redblueamerica.com

As even your grandma knows, "Grand Theft Auto IV" is out and it's being hyped as an X-rated wonderland. You can enjoy booty-bouncing, crotch headstands and double lap dances at the local strip club, and pay a hooker to talk dirty and service you in your hooptie. It gets better: After you get your rocks off, you can run her over with your car or riddle her with bullets -- it all depends on how you roll, ya big stud.

Earlier this week, Feministing's Samhita argued that "many young men are going to have their first ... sexual experiences via GTA and then they are going to kill the women they are sleeping with." It's important to note that GTA players don't have to kill prostitutes, although they certainly can if it occurs to them. As our resident tech-expert at Machinist told me, killing prostitutes is not required by the game; in fact, it will help you lose, not win, the game. Not to mention, boys and girls have been having their first sexual experiences virtually for some time -- it isn't something GTA invented. Those experiences can be fun or traumatic, healthy or harmful. GTA may be far more publicly visible than hardcore pornography, but I'd wager that a far greater number of young boys will be exposed to extremely violent pornography -- involving real, live, breathing women -- than will pretend to kill a prostitute in GTA.

I'm not defending the game or the fact that this type of hooker-killing game play was virally marketed by IGN, but the revolting truth is that there is a real market for simulated (or real) sexual violence against women, and it wasn't created by "Grand Theft Auto." Now, of course, remains the question: How much does the game do to encourage that fantasy?