Who would design a game like Grand Theft Auto V? (and why my son will never get to play it in this house)

I am a very lenient mother, there’s not much that my child doesn’t get away with. Added to my leniency and tendency to spoil Little Pencil, there is my husband’s laissez faire attitude to growing up which has resulted in a child who has seen a lot of movies that kids his age should probably not see. He roars with laughter on the couch next to his father as he watches comedies meant for adults over 18 and he can quote Ecclesiastes after watching Pulp Fiction, in fact when we traveled to France last year he was a little too excited about the Royale with mayo at the MacDonalds.

So far he’s turning out okay, other than the typical teenage stuff which seems to be contained to mini cyclones, he is a compassionate, understanding and kind kid. He loves his family and friends, he is sociable and confident and so far has shown no signs of becoming a violent offender. He clearly knows and can separate fact and fiction better than I can (I cannot watch action movies at all – too terrifying).

But there is one thing that he really wants and I have no intention of allowing him to have it, although he has nagged for almost a year. That’s a lot of nagging for someone who usually folds before the second hand has gone around the clock.

He wants Grand Theft Auto V and he is not getting it while I have any say in his life and he doesn’t like that at all.

Grand Theft Auto has gone through many iterations (all of them quite hideous in my opinion) but it is this 5th one and the ability to play in first person that is causing the most concern. As Simon Parkin writes so eloquently for The New Yorker in a post eerily entitle How Evil Should A Video Game Allow You To Be

Video-game violence is, like all onscreen violence, an act of play. But the medium has a unique capacity to inveigle, and even implicate, its audience through its interactivity. When we watch a violent scene in a film or read a description of violence in a novel, no matter how graphic it is, we are merely spectators. In video games, whose stories are usually written in the second person singular—“you,” rather than “he” or “she” or “I”—we are active, if virtual, participants. Often the game’s story remains in stasis until we press the button to step off the sidewalk, light the cigarette, drunkenly turn the key in the ignition, or pull a yielding trigger.

And the first person aspect is the thing that Little Pencil likes most. Yikes! He promises me that it is a “free roaming” game and that you don’t actually have to murder or rape anyone to get extra points but I am not budging. He promises me that he knows to respect all people and he would “never hit a girl”. He tells me that you can have the real experience of driving a car and “you can do missions that don’t involve any strippers”. Yeah that’s nice to hear.

What’s not so nice to hear is that you want to play a game where there is the possibility that you can hire a woman for sex and then murder her to get your money back, that you can torture somebody by wrenching out their teeth. I feel sick to the stomach at the thought that someone would design a game like that.

I’m not listening to his pleas of “but I won’t…” and” I know….” I am listening to the words of a Change petition started by three women who have all been victims of sexual violence

They write in their petition to Target.

It’s a game that encourages players to murder women for entertainment. The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get ‘health’ points – and now Target are stocking it and promoting it for your Xmas stocking.
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This is Grand Theft Auto 5. This game means that after various sex acts, players are given options to kill women by punching her unconscious, killing with a machete, bat or guns to get their money returned.

Please Target – we appeal to you as women survivors of violence, including women who experienced violence in the sex industry, to immediately withdraw Grand Theft Auto V from sale.

One of many fan clips on YouTube shows the woman being run down, run over, set alight and, still screaming, repeatedly shot. This misogynistic GTA 5 literally makes a game of bashing, killing and horrific violence against women. It also links sexual arousal and violence.

We have firsthand experience of this kind of sexual violence. It haunts us, and we’ve been trying to rebuild our lives ever since. Just knowing that women are being portrayed as deserving to be sexually used by men and potentially murdered for sport and pleasure – to see this violence that we lived through turned into a form of entertainments is sickening and causes us great pain and harm.

This game spreads the idea that certain women exist as scapegoats for male violence. It shows hatred and contempt for women in the sex industry and puts them at greater risk. Women in the industry are 40 times more likely to be murdered by a man than any other group of women.

Games like this are grooming yet another generation of boys to tolerate violence against women. It is fuelling the epidemic of violence experienced by so many girls and women in Australia – and globally.

Never mind toy shops with pink and blue signage and girls wearing pink and boys playing with trucks. This is the stuff that matters. This is the stuff that normalizes misogyny and violence.

Target and Kmart have taken the game off their shelves. I only hope JB Hi-Fi and EB Games are quick to follow.

Now tell me how I deal with the fact that many of Little Pencil’s friends own this game (some without their parents knowledge or consent)? I’m not allowing it on my watch but he’s nearly 14 and it’s not always my watch?

Can someone bring me some bubble wrap and slip flat food under the door? I’m barricading us in.