Here's the "Dirty Dozen" list of "Toys to Avoid" for the Christmas 2001 season, created by the "Lion and Lamb Project." This list gets major press coverage, so I suppose it means something. Infractors range from a Solid Snake action figure to Street Fighter II for Game Boy Advance.

http://www.lionlamb.org/Dirty_2k-02.htm

Where's the Church Lady when you need her?

They'd might as well have picked them at random. How do these crackpots get so much publicity?

I think a lot of it has to do with the ages that the toy is recommended for. They seem to be primarily concerned with who the toys are marketed to. For example:

'Children who play the game hear characters say things like, �My fists will have your blood on them� or, �You are not a true warrior!� One version, called �survival mode,� requires children to kill 100 people without stopping.'

This is a description of a videogame rated "E" (6+ years old). That seems a little harsh for a 6-year-old, don't you think?

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. "But the parents should take more responsibility, blah, blah, blah." But why shouldn't parents be warned about a game that carries the same rating as Super Monkey Ball and describes fists dripping blood.

OK, I can see being upset that the Street Fighter toys are listed for 6 year olds but contain very proviolent language from the games.

The ones I have a problem with are their saying the MGS2 and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots toys are objectionable. Their reason? Oh, the toys themselves are fine...but it's based on a game rated M or T! Good Lord, how did these devil spawn action figures make it on the shelves?

While they're at it, they should protest all Star Wars and LotR figures: both toys are listed as 6+ but are based on movies rated with PG or PG-13, both for violence.

"why shouldn't parents be warned about a game that carries the same rating as Super Monkey Ball and describes fists dripping blood."

I take it you haven't played the bonus levels of Super Monkey Ball, where you run over other monkeys and leave this bloody trail with your ball... Pretty disturbing stuff.

These people make me almost as sick to my stomach as the MADD and DARE people do.

Have you ever walked into one of their offices? Multiple times?

I have, it's like walking into a funeral late. Unless you're a co-fanatic of their righteous cause, you might as well be the Great White Satan.

I'm being serious here, all these groups, like it or not, are like domestic Al-qaeda's without the suicide bombings and horrible plans of destruction. Which, all in all, I guess that would make them more like political lobbyists than terrorists.

The effect is the same, tho: Everyone lazy enough to listen and not check the facts for themselves (which is most people) gets fucked over.

And by the way, last time I checked, wasn't Doom only 10 levels?

I know one of the Dooms only had 10 solid levels. No sub-levels or any of that crap counting as levels, it only had ten selectable levels, then that's it, DONE, game over.

Perhaps these jar-heads should look into the product before they actually review it.

Guess what? Another anti-video game press release has just hit the news wires. This one is by Children Now, and seems to suggest that video games lead to wife-beating:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/wire/2001/12/11/video_games/index.html?x

"Their reason? Oh, the toys themselves are fine...but it's based on a game rated M or T!"

Some people won't buy toy guns for their children because they don't want them to take up these 'vices' as grown-ups. Isn't it fair to warn parents that this toy is, in fact, partially an advertisement for violent games?

Hypothetical:
If GTA3 licensed the cars from the video game, would you give them to a young child? I wouldn't, for the same reason I wouldn't give a kid a Marlboro jacket and a pack of candy cigarettes.

When he's old enough to make that decision, fine, but parents and grandparents shouldn't unwittingly act as PR reps for companies making goods that they don't want their kids exposed to.

---

Quote:

Perhaps these jar-heads should look into the product before they actually review it.

---

Oh, complaining about misrating by the ESRB is fine, I have no problem with that. That's not what this group is interested in, though. They referenece Talking Ass Grossman, of course:

http://www.lionlamb.org/firststeps.html

'At the close of the twentieth century, virtual killing has become an acceptable form of child's play.'

Unlike every other moment in human history, when kids pretended to make cakes.

'When he's old enough to make that decision, fine, but parents and grandparents shouldn't unwittingly act as PR reps for companies making goods that they don't want their kids exposed to.'

Well, they could always not buy them. What do you mean, "unwittingly?"

Where can I get a Doctorate in Killology?

Kill Tech.

"What on Earth are you talking about? DOOM has at least 24 levels. The SHAREWARE had eight...maybe ten. E1M1 through E1M9 rings a bell. That includes the one secret level in that episode. The GBA version likely has 27 including the secrets if it's true to the original game."

