rape vs murder are really all about culture.

Just check USA media:

-guns = great
-blood & gore = great
-killing (bad guys) = great
-tits = K18 / censored

...meanwhile in the africa forexample both things are apparently considered pretty "manly" (in certain areas) apparently. Just check the link i put above and you get the idea.

The answer is in the finer details. There are plenty of justifications for gunning people down, with a very popular example being that they're trying to gun you down and another one being that they're simply very bad people. When it comes to rape, there's really never any excuse for it. It's always an evil thing to do, without any exception, since it inevitably boils down to achieving personal gratification at the expense of badly hurting someone else, achieving nothing else whatsoever.

And games aren't less sensitive to killing than movies or books. At the end of Hunt for Red October, we're happy that the KBG-dickhead gets shot before he blows up the sub with a nuke. At the end of Django, we're happy that all the bad guys got shot. At the end of Django Unchained, we're happy that old Sammy Jones gets intimite with dynamite and we're not really terribly sorry when Leo gets his shake, are we? In Of Mice and Men, we're sort of happy that the dimwit gets a merciful end rather than a painful lynching.

I could give you dozens of stories from books and movies where violence is not just a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem the protagonists are having, but in fact by and large the only solution. I can't think of any story, be it game, book, or movie, where rape is a solution in any way, shape, or form. If you can think of any such story, please do outline it.

I was being ever so slightly sarcastic in that comment. Its probably my fault, I forget that it doesn't work on the internet.

What about rape as a form of torture as the US used it during the Phoenix Program. Following your arguments that would be justifiable.

Was rape the only way to get the information? Not really, so where's the justification? Hell, was ridiculous levels of torture necessary to get the information? Probably not. Was the information extremely time-sensitive? I doubt it. Consequently one might argue that instead of justifying rape through the Phoenix Program, you've instead managed to unjustify Phoenix by getting it placed in the same category as rape.

So no, I still don't see how rape is justifiable, in clear contrast to Rambo gunning down some Russians who are clearly trying to kill him. He's really doing the only thing he can do to avoid getting captured, tortured, and eventually killed, and I think most people today can empathize with his dislike of that alternative. On top of that, the Russian soldiers he's killing are also protecting a cliche scumbag officer, just to make the moral issues one might have with the wholesale slaughter of Russians even less of a problem.

Edit: I don't know if my tone isn't a bit too adversarial. I don't wish to offend anyone but I'm not a big fan of torture in the first place and I certainly don't like it being used as an excuse to rape people.

I was kidding around myself, I believe it was midnight and I had 3 beers on me. But as you say, sarcasm on the internet doesn't quite work, specially on a serious topic like this.

But if you apply this kind of scrutiny, you must also be against any game that depicts random killing or murder without justification which we have plenty of and which you guys all love.

You, sir, probably never read the Dune series, which is a shame.



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Chapterhouse of Dune, about halfway into the book. Fun scene that one. I'm not going into details, but yes, there was this rape scene, yes, there was a reasonably good reason for it (although honestly I didn't see it coming) and I'd also add that the rape wasn't even the most disturbing part of it. Herbert eviscerated at least half a dozen taboos in less than two pages.






























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I think we're suddenly changing the topic a bit. You asked why rape is considered worse than gunning down a whole bunch of people. I answer that it's worse because gunning down people can be justifiable while rape is practically impossible to justify. Note that "can be" does not mean "is always". For the most part, the violence in games (and books, and movies) carried out by the protagonist is justifiable and the violence carried out by the antagonist is generally excessive and hard or impossible to justify.

You're now asking if I'm consistent in that I'm also against games that depict random killings or unjustified murder, which apparently us guys all love? That is one hell of a generalization. Shame on you for doing that. But anyway, no, I'm not particularly against games (or books or movies) depicting rape or unjustified killing, as long as they don't present such actions as morally good.

Granted, I've enjoyed both GTA and Carmaggeddon and there's a certain measure of unjustifiable killing in both those series, but then you're never presented as anything other than a psychotic asshole. The points you're earning isn't a "wow, you're awesome" score, it's simply a dirtbag rating. The more points you're getting, the more of an asshole you are. And of course it has to be said that the worlds GTA and Carma take place in operate under hugely unrealistic parameters, which goes a long way to help people keep the games abstract from normal morality. You might as well argue that Need for Speed (or Fast & Furious series, or Taxi) turns people into psychopaths on wheels.

Oh, OK, now I better understand what you're asking. Why do we (our society as a whole) tolerate killing, which most people consider to be worse than rape, in our various forms of entertainment, but we don't tolerate rape as a form of entertainment (which again, for most people is not as bad as murder since you're left alive).

That's an interesting question, and I think a lot of posters here have touched on some of the reasons, especially the issue of being desensitized to seeing killing in our forms of entertainment over the years.

I don't really have anything to add but wanted to say that now I understand your question/point better than I did at first. Maybe the fact that rape involves sex and as a society we seem to have a lot of hangups about sex might be a contributing factor? I dunno. As I said before, I can't explain why I feel the way I feel, I just know I do. Seeing killing in any form of entertainment is mox nix (did I get that term right?? 30 years since I left Germany) to me, while I would rather completely avoid any form of entertainment that includes a visual representation of rape. (Having it as part of the back story is completely ok, just don't want to see it)

No, I've never read the entire Dune series, only bits of it. And I'd say that in the few bits I've read, I've seen very little attention to moral justifications. Every now and again, some of "the good guys" did what they did because they perceived it to be the right thing but I don't recall much weight being placed into explaining why they didn't have alternatives, and generally I'd say that the Dune universe is extremely brutal, placing very little value in human lives, which I guess would affect the balance of morality.

Still, I haven't read Chapterhouse: Dune, so if you can provide some general outline of why the perpetrator felt it justified, then that would be nice. And I right in guessing that Herbert went through hoops to define a fairly irrational scenario where the only way to achieve what is necessary is by inflicting a deep emotional trauma?

That's a fair argument, Usually in action movies the scene shows the bad guys getting shot, blood sprays all over, and it cuts to Stallone's mug.

What if you changed Rambo to say... Saw? Or something similar? You can see the victims fear and terror, the torture is drawn out, people can put themselves in that victim's situation as the people killed in that movie are random nobodies (iirc).

Yet look how popular those films are. There are 7 Saw movies and two Saw games. Lots of people like and don't mind gory violence, whether it's 'realistic' or Hollywood.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMnnMRWJ-0]is everywhere. People give is pass, whereas rape makes people uncomfortable.

I don't know why some people mentioned real world violence, this argument was about violence in entertainment I thought, and you can still be desensitized to fake violence but feel sick towards real world violence.

As a victim of sexual abuse, you'd think I would find rape worse than murder. I don't.
I think both are equally horrible, the murder victim losing their life from a violent end, the rape victim suffering from physical and psychological abuse for years to come. In my mind, both are equally terrible for those reasons alone. HOWEVER, if it were up to me, rapists would be killed on the spot and murders would be corralled with other murders in an isolated area where they had to survive each other. Then again, I am idealistic and rather disturbed as told by a psychiatrist a few years back...

Why is that generalization shameful if it is true? Where are the numerous threads asking to remove Carmageddon from the site? Where is the gamer outrage about GTA? You can only find that among groups like mothers against violent videogames or something. I say there is little difference to gamers against rape games. And that is hypocrisy, not just a double standard, because every videogamer hates those groups and then goes around acting the same when the issue is something they personally don't like.

So, in such a scenario rape would be ok? You keep evading the question by presenting scenarios in which killing is ok while forgetting rape.