Not RapeLay. More like what my head does every time RapeLay comes up on the internet.
I’d heard of this game once before, sometime last year, I think–my initial and instinctive reaction was revulsion, of course, and it was the same this time when I came across it again–
But, I thought, for some reason this time impelled to actually analyze my feelings…why am I so revolted? The reason I actually felt moved to give it more thought this time round was because of a recent few minutes I spent watching my older son play Fallout 3.
I absolutely loved the first two Fallout games, and if I weren’t still deeply inmeshed in World of Warcraft, would no doubt have been all over it as soon as I gave it to my son this past Christmas (with a small token pause in my headlong rush in acknowledgement of the fact that I bought it for him, not me!). Naturally, by this time he’s already played it through more than once, but he was feeling at loose ends the other day and decided to give it another run, and I sat and watched him play for a little while.
If you haven’t played Fallout 3 yourself yet, lemme tell you–some of those deaths are gory. The Fallout 3 graphic captioning this post is actually not the most grotesque end your various foes in the game can come to at your hands–and just like the earlier games, you can target specific body parts, but unlike the previous games, the special effects graphics are really state-of-the-art when it comes to depicting the mayhem subsequently wrought. I was simultaneously fascinated and repelled, and it came back to haunt me later–why am I so up-in-arms about a videogame displaying cruel and graphic rape and yet relaxed enough about a game that displays cruel and graphic murder enough to buy it for my son for Christmas..? After all, I even consider murder a worse crime than rape–murder is the worst crime there is. Any other crime committed against your person, the chance always exists, however great or slight, that you may someday recover some to all of your quality of life. When you’re murdered, guaranteed! you will never get over that.
After some brow-furrowing thought, I managed to boil the salient differences between the two games down to three points:
1. The point of the game: Fallout 3 is not Murder 3. The object of the game is not simply to murder as many different people as possible, one after the other. In RapeLay, the object of the game is simply to rape, period. In Fallout 3, the player is trying to complete the main and side storylines present in the game–generally rescuing person A or finding site B or recovering important object C–the killing is also frequently in self-defense or in defense of others. In RapeLay, the player is there to rape every member of a specific family that crosses his path; there are no storylines to complete and certainly nobody that can be saved by the rapes committed–quite the opposite; the goal is to torture them all until they break.
2. The specificity of the victims: Fallout 3 is not Klansman 3. The people that are killed are of every race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation–those attributes are generally cosmetic only and quite irrelevant to the point of whatever storyline the player is engaged upon. Now, it would be quite different if the player was portrayed as white and every single person the player could kill was portrayed as black, wouldn’t it? In RapeLay, the player is there solely to assault females. Women. Girls. Period. The violence presented is aimed solely and only towards one specific subgroup of humanity.
3. The age of the victims: Fallout 3 is not Pedophile 3. As a matter of fact, in Fallout 3, you can’t kill kids at all. There are child characters, but they are unkillable. By contrast, in RapeLay, you are specifically encouraged to rape, I quote, “virgin schoolgirls.” ‘Nuff said.
Rape culture, anyone..?
I actually don’t consider Rapelay to be part of rape culture in the traditional sense. Rape culture is about normalizing rape (stuff like that abstinence education program that teaches that sluts have it coming). Rapelay is ugly, but it’s pretty obviously a masturbatory aid for the serious rape fetishist, and with the forced abortion stuff etc. it’s as depraved and transgressive as possible. You’d have a tough time convincing me that its existence and even its availability via online retailers is really normalizing rape or rape-y behavior as acceptable, simply because in its obscenity it’s so far out of the American mainstream (I could be convinced that it plays a scarier role in Japanese culture, however). The difference to me is the difference between rape-y themes in mainstream pornography, and the same content in porn that’s explicitly s&m. The former is normalizing rape, while the latter is marking it as part of a transgressive fetish fantasy.
Rapelay is obviously kind of scary in concept and execution, but I don’t think it will create rapists where none existed, and I don’t think it serves to normalize rape. While I can’t say I’m particularly sad to see it off Amazon, I don’t know if it’s worse than the endless ranks of porno, hentai, other japanese porn games, erotic fiction (e.g. Gor) and other media that feature similar subject matter and arguably contribute more to the normalization of rape.
“why am I so up-in-arms about a videogame displaying cruel and graphic rape and yet relaxed enough about a game that displays cruel and graphic murder enough to buy it for my son for Christmas..?”
I’ve given some thought to why depictions of rape disturb me far more than depictions or murder. For instance, I can watch horror movies where people are getting killed left and right. I can not watch rape scenes. I just can’t. There is nothing more horrifying to me than a rape scene. I suspect child murder scenes would be just as horrifying, but actual graphic child murder scenes are a rarity and I can only recall ever seeing one in my life.
