October 27, 2004

• I'm having trouble understanding your position. Is it because you object to the practice of prostitution, or because you object to the presentation of sex as physically beneficial?
• There's always Tetris.
• Is there an option to be a female character? How does she replenish her power supply? Knitting?
• Rather, I'm sickened by the "feature" (upheld in GTA3 and GTA: Vice City; I can't tell if it's in San Andreas or not) wherein the main character (a guy, of course) replenishes his health by having sex with prostitutes. Well, it's worked for me all these years...
• What is the return policy on games these days? Buy it then return it if you
• There are other ways of replenishing your health. (I played the last GTA, lost a month or so of my life in doing so.) I think the key with this so-called feature is that it adds to what I like to call, the 'bad-core' rating of the game: a cross between 'badass' and 'hardcore' that gets the target audience buzzed-- becoming coke dealers, drive-bys, beating up random people for money, etc. I recall reading somewhere that you could actually 'finish' the game without doing anything illegal, just that it was much harder. Many of the missions are not actually requirements to 'finishing' the story of the game. For example, while you CAN pick up the hookers (and actually, in my Australian censored version, this feature was NOT available) you don't have to. While you CAN shoot at police (usually ends up in a SWAT splatterfest) there's no particular reward for doing so.
• That being said, the whole thing is about role-playing, and the mass desensitization of our youth to violence in order to make them better soldiers for the next war. </rant> On another note, what about asking some sex-industry workers what THEY think..
• In the context of the game (and realistically, I'm with the bone on this one.) it makes sense. In all the games you aren't playing a man falsely convicted of a crime, the character actually committed those crimes. This especially holds true in San Andreas. Your character is an ex-con and a gang banger. I don't really think that he has the most politically correct views of sex and women. It makes sense that the game caters to -his- view point, since he is the star. But, I'm with the bone on this one. It works for me, too.
• Scartol: I'm not familiar with the game, but why do you consider sex with prostitutes to be "woman-hating (ab)use"? Does the main character pay for these services, or is it simulated rape?
• I'm having trouble understanding your position. Is it because you object to the practice of prostitution, or because you object to the presentation of sex as physically beneficial? Well, I think the idea of prostitution as something one human is entitled to purchase from another is a bit pathological (which Sheila Jeffreys discusses quite eloquently). But in the game, my main problem is that it was (might still be) part of the health system. As I stated in another spot, I don't know what to think if prostitutes are just there as part of the background of the game. (As I put it in that other post: "Whereas RockStar is trying to present a full-fledged representation of the criminal underworld, it makes sense that prostitutes would make an appearance.") So I'm not just looking for "is it there or not?", but rather "what if it is?" As for the return policy: Stores do NOT allow you to return a game if it's been opened, except to exchange it for the same title. What with duplication technology and other trickery, it would open the floodgates (I presume) to have a lax return policy with digital media.
• That's the twist. You do pay for the sex. It's not rape. However, if you want your money back, all you have to do is let her out of the car and then run her over. Which is of course objectionable.
• For example, while you CAN pick up the hookers (and actually, in my Australian censored version, this feature was NOT available) you don't have to. Hmm. I don't suppose you'd be interested in procuring for me a copy of this censored game? What else in it is censored? why do you consider sex with prostitutes to be "woman-hating (ab)use"? Does the main character pay for these services, or is it simulated rape? You pay for it. But you can kill the prostitute afterwards and get your money back. (Just like you can kill and rob anyone in the game.) I don't want to turn this into a debate on the merits of prostitution (or lack thereof) -- that's a discussion for another thread. (Thus I won't respond with my intitial incredulity at "TheBone"'s claim that renting prostitutes' bodies helps him to regenerate his health.) But I will say that I consider men renting women's bodies as deplorable (just as I do women renting men's bodies and men renting men and women renting women; I don't think people ought to rent each other). Furthermore, while many women go into sex work free from physical intimidation, economic pressures often play a big part, and I think we need to critique it radically. (Again, I will refer people to the Jeffreys book cited above; it's the best I've ever read on the topic.)