*pulls out Doom/Doom II/Ultimate Doom and blasts way thru a hundred or so levels*

Hot damn, I was wrong, Dave. But what a way to find out that I was. ;)

Jason: "Well, they could always not buy them. What do you mean, "unwittingly?""

I think he's referring to the fact that most parents nowadays are either A) too lazy or B) too stupid to look at the flip-open cover on the box, or look at the back of the box, to see if it's a decidedly inappropriate game.

It doesn't take a genius to look at the game box for GTA3, Max Payne, or hell, let's go waaaaaay back, Dungeon Keeper, to tell that the game should have a certain restriction on what age of kids can play it.

BUT, that's up to the lazy-ass parents to decide. And nowadays, and I think this is why we have the politicians elected that we do, parents and people in general are too lazy to check these things, and want it checked for them (i.e. why the ESRB even EXISTS in the first placE).

"What do you mean, "unwittingly?""

Continuing with the GTA3 car hypothetical:

If I'm shopping for a toy for Little Ralphie's birthday, I'm in the toy aisle at Toys R Us. I could be a parent, or a grandparent, or an uncle, or even a parent of a friend. I buy the cop car with real working siren and headlights. If I don't know much about videogames, how the hell should I know what GTA3 is, let alone what goes on in-game. Here, I UNWITTINGLY expose little Ralphie to some corporate branding of the Grand Theft Auto Series at age 7, well below the age that he should be exposed to that marketing.

So he sees GTA3 decals on a car, so what?
Little Ralphie goes onto AOL (with the parental controls activated) and looks up GTA3. He then reads a positive review for a game describing how much fun it is to shoot people indiscriminately and have sex with hookers in dark alleys.

"parents nowadays are either A) too lazy or B) too stupid"

The lazy, stupid parents argument is wearing a little thin. I think the case could be made that parents are a little too trusting. Too trusting of entertainment companies to be aware of who may buy their products, and too trusting of Junior to abstain from 'bad' products and not be influenced by them if exposed.

'Here, I UNWITTINGLY expose little Ralphie to some corporate branding of the Grand Theft Auto Series at age 7, well below the age that he should be exposed to that marketing.'

Theere's a big difference between "corporate branding" and "inappropriate content," I think. I take it you're using corporate branding to refer to something more than advertising?

'The lazy, stupid parents argument is wearing a little thin. I think the case could be made that parents are a little too trusting. Too trusting of entertainment companies to be aware of who may buy their products, and too trusting of Junior to abstain from 'bad' products and not be influenced by them if exposed.'

Hey, I agree a GTA3 car should have "13 and up" on it, but there's something than that going on here. This is stretching the bounds of debate an awful lot, though; something this contrived rarely happens.

"So he sees GTA3 decals on a car, so what?
Little Ralphie goes onto AOL (with the parental controls activated) and looks up GTA3. He then reads a positive review for a game describing how much fun it is to shoot people indiscriminately and have sex with hookers in dark alleys."

Good god. Even my arguments make more sense than this.

"BUT, that's up to the lazy-ass parents to decide. And nowadays, and I think this is why we have the politicians elected that we do, parents and people in general are too lazy to check these things, and want it checked for them (i.e. why the ESRB even EXISTS in the first placE)."

Also. Did you guys know that the Xbox has a parental control system (password protected of course) that allows parents to lock games to a certain rating? Eg, no playing "M" titles, or whatever? I think that's fantastic, and shame on all console designers for not implementing something like this sooner. How difficult can it be?

I guess Nintendo gets a special exemption since all the GameCube titles are for 12-and-under by definition. Spaceship piloting frogs! Be still my beating heart!

"Also. Did you guys know that the Xbox has a parental control system (password protected of course) that allows parents to lock games to a certain rating? Eg, no playing "M" titles, or whatever? I think that's fantastic,"

What do you suppose is going to happen at censor-happy Blockbuster with rental consoles?

Do the GTA3 cars say "GTA3" or "Grand *Theft* Auto 3" on the box. If it's the latter, then that should get a parent's attention right there. If not, we're right back to the lazy/stupid problem.

Oh, and parental controls or not, I'm not sure I'd let my 7-yr old children on the net w/o supervision. What does a 7-yr old need the Internet for anyway? (I don't have any children btw.)

