restrictions in general.
Child porn is a whole different ball of wax. It's not a victimless crime. The penalties are stiff, as they should be, which I've also stated upthread.
Of course reasonable people can disagree on the issue, although I think it's of interest to discover on what basis they disagree. Yes, I am arguing that I do not believe in content-specific restrictions on speech or porn or anything else that consenting adults want to put their minds to. I won't tell you what you can't do with your mind if you won't tell me what I can't do with mine. That includes faux snuff films or anything else with shock value that you can dream up. Do you really think that porn would somehow be a whole lot more extreme without the existing restrictions? In fact, the vast array and wide availability of pornography is a great example of just how impotent the Miller test is.
The Liftime comment was a joke, not a staw man. I'd like to see it off the air because it's boring and campy, but I'm not about to start a boycott for that cause. There would be no end to the crusade.
Color me clueless, I looked at the site but I still don't get how time place manner restrictions (which must be on a content-neutral basis) are relevant to the issue of hate speech at all. Hate speech / cross burning / flag burning prohibitions are based on the "fighting words" principle and that's a content based exception. If you oppose free speech restrictions that are content based in pornography, I'd think you'd oppose content based free speech restrictions on hate speech and other offensive conduct. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf.
The Extreme Associates case did include graphic scenes of simulated rape and murder, so my question re: faux snuff film wasn't exactly theoretical. Rob Black's interview was interesting because he admittedly wanted to push the boundaries, attract attention to make a point, not plead out and win the case. They ended up pleading out under Obama's DOJ (I believe they waited until GWB was gone to see of the Obama Admin priorities would change). FYI he makes some points that I think support your point of view particularly re: prosecutorial priorities and bigger fish to fry.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/interviews/black.html
And yes, I think the porn industry would get more extreme absent any restrictions. The mainstream porn industry (with First Amendment hater Larry Flynt) was promoting voluntary guidelines like the Cambria list to avoid prosecution, not out of the goodness of the hearts. Just like if we deregulate any industry, they will begin to push the boundaries to make more profit. Anyways, I think where we will continue to disagree is that I think the Miller test is valuable to go after the most extreme cases - otherwise we are truly in anything goes land for free speech but only when it comes to pornography.
I never said anything about "hate speech". Time, place and manner is a completely different foundation.
I think I've been crystal clear on this point. I oppose content-based restrictions on speech. Period.
I checked out the PDF, but is there something in particular you wanted me to notice about it?
Thanks for the Frontline link. I'll definitely watch it.
I definitely don't have any love for the Miller test. I think that is makes plain the truth that these priorities are entirely subjective. Even here, you talk of the "most extreme" cases. Who decides? I don't believe in the government, or one social group via the government, telling other groups or individuals what they can't do. This is one of the reason that I won't register with the Democratic party. I think they're as wrong on this as many Republicans are. There's no end to what people will find offensive or obscene. If you get your way, what's the justification to deny the others who ride in on your coattails? I get the feeling that you'd conclude that the Miller test has been applied judiciously, but I think that it represented the court attempting to draw a line that they couldn't really define. Frankly, I don't even think the line exists. As a result, the Miller test hasn't been responsible for prohibiting much.
I'm disappointed to see how men are willingly able to miss the point just to justify a valid sexual fantasy.
I've played video-games since childhood and, I love games so much that I have set my profession so I can realized them, indeed I love playing and making games. And my choice of games are really diverse, from Animal Crossing to G.T.A. (I am not agree with people who suggest to ban this type of games), but the missing point in here is G.T.A. is not a game where you just shoot policeman, in this free-will game you can engage in many activities or none at all.
In a free-will game where the player can choose between complete the missions to achieve the mafia-boss status or you can just steal a car and drive through the city admiring the scenario (believe me when I say is one of my favorites things in G.T.A.), my problem comes when a game is obsessively showing a systematic behavior (that goes also for books and films), or the whole game is just around a single same violent subject (raping woman in this case).
If G.T.A. would have been just a police-killing game called "cop-killer", it would have arise many eyebrows and maybe even being ban (which, in that case, I would have agreed) and this is very simple to understand. I consider myself a open-minded person, I would never condemn a sexual role play game between consenting adults , but there is a difference between a game where rules are set before-hand between two rational adults and a game where the interactions can go much further than a life role play and the player can be immerse in the gameplay going wherever far the creator of the game allows to go (example, in real life you wouldn't tore a nipple, so to say, of your sexual partner, in a video-game you might be able to do it).
