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    Should Free Speech Protect the Japanese Video Game RapeLay?

    By Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 10:14am | Social Justice, World Affairs

    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.

    Topics: 
    Social Justice
    World Affairs

    Comments

    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).


    by Deadman on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 12:59pm

    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.


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 3:52pm

    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:

    There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.



    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 4:47pm

    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.


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 6:17pm

    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.


    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 6:52pm

    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.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 4:53pm

    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. 


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 6:28pm

    Two things:

    Does society and the justice system spend as much time and effort caring about bringing rapists to justice?

    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.

    But I disagree with the Slate article that politicians are grandstanding when they express support for a ban. Somebody has to.

    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.


    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 6:59pm

    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. 


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 7:07pm

    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.


    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 7:17pm

    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.


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 7:29pm

    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.


    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 7:49pm

    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.


    by quinn esq on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 8:26pm

    Thanks, Quinn. That's sort of my point, made much less clumsily.

    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 9:02pm

    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.


    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 9:55pm

    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.


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 10:01pm

    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?


    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 10:21pm

    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?


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 10:39pm

    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.


    by DF on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 11:18pm

    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.


    by Orlando on Sun, 03/15/2009 - 11:51pm

    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.


    by DF on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 12:11am

    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. 


    by Orlando on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 12:23am

    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.


    by DF on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 12:56am

    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.


    by Deadman on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 3:48am

    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.


    by Orlando on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 8:09am

    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.


    by zergo (not verified) on Mon, 01/04/2010 - 6:17am

    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.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 9:56am

    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:

    • shouting "fire" in a crowd is banned;
    • taking what doesn't belong to you is banned;
    • traveling to Cuba is banned;
    • buying weed is banned; and
    • kiddie porn is banned.

    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.

     


    by Orlando on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 10:44am

    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.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 10:59am

    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.


    by Orlando on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 11:31am

    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.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 1:00pm

    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?


    by DF on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 1:06pm

    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.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 03/16/2009 - 2:36pm

    RapeLay search trends

     

    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.

     


    by Deadman on Tue, 03/17/2009 - 4:00pm

    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.


    by Orlando on Tue, 03/17/2009 - 4:13pm

    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.


    by Just a woman (not verified) on Thu, 08/27/2009 - 7:37am

    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


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 07/21/2009 - 9:42pm

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