• I don't want to turn this into a debate on the merits of prostitution (or lack thereof) -- that's a discussion for another thread. I don't think you can separate one topic from the other. It's your opinion of prostitution that's causing you to avoid the game, so it becomes a matter of your personal choice and there's not much we monkeys can add. If you really want our opinions, you're going to get our opinions of your views on prostitution.
• I don't think I can make that decision for you, but I will give you my spin on that particular mechanic in the game: It's how that game is played and bears no resemblance to my treatment or attitudes toward prostitutes (or women) in the real world. The same goes for the killing and all the other activities in the game. I would advise you to avoid the game if the way the game is crafted is causing you problems.
• replenishes his health by having sex with prostitutes. "Whereas RockStar is trying to present a full-fledged representation of the criminal underworld" Scenes of this game that I have seen - RockStar looks like Eazy-E., who may have acquired aids from prostitutes. It was a known fact in his neighborhood he traded dope for sex. The sad part with him having aids was the lack of surprise.
• "This is the best PlayStation 2 game ever made. Period." This is, quite frankly, nonsense. That honour must belong to Katamari Damashii.
• Well... I for one see nothing wrong with state-regulated prostitution. While I wouldn't do it myself, nor would I relish the idea of my sister doing it, I still think that it is one's right to do with their body whatever they see fit, with the proper checks and balances. It's economics that force me to sit in a flourescent lit cube all day, mindlessly doing my job. The only point with the sex industry is the addiction one can get to the money. I have a unique perspective on this, as a close female friend of mine was thrown out of her house when she was 19. She turned to stripping, and I tried to be there for her, emotionally at least. I was also 18-19 at the time, so I couldn't help her out financially or provide her with housing, so her choice was to be homeless or strip (in her mind, that is, convincing her otherwise was futile). She planned to do it for a year, but the $200 a night (it was a shitty club) was still too much of an allure for her to get a real job after three years. Picking her up at 3 AM, with the pervs circling was some of the freakiest shit I've ever done. After seeing the inner workings of club, they are revolting places. She started getting weirder and weirder, and we eventually lost touch. She never got in to the drug scene (as far as I know), and didn't buy in to the sex for money thing, but if she had, I think it was her right to do so. But, I digress, I don't mean to hijack this thread. My thoughts on GTA is that if the main source of regaining health were having sex with pros, that would be wrong. As it plays a minor part in the game, I don't specifically have a problem with it. Just my .02
• I've only played GTA once, at a friends house, and relatively briefly. However, I did play enough to form an opinion of the game which may or may not be relevant to your understanding of its violence and crime. I thought it was a brilliant satire. The most obvious manifestation of this was one of the radio channels which played a very funny parody of right-wing American radio. However, I felt that the satire ran much deeper than this. Indeed, it was built into the very fabric of the game. What I mean is this: it perports to be a game that gives you a choise between doing good or evil. As court3nay says above, it's -possible- to finish the game without breaking the law. However the game constantly and subtly pushes you towards evil. It's difficult to even walk down the street without knocking down pedestrians. All around you is a dark city of decay and crime and death. There's even a brilliantly ironic option to get a fire engine and go around the city putting out fires (good!), but to do it you need to steal the fire engine. Most of all, after playing for a bit, I realised that the game is a perfect example of the old dictum 'put in the right circumstances, anybody will do evil things'. We know, when we're playing the game, that the people we kill are genuinely not real: that it really doesn't matter. Freed from the need to feel sorry for our victims, we find ourselves becoming evil, murderous, sadistic. For the first time, I felt like I really understood the mentality of people who become involved in wartime atrocities (which I used to study). Seen in this light, the prostituion in the game is a continuation of the satire. Many of us feel that prostitution is bad, socialy destructive, exploitative. This is especially true of the kind of desperate streetwalkers who populate the game (perhaps moneyjane, our resident lady of the evening, would comment further on the subtleties of the prostitution issue). However, the game rewards you for, pushes you towards, using prostitutes. You have the choise to ignore them but the temptation, and lack of consiquenses, is there. Why is this satirical? Because it makes you confront, and in a very real way, the vulnerabilty of street prostitutes. It makes you understand the power of 'johns' and the violence of their lives. For people like me, who's life is comfortably removed from that underworld, it provides a visceral demonstration far more effecting than platitues and theory. Oh, and having been shown the prostitute 'feature' I have to say that it was not in the least bit titillating. It was grotesque and degrading and depressing, and I think it was intended to be that way. The best satire is satire that stings. The best satire is satire which makes the viewer or reader complicit. This is brilliant satire, in that it not only implicates the viewer, but puts the viewer, so to speak, in the driver's seat. You play, you laugh, you commit mass murder, and then you wake up to realise what you allowed yourself to become. I think GTA should be taught in schools.
