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Sony Cracks Down On Sexually Explicit Content In Games (engadget.com)

Slashdot reader xavdeman writes: Hot on the heels of its announcement of the specifications of the next PlayStation, Sony has revealed a new crackdown on explicit content. Citing "the rise of the #MeToo movement" and a concern of "legal and social action" in the USA, Sony has said it wants to address concerns about the depiction of women in video games playable on its platform as well as protect children's "sound growth and development." The new rules were reportedly already responsible for puritan cutscene alterations in the Western PS4 release of the multi-platform title Devil May Cry 5, where lens flares were used to cover up partial nudity.

2 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Sample of the "Sexually Explicit Content" by Ashthon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's an example of the vile and shocking "sexually explicit content" that Sony had to censor:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nupFJPaAn9s

    Most of the other examples of Sony's PS4 censorship are equally absurd. It should be noted that Sony moved their headquarters to California, which is why we're getting these utterly deranged decisions.

    Of course, there's a simple solution - don't buy anything from Sony.

  2. Re:The left loves slut shaming! by Shane_Optima · · Score: 4, Informative
    No, sensible sex-positive second wave feminists originally coined the term "slut shaming". Modern SJWs might borrow the term whenever a woman is being mocked, but they aren't using it in a sex-positive manner except perhaps by accident (they're primarily using it as part of a nonsensical identity politic narrative of all members of group A oppressing all members of group B. If This sounds like hyperbole, go read the first draft of the Contributor Covenant, one of the most popular CoCs circulating among software projects right now, recently adopted by no less than Linus Torvalds. Yes it's true that language was eventually removed, but it reveals the mindset of the architects of that document, and those same people are still some of the most active SJWs in OSS and indeed maybe the most active in in STEM right now.)

    There are a few reasonable sex-positive egalitarians left in the world who still embrace the term "SJW" as a self-descriptor, but they don't yet realize they are in the minority. You may be one of them; I don't know. I haven't seen particularly egregious out of you, but I've not been paying super close attention.

    Expressing regret is not intended to shame anyone.

    Yes it most likely is. Women tend to rely more on implication than men, particularly techie men.

    And even if there was no intended undertone there, even if they have nothing but the purest of feelings for women who participate in wet t-shirt contests and love it, as self-decribed progressive women who are ostensibly holding themselves up as role models (a fairly obvious implicit part of their narrative that young girls are lacking good role models), they're being (at best) extremely reckless. They should be aware of the value judgments they are vocalizing.

    It's been years since I read the interviews, but as I recall neither one said "oh, I regret doing that because *personally*, I didn't really want to do it but I let myself get talked into it anyway." It was no, this is *inherently* objectifying and bad.

    Have you ever talked down a mortified drunk girl after she's putting her shirt back on at a party? I have. More than once, in fact. And it was pretty clear to me that it wasn't the presence of males that bring out this feeling of embarrassment and regret. If she's not regretful, the guys go "woooo" and she goes "woooo" and life is good. It's only when there's a group of girls (and/or their boyfriends) there that don't go "woo" and she catches a look on their faces that leads to her regret.

    (Don't come back at me with some anecdote about a girl who was assaulted at a party. Yes that happens and it's a major problem that needs better pushing back against. But it's totally beside the point. Assault is assault and yes that can lead to shame, but "slut shaming" is something quite different.)

    That is not the thing they are complaining about. It's the coercion, the Weinsteins, the "sorry but to advance your career as an actor you are going to have to get your tits out".

    The movie Yeardley Smith was topless in was a nothing of a shit independent film (and not of an artsy sort) that did nothing for her career.

    More importantly, the wet T-shirt contest Kristen Schaal participated had nothing whatsoever to do with her career. She didn't give some big story about being pressured into it or impressing someone or anything. She just said man, that was such an objectifying thing to do, I wish I hadn't done it. In what way does that not pass value judgment on the hundreds of thousands if not millions of women who've let loose and had fun in a wet t-shirt contest at some point? If you don't think that's a value judgment, man you don't understand how women typically interact.

    Complaining about the coercive casting couch is fine. Cultural slut shaming is not. There is widespread demand for sexually suggestive media because this is both an accurate reflection of reality and it caters to basic human hungers. If wom