If rape plots are off-limits, how can they tell stories?

So Valve recently announced it would make a game called Rape Day available on its Steam platform — and yes, it does indeed give players the option to “harass, kill and rape women.” Which the developer holds up as a legitimate storytelling approach: “You can’t reasonable [sic] consider banning rape in fiction without banning murder and torture.” And apparently it didn’t violate the Steam rules, though Valve has since dropped it.

Actually, though, it’s quite possible to say “no rape” and allow murder and torture. And murder isn’t excused or hand-waved away in the same way as rape, which is why the latter doesn’t play so well as an entertainment fantasy any more. And as Robert Jackson Bennett has said, if they think rape is acceptable, would they say the same about having children molested in the game (Steam, according to the first link, doesn’t allow child exploitation)? I can’t imagine anyone arguing that if they’re not allowed to show child rape, that would make it impossible to have murders or violence.

In other sexist news:

Tucker Carlson’s deep thoughts on women and statutory rape.

From Argentina, a look at how even a legal abortion (for an 11-year-old sexual abuse victim) can get stopped if enough technical and bureaucratic obstacles get thrown in its path.

A phone app makes it easier for Saudi men to monitor women’s movements and block their right to travel. Google and Apple are fine with keeping the app in their store.

Echidne looks at why Google is suddenly paying extra raises to men.

How to stop pedophilia? According to one online misogynist, legalize sex with any girl who’s reached puberty, so that way the cops can focus on the real pedophiles instead of perfectly harmless stuff like adults having sex with 14 year olds.

Women geeks talk about being labeled fake geek girls.

Men are dying because social media give women all the power in relationships! At least that’s one incel’s theory.

For some men, women starring in action films is still unsettling.

The religious right continues to freak out about Christians actually supporting feminism and social justice. Don’t they know Jesus is a solid Republican?

Part of what “identity politics” does is turn being white and male from an invisible default setting to a visible one “and makes a lot of the people who have become white men rather than members of society’s invisible default category very uncomfortable.”

Manohla Dargis, NYT film critic on the good and bad lessons she learned about womanhood at the movies.

To end on a positive note, at the Mary Sue, a blogger expresses her love for “loud girl” Black Canary. And comics writer Barbara Randall Kesel talking about writing Barbara Gordon as Batgirl and Oracle, and on female heroes in comics.

Cover by Phil Noto, all rights reserved to current holder. #SFWApro