VectorM wrote:To anyone who is considering using rape in a conversation not about rape: fuck off.
Can we use murder in conversations not about murder? Can i say "Invisible War KILLED the franchise"? Are you going to tell me how we are normalizing murder
?
Do you really want to get into this? Because I have to say, I don't.
A long discussion of rape culture is not something that I really want to have. I'd also rather not parse the differences between being killed and being raped in any kind of detail. I'd prefer to avoid getting into the difference in how rape and attempted rape victims are treated as opposed to murder and attempted murder victims (or why it is that when someone is a victim of both people seem to default to the worse treatment.)
This is a fucking game thread as far as I know, we shouldn't have to be having this conversation. Why exactly do you feel the need to argue this point? Rape is a pretty narrowly defined term which means that it doesn't apply in the absence of sexual violence anyway. What's the worst that could happen if people stopped using it where it didn't apply? Their language ends up more precise? Oh the motherfracking horror.
This isn't the answer to your question that I should give because it doesn't address the myriad reasons why one shouldn't, for example, use the term rape where you've used the term "killed". It doesn't address the moral concerns, but since those moral concerns are built on a foundation of unnecessary undeserved suffering it makes my stomach turn to think of them, so I'd rather not go there. So today you get the cheap answer, the easy out as it were:
To say that a franchise was killed is a fairly straightforward almost literal statement. It was alive, then it was dead, something did that to it, the word for the verb for that is to kill.
To say that a franchise was raped is not the same. It doesn't apply. It can't apply. The meaning of the word rape doesn't allow it to apply.
Even if all else were equal, and it isn't, the use of rape would still be inappropriate where the use of the word kill is not.
-
If you really want to get into depth about why I'm saying that it is genuinely harmful to use the term rape in a situation like this I'll see if I can look up one of the many things other people have written on the topic. That should have two benefits. The first is that it would mean that the bulk of the writing would be off-site (all that would be needed here would be a link) which means this wouldn't be derailing the conversation here anymore. Second it would save me the trouble of writing more on a topic that I find quite literally sickening.
-
[Added:]
JC_Helios, thank you.
