Member Since: 5/24/2011
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Xbox E3 used a rape joke?
Quote:
(Trigger warning: this article contains graphic language related to rape)
If you missed what happened at Microsoft’s E3 press event, you can read this great write-up we posted yesterday, but I want to talk about what I think is the most unsettling thing about this entire incident: the section of our population who keeps insisting “just let it happen, it’ll be over soon” is not a rape joke, or — and this is even worse — that it’s not a big deal because it’s just normal trash talk.
This debate was happening all over Twitter, various discussion boards, and even made its way to the comments of our Facebook post last night.
Let me help: “just let it happen, it’ll be over soon” absolutely is a rape joke, and it is normal trash talk, and that is the problem. Watch the video at Kotaku to get a better sense of the context for what I’m about to talk about if you haven’t already seen it.
It absolutely is a rape joke.
It’s a rape joke because it is a phrase rapists use during rape
It’s a rape joke because it is a phrase rapists use during rape and is reported later by survivors; it’s used commonly enough that a huge number of people heard him say that and immediately went “WTF” on Twitter, in their minds, and in their stomachs; and it’s a joke because people laughed (is it worth noting it was the only thing people really laughed at in that demo?).
“You’re just looking for something that isn’t there.”
A lot of people seem to think that this is an issue of rabble-rousers trying to find something in this language that isn’t there — that it wasn’t a rape reference, and we are creating something out of nothing. To quote someone from our Facebook page “I think things are getting to the point where people are looking for stuff like that, and Microsoft, et. al’s appearance as a yeah-brah male dominated culture lends itself easily to that, whether or not there is anything to it.”
The last thing I need is to create a new fight when there are a thousand other unsolved battles underway
Speaking for myself, I can’t tell you how frustrating this is. I am doing the exact opposite of looking for things that “aren’t there,” because there is so much that is there it gets overwhelming at times. The last thing I need is to create a new fight when there are a thousand other unsolved battles underway.
This wasn’t an intellectual thing where I was like, “Ooo! Someone at E3 said something that we can twist into a rape joke and it’ll be great!” I don’t want that. That’s not great. It’d be a huge win if an event went off without any sort of horribleness.
This was a gut, horrible reaction that hit my heart before it hit my head. To temper my reaction, I even asked one of my roommates (who’s not a gamer or social justice-y person), “Hey, no context, if a person said ‘just let it happen, it’ll be over soon,’ what do you think it’d mean?” The verdict: rape reference. He even got the stomach discomfort, and he heard it second-hand.
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What a mess!
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