Somehow Minecraft seems a lot less annoying now....

The video game franchise Grand Theft Auto has long allowed players to have sex with prostitutes -- not without controversy -- but the bar has been lowered now that in the latest iteration of the game (GTA 5) the action takes place onscreen.

In the game clip above, posted to YouTube, a player called "Entertainment" gets an enthusiastic blow job and then gets out of his car and punches the prostitute in the face as she's leaving, knocking her out cold.  Not exactly Pac Man fever.  The comments on YouTube, at least on the first page or so, include these examples: 

 "This is outrageous!!! this game is portraying black ppl like violent ones! racism everywhere!!!.........you see what I did there?? I was trying to be a liberal douche, you know, those super socially correct heroes, I hate those guys. But in all seriousness, this looks great, I always kill the prostitute so I can recover my money... and cuz is a whore, no one cares, she's got no soul."

"I've been in all kinds of shit, and I still think Tumblr feminists are the dumbest shit to ever walk this fucking earth and what angers me the most, is that young women actually listen to them. The "leaders" of those organizations are ugly fat women"

A lot of comments take delight in the assumption that the clip will piss off feminists or, as Rush Limbaugh likes to call them, the "feminazis".  Those dour wimmins!  Always pissing on the parade....

This is disheartening stuff to read, but it's nothing new; the question of misogyny in video games and gamer culture has been in the news quite a lot recently and we discussed it in our latest post, To the Limits of Decency....and Beyond!  Suffice it to say that the hostility towards feminist voices within the gaming community is not isolated to comments on one clip.

As I said in that post, this kind of shit seems unhealthy, at least to these eyes.  GTA certainly didn't create misogynists, but it certainly panders to them; as the first comment (one of many) demonstrates, some gamers find that this clip reflects their own attitudes.  Sadly, it validates them as well.  Given that most of the comments are in agreement, it's hard to chalk it up to trolling; the commenters aren't baiting one another, but cheering one another on.

If free speech is to mean anything, we have to accept that some of the things we come across will be unpalatable to us, especially online!  Maybe I'm just being hopelessly PC or have become a boring, middle-aged father, but this shit is toxic.  What does it mean when our games involve abusing women?  Whatever it is, it can't be good. 

To the Limits of Decency....and Beyond!

In response to the screen-shot above, I wrote a long essay about porn and rape and sex, but it got too muddled and diffuse, finally undercutting my point:  that this pop-up ad seems very, um, unhealthy.  Just imagine the content of the game.

In researching that original post, I came across the story of Anita Sarkeesian.  In 2012, Sarkeesian produced Tropes vs Women in Video Games, a video series that examines misogyny in video games and gamer culture.  The series has received an angry response that, well, pretty much demonstrates misogyny in video games and gamer culture....

The New Yorker: 

In 2012, the Times reported that Sarkeesian had been sent images showing video-game characters raping her. Her Wikipedia entry was repeatedly vandalized. One man created a Web game called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian, in which players could punch Sarkeesian’s image and watch her face become bruised. The violent threats have continued unabated; Sarkeesian fled her home in August after a Twitter user posted her address and threatened to kill her.

Just this October, she and a venue hosting her received emailed death threats.  All because she spoke critically about women in video game culture.

Looking at that screen-shot and the response her videos prompted, it's hard no to conclude that yeah, Sarkeesian has a valid point.  My question would then be whether or not video game culture is more prone to misogyny than the culture in general.

Maybe, maybe not.  I found myself thinking of the recent viral video of the woman, walking in NYC, who got cat-called over 100 times during the course of a 24-hour period (watch here).  Leaving aside the issue of catcalling itself, the response to her video is pretty disheartening.  Like the Sarkeesian case, it's hard to argue that what this woman is saying is exaggerated, not when you see the downright virulence of the response to the questions they raise.

Here's a choice comment posted a few days ago to that viral video:  "I'd donate money to rapist group to rape a god's shit out of this feminist hypocritical bitch."

The comment pretty much sums up why women feel threatened by catcalling.  It's all smiley smiley "hey baby" until the lech is ignored, and then it becomes "fuck you you stuck-up miserable bitch" and other forms of verbal, if not physical, aggression.

Brings us back to a recent post, upon which Gid commented: "Interesting how a stare/glare can feel like an act of aggression."

Indeed.

Call of doody

This photo, snapped in Mali by Agence France-Presse photographer Issouf Sanogo, has caused the French military to pitch a fit.

"This is unacceptable behavior," Col. Thierry Burkhard told the French paper Liberation in Paris. "This image is not representative of action by France in Mali."

Because nobody's dying or killing there, see, they're using water balloons and spitballs.

Apparently the brass are working hard to identify and one would imagine, reprimand this soldier.

The photographer, meanwhile, seems to hope he hasn't caused the lad any grief:

"I don’t know the identity of the soldier in the scarf and I’d have a hard time recognising him even if I did see him again....I think -- and I hope -- that it’s impossible to tell who he is. I’m not even sure if he knows what people are saying about him."

In an interview, he stressed that the soldier wasn't posing, but merely protecting himself from dust, which is clearly quite heavy in the air behind him.

What strikes me is that in almost every article I've read on this, in English and French, the mask is said to evoke the character Ghost from the Call of Duty video game....a game that's been in the news quite a bit lately.  Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, for example was said to be have played it obsessively.

Interesting that once again the press is linking real and imaginary violence so quickly.

I'm a fairly pacifist guy, so I don't go around glorifying war or soldiers, but hell, their job sucks, they have to kill people.  Why not, as William Burroughs explained regarding the title of Naked Lunch, let everyone see exactly what it is on the end of the fork....or rifle, as it were.

What do people think the French doing in Mali, anyway, building latrines and teaching hygiene?

Like an old LoS pal once remarked about the totenkopf on SS uniforms.  "Hey, at least they were putting it right out front there."  Not comparing the French army to the SS, mind you, but hell, let's not candy-coat the facts.  In an age where we've sanitized war reporting, where in the US they tried to ban the images of coffins coming home at Dover  for concerns of "sensitivity" and "privacy"--not of course out of the fear people would see concretely what it's all about and start to question why.

The totenkopf, btw, features in a wide variety of military insignia.  Wikipedia shows a variety of pre-Nazi (18th, 19, 20th century) uses from France, Spain, Prussia and Poland.  Even the USAF 400th Missile Squadron used a totenkopf with crossed missiles as an alternative insignia up until 2005 or so.  The photo you can see on the Wikipedia pages even includes a death's head scarf or ascot of some kind.

Why?  Cuz it's badass, that's why.  Why do you think pirates used it?  If you're going into battle, why not look fearsome?  Easier than painting yourself blue like some latter-day Pict!

Personally, if the French military are serious about rooting out al-Qaeda fighters, they should probably spend more energy looking for 'em than searching for this guy in a skull scarf.  If they're so concerned about their image, I'd suggest re-thinking the stupid raids they do every once in while that either lead to the deaths of their commandos (Somalia, 2013), or the hostages they're supposed to rescue (Niger, 2011).

SS-Gruppenführer Hans Heinrich Lammers , 1938, looking all Nazi n' shit

Source:  http://blogs.afp.com/correspondent/?post/2013/01/22/Unmasking-a-controversy-in-Mali