Sex is a wonderful part of the human experience. But sex without consent, or rape, is a traumatic event that has devastating effects on both a psychological and physical level. It is the stuff of nightmares. Now, thanks to a Japanese company called Illusion, rape is the stuff of video games. In 2006, Illusion released a game called RapeLay in Japan. According to a Carnal Nation article, the point of the game is to stalk and rape a woman and her 2 daughters, with “the ultimate goal of ‘rape-training’ them to enjoy and even crave the assaults. The game offers a selection of sexual positions to choose from; if the mother or one of the daughters gets pregnant, the player has to force them to get an abortion.” The main character “teaches” the females in the game to be his devoted sex slaves by raping them repeatedly. Also, the game keeps track of how many times the rapist ejaculates inside his victims. In the beginning of RapeLay, the character, controlled by the player, molests and gropes a young girl on a subway. This is especially shocking considering that 64% of Tokyo women surveyed in 2004 had been groped on a train.* The Japanese even have a name for subway gropers; they are called chikan.
The game recently garnered attention in the US because it was found for sale on Amazon by a third-party reseller. It was quickly pulled from the website, and is not available in any stores in the US. However, an English-language version is only a few mouse-clicks away on the internet.
Unfortunately, this game is not an “isolated incident”; instead, it is part of a growing underground genre of erotic video games known as “eroge.” The Illusion company has released additional titles in eroge style, such as the “Battle Raper” two-part series.
What kind of a world are we living in where rape is fodder for entertainment?
Some feel that RapeLay is a Japanese problem, as it is banned in the United States. But this game is an affront to the female gender; it is a HUMAN problem, not a geographic one. We cannot condone the exploitation and denigration of women for the sake of entertainment. Sexual assault is a very serious and traumatic affair which has long-lasting and detrimental effects on its victims. We cannot allow these very real and horrific events to be the plot of a video game. It is disgusting and dangerous. The normalization and trivialization of such a serious and distressing event is detrimental to women everywhere.
Sources:
*statistic from this ABC news article: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/International/story?id=803965&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
http://carnalnation.com/content/6263/10/human-rights-group-urges-censorship-rape-simulator-video-game
http://www.slate.com/id/2213073/pagenum/all/
two weddings and some feminism
14 years ago
The truly horrifying thing about this is that there are far more imaginative and, well, carnal rape-themed video games out there. Whenever I found out about RapeLay last year, I searched and finally found some online footage which I did not know contained the virtual rapes--and those scared the hell out of me. Since then I have been told that there are also more fantasy-based video games out there where you can rape women with monster tentacles, etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I have talked to friends and read articles about how since the publication of a comic book called "Rape Man," the number of rapes in Japan have slightly spiked--leading some to market "rape dresses" that women can buy. If they fear they are about to get raped, all they have to do it lift up the dress and it will "give off the illusion that they are actually a vending machine." Sad stuff. What a world we do live in, indeed....