"Where can I get a Doctorate in Killology? "

Maybe Qt3 should start offering Doctorates in Gameology. What say you, Drs. Asher and Chick?

- Alan

"What say you, Drs. Asher and Chick?"

Is "Drs." your title if you're married to a doctor?

Anyway, shouldn't the above technically read, "What say you, Dr. Asher and Nurse Chick?"?

--INSERT REACTION FROM "Meet The Parents" HERE--

Amanpour

-Nice Nurse's outfit, guy.
-They're O.R. scrubs.
-Oh...are they?

http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/044249.htm

I think this is such a great feature. I just found out about it a few days ago. Microsoft should be advertising this feature a bit more..

"Too trusting" is in my mind equivalent to lazy and stupid. Buying inappropriate video games for kids is the same thing as buying toys that are inappropriate for a child's age (i.e. has parts that are choking hazards, etc.). Ignorance is no excuse for not doing your homework when buying gifts. Looking at one of their examples, Street Fighter, you must agree that it is not particularly deceptive regarding its contents -- you can't say that you honestly thought you were buying a pleasant fishing game for little Johnny. Skulls are going to be cracked, and blood is going to be spilt, when a game is called Street Fighter.

>"Where can I get a Doctorate in Killology?"

MS Word. I've got doctorates in Rocktology, Groovology, Pimpology, and Grossmancansuckmydickology.

Brad Grenz

Parental control is a good idea, but only if you use it. The lobby was so forceful for a V-chip that they passed a law requiring every TV sold in the US to have one. Only like less than 2% get used. It's funny to watch Congressional hearings about sex/violence in media and children cause you can tell how bitter those statistics make the congress people. What good is giving parents these kinds of tools if they don't bother to use them? Very frustrating.

Brad Grenz

It's an indicator that parents either don't really want the tools, they're too hard to use, or they want someone else to do it for them. Pick one.

Parents just don't bother.

\sarcasm {Just keep on parent bashing guys. I'm sure you are the perfect parents yourselves. It's such an easy job, after all.}

--Dave

"Good god. Even my arguments make more sense than this."

Yes, Jeff. It is contrived. It is a HYPOTHETICAL situation that I dreamed up as I typed. Now if you'd like, I can apply for a government grant and take six months to come up with a much more plausible scenario.

"I take it you're using corporate branding to refer to something more than advertising?"

I sure am. I am talking about the same type of corporate branding that Apple Computer used in the 80's when they targeted public schools. The same corporate branding MS uses whenever they do anything.

"Did you guys know that the Xbox has a parental control system (password protected of course) that allows parents to lock games to a certain rating? Eg, no playing "M" titles, or whatever? I think that's fantastic, and shame on all console designers for not implementing something like this sooner. How difficult can it be?"

I think it's great, too. However...

"The lobby was so forceful for a V-chip that they passed a law requiring every TV sold in the US to have one. Only like less than 2% get used."

I oppose this sort of legislation, in general. I think these features are great, if people want them. And if there is real demand, then you don't need the government to force manufacturers to provide them--they'll just do it. I don't think people should be forced to pay for them (and we do pay for them--the law requires the inclusion of the V-Chip, but it doesn't stipulate that the manufacturers can't raise the price of the product accordingly) unless they want to, however. For instance, I have absolutely no need for a V-Chip in my television, and if it means saving a few bucks, I'd buy one without.

Kids have been sneaking into rated-R movies for years, but we don't see Children Now forming picket lines outside of the Cineplex.

Burger King is giving out Lord of the Rings (rated PG-13) in their Kid's meals (targetted at kids 4 - 12).

Pokemon, one of the most popular licenses in history, is built around the concept of raising a monster custom built to destroy other monsters. Oh yeah, you also have to capture and enslave your monster before you can train it.

99% of Loony Toon cartoons filmed from 1935 to 2001 have contained violence of some sort. Most the result of the use of a firearm or explosive device.

The 3 Stooges...nuff said

In this society, it's always easier to blame others. Your kid did something bad? It must be the TV or the Playstations fault. It couldn't be because you're at work 10 hours a day, then tell your kid to shut up when he wants to show you his new picture of Ryu and Ken duking it out. It couldn't be because the school system has been sued so many times that teachers are afraid to berate a child for bad behavior. It couldn't be because your 13 year old is going through puberty and his hormones have more control over his mind then your best intentions do.

