Sex workers call for GTA ban
p2p news / p2pnet: An interesting new voice has been added to the growing list of individuals and organizations calling for Take-Two Interactive’s Rockstar Grand Theft Auto video games to be banned.
Take-Two is currently being sued by Los Angeles for failing to disclose that its Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game contained “pornographic” content.
“Since the video game Grand Theft Auto accrues points to players for the depiction of the rape and murder of prostitutes, SWOP-USA calls on all parents and all gamers to boycott Grand Theft Auto,” says the project. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Regarding the Video Game Grand Theft Auto
Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOP-USA)
Although SWOP-USA will always be adamantly opposed to any and all forms of censorship, as concerned parents ourselves, we wish to inform other parents of the potential danger extremely violent video games pose to children. And in the interest of furthering sex worker`s human and civil rights to life and personal safety, we object to any media which represents sex workers as legitimate targets of violence, rape and murder. Censorship is a blight on the freedoms we hold dear but we wholeheartedly encourage citizens to vote with their dollars by refusing to purchase products which encourage the denigration and destruction of prostitutes. Since the video game Grand Theft Auto accrues points to players for the depiction of the rape and murder of prostitutes, SWOP-USA calls on all parents and all gamers to boycott Grand Theft Auto.
Concerned parents and citizens are encouraged to read pertinent research regarding child development and interactive representations of violence. For your convenience, research results as reported by David Walsh, Ph.D. for the National Institute on Media and the Family in 2001 are summarized below:
Prominent organizations like the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association have all concluded that the scientific evidence shows a cause-effect relationship between television violence and aggression among the children and youth who watch it. Based on this research, many social scientists have hypothesized that we should expect video games to have an even greater impact for the following four reasons.
1. Children are more likely to imitate the actions of a character with whom they identify. In violent video games the player is often required to take the point of view of the shooter or perpetrator.
2. Video games by their very nature require active participation rather than passive observation.
3. Repetition increases learning. Video games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioral rehearsal for violent activity.
4. Rewards increase learning, and video games are based on a reward system.
. . . [Research is] showing that the concern is indeed warranted. . .
Children with the lowest hostility scores are almost 10 times more likely to have been involved in physical fights if they play a lot of violent video games than if they do not play violent games (38% compared to 4%). In fact, the least hostile children who play a lot of violent video games are more likely to be involved in fights than are the most hostile children who do not play violent video games.
. . . [There is] a strong correlation between exposure to violent video games and various forms of antisocial behavior.
From Video Game Violence and Public Policy by David Walsh, Ph.D. for the National Institute on Media and the Family, copyright 2001
Also See:
“pornographic” content – LA sues GTA San Andreas co, January 27, 2006
February 17th, 2006 at 12:26 am
âChildren with the lowest hostility scores are almost 10 times more likely to have been involved in physical fights if they play a lot of violent video games than if they do not play violent games (38% compared to 4%). In fact, the least hostile children who play a lot of violent video games are more likely to be involved in fights than are the most hostile children who do not play violent video games.”
WTF?? Must’ve been some crack-head hooker that came up with that heap of grabage! Nice kids who play video games are more hostile than hostile kids who dont play video games, who are actually quite peaceful and really good kids underneath all that hostility if you just get to know them. Whereas those nice kids are a ticking bomb, bottling up all that anger into a nice juicy molotov cocktail of hate and teenage angst. Waiting for someone to knock them over in gym class or a passing car to splash water on him before erupting in a frenzy of hooker murders and meth amphetamine abuse. Of course, it’s all so clear now, i’m glad thats been sorted out at last.
If you ask me those poor least hostile kids get into more fight because they are the quiet ones who get picked on and so they play violent video games as some kind of therapy. A sort of virtual revenge on their tormentors. Whereas the most hostile kids are just better at making themselves look innocent, they’ve had more practise at pretending nothing has happened. And after all, they’re not the ones with a fat lip and their shirt torn. You must also remember that 96% of statistics are completely fabricated, the other 18% are attributed to rounding off errors.
February 17th, 2006 at 12:56 am
This Sex Workers Outreach Project sounds like a bunch of fundies, I bet you it’s a right-wing organization that isn’t REPRESENTING sex workers, but trying to eliminate them.
