This is Disturbing, Too
This isn’t on the same level with a world-wide pandemic of lethal avian flu (see below), but I find it disturbing.
White-Wolf Games is soon to market a new card game called Pimp: The Backhanding. Apparently the company thinks that posting a link to Amnesty International on its marketing page absolves it from promoting a game that includes the following description:
Each pimp in your posse can be used only once each round, either to mack a ho or to backhand one of the harlots an opponent tries to take home. In the Money Laundering Phase, you score any ho you macked that didn’t get the shit knocked out of her in the Backhanding Phase.
As the parent of a teen and a pre-teen, both boys, I wonder how in the hell they can resolve the conflicting images of women that are fed to them in this society. Are we competent human beings able to do anything, even serve on the Harvard faculty in math and science, or just ho’s? Am I just old-fashioned to not think “pimp” culture is cool?
I never imagined in the heady days of the women’s movement of the 70s that we would still be having these discussions. And I refuse to categorize this post as “Women’s Interests.” Haven’t we learned that women’s interests are human interests by now?
By way of Alas, A Blog.
January 23rd, 2005 at 7:34 pm
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Got news for ya: You’re living in an entire culture of “Pimps’N'Ho’s.” Money is EVERYTHING, and violence solves all problems: The Bush Platform. Check out his actions in South Asia this week:
POLITICS TRUMPS RELIEF EFFORTS:
Tsunami Update
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January 23rd, 2005 at 9:11 pm
I thought it was pretty funny. Now I feel so dirty.
January 23rd, 2005 at 9:18 pm
War has traditionally been a process of men being forced to kill other men or be killed by them. Are you similarly offended by the culture of anti-male violence cultivated by every war-based game ever devised? (I will not attempt to post an exhaustive list of such games - it would be easier to list those that do NOT qualify).
January 23rd, 2005 at 10:37 pm
Of course, David, many men volunteer to fight in those wars, where as no woman I’ve known has ever volunteered to be a ho.
January 23rd, 2005 at 10:56 pm
Almost anything can be funny once. But when it evolves to this degree, I also fail to see the joke.
Forty years ago, America experienced the Love Generation. It has wrought some marvelous changes in the world. But oversexualization of the young is not one of those good things. One does not have to be a prude to see what’s being promoted here.
The company promoting this is from Stone Mountain, GA, which just goes to show you how a place that’s as reactionary today as it was in Civil War times promotes defecate while dismissing objectors as too politically correct.
This is neither love nor good commerce, nor a fair representation of our culture. It more closely resembles Satanism, the worship of evil things.
January 24th, 2005 at 6:48 am
I have to agree with Dr. Del Amor 100%. I am as shocked by a pimp games as I would be by a KKK game. The obscenity in American society is the glorification of violence, and yes I agree that we are also over sexing our young. Several years ago I walked into the game area of a computer store with my wife. Just scanning the game titles and box covers, we were overwhelmed by the messages of violence, Satanism, and the general elevation of all criminality.
January 24th, 2005 at 8:00 am
I can’t tell if tas’ comment is sarcasm or not.
January 24th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Well now - if the hos had semi-automatic weapons or the ability to “mack” the pimps back - then you might, just might be able to compare it as at all equatable to the war games. Which are about as offensive, FWIW.
January 24th, 2005 at 11:42 am
huzzah! prostitution, as well as its depiction in the media, is those damn hippies’ fault! i’m glad we got that sorted out.
January 24th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
Mustang Sally: are you seriously suggesting that a ‘ho’ sees as much violence and is forced to inflict as much violence as a soldier? If you ignored the actual fighting-the-war part then I suppose you could argue that soldiers have historically received comparable humiliation and physical violence from their officers in peace time. Perhaps you think soldiers can “mack” their officers and get away with it? But we’re talking about war games not peace games so I think the soldiers have the worst of it. You might want to read “Prostitute with a gun”, a chapter in “The Myth of Male Power” by Warren Farrell.
