Equality Now, RapeLay, & the American Public

[Sakunyuusha]

Walls of text have the nasty habit of scaring most people away. So ... I'll keep it brief.

Do you know Equality Now? If not, look them up.
Do you know RapeLay? If not, look it up.
Do you remember our discussions on Akiba-Online about this matter? If not, look them up via our Search feature.

Having said that ... here you go. Watch these, let your jaws drop, and then let the discussion begin:

Link 1: the video report
Link 2: the article in HyperText

Resources:
[hide]
about Equality Now
official website
Wikipedia article

about RapeLay
Something Awful.com article
Wikia Gaming article[/hide]

 

[redrooster]

I know about the rumor going on, just reg. this special game, and I already deleted it completely several times, at least I deleted the links and closed the threads giving an explanation too, due to that reason, there is no need to attract attention, not for just a game...

Normally there´s no rule for something like that, I just decided to do that. There should be no active thread for this game here at A-O...

 

[silentwhim]

i'm sure this video will make hentai games even more popular ~_~

 

[reingiolt]

and here i thought they were done with this. now that they have CNN on their side i wonder if that'll be enough. those British gamers said some good things too. due to all the number of FPS games it seemed natural to me but looking at it from a different perspective, games where you kill in order to win is pretty much as twisted as games where you r*** in order to win. and then there are the GTA games. these have also been targeted by the media but they still keep on coming. i wonder if they've ever made reports about the SMT games where u kill god.

 

[Ceewan]

Sheesh, everybody is a critic. You think maybe they would enjoy Biko3 more? The sex scenes are not as good but the gameplay is more entertaining.

 

[example100000]

this one is good - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICQ5SIFld1A
i think this opinion of the game is good....if you can play grand theft auto and brutally murder people, what's wrong with having a sexual fantasy of raping people? you dont see people killing everyone coz they played gta.... :sigh:

 

[Sakunyuusha]

The problem with that argument is that someone may share in that logic but reach the opposite conclusion: "not only should r*** games be banned, but so should games in which you kill people!"

[hide]It would be similar to this scenario:

There is a law which permits women the right to vote but denies blacks the right to vote. Black protesters say, "If women can vote, why can't we?" Some white men in the country agree with the blacks' line of thinking but reach the opposite conclusion: "By golly, they're right! We need to rescind the women's right to vote, as well! It's not fair that women can vote but blacks can't! And women voting is pretty bad! Let's make it so that neither one of 'em can vote!"

It would be better to point out the absence of reasons as to why blacks shouldn't be allowed to vote than to point out the similarities between blacks and other groups which get to vote.

Likewise,

We have here a child molester who is in prison and a normal guy who is not in prison. Both of them are humans. Both are male. Both are American. Both were born in the 1960s. Both identify themselves as secular Christians. Both have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Both live in Massachusetts. Both are single, never married. Both love Star Wars. Both hate Dancing with the Stars. And yet only the child molester is in prison. Why? That's not fair! Look how similar they are! If the normal dude gets to be free, the child molester should get to be too!

We don't lock away child molesters because of the absence of similarities they hold with the rest of the population. We lock them away because of the presence of particular factors (e.g. that they fucking molested a child).

My point: the best way to defend hentai games which require the player to partake in behaviors which are illegal in the real world would be to point out their absence of ban-worthy characteristics -- something which doesn't require them to be compared with other video games -- rather than to point out their presence of positive characteristics -- something which does require comparison with other video games.[/hide]

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Follow-up reply:

Things worth pointing out in a defense or critique of RapeLay:

• RapeLay has been linked to x% of r*** cases in Japan.
• RapeLay has been linked to x% of domestic violence cases in Japan.
• RapeLay has been linked to x% of brutal acts against women in Japan.
• In regions where there is a statistically significant surplus of RapeLay owners, there is or there is not a statistically significant surplus of r*** cases.
• x% of rapists in Japan own RapeLay or games similar to it.
• x% of criminals in Japan own RapeLay or games similar to it.
• x% of Japanese own RapeLay or games similar to it.
• And then, x% of Japanese are criminals; x% of Japanese are rapists. (Compare all these figures to assess the significance or insignificance which r*** eroge play in r*** cases in Japan.)
• x% of owners of RapeLay express misogynistic views.
• x% of owners of RapeLay exhibit violent tendencies / behaviors.
• x% of owners of RapeLay express violent thoughts.
• And compare these last three with the same percentages for Japan overall. (e.g. x% of Japanese, period, are misogynistic.)
• and many more points

Things not worth pointing out in a defense or critique of RapeLay:

• There are other games which are just as bad and are also legal.
  • irrelevant to the defense: it could be the case that those other bad games, too, deserve to be outlawed
• Other nations which do not have RapeLay or games like it have higher incidences of r*** or brutality against women than does Japan.
  • irrelevant to the defense: this comparison doesn't prove or disprove the effects of banning RapeLay on domestic [i.e. Japanese] incidences of r*** or brutality against women; nor does it tell us anything about the incidences of those crimes in the foreign nations were those nations to begin distributing RapeLay and games like it to their citizens. That is to say, this may be proof that r*** games help to lower the incidence of r*** in countries which sell them. Or it could also mean that Americans are just naturally more predisposed to r*** women than Japanese are; and that an America with RapeLay would be even worse, while a Japan without RapeLay would be even better. Both conclusions are possible until otherwise disproven, which renders this argument pretty impotent in any serious debate.
• People will find other ways to fantasize about this sort of behavior, so there's not really any point in banning it.
  • True! But at the same time, it's not a persuasive argument to those who strongly believe that we should still at least try to ban bad things rather than throw up our hands and give up altogether.
• Banning RapeLay impedes on my freedom of speech!
  • A, this is Japan, not America. B, in any nation, there is no such thing as unlimited free speech. Speech which directly drives someone to their death (e.g. deliberately misleading them into walking onto an unstable bridge and then watching as they fall to their death) is illegal in, I would think, every country on the planet. This is an extreme example but meant to point out the fact that there is no such thing as absolute, 100% free speech. Human beings realize that certain things should not be permitted to be said depending on the circumstances. (e.g. the above example is okay for an actor to say in a film or play but is not okay when executed in real life!)
• other points

 

[nuns]

It's hypocritical for Americans to whine about this game. In America, someone is r***ing every two minutes. In the U.S. military, one out of three female soldiers are r***ing by male soldiers. That's according to their own statistics. They should do something about that instead of whining about a video game.

 

[redrooster]

what I never will get: they are going against something like rapelay, but never against something like Fansadox / DoFantasy Comics, which indeed are far more worse and located just in front of their own door...

 

[I<3Asianwoman]

It's hypocritical for Americans to whine about this game. In America, someone is r***ing every two minutes. In the U.S. military, one out of three female soldiers are r***ing by male soldiers. That's according to their own statistics. They should do something about that instead of whining about a video game.

Where did you get that statistic about females in the US military being r***ing?
I never heard of it and I served in the US military.I'm not saying r*** does not occur in the US military, but no more than the civilian sector.

 

[nuns]

Where did you get that statistic about females in the US military being r***ing?
I never heard of it and I served in the US military.I'm not saying r*** does not occur in the US military, but no more than the civilian sector.

That's from the pentagon's statistics. Google "1/3 r*** military"