Guest wrote:Are you one of those people who argue that simulated child porn images doesn't harm anyone too? A lot of people believe that is the answer to the problem of people seeking that kind of stuff. Give them photoshoped images to satisfied their needs that way nobody is harmed. I don't know if I can go along with it. I know the violence or abuse isn't real but when you're using real images of people it's kind of freaky and it believe that it could desensitise them and leave them eventually wanting something more extreme.
Well, since you ask...
Firstly, we need to make the distinction between people who're actual child-abusers and people who have paedophile inclinations.
Anybody who actually
acts on those impulses needs feeding into an industrial wood-chipper. Slowly.
Having got that out of the way, we have to accept that there ARE people out there who have these inclinations.
Feeling sorry for a paedophile probably isn't top of most people's lists of things to be concerned about but I think most people would, at least, realise that it must be quite tough to be an otherwise upstanding, productive member of society who then spends their evenings ogling the pictures in the Toyz R Us catalogue.
If (and that's a big "if") a bunch of studies were done which concluded that paedo's seeing images of kiddies didn't encourage them to abuse of real kids
and which also concluded that it's be useful to provide them with suitable "material" then I think it might be justifiable to do so - possibly in conjunction with some kind of voluntary registration system to ensure they didn't get jobs with kids etc.
It's one of those things that's certainly incredibly distasteful for normal people to think about but it might be justifiable if it could be proven to be beneficial.
Going back to sarkeesian, though. She's far from an innocent victim who's being maligned.
She's a shit-stirring harpie who has deliberately antagonised a group of people for personal gain.
It might not be the most tasteful response but can you blame somebody for deciding to do something which portrays her negatively?
Do people worry about the implications of burning effigies of poor ol' Guy Fawkes every November?
As I already said, if the game in question involved pummeling Trump or IDS, I doubt many people would be particularly upset about it because a lot of people can probably appreciate the sentiment behind it.
Gamers aren't reveling in a game where you get to pummel Anita Sarkeesian because she's a woman.
They're enjoying it because she's a nasty, manipulative, arsehole who's taken a giant shit on their hobby for the sake of personal gain.
Just like they enjoyed a similar game that allowed them to pummel anti-gaming lawyer Jack Thompson.
Tasteful? Possibly not.
Justifiable? Probably.
Sexist? Definitely not.
Bet your bottom dollar if a woman posted a pic of a beaten man they would go mental. Yet they dare to talk about the women being the one with issues.