Nope, it must be the video games. It has to be.

Except when you're raising children of your own, it becomes almost impossible to monitor every single thing that happens throughout his day. When all my son has to do is open a magazine or turn on the TV to find someone horribly mutilated (have you looked at a video game magazine lately?), maybe tolerance and free speech are being abused.

We're talking about marketing and advertising here. Those people were pointing out that Metal Gear Solid toys, made based on an M rated game, are being marketed to kids along with many other toys about games, etc. The games are fine for those old enough to play them, however, the marketing of the games and the toys that go along with them is targeted at a totally different audience than the game itself is intended for. That's the problem. No one is asking for the products to not be made. In fact, I have no problem with them at all since I enjoy them myself. But I'm 29...I understand the reality (or unreality) of the product. Kids at three or four years old (and often a lot older) don't understand it. Short of them never participating in society at all, staying home under lock and key with no TV, no computer, no nothing, you simply cannot stop this stuff from getting to them.

There may not be a causal relationship between violence in games and violence from children. But I think it's fairly clear if you observe them that the games DO affect them and so does the advertising. They don't deliniate ads from shows or sometimes even real from the unreal.

Parenting isn't a piece of cake. Explaining to your child why he shouldn't want to shoot something or beat the hell out of something when he sees it in a commercial on TV is extremely difficult. Try it sometime. You'll see.

--Dave

Hey, Amanpour just called me a nurse and you guys are still droning on about ratings and crap? At least I wasn't named after some fasion model reporter on CNN.

-Tom, R.N.

But kids have ALWAYS been violent. Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, Road Runner and Coyote. Now it's just Ryu and Bison or Solid Snake and the bad guy. Hell, mankind is, and always will be, violent. We're predatory, so it's in our nature to play in ways that will enhance our hunting skills. I bet 10,000 years ago it was Hunter and Antelope.

And it's not just people. Puppies and kittens bite and wrestle with eachother. Even the ones that have been bred to be as docile as possible still have these traits.

The problem is that kids no longer just wrestle...they find Daddy's gun. That's who I blame. How many accidental deaths do you think occur in the UK or Canada? They play the same games and watch the same movies, how many deaths in those countries are blamed on video games or media violence?

This WinBack thing that is being blamed on the game...do you think anything bad would have happened if that father didn't leave a loaded weapon on his bookshelf? The kids were PLAYING. Goofing around, not hurting eachother. Then one says "Hey, ya know, Dad has a gun" and boom, one of them is dead. The game didn't drive them to it. Those kids would've played with the gun eventually for one reason or another, it's just that the WinBack game was around at the moment.

And yes, parents can't watch their kids 100% of the time... but they don't have to. Get rid of the gun and you won't worry about your kid shooting himself. Lock the medicine cabinet and the kid won't chug a bottle of Dymatap. Common sense, but parents just don't use it anymore. They think WE should lock their cabinets and check the chamber of their .44 to make sure it isn't loaded.

Having a loaded gun in a house with kids is just a bad idea. My dad shot skeet so he had a nice shotgun. I knew where it was and probably got it out a dozen times when I was home alone just to look at it and feel the heft of it. If my dad had been careless and left a shell in it and I had dropped it, who knows what might have happened?

Heck, when I was six I climbed up on the kitchen counter and went into a cabinent and found his razor blades. I just had to check those out. I cut my hands in a dozen places. Imagine my dad's surprise when he saw me trying to walk around him while keeping my hands behind my back and then when asked, showing him my bloody red hands. Christ, I'm glad my kids never did that to me!

If you keep dangerous stuff in the house, kids will get into it. They're like gamers finding exploits in a game. I'm sure some kind of chaos theory applies.

I don't have a gun. I also don't leave medicine lying around. I do everything I can to prevent those things from happening.

But you don't want to listen to me since you're droning on about something completely different than the point I made above. The advertising is AIMED AT CHILDREN when the product is not.

It's a problem and it's got nothing to do with parents taking responsibility for their children's actions. When every other advertisement promotes some form of violence, how do you explain to your child that said violence isn't right?

