On the subject of violent video games...

I'd say it's weirder that nobody has ever given proof that sexual themes actually "mess children up" or whatever.

There have actually been studies that say that America's prudishness about all things sexual is partially to blame for our violence. By demonizing sexuality we've taken away outlets that end up replaced by violence. It's more acceptable in America to have guns than a porn mag. That helps aim teens which are at their biggest hormonal peak at unhealthy violence as an outlet rather than healthy sexuality.

Except violent crime happens more often in cities, which are typically very sexually liberal. Likely because the biggest contributors to violence have nothing to do with how often you get your rocks off, but chronic poverty and local drug activity.

edited 31st Jan '13 5:46:51 PM by Pykrete

Violence in cities is mostly to be blamed on gangs, but violence against women and children is largely to blame on being prudes. We need to attack this on all fronts. Not just the obvious ones.

Violence against women and children most often happens from within the family, typically because of power issues. Even cases of sexual assault itself have more to do with power than sex.

I have to admit, I've been watching a lot of British programming lately, and I've noticed how much differently sex is treated in these shows. It's just there and not a big deal, in American media, any instance of a woman taking a shirt off is going to involve all sorts of camera angles focusing on her in her bra and how titillating it's supposed to be made out to be. In British telly it's just "Meh, girl popping off a shirt, whatev."

And studies show that a big contributor to that is the objectification of women and demonizing of sex. By painting sex and sexuality as unclean and impure, woman, or anyone you happen to be attracted to is seen as evil and something to be overcome.

It's proven that greater availability of porn and treating sex as something natural instead of as something to be ashamed of cuts down on the number of rapes. There have been multiple studies to this effect.

x6 That makes a certain amount of sense, actually. Biologically, humans are probably supposed to start having sexual encounters and reproducing at, well, sexual maturity. Increased life spans and prolonged societal educational standards have resulted in a legal prohibition until a few years shy of twenty in many countries, but since natural selection had it's Homo Sapien department almost entirely laid-off, we're stuck with biological clocks that still think living to fifty is a one in a million thing.

Judging from recent studies on bonobos, it's possible that our desire for recreational sex is at least in part related to reduced aggression. You can count the number of species that have recreational sex on one hand, and they're all both intelligent and social, so at the very least there's a possibility that it's important for us psychologically—and depriving your psychology of what it needs is usually not a good thing. I don't know if it's related to video games or not, though. Insert half hearted gag about how video games are more popular amongst sexually frustrate high school nerds here.

Our shame about it is kinda weird, actually. If you told a child that babies were made by a man sticking one body part into a woman, and that they both enjoyed it, the kid would be like, "Ok," and wonder what the big deal was for a minute before going back to reading. I can understand not wanting kids to experiment or get raped or whatever, but I seriously doubt they would care about sex if you told them.

edited 31st Jan '13 6:16:48 PM by Rem

As you know, violence and sexuality in videogames can often be talked about. Has anyone of you read Grand Theft Childhood? It's pretty good and refutes the theory that video games cause violence in real life. I often wonder, is Brain Dead 13 mentioned in that book?

edited 31st Jan '13 6:43:03 PM by Angeldeb82

Those studies conflict so much you're not going to be able to claim proof of anything without some really heavy cherrypicking. The ones I'm pulling up from journals are a scattershot of positive, negative, and little to no correlation at all, the last one being by far the most frequent. A good deal of the ones that find no correlation with the violence itself did find a correlation with the misogynistic attitudes that can lead to it over time.

Also stop reading Sex at Dawn.

You should try watching some of the continental European stuff (Spanish and French being big ones), they are more casual then us Brits and really make us seem rather prudish.

edited 31st Jan '13 6:46:36 PM by Silasw

on libraries, how many bother with blocking porn sites?

Because a lot of the ones i've seen had quite a few patrons going to the bad sites.

also, on the porn/ violence against women relationship, how would you regard Japan? They have an absurd quantity of porn & brothels. And notorious for the frequency of public molestation (Chikan)

My own view on games is I've played plenty of shooters, slashers etc, but never wanted to go postal with a handy firearm.

Even the old Warcraft games had low-res gore when the grunts and peasants were killed

It was my (quite probably mistaken) belief that the issues regarding public molestation had to do with a cultural reluctance to draw attention to oneself in polite public, so the women in question don't often scream or punch the guy or whatever when it happens, thus drawing the perverts to a consequence-free grab?

I read an Interview of Catherine Bell (of JAG and Army Wives fame) where she had a run in with a chikan.

She of course decks the guy. And he seemed completely shocked.

Yeah, I'm reasonable sure that the whole Chikan thing has more to do with a culture of female submissiveness (which is slowly fading), and the "a proper lady doesn't draw attention to herself" thing. Pinning on porn culture seems a stretch.

Nancy Pelosi: Video Games Are Not The Reason For Violence In America

Not that I'm complaining about the "video games are not the cause of violence" bit...but wasn't she one of the ones who suggested the study in the first place?

Doing a study is science. Claiming that video games cause crime is making things up.

Besides, if it's not video games, it's OBVIOUSLY those eeeeevil guns that Sen. Feinstein has been so tireless in trying to ban.

edited 10th Feb '13 5:43:50 PM by Nohbody

Somehow, these guys are trying to turn it into a video game version of Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham.

Doing a study is the opposite of writing a scaremongering book based only on anecdotes.

And yet, a scaremongering book based on anecdotes nearly crippled the Comic Book Industry and led to self-imposed censorship.

When packaged correctly, it doesn't take much to turn opinion against something. Media have been doing this forever, so it would not be hard to imagine it happening to video games.

Hurray for bias!

{alternate title that no one will get: VIVA BIAS!}

I have the news that a PBS NewsHour special on the connection of violent video games with actual violence will air tomorrow. Here's a blog for this:

Video Games: Violent, Yes. But Do They Make Us Violent?

edited 18th Feb '13 2:32:11 PM by Angeldeb82

@Devil Take Me: The difference is that video games already have enforced censorship in that all video games in retail stores need to be rated by the ESRB. Back when the Comics Code was created, there was no such thing as ratings. When the Comics Code was adopted, the only thing that existed at the time to base it on was the Hays Code of film. In reality, the Comics Code should've been abandoned for a unified comics ratings system as the Hays Code was abandoned for the MPAA Ratings System.

By the time video games would be subjected to the same sorts of hearings that film and comics were subjected to, the ratings system of the MPAA had proven to work effectively and prior to then, the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality worked as a psuedo-Hays Code. Pretty much once a video game rating system had been agreed on by video game developers, Nintendo dropped the censorship.

edited 18th Feb '13 7:20:35 PM by GameGuruGG