Kind of a fraught topic, but I'd in general advise to watch out with kink shaming. Odds are that most people who like this kind of porn are not at risk of becoming rapists. Any link like that is probably like way too understudied to make any scientific conclusions. And then there's the replication crisis in social science.
I think that one
potential value of depicting rape in games is that it can be used to challenge common rape myths. Show most types of rape as acquaintance rape instead of stranger rape. Include an explicit link between war and war rape. Treat things like noncon sleep sex, incapacitated sex and blackmail sex as rape and not as something innocent. Retire the trope where a rape victim ends up loving being raped. Make rape about power instead of sudden lust. But that isn't done often in practice, to be honest. And while rape can be presented in a non-sexualised manner, people who consume it as part of their kink will want the sexualised version.
On the other hand I don't believe that the idea that "it's just fiction" always flies. Fiction can shape people's beliefs. A lot of fiction, including porn games, reinforces existing beliefs. I expect that most rape games play the rape myth tropes entirely straight. A lot of "shemale" porn uses the negative trope where the trans woman is deceptive, you also see that in some futa porn games. I'm a history nerdette and you wouldn't believe how much stupid nonsense that people believe about history derives from fiction. But if people realise that a certain element in fiction is not true, I'd hope that there isn't being a reinforcement effect. So I think that attacking the myths is more effective than attacking the fiction. But fiction that doesn't use the myths is better.
We should remember that fiction may not have an uniform effect on the entire population, too. People with some traits may be influenced in different ways. Often rapists have psychopathic or sociopathic personalities. Some people say that violent games have different effects on different groups of people. I don't know how reliable that is, but it is something that could be true.
Another thing to keep in mind is that ravishment fantasies are a thing and that demand isn't ever going away completely. These are articles by the same author about the prevalence of
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and
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fantasies. They are not peer-reviewed and not surveys, but they are based on data with big sample sizes.
I explored these questions in my book,
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, which is based on a survey of more than 4,000 Americans’ sex fantasies. Among the many things I asked about were fantasies about being forced to have sex. Previous research has found that these fantasies are common among women; however, I found that they’re actually quite common among people of all genders. Here are the numbers:
I surveyed more than 4,000 Americans about their sex fantasies for my book
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and, as part of this survey, I inquired about whether people had ever fantasized about forcing sex on someone else. Here’s what I found:
· 20% of self-identified women had fantasized about this before, while 4% said they fantasized about it often
· 38% of self-identified men had fantasized about this before, while 7% said they fantasized about it often
· 38% of non-binary participants had fantasized about this before, while 9% said they fantasized about it often
What's obvious from this is that the direction of the ravishment fantasies correlates with traditional gender roles for men and women. So maybe emancipation can decrease or remove the difference in percentages? But the level of submissive ravishment fantasies are quite a lot higher than the level fo dominant equivalent, even among men.
The author also says that a lot of the underlying factors are the same. But some factors only have a link to one of the directions:
That said, it’s important to note that there was a moderate correlation between fantasies about forcing sex on others and fantasies about being forced to have sex, which suggests that some people fantasize about both, such as those with active imaginations and sensation seeking personalities, as well as those who identify as BDSM switches (persons who go back and forth between dominant and submissive roles).
However, it’s also clear that some people only fantasize about one role—and there appear to be some factors that uniquely predict having one type of fantasy, but not the other. For example, having more relationship power was linked to fantasies about forcing sex on others, whereas low self-esteem, attachment anxiety, and sexual victimization were all linked to fantasies about being forced to have sex.
There is an issue however between catering to ravishment fantasy and challenging rape myths, because a lot of ravishment fantasies are about settings where the victim "actually wants it". Maybe that puts realistic depictions of rape at a market disadvantage. That's bad news for people like me who want those stereotypes to be challenged.
I also see that there's often an assumption that the people who create and consume rape porn are male. This is clearly not true in the strictest sense, although the creators and consumers may be in the majority or disproportionally male. The developers of
Rainy Day and
The Last Enchantress, both games that have rape porn, are female for example. I think it is better if we hear more from female fans of rape porn but they may be pushed away from discussions if they feel marginalised.
Finally I think that people engage differently with empathetic fiction (people use empathy) and violent or pornographic fiction (people use it for escapism). I don't believe that the response to one type is the same as to the other type.
Sorry for the very long post.
