Grand Theft Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

If you've spent five minutes on the internet in the last 24 hours, you've probably come across the controversy over the sex and violence, as in sex-and-violence, featured in the just released Grand Theft Auto IV. After a video of the Ladies of Liberty City began circulating around, in which men drive around, pick up sex workers and/or drive over them, shoot prostitutes standing on street corners, and get some freaky-ass, legs-in-the-air, booty-shaking lap dances, everyone got all up in arms over it. The girls at Feministing weren't having it: "It is no question that GTA is merely reflective of the bigger misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy, but the question is why is a game that depicts such violence towards women so popular?" (Jesus Christ, if this is what degrees in gender studies hath wrought, polysyllabic bloggers still carping about the patriarchy, please fucking stop handing them out.) Jack Thompson nearly had a heart attack over it. (To wit: "Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio. We now have vaccines for that virus... The 'vaccine' that must be administered by the United States government to deal with this virtual virus of violence and sexual depravity is criminal prosecutions of those who have conspired to do this.") And Rockstar got a helluva lot richer. (See: "Record Sales Expected For Grand Theft Auto IV.") I have a writer friend known online as the Harpoonist, and if you say something totally idiotic to her, or if she is recounting a story to you in which someone says something totally idiotic, she says: "I mean, really?" I think this is her way of saying: "Are you fucking kidding me?" But without all the swear words. And that, in sum total, is my reaction to this ridiculous, overblown, cockamamie controversy over the Ladies of Liberty City and the sex-and-violence in Grand Theft Auto IV. I mean, really? I mean, are you fucking kidding me? What is this, the fucking 80s? Did politically correctness not die, like, last century? Did we not hunt down all the feminists and shut them up already? Are we not a culture so completely overrun with politically incorrectness that the only appropriate response to the latest incident of it is to laugh? Because while the feminists were out burning copies of GTA IV and building sex positive spaces in the sky, while Mr. Thompson was off getting his knickers in a major, anal crevice wedging twist over this, while Rockstar was in the corner counting its money and laughing hysterically at the grand spectacle of it, I was watching the video you can see for yourself here, and when the guy in the car with the commendable soul pole got what he wanted and then ran over the woman who gave it to him, you know what I did? I laughed. Because I thought it was funny. Because this whole moronic outcry against what is nothing but an unabashed and unashamed articulation of Man's basest impulses run amok is nothing but hypocrisy. Here's a newsflash for you. This is the way people think. This is how things are. This is the way it is. Every week, I get more Letters from Johns, and this is the conclusion that I have come to. That men seek out prostitutes because prostitutes let men express themselves ruthlessly. With utter impunity. Because if you pay her, you don't have to feel guilty. And if you think men pay women for sex because we live in a misogynist society, you should come down out of your ivory tower and live amongst the rest of us for a little while. Do you know what Mr. Soul Pole in GTA IV says before he runs down the woman who just serviced him? Were you not listening, Feministing? He says: "I'm a hired killer and I pay for sex. My mother would be ashamed." Then he takes out the girl. Feel free to take a little time to think that one over, ladies. Or here's a line from a letter I got from John 15: "My mom was nuts, and aside from the mental illness, loved her wine and valium... Sundays was a real carnival, and me being the eldest bore the brunt of her wrath." Oh, yeah--and, by the way, he's a state investigator. Or here's a line from a letter I got from John 30: "I would possibly seek companionship in this manner again, but honestly it was a frightening act of depravity fueled by a complete loss of morals related to my murder for hire status in the military." The fact of the matter is that you cannot police the sexual fantasies of men. It isn't going to happen. You can't distill one man's desires into some reductionist understanding of 21st century America that posits women as the victims of men once again. You can't continue to stick your head into the sand and refuse to believe that this isn't a part of how men really think and feel and fuck and want and love and hate and live. You just can't. To do so is insanity. To be totally honest, that's what really blew my mind about Spitzergate. That America was just so shocked, so outraged, so aghast. What do you think cocktails of power, money, and sex begat? What do you really think is going on behind closed doors, on street corners, in parked cars in America? I mean, really?