I still haven’t quite worked out why I have such strong feelings about the matter, but…I think for starters it has to do with the fact that I have little fear of being murdered. It isn’t that I don’t think it’s possible that I will be murdered; it just doesn’t scare me as much as the possibility of being raped. As crazy as it sounds, with rape you have to live. You have to deal with the aftereffects. And as someone who knows how traumatizing the aftereffects of sexual abuse are, part of me feels like I’d rather just die than to deal with being raped. Of course I know that in reality I would choose to live, but thinking about the matter, this is how I feel.
As for why I believe that depictions of rape and rape simulators are more dangerous than murderous ones: Murder is generally accepted to be a crime. It is accepted to be something that is wrong. Rape…not so much. Rape is not always considered a crime by many and is even actively encouraged in certain circumstances. There’s also the sexual element. Sexual energy is an incredibly powerful energy. I’m sure we’ve all heard the Pavlovian theory about men and misogynistic sexual images creating sexual abusers. I happen to believe that there is at least a certain degree of truth to this theory. What we masturbate to creates our sexuality to some degree or another.
“I actually don’t consider Rapelay to be part of rape culture in the traditional sense. Rape culture is about normalizing rape (stuff like that abstinence education program that teaches that sluts have it coming). Rapelay is ugly, but it’s pretty obviously a masturbatory aid for the serious rape fetishist, and with the forced abortion stuff etc. it’s as depraved and transgressive as possible.”
I’m sorry, but are you smoking crack?
You’re a troll, right? A sophisticated, very cleverly disguised troll?
“I’m sorry, but are you smoking crack? ”
Ok, let’s look at what you wrote above:
“Murder is generally accepted to be a crime. It is accepted to be something that is wrong. Rape…not so much. Rape is not always considered a crime by many and is even actively encouraged in certain circumstances.”
So, as far as I can tell, the way rape works in ye olde patriarchy is that a big deal is made of stranger rape, preferably of virginal white women by scary minorities. Rape is defined as stranger rape, obscuring the reality that the majority of rapes are acquaintance rape, date rape, marital rape, etc, which are then defined as “gray areas” (or worse, as “she had it coming”). So while lots of rape is considered “not a crime” or tacitly encouraged in rape culture, this is made possible by the fact that stranger rape of “good girls” is held up as “real rape” which everyone agrees is bad.
Because Rapelay is about exactly that scenario – a psycho stranger rapes virginal girls – I don’t think that it contributes to the normalization of rape; instead, it’s a situation that even the most sexist non-sociopath would consider an evil crime. People who play Rapelay are doing it to experience something that’s amoral and illegal in real life, and they know it, and the game make no bones about it; it’s a very different dynamic from when other kinds of rape are dismissed as “boys will be boys” or “sluts get what they deserve.”
Ignotos: “Rapelay is obviously kind of scary in concept and execution, but I don’t think it will create rapists where none existed, and I don’t think it serves to normalize rape. While I can’t say I’m particularly sad to see it off Amazon, I don’t know if it’s worse than the endless ranks of porno, hentai, other japanese porn games, erotic fiction (e.g. Gor) and other media that feature similar subject matter and arguably contribute more to the normalization of rape.”
Exactly.
“Because Rapelay is about exactly that scenario – a psycho stranger rapes virginal girls – I don’t think that it contributes to the normalization of rape; instead, it’s a situation that even the most sexist non-sociopath would consider an evil crime.”
Even stranger rape is very often not considered a crime. Women – even virginal ones – are often held responsible for being raped, rather than, you know, the rapist.
So, yes, I still stand by my original statement. Either you are a troll, or you are completely mistaken.
“Even stranger rape is very often not considered a crime. Women – even virginal ones – are often held responsible for being raped, rather than, you know, the rapist.”
This is true to some extent, but I think that even the most ardent victim-blamer would admit that rape exists and is wrong – and that the scenario they’d picture is very close to the one in Rapelay, which in their minds is the only one with no ambiguity. Remember Bill Napoli and his “sodomized virgin” exemption for abortion bans? It’s the same dynamic.
That said, I’m inclined to agree with this piece at Sociological Images about a condemnation of Rapelay in the Sun: http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/02/16/this-is-what-rape-culture-looks-like/
The giant picture of the girl in her underwear is as big as the article – clearly whoever put this page together thinks the story is at least as titillating as it is “SICK” and “shocking.” So, i will agree that some of the reactions to Rapelay do represent rape culture. The mere fact that scantily-clad women are present makes it eligible for sexualization in the newspaper, regardless of their claim to revile the content. I guess at some level that’s exactly what Rapelay itself is about: sexualizing something we claim to revile (complicated by the fact that people with no desire to rape or be raped can and do have rape fantasies). My inclination is that Rapelay is something that is too explicit to get beyond the very edges of American culture; that no one would ever admit to liking it. Still, the idea of a bunch of frat boys chuckling while playing it “ironically” is enough to make me want to vomit.