• If you don't want to discuss the merits of prostitution, I suggest you not then expend a paragraph of scathing vitriol on the topic.
• Nicely put, Dreadnought . I don't know if I believe it, but nicely put.
• ... bears no resemblance to my treatment or attitudes toward prostitutes (or women) in the real world. ?????
• Prostitutes OR women?
• Although I don't care for the term, I think it's fair to describe myself as a "sensitive guy." I think GTA (Vice City) is a blast. I'm not troubled by the excessive violence and gore (well, maybe just a tad). I've done any number of "immoral" things in the game I wouldn't dream (or dare) to do in real life. That's exactly the appeal to me. The fact that there are prostitutes I think has more to do with the genre than anything else. They're not intrinsic to the storyline, and you aren't required to interact with them or worse yet, murder them. And they're not the only way to restore health. So no problem here.
• What an interesting reading, Dreadnought. I hadn't thought of it that way, but now I want to play GTA again and look at it through that lens. Debaser626: I tend to agree with you, also, with one exception. I don't agree with state control over the sex trade, because I think that in areas where the gov. does control it (see: Nevada), too much control is taken away from the women. For example, the state mandates that each woman be tested for STDs once a month, but they do not demand the same of the johns, and nor do they require that the johns protect the women with the use of condoms. Instead, I would favor decriminalization together with some form of unionization or co-op formation. Within these (voluntary) unions or co-ops, the women could form communities that set their own rules of engagement. The customers would know these rules (for example, this group gets tested monthly and demands condom use, this group gets tested yearly and does not demand condom use...) and decide upon the preferred level of risk/reward. I have an article hanging around here somewhere that discusses the differences between decriminalization and regulation. If you'd like, I can try to find it, since it articulates the point way better than I am here. I will admit, though, that the fact that you can kill the prostitutes and get your money back in GTA is very, very icky. (sorry for the long, thread-jacking response. Return to video games please)
• PatB: point to you for catching my bad phrasing, although it should be noted that prostitutes can be of either gender. A (perhaps) better way of phrasing what I meant: ... and bears no resemblance to my treatment of or attitudes toward prostitutes and prostitution (or women, in general) in the real world. At any rate - the point is this: it's a game. G-A-M-E. If one can't separate what happens on the Playstation from what happens in the real world, perhaps one shouldn't be playing that game. An argument can be made that the killing and other violent and unsavory acts could influence someone into believing that such behaviour is acceptable in the real world, just as an equally valid argument can be made that it is a semi-accurate depiction of real world events in a controlled environment where such aggression is safer than elsewhere. That's a decision that each person has to make for him or herself. Me? I'm eagerly awaiting the PC platform release. The variety of game activities and the storyline sound pretty damn cool to me.
• I think this whole discussion is largely missing the point. The point being that it's absolutely not necessary to pick up prostitutes in order to advance in the game, or at least this was the case in GTA3 and Vice City. The fact that your character restores his health by doing so is hardly worth mentioning -- the amount of health restored is minimal, and it's actually kind of tricky to pick up a prostitute (you have to be on the right streets at the right times of day, in a car that isn't too banged-up, then find an isolated spot to do your business). It's more of an "easter egg" feature than anything. So really, if this offends you, don't do it in the game! It's practically impossible to "accidentally" pick one up.
