Games themselves are trivialising the most serious crime - murder, from the very beginning.

OP said that 'some things should just be off limits' for joking, which I'm putting a big, fat no to. How exactly does that make me an insensitive asshole who wants to run somewhere and purposefully harm someone with what I'm saying? Just because I won't weight every single word that I ever say just because someone, somewhere could get offended, doesn't mean I want to run around, being a dick to people.

And yes, to start banning usage of words because someone doesn't like them would end badly, surely even you can see that.

True for some games at least, and that's pretty sad actually. But you don't really want to make an argument i the vein of "Many games are trivializing murder, so we shouldn't be bothered if gamers trivialize rape", do you? Cause that would be a rather weak argument, I think.

What I mean, something being trivialised in some form doesn't make it less serious in a real life.

Just because somebody jokes about rape, it doesn't mean rape as a crime is less serious than it was before.

Words are just that - words. They hold no power until you decide to give it to them.

When you are getting points for murdering people in games, it doesn't mean murdering people in real life is any less evil or may make anyone thinking it is.

Context is more important than just a word on its own. There are many words being misused and trivialising the core problem - there is no single reason why we should focus on a rape word and not on cancer, death, disease, prostitution or whatever.

There is a joke:

And old, ugly lady comes in the woods, sits on the grass and shouts "Help, help, rapist!"

A knight jumps in, looks around and sees nothing. "There is nobody here, lady"

"One can always dream" - lady replies.

Is making that joke really mean I think of rape as something not serious? Not in a slightest way. If people were able to distinguish reality from jokes and video games, it would be awesome.

Exactly. +1

This.

I personally think it's a good thing to be able to laugh at problems, even (specially!) if you know it's a problem. Starting from your own issues, and those of your people. Sure, they are people who were touched very closely by a particular issue, and won't find cracking jokes at it very funny. If you know there's such a person present, you're not going to start joking about it on their face, that's politeness and common sense. But I don't agree with completely forbidding the joking on an issue because there are people that might not like it.

I can crack jokes at terrorism, independentism, torture and stuff like that that affects my country very closely. Hell, I spent a night exchanging terrorism jokes with an Irish guy on a pub in Limerick, he would tell me some IRA ones and I would reply with a ETA one. Then we would both laugh at one aimed at the USA. This doesn't mean I don't consider terrorism a serious problem, but I think it's healthy to be able to laugh about it.

I'm not saying that words should be banned, but that words have power and you shouldn't wave powerful words around without a proper reason. Sorry that it seemed like I was implying that you're an insensitive asshole, though I guess I was kind of saying that I think you'd have to be to really agree with the "it's just a joke" mentality and that you're probably not (hence I provided an obviously off limits seeming joking situation, since hurting someone around you just doesn't seem to be extreme enough these days, but then it was too extreme and aaaaaa!).

It starts with yourself. How you address others and how you communicate can inspire others to do the same. You can not scold others for using words you don't like. I for one am not religious and find that Marx was right on the money with the sentence "Religion is opium for the masses" but I would never scold anyone for using God or other religious contexts in a sentence. Same goes for words like Gay or Rape. If someone says " that is totally gay" I sometimes feign stupidity and ask if they think it is "Jolly or fun" to get a reaction same could be done with rape. It is up to you to change the nature of the conversations you are in you cannot change others.

Yes, but that doesn't make the trivializing a positive thing.

There's a difference between making a joke, and using a word in a thoughtless manner.

The joke actually _acknowledges_ the seriousness of the subject, because otherwise it wouldn't have been made. The whole point of the joke that you quoted is the way in which a serious subject is addressed in a funny way. And I don't criticize that - like others in this thread, I strongly feel that nothing should be "off limits" for jokes per se. Depriving ourselves of jokes because they might offend someone would be pretty sad.

But my point is, the statement "Dude, I got totally raped" in gaming is not even a joke. It's just a thoughtless (and needless) application of a word that has very serious connotations. And it's not the "joking" that's trivializing the issue (because there is no joke being made in the first place), but the thoughtlessness.

Personally, I'm making lots of strange jokes about things other people might find offending. Yet, it never occurred to me to say "My team got raped" instead of "My team got destroyed", because it wouldn't be a joke, and the first statement is in no way more funny than the second.

I cannot really agree. I am not using this term, it's just not part of my everyday metaphors, but I've often been struck by how easy it is to joke about distant notions, and hard to joke with horrors you're more familiar wth. Especially in contexts where language is seeking for more and more radical metaphors, as the overused older ones lose their impact.

My point is that if I was reacting, and wishing to sanitize language, every time that I twitch in front of a joke reference to matters I'm sensitive to, I'd militate for drastic empoverishment of communications. Or even humour. Because, "when you think of it", too many forms of humour or common expressions are genuinely creepy. And you tend to "think of it" when your life trajectory confronted you to what these things mean "for real".

You're not wrong to be horrified, when you're the one who has a clearer awareness of what it is actually about. But if you add up all the good reasons to be horrified, by all the people who have a clearer awareness of all the subjects, you dramatically reduce the freedom of expression (expression as form, not content, here) of all the people who don't have this direct awareness (on one or all fields), and who are shielded by abstraction and distance, and by how unreal it all seems to them. This becomes, by accumulation, a very problematic form of "political correctness", especially to people who don't have the "feel" of the invocated realities. And not having this "feel" (at least not on all subjects simultaneously) may be precisely what allows us to sleep at night and breathe at day.