On another note, I was thinking about the three points in the OP, and I’m not sure they’re as useful a distinction as appears at first glance. Points 2 and 3 both make Rapelay more unpleasant and scary, but I don’t think that we would react to the game that much differently if you could brutally rape men as well as women, or if there weren’t underage characters available. An equal-opportunity rape simulator wouldn’t be “fixed” so that it was acceptable.
That leaves point #1, which is the strongest. But there certainly have been games that were all about committing murders – Carmageddon and Manhunt come to mind. And many other games, including Fallout 3, explicitly support a “dark side” path where you hurt and screw over as many people as you can find. They may punish you with a “bad ending,” but unlike the hooker-killing in GTA, “evil” quests and options are designed with the intent that users will play and enjoy them. I remember the back of the box for Fallout 2 advertised “fall in love, get married, then pimp your spouse for a little extra chump-change” (I never played much Fallout 2, so I don’t know how that played out exactly in-game, but it was still an eyebrow-raiser).
Lastly, I think pretty much everyone would be really disturbed if you could rape other characters in Fallout, regardless of whether or not raping was the point of the game, or whether the rape mechanic was “intended” to be used for consensual sex.
“but I think that even the most ardent victim-blamer would admit that rape exists and is wrong ”
I’d agree that most people would admit that rape exists. I damn sure would not agree that “even the most ardent victim-blamer would admit” that rape is wrong.
Yeah–by definition, the most ardent victim-blamer thinks that rape is justified by the victim’s behavior.
I think it might have something to do with not perceiving murder in-game as murder, exactly. Consider this study; gamers appear to, for the most part, get the same amount of fun from playing virtual paintball as they do from a bloodier game.
Relating this to Warcraft and such, when I originally played Warcraft III, I wasn’t in the least disturbed by sending endless waves of peasants to certain doom at Orcish hands, but I was disturbed when Arthas caught up with Uther and killed him, far more so because I was doing my darnedest to make it happen.
There’s a level of psychological involvement that was required in one case, but not the other, and I think that’s what makes the difference. Rape is such an inherently personal crime that you can’t just mentally map it onto a game of tag.
The whole concept disgusts me. If somebody created a game where the whole idea was sodomizing virginial school boys people would be offended and raise hell. But raping virginal school girls – big deal. I had a disucssion about this with a guy once and he hit on something that I think is probably pretty true. He said society as a whole gets less upset about rape – whether the victim is a thirteen year old virgin or a fifty year old woman – because – hey, she’s a woman – that’s what women are for.
Guys are supposed to screw women and if you’re a woman you’re going to get screwed sooner or later so who cares when and how it happens. He said he thinks that’s why so much of society blows off the whole subject or wants to blame the victim whereas – if they person raped is a boy or a guy – then it’s a sick, heinous crime because the guy is supposed to be the screwer – not the screwee. It’s unnatural. Having known women that this is happened to – I just told him – there’s never anything normal or natural about rape. And the last thing they need is to be putting garbage like that in a game.
[...] and Belle Have a Blog asks why the game is so much more disturbing than games that simulate murder. Lisa Kansas at PunkAssBlog argued that in violent games, killing people is at least partly a means to another end, and [...]
It’s a fantasy game for a specific group of people. That group of people doesn’t include everyone and doesn’t include you. Not everyone is entertained by violence or sexual content. So it’s not surprising that there are people railing against violence in video games. So I ask why would you attempt to limit a sub group of people who fantasize an fetish of theirs just because you find it revolting? Removing this type of content will not eliminate sexual crimes throughout the world. In fact there’s every hope that it might reduce it. And it’s unlikely that such a game will corrupt youths considering that any youth that buys, obtains or is given the game or given chance to play it is interested in the subject. It may not seem like it but this only results in the suppression and segregation of those small pockets of society that fantasize about these things. If you feel that you should be allowed to engage in legal activities in privacy then I suggest you back off of this subject if you can’t even give it your partial support.
On a similar note you should be experienced and adult enough to know that even normal people have their quirks and oddities. Would you submit that everyone behave as you do? All one has to do is spend enough time on the net to experience just how wild and unnatural people are outside your small sphere of understanding.
This follows along the similar line of religious organizations forbidding masturbation. I can think of nothing more preventive of sexual assault and sex outside marriage or relationships than masturbation. Maybe a game like rapelay would provide similar benefits?
I apologize for posting anonymously but those who exist on the internet can’t always be trusted.
It’s not a matter of personal preference, it’s a matter of contributing to a rape culture. And it’s not even a matter of “eliminating” sexual assault by banning this video game or that video game. This is what I find so fascinating- no one actually advocated for this to be banned.
But, yes, it does in fact contribute to a culture that normalizes and okays rape. This game positively reinforces someone’s desire to rape, and negatively reinforces their urge not to. That’s pretty fucked up.