I’m liberal, I’m feminist, and I’m female. And I am very much aware that speech is powerful, images are powerful, exposure to ideas is powerful.
And that would be exactly why the people who founded this country made freedom of speech our right.
There’s a price to be paid for that right: people are going to express ideas that we find objectionable. Oh well. Deal with it, don’t try to carve out a special exception for the kind of ideas that you personally dislike.
Bitch, complain, speak with your wallet, all of that is fine. But the minute someone starts talking about “banning” anything because of the ideas it promotes, forget it, you lost me, I don’t care how hideous the idea may be.
This happens all the time, but the reason I brought it up today was because I watched a CNN report about a Japanese game that features rape: http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/rapelay. As I say, condemning it, organizing against it, protesting it, great. But when I heard the word “ban”, that got my back up. And of course, it’s “women’s rights” groups calling for such “bans”. Well, my idea of women’s rights is the right not to actually BE raped, not the right to tell anyone else they can’t play a game in which they get to play at raping. BIG difference.
And as long as I’m on the subject, I’d like to repeat again my deep dismay about “hate crime”. It’s a liberal idea and it’s stupid and it drives me crazy. Crime is crime. The minute you start layering on special punishments because of someone’s motives, you are into thought police territory and I hate that shit with a passion.
I don’t think CNN was doing that, but to simply answer the question: CNN can give any opinion they like about anything, but they should make sure to label it as such, to avoid the appearance that CNN opinions are “news”.
That game is 4 years old? How is that news? I don’t think it’s going to get a wide US release regardless. Of course the subject matter is an appalling piece of Japanese fetishism, but it bothers me that people would care less if it was a movie or something. Because everyone knows that only children play games, and you can buy hentai games at Best Buy.
CNN is “news” just slightly more than Fox. They love puff pieces.
I have no disagreements with the content of your OP. “Oxymoron” seems a bit tame, though.
While I can certainly understand why some people dislike these games I am unsure what law they think can be used to ban them from the United States. We’re not Australia, our government doesn’t get to dictate to us that a game is too violent to be sold. On the other hand, under the Clinton administration Janet Reno threatened to lean on our video game industry for advertising games with violent content to children. How she would have leaned on them, who knows?
I agree, Stoid. It doesn’t seem to me that you can censor speech to protect a right.
This is why I hate any talk of banning flag desecration. Nothing (political) gets my hackles up more than that.
I also hate it when people flip out and say criticism of the military should be banned because they put their asses on the line to defend our right to criticize. That one is REALLY bizarre.
Here, I disagree. Motive is a perfectly normal thing for the law to take into account. That, after all is the difference between murder and accident, or fraud and incompetence. Hate crimes are more dangerous than ordinary crimes, because they are part of an agenda. They are both focused on a specific group, and harder to discourage because the perpetrator isn’t motivated just by self interest.
I had a heated discussion with an acquaintance over Facebook along these lines because she joined a group whose sole purpose was to get a different group removed. The group they wanted removed from Facebook was supposedly called “Fuck the Troops”. I have never actually seen this group, but needless to say, wanting such a group removed from Facebook says a lot about those people.
The acquaintance went on to spout some bullshit about ignorance and freedom and never really addressed my point. Nor did she answer how exactly what she was talking about had anything to do with my main point.
In California, if your crime falls under a so-called special circumstance, you’re probably going to get additional penalties. Many of these special circumstances involve what could be thought of as motive. So, for example all of the following count as special circumstances: (1) the killing is motivated by race/national origin/etc. (this is your “hate crime” although it’s also in a different explicit section); (2) killing a police officer, federal officer, court officer, judge, etc. in retaliation for their exercise of government duties; and (3) killing someone to prevent or disrupt a trial (government official, witness, etc).* You also could get an additional penalty for killing someone for financial gain.
Now, I’m using the term “motive” here in a lay person sense, but since I guess you are to, I hope that’s okay. All of these additional penalties in some way have to do with the motivation behind the crime. Do you object to them the way you object to “hate crimes”? Why is “hate crime” the one that gets singled out here. Have we descended into thought crime territory because you might get an additional penalty if you kill someone for financial gain or to disrupt a trial?
*There’s a lot of others. I just picked out these for illustration.
The various industries including music, motion picture, and more recently video games have all come up with their own rating standards out of fear of the government coming up with rating standards. For the most part, books seem immune to these kinds of pressures today. For video games I suspect you’re correct, part of the problem is that many people view them as a mode of entertainment for children.
If I burn down your house because I hate you for screwing my boyfriend, vs. burning down your house because I hate you for being Jewish - same crime. I burned down your house. What I meant to do in both cases was the same: burn down your house to bum you out.
If I beat the shit out of you because I’m in a bad mood and you cross my path, or I beat the shit out of you because you’re gay… no difference. I still beat the shit out of you either way. It’s wronger than wrong to make my beating the shit out of you for being gay worse, because it’s punishing me for my opinions, not my acts. Way, way wrong.
Special circumstances are not the same animal. We need to make killing the people charged with keeping us safe from killers a bigger deal so killers will be (one hopes) less likely to kill them. Makes sense to me, and even if it doesn’t, it’s still not thought crime.
Hate crime is liberal bullshit and as a liberal it grinds my ass particularly. It’s essentially criminalizing being politically incorrect, and that’s infuriatingly hypocritical.
It’s also part of a more general offendability that I think is ridiculous, but that really is a whole 'nother thread.
I noticed you completely ignored the fact that killing someone for financial gain can get you additional penalties. Do you object to that or not?
And some people think that we need to make other motives a bigger deal. All you’ve done here is say that motives you approve of giving additional penalties to should get them, and motives you don’t approve of giving additional penalties to shouldn’t get them. In the case of trying to disrupt a trial or retaliation, we’re still taking about motives, just as we are with hate crimes. The only distinction you’ve made here is that you think some motivations are worse than others. Well, that’s okay, but that’s not a stand on criminalizing motivations. All you are saying is that your preferred motivations should get extra penalties.
And here’s where we get to it. You think that giving additional penalties for killing someone because of their race is “liberal bullshit.” Then just say you don’t like giving additional penalties to that particular motivation. Trying to couch it in some objection to “though crimes” is nothing more than participating in the same hypocrisy you accuse others of. I didn’t realize conservatives were so gung-ho about protecting murderers who kill because of racial motivations, but thanks for laying that out there.