I most certainly did not make it up, and it does mean metaphor or representative, however, it is very much in use in my experience. My only guess is that this may represent a difference in American vs. UK English. I am an American, and one who holds a degree in English, and is pursuing a post-graduate degree in Philosophy. In my experiences, Proverbial You (or the admittedly rarer, Proverbial I) is used as so:

"Now, if you wanted to go to the ATM at 3AM, but your bank does not allow this, the next best thing for you to do would be to go ahead and just pay the fee at another bank."

In this case, I might be talking specifically to you, but more than likely, since this is a hypothetical situation, I mean that any person could be denoted by "you." We use such expressions in daily life all the time, and plenty of times in articles or scholarly journals. This is, in America, at least, called Proverbial You. If I were to speak about what "I" could or should do, but could be replaced by anyone else, then I am speaking of Proverbial I. Since I was speaking not about me personally, but me as member of the public, and therefore could be replaced by any member of the public, not just myself specifically, I was using Proverbial I. Does this make sense?

These are all concerns I would expect the producer to already be thinking as responsible member of society. The question is, should he or she be held responsible for actions that cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have occurred because of the games. This is where an incitement charge would need to be considered. Are these games the same, and is the producer knowingly allowing them to be the same, as a terrorist, dictator, or hate group leader convincing a mob to act else they would not otherwise act? If incitement, knowingly, can be proven, then forget the banning of the games: convict the producer as an accessory to rape.

And I am just saying we need to break it down into even further categories.

In one of the only opinions I will venture, which might make you understand why I am not as easy to push to one side or the other is my take that gender is not the relevant issue at hand: in essence, I think trying to label statistics of any sort, ever, organised by gender is misleading. This is highly controversial, and I realise most of the world cannot seem to see this as I do. Of course, I maintain this a vicious circle. Believing gender is relevant leads to believing gender is relevant.

It's a good point, but those things are portrayed as bad in most cases. Murder in films and media usually has some dire consequences, in GTA, the police come, in Saw, (don't want to it away for people but everyone seems to have their come uppance.) It's rare that anyone actually gets away with murder and has a decent life after that in media. I've never seen these rape games so I've never encountered whether the rapist actually suffers any consquences, but as it's supposed to be a sexual thing then I doubt they are going to face any of those kind of consequences in game. As mentioned earlier.

Also, murder isn't gender or race specific, but most rapes that occur target the female demographic, which is another worry.

Rape by agreement of the parties is not possible. In order for an act to be rape one of the parties must not consent.

A couple playing at "rape" in their bedroom does not qualify as rape.

Perfectly. :) I did understand how you were using it after that last post and I wasn't trying to imply you were making it up, but it definitely seems be a discrepancy between British and American english. Over here I think it's called the "Generalized You" and what you know as the 'proverbial I' then must be what I understand to be something like a second-person 'I'. As I mentioned before, in my experience something 'proverbial' is normally understood to be related directly to a specific idiom. Such as, "If I wore that I'd stick out like the proverbial thumb" or "We're getting up the proverbial creek here guys...". Glad to have cleared that up!

Unfortunately as to whether the producer is thinking them is probably shaky ground. The cynic in me doubts whether as a money-spinner they really care or not, and don't simply possess a "lets milk it while we can" mentality. I think for practical reasons, proving that any producer (if they do) are purposefully being incisive could well be impossible, but they could simply be neglecting close scrutiny of what the affects are.

What bothers me, and perhaps this is a very western perspective, is that if these games were say, focused on the abuse of a single racial stereotype, they possibly would never have even hit the production line on grounds of racism. Why then is it acceptable for a focus on abuse of women, or at least for it to be considered in very different terms?

In continuation from that, I'm not sure I fully understand your last point, so I will simply say that the impression I have is that these games seem to be quite gendered in and of themselves, and so that, to me, makes gender issues relevant.

We usually don't add proverbial in that case; we just say the proverb. "Man am I up a creek without a paddle!"

We would still, then, need to show the producer knew, in a real way, of the effects of the games, and chose to produce them anyhow. Much as if I know someone is going to kill someone else and I do nothing, I might, if the situation is clear enough, have been guilty of neglect.