Either that or they are simply absent of all brain cells, much like most buearucratic types.
Can we, as citizens of the rest of the world, agree now to just simply ignore anything that comes out of the USA? It’s always either bullshit, spin, or bullshit w/ spin.
February 17th, 2006 at 3:20 am
“The video game Grand Theft Auto accrues points to players for the depiction of the rape and murder of prostitutes”
Well… Having a copy of the game myself I have never found myself able to “rape” a prostitute in it. Sure, you can drive up beside them, they get in the car, you drive somewhere quiet, cash goes down, health goes up. This appears to me to be the normal hooker/client scenario (though if there’s a health bar IRL, I’ve never seen mine). Rape would imply a FORCED sexual relation, which does not seem to be the case. True, you can murder the prostitute afterwards and get your money back, but that depends on what sort of person you are, not who the game makes you.
The entire issue here comes down to the fact that young children/people/llamas etc. are impressionable, here in the UK, the game is rated 18… said children SHOULD NOT have access to it. But they do, because parents really don’t give a second thought to a computer game. Had GTA:SA been a movie, these parents would look at the DVD case or whatever and say “This is an 18/R/Not allowed for kids flick, I’m not buying you this”.
Perhaps this is because parents hark back to the days of Pong and Donkey Kong, when VG’s could do no wrong. Parents need to be educated that the line between interactive entertainment and blockbuster movies is a lot more hazy now, as it stands, they continue to supply their kids with 18-rated content, because they don’t think there will be a little section on the box detailing what bloodthirsty antics only Pol Pot could have dreamed of.
/end rant =)
Please note this is my personal opinion, and in no way do I claim to be an authority on parents.
February 17th, 2006 at 4:22 am
Well…just to throw my 2 cents CA in.
The majority of social psychology studies agree that viewing violence makes people more violent (obviously not on the spot, but exposure desensitizes) in the long run, and not the other way around (violent people are attracted to violent things). Of course, this is something that will be debated until the end of time =). How big of a factor this was, I cannot remember, but they did find a correlation.
We can all think of exceptions – I know plenty of people who play those kinds of games who wouldn’t go around killing people. Even if I dislike these games myself, I don’t believe everyone who plays them are pyschopaths. The studies just say the probability is higher. Not everyone turns evil. Obviously social circumstances, parents, financial status, are all very (more) important factors.
While (presumably) these statistics aren’t made up, I suppose you could question the validity of the studies themselves. But I have no answer for that
.
February 17th, 2006 at 8:14 am
hahaha this gets better
February 17th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
All I get out of this story and the comments is, that if we get rid of all the violent games and make no more violent or hostile movies without any sexual content and everything showin’ on TV is without violence we will have prefectly behaved children and teenagers and end up with a pefect world to live in without anybody having any aggrestion or ill feelings toward anybody else.
My first response ……………..BULL SHIT
Teach respect for others at home and in schools. Let kids grow up in a violent free home so they don’t see hostility every day.
You want a better world……..Educate and teach the adults of today about respect , honesty and decency . It’s not the Kids or the games that are causing the problem.
February 17th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
“Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOP-USA)”
How odd this title. To my knowledge, other than in Nevada, there is no legal prostitution in the US. So maybe the better call for SWOP would be legalisation of prostitution rather than a virtual world game that ends with the button pushed.
There is always some group that sees inherent evil within something. In my day, it was violence in comic books. Today video games have largely supplanted comic books as a form of entertainment for the kids. Somehow after reading those comic books, I never felt I would be able to jump off a building, stop a bullet by poking out my chest, or beating up the kid next door. I don’t think kids today thing this virtual world any more real than I thought comic books were.
It’s just a game, no more, no less.
February 17th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
Adult movies such as the one’s with the R rating and X rating are made for adult viewers. Hence the Mature rating on the game San Andreas, that means it’s made for adults not children. What is failed to be mentioned here is that not only prostitutes can be killed but everyone. I have personally played and beat the game and you can solicite hookers but can not rape them. I think that anybody that talks about this but hasn’t played it needs to shut the hell up b/c you don’t know what its like. And if your stupid enough to let your kids play games like this and not supervise them then it’s your own fault as to how they turn out!