January 25th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
Actually, as an enthusiast of White Wolf published games, I can tell you that Pimp:The Backhanding, is just a joke, it is not something that would be published or marketed. Bungie Studios, the makers of the popular Xbox games Halo and Halo II, made a similar joke on their webpage on Apil 1st 2004, about their next game project called “Pimps at Sea.” Conan Obrien, on his popular late night show, has a reoccuring character “Pimpbot” a robot pimp. I personally do not find such “pimps and hos” jokes to be distasteful, because I think the jokes poke fun at how different popular culture has diverged from a realistic depiction, rather than making light of the plight of some women in the sex trade.
Messages of anything, be it violence, sexual explicitness, “Satanism,” criminality, mean nothing, so long as your children are not idiotic sponges that will soak up anything. It is not from an excess of sexuality (over sexualization of the young) or violence in media or anything else from which our country suffers; rather we suffer from being able to view these issues in perspective. We are people obsessed with fashion, consumption, popularity and emulation, and “grown-ups” only encourage these mind-numbing trends in the youth.
Oh, and plenty of women volunteer to be “ho’s.” I think it’s an important part of feminism that we allow women to be prostitutes as well as virgins, housewives, doctors, lawyers, or anything they want to be. We need to be accepting and inclusive.
Male power is not a myth. But nor is female power.
January 25th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
I meant to say Pimp would not be published under the label of White Wolf. It may be published under the Arthaus label, which is an adult/humor label. Also on the webpage is this disclaimer: “Pimp is a fictional game about the humorous stereotypes created by television and film and is in no way representational of the true horrors of the sex trade.”
Indeed, the White Wolf company slogan is “Games for Mature Minds.”
The game starts selling on Valentine’s Day.
“Pimp is a hilarious, stand-alone card game for two to four mature players. Rev up the chrome-caddy, dust off the purple suit and fedora, and make yourself some dough with the world’s oldest profession.
* Enough strategy and variety to offer great repeat play value…
* But not so complex that you can’t play after too many beers or too few pretzels
* If you like being politically correct and never laughing, don’t buy this game
* A fast-playing, yet high-strategy game, ideal for after-hours game-nights
* Suggested for mature players.”
January 26th, 2005 at 3:54 am
I wasn’t blaming anything on ‘the hippies’. The Free Speech movement, for example, helped bring sexuality out of the shadows, so we could speak about stuff with a greater sense that sex was normal, not dirty.
An unintended consequence is the ‘oversexualization’, but the biggest credit for that goes to folks who capitalize on titillation, not on hippies.
I can understand ‘jokes’. Otherwise The Simpsons and South Park could not be funny as they push pc buttons. But when a joke becomes a game - even for adults - it reminds me that not all definitions of ‘adult’ are equal.
One can laugh beyond the edges of good taste, but those who find added mirth wallowing past those edges strike me more as grown-ups who barely made it past middle school in their humor development.
Like Sam Malone in Cheers, they can be well-liked, while not truly adult. Perhaps it’s only parents who can truly appreciate the distinction.
February 1st, 2005 at 9:55 pm
I disagree. I think plenty of people are capable of appreciating the distinction. So long as you understand and appreciate the difference between reality and fantasy, that is maturity. Maturity is not defined by what you no longer find funny; you can be perfectly mature and well-adjusted but still laugh at “toilet humor.”
PIMP is just an example of cartoon violence in completely fictional circumstances. I laugh at Wile E. Coyote being blown up or dropped off a cliff, but I would not find it humorous to see a real animal dismembered, crushed, dropped off cliffs or blown up. Similarly, I find the thought of “backhanding” funny when the victims are completely fictional characters that happen to be women. In reality, I would never strike a wife, girlfriend, or female friend in anger or aggression (unless it SOMEHOW happened to be self-defense) and I would have words with any man who would.