I have personally hurt, killed and even tortured thousands if not millions of fictional characters by now, and I've watched even more get killed. Am I a criminal?
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.Well yeah that's what the conversation was about, works that portray fictional illegal acts. I guess it says something about the internet that you felt the need to check that nobody was defending works that portray actual illegal acts.
But yeah, I'd say slap a big red warning label on it, "this work contains fictional portrayals of illegal acts, including X, Y and Z". Hell it'd do wonders for addressing rape culture if done right, assholes would find it a lot harder to try and claim that rape isn't rape if all fictional portrays of it had to say that it is.
I play grand strategy games, I've killed thousands of fictional characters because I forgot to move an army out of attrition, hell EU 4 has what's jokingly called the "genocide" button, I'm pretty sure I've hit that a few times.
edited 7th Apr '16 12:54:33 PM by Silasw
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ CyranI've seen at least one flash hentai game that does exactly that. If a random flash game can put up a warning just fine, so can any other porn.
edited 7th Apr '16 12:55:41 PM by Luminosity
Hell I'd be up for having them on more then just porn, it'd help with consumer choice if nothing else because it would tell people what the fiction they were buying contained.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ CyranA certain NSFW site I recently joined actually has a requirement for such warnings as part of it's policy.
And that's a great idea. The standard rating systems aren't always all that informative.
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.Hmm, no objection there. It makes sense to have content wrappers on potentially objectionable works anyway.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Even more important would be a good sex education. Because labels can be left out by pirating, for example.
Ideally, people should recognize the harmful stuff even without a label.
Pirates don't change the CERO/ESRB/PEGI....
There is just no point.
But aren't we heavily veering off topic here?
Yes. Still, I have to say that the fact that we were able to have this discussion at all (and in a sensible manner, without even a single thumped post too) is a very good sign.
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.Tasneem Salim of GCON on running a women's games convention in Saudi Arabia
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotStop pressuring women to be moms, something that doesn't get said often enough. Not everyone wants kids, yet it's an implicit assumption regardless of culture that if a woman gets into a relationship she must want children with whoever she's dating. Emphasis mine.
Assuming that all women automatically want kids is insulting—to everyone. It insults those who do plan to have kids or are parents already by diminishing the sheer amount of physical and emotional labor that goes into the undertaking. It insults those who don’t want kids, or aren’t sure, by elevating motherhood above every other option. It denies the fact that it’s possible to love your kids but hate being a mom, sometimes or all the time, or even regret motherhood. Nobody wins by coercing someone else into becoming a parent, or making someone feel guilty, damaged or ostracized for not wanting kids.
In an essay for Lenny Letter, actress Joy Bryant detailed the galling comments she’s gotten from other women about why, exactly, she should be having kids, including “you’ll have beautiful children” and “you’ll be such a good mother.” She easily skewers the vanity of the former and pointlessness of the latter (“I’d be a good competitive eater, too, doesn’t mean I should”).
What I found to be her most egregious example was hearing “Just give him a baby already!” What on earth? As if she “owes” her husband a child. Bryant writes, “It doesn’t matter what I feel, want, or need, I should just give him a baby, like it’s a blow job. We are talking about a human being who should be wanted by the people who created her.”
Here’s another news flash: those who are childfree may very well enjoy kids, but not want to have their own, just as you can be an animal lover and not want to be a pet owner. But with children, it’s assumed, as Bryant writes, that because you can, you automatically should, as if your maternal instincts will go entirely to waste otherwise. At the childfree blog We’re {Not} Having a Baby, user Courtney writes about her journey to embracing being both a “kid person” and childfree. After years of dithering and postponing the decision about whether or not to have kids, when her husband told her he didn’t want to, she writes, “It was like a light bulb went off. We don’t HAVE to have children. I am not required to procreate. Amazing.” Think about that: “I am not required to procreate” was a modern light bulb moment, not something from centuries past. That should tell you how deep this cultural indoctrination goes.
Thirty-year-old UK writer Holly Brockwell just won her four-year battle to get sterilized, after being told by numerous doctors that she was too young to make such a momentous decision, with one doctor even telling her he wouldn’t consider the procedure until she’d had children.
But pressure to have kids is a problem for more than just the adamantly childfree; those subtle and not so subtle questions and hints, from family members, friends, coworkers or strangers take a toll. In a moving essay, Margo Lockhart details her inability to process the fact that her daughter wasn’t gung ho to become a mom, writing “I have been guilty of expecting my daughter to have children without really asking her if that is what she saw for herself.”
When her daughter later told her mother she was pregnant, Lockhart admits she was not as supportive as she could have been, precisely because she had only one vision for what motherhood could mean to a woman. “I was surprised that she was not happy. I dismissed her anguish about her career and her travel dreams. I regret that I wasn’t more intuitive to her moment of not wanting to be a mom. Instead, I made it about how wonderful motherhood is, and how happy she would be. I could not fully digest that she was not happy about being pregnant,” she revealed.