• scartol: i can get you the game, but it won't work in your PS2 because of the region-thingy. :( They left in the bit where you take over a strip club, though... so it'd probably still offend! *sigh* On the PLUS side, you can go through the strip club and bash the living crap out of the patrons :) regularly, too. They take your weapons at the door but you get to keep your knuckle dusters. Ahh. I'm going to go and fire up the PS2.
• drivingmenuts, I got your meaning, I was just being an asshole. (~.^)
• You obviously are able to disassociate real life from the video game world, since you don't have a problem with the killing, carjacking, and all the rest of the game. Just activate that same part of your brain you use to differentiate the real world vs. the video game world.
• I get to drive a humvee in GTA III. I find that more morally disturbing than having sex with a prostitute. I mean, the whole concept of driving a car is pretty alien to me, let alone one of those monstrosities.
• You can play the game without picking up and/or killing prostitutes, but I think that's beside the point. As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, the dilemma is whether or not to buy a game that you really really want to play but has an element that you (and I use "you" throughout in the universal sense) find distasteful or offensive. If something bothers you, well then it bothers you. Do you want to support a product that depicts sex (or anything else for that matter) in a sick way? It's a personal issue, but I don't think it's a trivial one.
• Where's our resident prostitute when you need her?
• Oh wait. Here I am.
• ampersand: I don't think that's what scartol was getting at. After all, he expressed an interest in the Australian version of the game...
• That honour must belong to Katamari Damashii. Having played both in the last 24 hours, San Andreas kicks the shit out of Katamari Damacy. And believe me, I like to roll sticky balls around, I've dreamt about Katamari balls for the past week. But San Andreas is incredible. And I'm only a few hours in. The thing is *five* times the size of Vice City, and at least twice as big as True Crime: Streets of LA. The entire thing is densly packed, and there are RPG elements along with the random violence and crazy missions. The freedom in the game is unbelievable. You can finally swim, you can climb fences, you can ride a bike, motorcycle, car, jet, parachute, lawn mower, and even a train. There are so many minigames that I've lost count after only a few hours. You can walk up to any arcade machine and play. I could go on and on, but the thing is, this game is incredible. You haven't lived until you've done a driveby in a lawn mower while wearing only your underwear and a cowboy hat on a beach while listening to Willie Nelson singing "Crazy". So much better than Katamari Damacy, even though that I still can't get the theme song out of my head. To answer the original question, yes, you can still pick up prostitutes. However, as far as I can tell, you get no benefit from it. Health is raised by buying food and saving the game.
• You are soooooo in the wrong community on this one, dude. Personally? I'm not drawing that thick line, declaring "violence good" and "prostitution/sex bad." (Only in America, and I mean that as chummily as possible.) I think it's all over-the-top; none of it is meant to be emulated or taken literally or seriously. The public discourse about video games in the last several years has revolved entirely around people understanding that they are escapism/entertainment, not instructional videos. That seems to be slow to sink in. You know what? I haven't played this game yet (I suck at action games), but I find that concept less offensive than what I find in the games I play: women are either meek, pretty little supporters who more often than not get kidnapped and scream the hero's name despairingly for the rest of the story, or witch-bitch types with skimpy clothes cast as "evil" or "dangerous" (because women expressing sexuality is evil, no doubt about that). That, there, bugs me. Because it's taken seriously. Rockstar? Not so seriously. Which isn't to say it should be brushed off as a joke, but that it is an intentionally lurid story-world that isn't meant to be literally applied to daily life. I don't go lopping off people's heads with axes, either, even though you can get away with it in some games. Real-world != story-world.
• Exactly. How could you take any game seriously that has a shipping company called R.S. Hole "Have some shit you don't want? Dump it on us!"?