Instead of teaching kids to attempt to avoid violence if at all possible, you seem to be advocating its usage in any situation based on the fact that we're all animals anyway?

So to hell with society. I think I'll go over and punch my boss in the mouth just because he makes me work too hard.

--Dave

"So to hell with society. I think I'll go over and punch my boss in the mouth just because he makes me work too hard."

Obviously not too hard, since you have time to post to this board all day long.

No, of course violence isn't OK. What I'm saying is that the media didn't make people violent. People are violent by nature, they don't need any help. Kids will always play rough. But there is a difference between 3 kids wrestling on the living room floor and punching your boss in the face. One is play, one is being a jerk. A better parallel would be to say that you and your boss play basketball, and you give him a nice hard body check to the floor. That is the type of violence I'm talking about; rough housing.

Now lets go at your advertising thing here: The Metal Gear Solid 2 commercials on TV seem aimed at the Teenage crowd. I have yet to see a truly violent game on TV aimed at children under the age of 15.

The toys, however, are aimed at kids. Lets look at that one a second: TOYS. If you're selling action figures, you better be targetting it at the under 15 crowd or all you'll get are a few collectors and some never grow up types (like me). You want to sell 1 million Solid Snake action figures, you need to target the kids.

The gripe seems to be name branding, but I just don't agree that it's a problem. You aren't complaining that Solid Snake action figured have guns, you're complaining that they have Metal Gear Solid printed on the box. Why? Because the game is violent. Would a Solid Snake be less offensive if we changed the name to GI Joe? Dose the MGS2 tag on the box make them want to play the game? Maybe it does, I don't know. But if it does, parents just have to say No. The game has the Rated M stamped clearly on the front, and anyone bothering to look at the box would see that it is a violent game. By the time a kid can afford to buy the game themselves, they're old enough to realize that it's just a game.

So condeming a toy because the game it's based on may be unacceptable seems silly to me.

Nursing is a noble profession. I don't know what you're griping about.

Drs. Amanpour

Just for future mathmatical references, chaos theory has been supplanted by complexity theory for most cutting edge physicists, mathmatician, and large scale quantative data analysis.

'"I take it you're using corporate branding to refer to something more than advertising?"

I sure am. I am talking about the same type of corporate branding that Apple Computer used in the 80's when they targeted public schools. The same corporate branding MS uses whenever they do anything.'

Well, that doesn't really answer the question. Brainwashing? Increased market penetration through familiarity? It's not like Apple's school monopoly did them much good.

Gah, I can't find the accidental gun death rate for kids in Europe. Stupid web.

Here's a pretty nice link that I dug up.

http://medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNSTAT.html

This is from a college medical institution; it's about the only place I could find that wasn't hip deep in propoganda by control advocate of 2nd Amendment advocates. This page though is still rather anti-gun, but at least it gives some good numbers in a nice graphical form.

Um, you might try JAMA. And Medline.

For example:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n5/rfull/jcv80003.html

http://www.idealibrary.com/servlet/citation/0091-7435/32/201

hmmm, won't let me view those articles. Medline wants $35 for it and JAMA wants me to pay a membership fee.

Have you seen the Metal Gear Solid action figures? Aren't they done by McFarlane toys or someone like that? These things are sculptures. They are not aimed at children and I'd wager the the age of the average MGS action figure owner is something like 19. Christ, you can barely even pose them, useless for the kind of "playing" a 8 year old does. They're collectables. Were the horror movie action figures put out by McFarlane singled out on this list (I don't even care enough to read it)? If not they should be, otherwise they targeted Solid Snake for the sole reason of being a videogame-based toy.

That's the problem with these witch-hunts. They never even bother to find out who buys the stuff, or they have absurd classifications. Remember the FTC report last year? Did you actually read it? As far as their criterium were concerned if you advertized an M-rated game or an R-rated film during the Simpsons you were deliberately marketing you naughty-naughty goods to children under the age of 18 which is oh-so-evil. All because like 30% of those in the audience of that show are under 18 (doesn't bother to mention how many are under 16 or 14 or 12. I bet by twelve the percentage is pretty small. It's not like GTA3 of Scream 3 are being advertized during teletubbies, but that's the way they made it sound). I'm sorry, but if 30% is under 18, then logically 70% is over, how is that specifically targetting those too young when the audience is overwhelmingly made up of those you are allowed to target? And the thing talks about "children under 18" as if that automatically is 7 years old. There's nothing about an R or M rating that says a 16 or 17 year old can't or shouldn't ever be exposed to it. Hell, most parts of the country a 17 year old can walk into an R movie with nothing more than the flash of an ID. But companies shouldn't target these age groups, regardless of the fact that they are perfectly valid markets for certain products which may be branded with an R or M. Seriously, how many high school students aren't allowed to see R-rated movies? But there should be laws against Mirimax trying to get them into the theaters to see such a movie their parents have given approval for.