Unfortunately, and while I don't have link in hand, this is not the case. The stereotypes of blacks I have seen in Japan were initially very, very shocking. In anime, and in toys, and sometimes, yes, in games. I think it's decreasing, but it doesn't change what already exists. And it's not quite the same, because most people believe there is no inherent difference between races, and that rather the "racial experience" comes from contact between people of different races, and is essentially, an artificial construct. Say seriously that there is any real inherent, relevant difference between races, and you come off sounding like one of the Nazi social scientists.

Say you believe there is some inherent difference between men and women, and you get a clap on the back from both the conservative far-right who believes women to be inherently inferior, and the far-left radical women's movement that maintains women deserve their own everything, because they are inherently different (if not superior).

It would take an entire thread of its own, but I believe gender is NEVER relevant. In fact, I believe gender doesn't exist inherently. There's anatomic sex, and then there's gender identity which is developed in the same way other identity traits are, and our concept of "matching" is arbitrary and antiquated, and that the differences we see in behavior are self-created, and thus that third opinion I have is that, honestly, banning or not banning the games will have no effect whatsoever on misogyny or rape at all. It's all window dressing. It's people trying to look like they're doing something because they can't face the real issue: it is our failure to treat "boys" and "girls" equally from the moment of birth (or sometimes before, pink and blue? Really?) and to pin their eventual, unformed identity on what they have between their legs, and then our continual enforcement of it every minute of every day for the rest of their lives that causes certain individuals to believe that actions, such as rape, could ever been considered allowable. If we can teach children to move anatomic sex to the same level of importance as race, and respect each other as individuals, I do not think misogyny will continue, and the demand for rape games will either decrease, or be shown to have zero effect on the destabilised individuals who choose to rape regardless of any outside stimuli.

The problem is, we won't do it. If anything, I've seen my side lose ground on this. The fact that even public schools have been experimenting with same-sex classes, classrooms, or entire schools is the worst possible thing we could do. It's running full speed the opposite direction. We'll never make progress that way. We learned that lesson, or should have, from race: separate is NEVER equal, and it ALWAYS causes discrimination. Some segment of one of the groups will always find a way to argue that the separation represents superiority of one group over the other.

Then all this can simply be fixed by providing a warning message at the start of the game/film telling people it is not intended to be taken seriously, and is some seriously messed up shit, and whatever.

Still, I never imagined people would need to be told this stuff is wrong.

This is disgusting, immoral and wrong! how could they ban such great games?

Eh, I didn't know there's no consequences in rape games. At least in shoot em ups and such you can wind up in jail or die.

It's certainly caught the attaention here!

I don't think the word "rape" is a big thing in Japan as you say.

Japan is a very safe country.

I thought in the case of 'rape' in Japan that the support for victims was at a minimum. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but years ago, I recall reading that it's easy for guys to get off for a rape accusation if he says the victim consented to it, therefore, not making it a rape.

That aside, I'm still under the impression that these games are justifying raping an innocent victim, and doubt any normal person if in that situation begins to "enjoy it", another impression I'm getting from this genre, but, I've never seen a rape game nor have I ever played one, so my impression could be incredibly scewed here.

Your impression is correct, in as far as I know. On the other hand, I still don't see how they are any more or less "pro"-rape than trashy romance novels. If you've ever read one of those, I tell you, a plot line where a handsome, yet sympathetic villain captures and "ravishes" a female character until she finds she's fallen for him is incredibly common. The demographic? Women.

Even if the language is more flowery, isn't the "objectionable message" the same?

I've never read a romance novel and never will since I hate romance stories in general. That aside, for those types of novels, the villain isn't raping or abusing her and then she falls for him, right? He just has a "bad boy image" or something, right? Isn't it usually that the more time spent together (forced or otherwise), the two eventually fall for one another? Isn't that usually the case for those sappy novels?

Ravishing is a euphemism for rape.

I am definately not a 'shy' Otaku thank you very much.

i don't think its a big deal, its just a game, such as prototype in which u slaughter a whole city and still it doesnt mean anybody is actually going to do it for good.

besides, sick people are everywhere and so are rapists and they wouldnt stop doing whatever they do due to a game or not.

True enough. We need to trust the morality of users of the game. There has been extensive research into the correlation between sex-related crimes and the availability of pornography for example. It was found that those countries where pornography was abundant had lower levels of rape and other sexual crimes.

As Guigoo said, some people are gonna commit such crimes anyway due to a maelstrom/multitude of other factors.