• MonkeyFilter: You haven't lived until you've done a driveby in a lawn mower while wearing only your underwear and a cowboy hat on a beach while listening to Willie Nelson singing "Crazy".
• Fascinating discussion. Scartol, I'm trying hard not to play dimestore psychoanalyst, and trying not to sound confrontational. But I'm really having trouble understanding why you should be going into this deep moral quandary regarding the issue of recieving a benefit from patronizing a prostitute in the game, while apparently having no major qualms about the theft, manslaughter and murder portrayed in it. Could you help me understand your point of view? When it comes to violating or using another human being, how important is gender? Is it worse for a man to murder a woman than another man, for example? How would you (or any other monkeys) feel if you could choose the gender of the main character and the prostitutes?
  I don't pretend to have the answer to any of these questions, but I'm interested in what everyone thinks, especially scartol.
  Disclaimer: I am a gay male so the gender politics thing fascinates me, especially when I see straight folks get all upset about something that doesn't mean much to me. Also, I've never played any of these games. I waste enough time on the Internets.
• that is, if anyone's still reading. Damn work!
• "This is the best PlayStation 2 game ever made. Period." This is, quite frankly, nonsense. That honour must belong to Katamari Damashii. That's only because no one has ported Nethack to the Playstation as far as I know. Back on topic: I've never played any of the GTA varients except the first one. However I get my copy of Dungeon Keeper II out every few weeks. In DKII you are also the bad guy and you are rewarded for smacking lessor characters around. And while I'd never smack a user around (however surely they need it :) I find smacking a goblin to get him to work harder a great stress reliever. Key thing is to seperate escapism game playing from reality.
• Could you help me understand your point of view? I'm really trying, honest. I appreciate the honest dialogue I've gotten here, and I know this is kind of a strange discussion in the first place. When it comes to violating or using another human being, how important is gender? Well, in theory, it doesn't really matter. Like I said, in general women renting men is just as repugnant to me as men renting women. But, we live in a world ensnared by unjust gender roles, and violence committed by men toward women occupies a particular space in my mind -- just as violence committed by white people against black people occupies a particularly vulgar and disturbing space in my mind. Which leads me to a point I've wanted to make all day: Suppose there were a game wherein the main character (a white guy) got some bonus points for beating up a Black Sambo character? Wouldn't that be especially abhorrent -- more so than just random violence against random people? Because then the violence is directed at a particular type of person because of their group identity. This is what bothers me about the (ab)use of prostitutes in this game -- it's viewing and using them in a certain way (although it sounds, from ShawnJ's comments, like there's no health benefit attached, which could give me the ethical out I've been searching for) based on their group identity (women as providers of male health via sex). Which is why I didn't want this to become a discussion about prostitution per se. Rather, my question is this: Where do we draw our lines? Does the presence of Jar Jar Binks make Episode One too grotesque to enjoy? Does the anti-gay sentiment in some otherwise politically-perfect hip-hop make those songs too disturbing to enjoy? I wanted this to be about how we interact with our culture generally, not just about this one aspect of this one game. (I'd hoped to use the one as a springboard to the other and back again if possible.) To this end, I'd love to hear peoples' opinions on these other examples. (continued)
• Is it worse for a man to murder a woman than another man, for example? It depends -- for me -- on why the crime is being committed. If the guy goes around killing both men and women, then he's not picking on her because of her group identity. He doesn't appear to have a problem with women as women, and therefore his pathology is much more generic. This doesn't mean it's less disturbing, but it is less focused. And sometimes a more focused pathology is more chilling to me. How would you (or any other monkeys) feel if you could choose the gender of the main character and the prostitutes? This would definitely change things for me. Part of the sickness of the past GTA games, for me, was that -- once again -- it pandered to the egos and fantasies of adolescent (both physically and mentally) boys, and reinforced absurd notions of male health and how men interact with women. Let me say here, for the record, that I recognize that this latest game also reinforces some stereotypes (as far as I can tell) of black folks as gang members. However, since other races of people are also depicted in various roles, this doesn't seem to be the same kind of problem. Having strong independent female characters in addition to the prostitutes (and having prostitutes of the other gender, as well as alternatives for the gender of the main character) would certainly make it easier for me to enjoy it. This is one of the things I've always liked about the Star Wars video games -- you could choose your gender, or at least cycle through various characters of both genders. I believe that culture replicates as it reflects and/or provides escape. And one of the reasons I wanted to open this discussion is because too often the discussion gets boiled down to one of these three overly simplistic points of view. I don't know if that's helped clarify or not. But now I have to decide whether or not I'm willing to live inside this particular contradiction.