So, sexual agression for you. Cross-cultural prejudices for me (they have consequences). Cancer for another. The Shoah for Europe, and especially Germany. Genocides. Murders. Talibans. Irradiation. Making a videogame on tchernobyl is poor taste, according to a friend. Making videogames on recent wars is poor taste according to me. So many actual horrors that are treated lightly in so many contexts. If we really start to "wish it out" of language, of humour, of gaming, of fiction/entertainment, of poetry (as some have asked about the Holocaust), not a lot will be left. I'm certain that I could attack you with full legitimacy on many subjects that you feel sufficiently abstract and distant to toy with them, in your words and in your hobbies...

I think that it's a matter where we cannot afford to be right. You may be, because it's just one thing. But collectively, society may be asphyxiated quite fast if we "think about it" in every domain where we should.

What about "I was totally fucked / murdered / buttfucked / devoured" or whatever else?

Is the only expression allowed "I totally lost my game" ?

by the way, I agree with pretty much everything Telika said. I was mugged twice or three times in my life, and maybe the jokes about being mugged weren't that funny for me at a time, I have no problem with them whatsoever. I know it's not the same as being raped, but every man has his own traumas.

By the way, I can't even think of a number of times we were joking about "leaving the black dude behind" in Left 4 Dead. Does that mean we're racists or even insensitive towards the problem of racism? No. We just had a good time.

You say saying things like that is simply thoughtless. Ok, but what requires them to think about seriousness of rape all the time? Is it some kind of law? Does everybody has to think thhrough everything he or she says and does? Especially while playing video games?

Does it always have to come down to this slippery slope thing..?

Okay, let's imagine there's this thing called rape culture. It's not a nice thing and you don't want it in your living room. This whole video game rape lingo is a part of it.

Now to look at your suggestions, and assume they work in the same way:
"I was totally fucked" adds to the fucking culture. I'd guess quite a few would like a fucking culture, even if it's a bit crass.
"I was totally murdered" adds to the murder culture. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Luckily people are less likely to go around murdering because their friends think it's ok.
"I was totally buttfucked" adds to the buttfucking culture. Yeah, butts happen.
"I was totally devoured" adds to the vore culture and someone gets the kicks out of hearing it.

Anyway, yes, that means that the only word you're allowed to use is platypus. Work that emphasis if you want to be understood. You'd better not argue against platypus or I'm taking it away from you too.

It's nice that you cope so well. I've been mugged once as well (or robbed, maybe, does mugging involve getting punched because those guys were nice enough not to punch me), it didn't traumatize me either. I think I was more traumatized by someone calling me scrawny. Doesn't mean someone couldn't be properly traumatized by a mugging.

I find that an unfortunate choice of words when defending sexual assault jokes. Anyway, if a black dude had walked in and been unnerved by the way you were acting, would you have told him to relax because it's not a thing?

It would be preferable to have some thought involved, yes. Even if person A isn't thinking about the seriousness of rape all the time, person B might not be able to do the same after it starts, and if person A takes it upon himself to remind person B via the means of supper hillarious rappe jokkes, person A isn't free of guilt just because he doesn't think it's a big deal. The problem here is that even after people make these jokes, that aren't even funny or in any way better than the alternatives, and manage to hurt someone, they side with the jokes and get really defensive.

It's something like:
Frank makes a thoughtless joke or says something stupid.
Jacob hears it and is hurt. What happens next is...
A: Frank says that it was thoughtless of him and apologizes. (Yay, Frank, to err is human)
B: Frank says that the joke was totally funny and Jacob needs to get a thicker skin (Frank, you're not welcome to my tree house anymore)

In the following days...
A1: Frank keeps making those jokes (Frank, to err is okay, to keep erring gets real old)
A2: Frank takes Jacob into consideration, and maybe even realizes that the joke wasn't that important (Frank, have this flower)
B1: Yeah, Frank just keeps saying stupid things (No surprise)
B2: Frank stops saying it to avoid the wrath of Jacob (meh, whatever, I'll take it)

I'm explicitly not talking about "disallowing" statements because I fervently believe that language must be free. It's for everyone to decide for themselves which terms they want to use and which ones they don't. Language is a living entity - sometimes words become common that do more harm than good, sometimes other people raise the awareness of that problem, and sometimes the words fall out of favor afterwards.

When I was in school, it was very common to refer to Turkish immigrants as "ticks". That's an atrocious insult in this context for a number of reasons, even though the people who used it deemed it funny. Over time, the term became so common that some people started to use it in a thoughtless manner, really just as a synonym for "Turkish immigrant". Later on, people raised awareness how horribly abusive this term was, and it then fell out of favor.

Personally, I believe that the usage of "raped" in gamer lingo has reached this level of thoughtlessness, at which point it is a good idea to raise awareness of the problem and ask people if they really want to use this term, and whether it really has any advantage over alternatives such as "destroyed", or some of the ones you mentioned.

I'm not asking to forbid jokes or to censor language, and I'm not asking people to think about everything they say. As said before, language is a living entity, language needs freedom to develop, and it would be horrible if we had to consult an inner censor before making any statement. What I'm saying is that this particular term ("rape") is currently being used thoughtlessly and needlessly in a way that does more harm than good, and that I would be happy if people used a different term, or at least spent a minute thinking about their usage of it.

Is there any advantage in using the term "rape" in this context? Is it really more funny than saying "destroyed" or one of the other alternatives? Is it a more precise description of the event? If not, then why should we continue to use it? So far, the only arguments pro using the "rape" term are "Don't tell us how to speak" and "Censorship impoverishes language". I agree with both of them, but I really can't see them as compelling arguments _for_ using the term "rape". Do you?

Yeah, I'm staying out of this one...