Gamer = Rapist according to crackpot...

[Khatovar]

Found this in the news today. And believe it or not, this tripe doesn't come from Jack Thompson this time.

Playing the rape card: "Media psychiatrist" ratchets up anti-videogame rhetoric (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/playing-the-rape-card-media-psychiatrist-ratchets-up-anti-videogame-rhetoric.ars)


Some of my favorite bits


In a phone interview with Wired.com, Lieberman claimed “countless studies” show a connection between videogames and violence. Yet she would not name any of those studies and could not name a single relevant videogame, though she did reference “that game where … it took place in an academy.”


But Lieberman, who received her M.D. from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, said games like Bulletstorm cause violent behavior and, since rape is a violent crime, “Ergo, there is no question that [violent videogames] cause an increase in rape.”


Despite Lieberman’s allegation that there has been an increase in rape, the number of forcible rape cases in the United States has decreased since the early ’90s, according to FBI statistics. Additionally, anti-sexual-assault organization The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network says rape cases have decreased by 60 percent since 1993.

When shown these figures, Lieberman said the “statistics do not reflect all the rapes, since many go unreported and others relate to child abductions.” When asked for statistics showing an increase of rape in recent years, Lieberman said she did not have time to pull them up.

Everyone knows us gamers are too fat and lazy to go out and rape people. That's too much work when we can just sit here and download porn. Duh.

[Fat Tire]

self-described “media psychiatrist” :D I lol'd
“When videogames are violent and sexual, it causes the players to become desensitized to rape and think it is a game."


Same could be said about me seeing all the dead bodies in Iraq, I became numb, but that doesnt mean I am going to kill around killing people.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Seeing where she received her education and with over 200 references to Sex, Adultery, Rape and Prostitution in the bible, I can see in a round about way that she comes to these conclusions w/o providing any proof.

Nevermind, shes bat-shit crazy.

http://www.drcarole.com/home.htm

[F9thRet]

Right. what an idiot.

Ok show of hands, how many of you wanted to commit sodomy after playing pac man?

Stephen

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Right. what an idiot.

Ok show of hands, how many of you wanted to commit sodomy after playing pac man?

Stephen

ROFL! Well played. :D

[Multibocks]

Well.... Mrs Pacman was hot...

[Tonuss]

I don't typically rag on Fox News, but my goodness did they shit the bed on this one. Aside from being the ones who decided that this "expert" deserved the time of day, they also throw in the usual bullshit that is designed to make the situation look even worse than it is.

For starters, they use "an artist's recreation of a scene" from the game, which shows a very bloody dismemberment (by the way, if the game's graphics are as shitty as this "recreation" then I think Bulletstorm has a bigger problem than angry parents). Then they add the following:


players are rewarded for shooting enemies in the private parts (such as the buttocks). There’s an excess of profanity, of course, including frequent use of F-words. And Bulletstorm (http://www.bulletstorm.com/) is particularly gruesome, with body parts that explode all over the screen. And:


And with kids as young as 9 playing such games, the experts FoxNews.com spoke with were nearly universally worried that video game violence may be reaching a fever pitch.

“If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm's explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant,”Bulletstorm will have a mature rating slapped on it, which means that it's rated for people 18 years and older. But fuck that noise! Parents can't be trusted to raise their own kids and make decisions for them... that's the government's job!

Ever notice how people on each side of the political spectrum spend half of their time complaining that "the other side" wants to take away your rights, and then spends the other half... WISHING THEY COULD TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS?

Assholes.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Its not the governments job, its the kid at best buys job to do it. Thats the person who gets fined $1000 in some states if they sell it to your 9 year old.

Pac Man doesn't = Sodomy. It taught us all to eat till we get fat.

[Ualaa]

Right. what an idiot.

Ok show of hands, how many of you wanted to commit sodomy after playing pac man?

Stephen

That was very good.

[zenga]

Seeing where she received her education...

KUL / UCL (Leuven / Louvain) is a university that shows up in many 'top x lists' of universities world wide (depending on the field it ranges of course).

[Coltimar]

I think the fact that we are joking about rape lends credence to her argument that we are desensitized.

[Ualaa]

Desensitized to a degree.
The joke is regarding her logic and how she came to that conclusion, not so much the topic itself.

I can make a joke about an axe murderer.
But just because you joke about something... doesn't mean it would be "not a big deal" when it occurs on your block.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I think the fact that we are joking about rape lends credence to her argument that we are desensitized.

Context much? Really. These sorts of arguments are better suited to the WoW general forums. We're a bit brighter than that here.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

http://www.dorkly.com/comic/10939/dueling-analogs-video-games-cause-violence

[Khatovar]

I think the fact that we are joking about rape lends credence to her argument that we are desensitized.

And what does it lend to the conversation that I am a female who has been sexually assaulted and I'm the one who brought the topic to discussion?

Does this mean I'm looking to get raped as I am a gamer and I hang out on this message board, not hiding the fact that I am female? Does the fact that I'm currently playing Dungeons mean I'm a Sadist? I'm also playing Batman ; Arkham Asylum, does this mean I've got delusions of grandeur and the desire to be a vigilante? I spend a lot of time on the FindADeath forums and watching TrueCrime and forensics shows, does this mean I am a serial killer? I'm also Pagan and listen to industrial music, does this mean I kill babies and don't know what a smile is?

I could just as easily say something like Christianity should be outlawed because it breeds pedophiles and murders and cults, pointing to all the priests nailed for assaulting altar boys and people like John List and Jim Jones.

Absurd is absurd. No one is joking about rape. It's Ms. Lieberman who's downplaying what rape actually is, because it's something that just happens because of something like a video game. It's insulting to me to think that this woman is sitting here saying "if it weren't for video games, these people wouldn't be raping".

There wasn't a simple external trigger that turned these nice people into monsters. It's a cop-out when people use it {games, religions, movies, music...} as a defense and I still see it as a cop out when people try to demonize it. It's the same basic fear mongering that we've heard about since the dawn of time from people who don't know what they hell they're talking about. Simple people need simple answers, damned be the truth.