• You can play the game without picking up and/or killing prostitutes, but I think that's beside the point. or driving to the next 'wet' county to buy a six pack of beer just to stare at the Born On date.
• Everyone has their line. You just found yours. Now you have to decide what to do about it. You're faced with having to decide which would feel better (over both the short and the long term): the fun of playing the game, or the warm fuzzy feeling from knowing that you're standing by your principles? Personally, I think you would find that playing the game would deliver more fun in the short term, but standing by your principles would feel better in the long term. What it always comes down to is, how much are you willing to sacrifice for the sake of your beliefs? I feel there's not much point in having ethics if you're not willing to stand by them. On the other hand, we all live in the real world, and things are never quite that tidy. As a side note: call me a stickler, but anyone who seriously told me to ignore my conscience would be off my "friends" list pretty quickly.
• This is interesting. (Sorry for commenting.) Where do we draw our lines? Personally? Authorial intent, or whatever information I can dig up in regards to authorial intent. Some pieces are meant to espouse a particular worldview, some are meant as parody or satire, and some are meant as fantasy. I don't think GTA is meant to be taken literally. I truly don't. Therefore I don't really think it espouses any social mores.
• Hi everyone, by the way, I've had an account for ages, but I've never bothered to post! Maybe this isn't the best way to introduce myself, but here goes anyway: Scartol, in later comments you asked how people draw their lines, and where. I think carefully about drawing my lines, but once they're drawn, that's the end of it. If I find something offensive, I won't watch/participate/buy/listen to it. Personally, I don't play the GTA games specifically because of the issue you raised - I think they're aggressively demeaning to women, and I want no part of it. (I'm female, if that's pertinent.) I realize this makes me sound like some kind of freaky dogmatic partisan hard-line strident feminist whacko, but I'm really not. Honest. I don't push my beliefs on others. I strongly feel that everyone has to make these choices for themselves. (For example, I never would have said any of this if you hadn't asked.) In short, I try really hard to be a decent human being - it's the only way I can manage to live with myself.
• I guess I made my peace with the misdeveloped libido of game programmers too many years ago to be particularly disturbed by the GTA prostitute easter egg. Let's face it, from Lara Croft to Duke Nukem to GTA, the puerile sensibilites of the code punchers are all too clear, yet each of these games was/is a well designed play experience with much to recommend it aside from the sprinkling of gratuitous boob-shots. Honestly, the prostitute health boost bothers me a lot less than, say, the slavered over polygons that make up Lara Croft. This is because the sexism in GTA, at least as far as I've played, is not in the forefront. True, you can go through some game-play contortions and be treated to the oh-so-thrilling image of a rocking car, and yeah, I did it once just to see what would happen, but it's not an integral part of the game and what keeps me coming back are the myriad much more interesting things to do such as careering a motor bike through a crowded mall, flying a helicopter nose first into a light house, or the simple pleasures of homicide on a mass scale. The fact that you're willing to consider buying a censored version of the game is rather interesting. Since your money would still be going to support the same company, after all, why not just buy the regular game and resist the temptation to visit the streetwalkers? You'd probably save yourself some cash.
• I like Dance Dance Revolution.
• Can you kill people in DDR?
• In Soviet DDR, game kills you! (which is about the truth of it. some of those songs slay me.)
