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4/1/2019 Grand Theft Auto V and the Culture of Violence Against Women | HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/grand-theft-auto-v-and-the-culture-of-violence-against-women_b_6288528 1/6

Malika Saada Saar, Contributor

Malika Saada Saar is Google’s Senior Counsel on Civil and Human Rights. Before joining Google,

Malika was founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Project for Girls (Rights4Girls)

Grand Theft Auto V and the Culture of Violence Against Women 12/09/2014 05:44 pm ET | Updated Feb 08, 2015

Close view of the packaging of the console game Grand Theft Auto 5 at the midnight opening of the HMV music store in central London

on September 17, 2013. One enthusiastic fan camped outside the store for three days. AFP PHOTO / LEON NEAL (Photo credit should

read LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)

Coming to you, right in time for Christmas, is Grand Theft Auto V. It is a continuation of the

violence and sexual denigration of women offered in the previous versions of the Grand Theft

Auto games. But, now, taken one step further as the acts of gender-based violence can be

played out in first person.

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4/1/2019 Grand Theft Auto V and the Culture of Violence Against Women | HuffPost

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In GTA V, a gamer can purchase a woman (or is she a girl?) to perform a menu of different

sexual acts that he experiences in first person. After purchasing the woman/girl, the gamer

can choose to kill her — and actually is incentivized to kill her to get his money back. At

present, GTA V is one of the most popular and money making video games.

If Cambodia, India, or Nigeria produced such a video game, there would be global outrage. It

would serve as unequivocal evidence of their misogynistic cultures in which women and girls

are systemically raped and murdered with impunity. We would critique the ways in which their

cultures and values are organized around the normalization of gendered violence.

Interestingly, there has been little to none such backlash against the American made and

marketed GTA V in the U.S. The release of GTA V has been met with a very muted response.

Any criticisms are reduced to being mere moral panics. Free speech advocates, GTA V fans,

and other supporters insist that GTA V is simply a game, a victimless form of entertainment.

GTA V is certainly not the only video game, or only iteration, of celebrated violence against

women. Nor can GTA V be faulted for actually causing gendered violence. But GTA V’s new

standard for ramped-up, graphic violence against women comfortably exists in our rape

culture, and reifies the distinct ways in which women and girls are propertied, humiliated, and

abused.

Violence against women — and our acceptance of that violence — is why GTA V’s assault on

women can be framed as unapologetically entertaining. The abuse played out in the game is

not really outside of our cultural norms. Here, in this country, one in four woman will

experience some form of sexual violence by the time she turns 18. One in five young women

on college campuses will experience sexual assault. One out of every three American

women has been beaten, sexually coerced or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Overall,

domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the U.S.

It therefore makes sense, against this backdrop of tolerated violence against women, that

victims rarely report the crimes committed against them. The Justice Department estimates

that fewer than 5 percent of completed and attempted rapes of college women are reported

to law enforcement officials. In general, 60 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the

police and 97 percent of rapists will never spend a day in jail. When rape and other forms of

violence are normalized, victims are silenced, disbelieved, and ridiculed—and perpetrators

are rarely held accountable.

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4/1/2019 Grand Theft Auto V and the Culture of Violence Against Women | HuffPost

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And that is precisely why we must speak out against Grand Theft Auto V. In it’s first three

days, GTA V grossed $1 billion, setting industry records. It is legitimizing, and significantly

profiting off of, America’s rape and gender-based violence culture that we must be seeking to

end, and not expand or further entrench.

Last week, Target Australia pulled GTA V off its shelves after three survivors of sexual

violence started a change.org petition for the game’s removal. In the petition, the survivors

wrote to Target: “to see this violence that we lived through turned into a form of

entertainment is sickening...” Nearly 50,000 Australians signed the petition. Wal-Mart

Australia pulled the game shortly after Target’s announcement.

In a matter of weeks, parents will be wrapping gifts for our children. If we want more for our

daughters — and our sons — then there is no reason to purchase GTA V, and be complicit

with the many ways in which violence against women and girls has become the comfortable

norm. We must call out the very practices that bind our daughters to a culture of violence.

Even when those practices include a popular, profit-busting video game that our kids, or other

family members, want for the holidays.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence

Hotline.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-656-HOPE for the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

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