Cool thing was watching the testimony and seeing Sega's Peter Moore tell the senators he thinks the study was a load of horse shit (not in so many words).

Brad Grenz

Almost all of these "media studies" reports are released to the media before peer review, also. Yech.

Judging by the "measure with my finger" method on that Utah website, French children have 1/4 the accidental firearm death rate of American ones. The wierd thing is that every single one of Ireland's underage firearm deaths was suicide. What the hell is going on there?

Hunting firearm accidents are pretty close to zero, though, which implies "playing with Dad's gun from the closet" is the normal state of affairs here.

Kind of odd, now that I think about it. My brother and I both knew my father had a gun in the closet since we were 6 or so, and we never even thought about touching it. He never mentioned it, and neither did we.

Good Easterbrook article on the complete lack of basic safety controls in weapons design:

http://www.thenewrepublic.com/archive/0599/053199/easterbrook053199.html

I once read an article, I think it might've been Newsweek, or Time, doesn't matter, but it was an extremely well-written piece on rape.

It said things like rape is a natural part of man's behavior. Do you think love happened 10,000 years ago? No. Man wack woman, Man rape woman, Woman have child, Child grow up, Child become man, repeat twice and rinse when done.

A man does not want to rape because he just got done seeing American Beauty and saw some teenage breasts at the end. A man does not want to rape because he saw virtual-breasts in Quake II on his top of the line machine.

A man does not rape because a teenager walks past him in skimpy clothes. A man did not rape 50 years ago when he saw a schoolgirl walk by all covered, from head to toe, by clothes. A man knows what lies under those clothes, more or less of them does not help his urge to rape.

Man has raped since the dawn of time. It's a matter of procreation. We will always have rape. It's an instinct. Instinct. I-n-s-t-i-n-c-t. Before there was love, before marriage, before casual sex at singles bar, before wenches in bordello's, before celibate priests and nuns, there was rape.

And just like there has always been rape, whether it be right or wrong to our society now, whether it is liked by our society now, whether any of us cares to admit that it exists, it does. And it always will.

Because it's an instinct. And just like rape, we have a killer instinct.

That is what it all boils down to. Our instinct. Kids do not know the difference between right or wrong, nor do they know malicious or harm. They play. If you want to tell me an 8 year old is ready to kill someone on purpose, I'd call you the biggest liar since Nixon.

They play, because like animals, it's part of their instinct. All their playing is honing their skills, in one form or another. Kick the can? It's playing to hone coordination. All kids do is play.

Once you grow up, and because aware, become sentient, become a teenager or an adult, you know the difference, and it is no longer playing. For some, the awareness isn't all there, whether it be for their parents fault, or for their own, or for whatever factor you can think of, the awareness might not be there. And thus, when a 15 year old shoots his 16 year old friend because they're playing, chances are it was an accident.

An accident. And he didn't mean it. Did he want to shoot his friend? Probably not. I would hope not. But he must have had bad intentions, all because he was playing a game. Or because he was listening to a certain type of music. Or watching a certain show.

Does the teenager listen to Disturbed, Mudvayne, and Skinny Puppy because he is angry? Or is he angry because he listens to them? What came first, the melodrama, or the pop music? Am I sad because I listen to pop music, or am I listening to pop music because I'm sad?

The point is, no one can ever make us do anything. Tom couldn't make Mark write a piece he didn't want to, and Mark couldn't make Tom admit he's a nurse (which he really is, really!) if he didn't want to.

A game can't make me shoot someone I don't like in the face. A game can't make me slit my wrists, nothing can make me do anything I want.

And in the end, only the clinically insane have a reason and an excuse for doing something they didn't want to, because they didn't know. They will never know, what they've done. Because like the child, the awareness just isn't there. In some form or fashion.