• Wow. Very interesting. Spectrusery wrote: "But I'm really having trouble understanding why you should be going into this deep moral quandary regarding the issue of recieving a benefit from patronizing a prostitute in the game, while apparently having no major qualms about the theft, manslaughter and murder portrayed in it. Could you help me understand your point of view?" ...which really hits the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. These days I'm very sex-positive" and, thus, inclined to see all sorts of things favorably that, as a feminist, I used to deplore. Prostitution is one of those things. So my own view is slightly positive on prostitution, though still ambivalent in practice. But putting that aside, I have a *lot* of trouble understanding how in anyone's moral calculus this issue of prostitution could be a greater concern than the fact that the whole game is centered around gratuitous and extreme violence, including murder. I really don't understand how any argument that justifies the appropriateness of that wouldn't necessarily include a justification of prostitution. That is, unless someone's morality is really, really screwed-up, in my opinion.
• Perhaps it's a matter of what hits close to home? I mean, I've never seen a murder, and only known one person who's killed someone else, so the whole thing seems abstract to me. Sexism is something we see on a nearly daily basis, so I can see how that issue may be more pertinent scartol .
• Well, that's an explanation of psychology, and it's reasonable and makes sense. But I don't think that's a moral argument. I'd like to think that an adult can make moral decisions on a stronger foundation than just what personally bothers one most based upon individual and limited experience.
• How 'bout this: It's unlikely, based on per-capita incedences of murder in our society, that the designers of the game are homidal maniacs, therefore your consumer dollars are probably not going to suport homicidal mania but it's much more likely, based on the relative prevalence of sexist attitudes in our culture, that the designers of the game are misogynist assholes, therefore it's a more pertinent fear that if you purchase the game your consumer dollars will be going to support the promotion of said sexist attitudes.
• kmellis: The snarky part of me suggests it's because one gets more cred for parading "sexism sucks" credentials over "murder sucks" ones 8). We (in the Western sense of we) generally seem to be a lot more upset by sex than violence, though. Compare the agonising over, say, the idea of a 16 year old watching a movie and seeing people fucking, with squirting juices and all, to the complete lack of concern with graphic violence.
• Nickdanger, I can see the sense behind your remark about the prevalence of sexism vs. actual murder. I also agree with rodgerd's remark about the fact that our (Puritan based, generally f---ed up) society would rather see an explicit murder scene than an explicit sex scene. (I also also thank scartol for starting such an interesting discussion!) While I, like kmellis, identify as sex-positive, I try to ask the questions about where the power lies in sexual relations. Where prostitutes hold the power in a greater than or equal to relation to their customers, (as our dear moneyjane seems to), I find no problem with prostitution. Where the woman holds a lesser amount of power to her customer (defined as being forced into the job or being physically, sexually or mentally abused in any way), I'm against it. I also agree that prostitution, as presented in the GTA games, is pretty purile and 12-year-old boy-ish. That said, I have enjoyed the few times I've played it. The whole game is a 12-year-old fantasy. I don't know if that makes me a hypocrite or not.
• "Where prostitutes hold the power in a greater than or equal to relation to their customers, (as our dear moneyjane seems to), I find no problem with prostitution. Where the woman holds a lesser amount of power to her customer (defined as being forced into the job or being physically, sexually or mentally abused in any way), I'm against it." I agree entirely. What is truly perverse is that the continued illegalization of prostitution greatly encourages the latter while discouraging the former.
• Of course. Although, I believe such laws have nothing to do with actual prostitution per se, and much more to do with legally controlling the behavior of women. (For instance, up in Toledo OH, a woman cannot legally go into a strip club unaccompanied by a man. Example: Hugh Hefner could not bring all six(seven?) girlfriends without extra male escorts for them.) This law sees *all* women as potential prostitutes... as do laws (rather common in these here parts) that legally identifies any house where more than three unrelated women live as a brothel. Some University campuses can't have sorority houses on them because of this law.