And then there is the problem of the subject that is tackling, as a woman I found very sad to see how man can just alienate themselves from this problem which is created by men themselves. The problem is not a women's problem, is a men's problem, and until men don't accept this fact and take action, little will change in this aspect. But it is hard for men as, to start with, they can not relate, they can't understand (or many they don't want to understand, as their fantasy of domination converts into abomination). They can't relate because the headlines in the newspaper talks about women being rape in the street and not men (as their fear of being raped is just limited to jail), therefore their lack of interest in the victim.
The subject of this game is perverse, as perverse as it could be a game based on a jail where the male protagonist must rape all his male inmates. Why there's not a game such this? Obviously because it doesn't excite men as much as women's rape. Is as amoral as a game based on slavery (imagine a management simulator of a cotton field, where you manage slaves, what the heck! you could also even rape the women there!) Or a game about the ku klux kan abusing and killing women and torturing and hanging men? Would you also think it would be not fair to ban them as is just a game (and books and movies have been written about it) and it will violate the freedom of speech? Can for once men put themselves in the skin of a woman? Is any subject that would make you susceptible or hurt?
I can't believe that you just can't see it, when a subject is wrong is just wrong, no matter how much you love violence and free expression (as I do), my fear is that maybe I can see it just because I am a woman, and that is the only thing that separates our opinions.
This argument is absurd; you do in fact have the right to burn a cross, if it is done in your fireplace, or out in the boonies where no one is intended to see it. It is only illegal if it is done in a place where it can be construed to be intended to intimidate or terrify someone. How does playing a game in the privacy (or pervacy) of ones home equate to burning a cross or placing a noose in someone else's yard, or in a public place?
Yeah, such public commerce that it was out for a couple years before some whiner brought to the attention of the fanatics who seek to ban it. Can't just burn the books in the public libraries, can you, but need to reach into peoples homes as well.
I was pondering the promotional nature of the negative press last night. This game was released in 2006. Though I was aware of the existence of Japanese H-games, as they're called, and even aware that some of them catered to the more perverse, I had never heard of it. Apparently, it was reviewed by SomethingAwful a couple of years ago, a site that I read semi-regularly, but don't I recall reading about it. Near as I can tell, the Amazon ban seems to have brought it swiftly into the public eye. Unfortunately, the Slate article that I linked is correct in that it takes no more effort than a Google search to find a source for it.
This seems to raise the question: Is it better to not talk about it? Somehow this doesn't seem right to me. The way this appears to have unfolded, as described by this article, seems perfectly reasonable to me. The product found its way onto Amazon's UK offering, people complained and Amazon removed it. The recent rash of articles to be found by searching Google News seem to indicate that what brought the topic into the US press was a New York City Council member calling for retailers to boycott the game.
One thing that I can't seem to validate is whether or not the game was ever on US retail shelves. If it was, then I can understand the call to arms. OTOH, if the game wasn't on retail shelves and major online sources like Amazon and eBay had already canned it, which appears to be the case, then I have to wonder whether the public ire has caused more harm than good in promoting an effectively unknown and unavailable product to a much wider audience.
Does NYC have an equivalent of SF's Japantown? Outside of some other asian specialty shops in the south bay, I can't think of any other place that might have something like this on a retail shelf. Were there retailers in NYC that were carrying the game?
It was only only officially released in Japan, so if anyone sold it here, it would have been only small shops that specialize in imports. It wasn't Amazon itself that sold it in the UK but one of the small retailers in its umbrella.
I've been thinking about the negative publicity question too. The question is what you're aiming for. If reducing sales of an odious game is your object, the publicity has to be counterproductive. What's the point of banning a game that no one even sells in this country and is unlikely to ever sell? The hoopla accomplishes little other than free PR for a game that can at best hope for a cult following here.
But if your goal is to raise awareness about rape, it might be of more value. Still, I'm not sure that what is accomplished by American politicians denouncing a rape game that no Americans play, other than to marginalize the influential Pro-Rape Lobby.
The best value that I can see is to shame the citizens of the one place where such a game is actually considered acceptable. Japanese tend to care about what Americans think them, and if we can get their attention, it may raise rape awareness there.
just something to consider - the chart above is for Google search trends for RapeLay. i think we can all agree that the attention focused on the software has revived attention on a product that probably would have quietly disappeared. not saying that negates the need to discuss the issues, i'm just saying it is a consequence.
Good. I want people to know about it. I wish I would have known about it three years ago. We need to shine light into all the dark corners.
Yes, I totally agree with you Orlando, I wish also to have known about it earlier, this kind of shameful behavior in the game industry needs to be addressed.
Does anyone here know where I can get a copy of Rapelay?
I was sexually assaulted and would like to desensitize myself.
I have watched rape themed movies..but I think playing a game will give me more of a feeling of control
thanks bunches