But for the rest of us, it's our own fault. No one elses. For a child, it's the parents fault up to a certain point, and then it becomes the childs responsibility to grow up and deal with whatever shortcomings his parents might have had.

But, in the end, it's our own fault. Because, like rape, it's all part of an instinct. Everything we do is driven by that instinct, everything.

A killer, instinct. In some shape, form, or fashion.

~M.K.

Well, I'll grant you that the mating instinct runs deep, but I think you're going off the deep end by claiming rape is an instinct. I'm sure even in prehistory there was a difference between a willing partner and one taken by force, and that women did their best to resist under the circumstances.

And I'm sure someone will come back with that being a useless rant that doesn't fit in the situation, I just wanted to offer a different perspective on things.

And prove to Wumpus I can write a good piece without slaughtering the point at the end. =P

Somehow, I don't think that'll play in Peoria.

The abstract for the article I cited via Medline should be free (although the full text is not) and the JAMA article was from one of JAMA's supposedly free online sections. My point was not necessarily those articles -- they were simply examples of search items since Google isn't really suited to the kind of search you are doing.

I once read an article, I think it might've been Newsweek, or Time, doesn't matter, but it was an extremely well-written piece on rape.

You must have read a review of Thornhill and Palmer's A Natural History of Rape: The Biological Basis of Sexual Coercion. That was the latest salvo in the sociobiology debate and it made it into the mainstream media -- I think that was a couple years ago.

FYI, to make things worse the Solid Snake action figure comes with a "spring-action kung-fu rape stick," whatever that is.

"That was the latest salvo in the sociobiology debate and it made it into the mainstream media -- I think that was a couple years ago."

It's downright mysogynist. All sex must be "rape", because females won't have sex willingly.

Many women like the hump hump. I'm sure this was true even in prehistoric days.

Sure, but I'm also certain non-consensual sex has some sort of evolutionary component. Check out what ducks do in their free time.

'My point was not necessarily those articles -- they were simply examples of search items since Google isn't really suited to the kind of search you are doing.'

Damn google, damn them to hell.

"It's downright mysogynist. All sex must be "rape", because females won't have sex willingly."

The point of the book (which was originally published in abridged form as a journal article) was that at some point rape was (according to the authors) most likely an effective tool for evolutionary fitness. Thus, a tendency to rape may have been preserved as a genetic component in males. This then became the basis for an attack on the prevailing sociological idea that rape has nothing to do with sex, but is an exercise of male power and expression of disrespect for women. The argument is a result of the increasing conflict between traditional psychology and a branch of psychology known as "evolutionary psychology" which attempts to re-evaluate many of psychology's assumptions based on advances in genetics and molecular medicine. Unfortunately, you can't really do evolutionary psychology experiments, so all you end up with is a lot of interesting but unsubstantiated speculation.

That's a synopsis of the point made by the authors. I read the original article but have not read the book.

I think that's a crock.

Sure, men are aggressive and have perpetual hard-ons by nature. You'll get no debate from me on that; we're born that way. But the leap from that to "rape is genetic" is awfully extreme.

Sex is, and has always been, a two-way street. I think a lot of guys fixate on the "women don't want it" side of the equation. Just because they're the gatekeepers, that doesn't mean they don't like it, or don't want it. Not the same thing at all.

That isn't to say that rape didn't or doesn't happen. Clearly it does. But I seriously doubt a significant portion of procreation was based on that kind of interaction. For one thing, who raises the children? Rapists don't stick around, and females and children would have a hard time going it alone in prehistoric days.

Yeah and doesn't sexual selection tend to give the female considerable power in choosing mates? Hence the development of absurd ornamentation like the peacock, serving no purpose other than impressing females. Admittedly bird sexuality may have little in common with primate sexuality, but still, it is likely a two-way street.

"That isn't to say that rape didn't or doesn't happen. Clearly it does. But I seriously doubt a significant portion of procreation was based on that kind of interaction. For one thing, who raises the children? Rapists don't stick around, and females and children would have a hard time going it alone in prehistoric days."

See, Wumpus, this is your problem, you're looking at things strictly from the way our society functions today.

Rape back then was not about power, or greed, or any of that bullshit. It was about procreation.

