levite

Of course I would discuss and educate my children concerning sexual violence without something like this. But rather than doing so shockingly, and at a young age, I would do so gradually, more subtly. I think the best way to prepare a kid for education about proper sexual and relationship mores is to demonstrate loving and courteous relationships, and give them a solid grounding in respecting their friends and neighbors, preparatory to respecting their partners. But that doesn't mean I won't crank up the up-front lessons and shock value if I think my kid is being led down the garden path.

I will do my best to teach my kids about non-sexual violence, and preventing that also, but that's different. The problems most video-game playing kids have today is that they don't clearly understand the boundaries between the videogames and how the real world works: for example, they understand that in the real world, killing is wrong, but they don't get the permanence of death. But this rape game is not fictionalizing the subject, as if, for example, the virtual victims, once engaged in the sex, enjoy their violation. It specifically reproduces the fear and pain reactions of the victims, for the pleasure of the user. It doesn't merely blur the distinction between fantasy and reality, it actually promotes an unhealthy attitude, namely, that it is okay to take pleasure in hurting others, sexually.

Sure, I understand that this is a virtual simulation. But it is clearly geared to preparing someone for the actual act. It acclimates the user to enjoying the suffering of others, it promotes a deeply unhealthy mindset. The fact that the "training victims" are not real, and thus there is no real suffering, is entirely irrelevant when compared to the future victims whose real suffering will be ignored. It's just sick.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)