This is an important lesson — we can never assume we know how someone else feels about anything, especially such a huge, life-changing decision, unless we ask and are open to fully listening. Having kids isn’t something we should expect people to decide on a whim, or because it’s expected, or because of their gender.
Lockhart also delves into the messy reality of child-rearing, acknowledging that even welcomed, wanted children are a lot of work and some days may be quite harrowing. She acknowledges that making one choice doesn’t mean you never consider what might have been, nor does it require glossing over the harder elements of your decision. She admits, “for almost 30 years I’ve been programmed to deny, delete, and push back any negative thoughts about being a mom… I’ve been a mom since I was 19 years old and the truth is at times, I’ve felt jealous of any woman who was able to have a flourishing career without having to do the balancing act of motherhood and family.” Notice that she’s not telling other women not to have kids, but simply sharing her experience.
This baby pressure is tied directly to reproductive freedom, because how free can we possibly be when we are bombarded with the idea that we should want kids, or it makes us somehow less human, less womanly, less loving? It could even lead to more abortions, if men like Vartan’s lovers consider birth control something they can use or not at will.
Women should not have to detail for anyone their reasons for not wanting kids, nor should they be shamed or railroaded into having them. What purpose does that serve—to either make women feel guilty for not having kids, or push them toward doing something they know in their hearts isn’t really for them?
I’ve known I want to be a mom for the last decade, and I’ve sometimes wondered why my childfree friends are so vocal about their stance, but I need look no further than the examples cited above. Women are so vocal about being childfree because our society repeatedly treats motherhood as both the default and the gold standard.
Too many people are all too happy to assume that what’s right for them is what’s right for everyone else, rather than simply making peace with the fact that some women (and men) want kids, some don’t, some aren’t sure and some may change their minds. Those options are all fine; what’s not fine is claiming that, say, because you love your kids, everyone will love having kids, or because you regret not having kids, all women will. I would hope we can all agree that a man removing a condom during sex in order to trick a woman into getting pregnant, and assuming she’ll magically decide not to get an abortion because she’s just so overcome by discovering her true purpose in life, is a disgusting move. It’s infantilizing—no pun intended—to promote the idea that women are “made” to be moms.
That one hits quite hard, because I am often pressured by all of my family (with the exception of my brother funnily enough) to have kids.....
And I... just cant. :/
I know the feeling, strongly. Telling people I'd drown my child at eat it like a starving feral cat before two weeks was up doesn't even get them off my back sometimes. It just makes them go all, "it's different when it's yours" even more.
Which is the point. It's different when it's yours. Just not necessarily in a good way.
i. hear. a. sound.After watching what is happening in Japan and Germany, I cant say I agree completely. Social pressure is pretty much the only thing that keeps that from happening here really.
France actually had to increase the pressure in various ways and made families more accessible such as day care services in big office buildings and such to get out of its decline.
There definitely should be equal pressure though.
edited 16th Apr '16 11:30:21 AM by Memers
I'm surprised nobody's taken your comment seriously and phoned the Police...
edited 16th Apr '16 11:31:49 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnDude, I am from Japan.
We have that pressure, it is horible.
The issue with Japan, if I understand correctly, is that social roles are so strict that there's basically one way to be "the mother". Which is stay at home 100% dedicated to your child's success. That's a similar reason why marriage is so uncommon. No one wants to be "the husband" who stays up to the wee hours of the morning to bring home a paycheck without actually spending much time with his family. No one wants to be "the wife" 100% dedicated to her husband and giving up he previous social life to do so. Immie of course is a better source of info on that, but when social roles are so narrow, there are few people who want to act out those social roles.
edited 16th Apr '16 11:50:39 AM by RhymeBeat
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.
You're not wrong. It's at the center of Japan's looming demographic crisis. Among other things.
Si Vis Pacem, Para PerkeleIt is quite a bit different than what I was talking about. The work system and pretty much everything else actively fights against it, only family really puts on pressure.
But not going to argue here.
edited 16th Apr '16 12:11:15 PM by Memers
Regardless of any social concerns about demographic problems and all that, women shouldn't be pressured to have children or made to feel like they have no other purpose in their life besides that. That's counterproductive.
Also there's a difference between pressuring someone to do something they don't want to do and making it easier for someone to do something they do want to do.
We should be letting the women who don't want kids to get on with things, while helping the women who go "If have kids if only X was different" by looking at changing X.
We want women to have kids but many don't want to, instead of trying to change the women how about we change the system?
edited 16th Apr '16 12:19:18 PM by Silasw
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ CyranForget it
edited 16th Apr '16 12:50:53 PM by Memers
There's a major difference between "support mothers" and "pressure all women to become mothers".
So we do have standards. Good. Now we have to be concerned with works that portray exploitative or illegal acts without actually exploiting the person or kind of person depicted. Grey area.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"