They weren't out to do the rape of today, where they run away once it's done. They stuck around back then.

The rape of today is not that rape of yesterday, but the principal is still the same: The male of the species literally took the female by force, impregnated it, and then, more or less let the woman raise the child.

All the while, it provided food, shelter, that kind of thing, etc.

Look at it this way, it's amazingly simple: A lion mates over 30 times a day. Those female lions are more or less "raped", because the male lion doesn't give a flying fuck if they're not in the mood, he takes them.

The same thing happened in our ancestory, why? Because unlike what some people today seem to not understand, we are not the same people today as we were back then.

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Quote:

we are not the same people today as we were back then.

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"I think that's a crock."

You may be correct, but I'm not really interested in debating it, mostly because I lose interest quickly in arguments that are based on "it must have been the case that..." What were people like "back then?" Based on some stuff I've read, they very well may have been hobbits. Also, I ended up discussing this with a lot of people when the article came out, and the only opinion I formed was that I'd really like to be able to publish journal articles based on no data and just my speculation on what I thought was likely in some scenario.

"So if that's the case, why are people using this argument to support their conclusions about violent behavior above?"

Because our instincts from then and our instincts now are the same.

However, we don't rape the same way, because society and our environment manipulates it. Just like we don't kill the same way, eat the same way, etc.

You can't change core programming, genetics, you can manipulate them, however.

"Also, I ended up discussing this with a lot of people when the article came out, and the only opinion I formed was that I'd really like to be able to publish journal articles based on no data and just my speculation on what I thought was likely in some scenario."

That's smart, Bruce. However, publishing a journal article that has more sense in it than some others probably did, at least deserves some merit.

Saying that we're the same people back then, socially, is fucking stupid. We're different now than 500 years ago. Than 1000. Than 10000. We're not egyptians, nor were the egyptians us. Not intelligence-wise, not socially. So to say that social and environmental aspects are the same, is very damn ignorant.

However, saying instinctual aspects, is not. Instinct is proven. Mating instinct is proven, just as killer instinct is proven. And don't get technical saying that it's not proven, because it is. Why else would we eat, or mate?

SO! Back to my original point. It's stupid to speculate that social and environmental aspects are the same, because we know from our own history that they are _not_. We can look at the Romans, Egyptians, the British, hell, even ourselves 200 years ago, and see that we are not the same in either of those aspects.

And like I said above, it is very safe to assume that 10,000 years ago, we were unintelligent, stupid primates who didn't have anything above a loose archaic society based on whoever was strongest. It is ALSO very safe to assume that no, not all women were consenting when it came to sex. And if they weren't, well hell, we didn't have a society, so rape probably very well did happen. For no other reason than procreation.

Sex was a very different thing back then. So was all social aspects that led up to it. And hell, you're a male primate, you're used to taking what you want, so you take the female, regardless of whether she's in the "mood" or not.

Not social, not environmental, it's all genetic and instinctual.

I'm with Bruce on this one. And Proust.

I've read a bit about mating habits of primates, and they're all over the board. Some male primates do use force to procreate. I can't remember the species names off the top of my head, but one type of gorilla has been observed to beat the crap out of a female during her period so that when she's fertile she'll be servile to the male.

There's another group of primates where the females terrorize the males and mate when they feel like it.

There's even a group of primates that will have sex just for pleasure and do it missionary style. The female will grab her partner's face with both hands and force him to look at her as they mate. These primates also engage in homosexual activity for pleasure and as a way of defusing fights. Angry males will stroke one another's penis, etc.

Can't remember the name of the book, but it focused on female scientists. Seems that the study of primates was male-centric for a long time. Many of the male scientists refused to believe that the female primates had orgasms, but female scientists more or less proved it. Interesting book.

"It's not like Apple's school monopoly did them much good."

Only good enough for Microsoft to try and copy it. "Student" versions of Microsoft software has been chronicled in another thread. Shoot, why do you think they want to pay their anti-trust fines in the form of software and computer equipment?

>There's even a group of primates that will have sex just for pleasure and do it missionary style. The female will grab her partner's face with both hands and force him to look at her as they mate. These primates also engage in homosexual activity for pleasure and as a way of defusing fights. Angry males will stroke one another's penis, etc.

Sounds like bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees), the Austin Powerses of the natural world.