Equality Now is doing a great disservice to women around the world. Here's why.

The "women's rights" group Equality Now has gained significant visibility in recent months for making a huge stink about a "rape simulator" game called "RapeLay" by Japanese software developer Illusion.  This extreme criticism, packaged with demands to Japanese and United Nations officials to ban rape fantasy simulations, has been analyzed and argued by a huge community of people on the Internet.  The brouhaha culminated in the formation of the grassroots fictional freedom group Yes To Freedom ~Fiction Without Boundaries~ as well as what appears to be the beginnings of an organization called The Fictional Expression Consortium.  Some members of Yes To Freedom have spent countless hours analyzing the claims of Equality Now regarding RapeLay and pornographic drawings and animation in general, and most of the scientific studies and statistics uncovered that deal with the effects of pornographic material being more or less available show a direct correlation between increased availability (and variety/fetish specialization) of pornography with lowering sexual crime rates, and specifically show a drastic decrease in forcible sex/rape statistics.  Indeed, it seems that all the evidence points toward a need to keep pornography, especially controversial pornography such as rape simulation and drawn or animated "lolita complex" or "lolicon" pornography, available to lower sex crimes, including child sexual assaults.

The argument that drawings or animations of illegal acts eventually "push" the consumers of such depictions to commit such acts has long been a topic of controversy, but studies on the effects of these materials depicting said illegal acts have almost entirely proven that they have the opposite effect of what is commonly believed.  For example, a depiction of a child having sex with an adult is thought to "legitimize" that illegal act and increase the number of child sexual abuses and statutory rapes, yet in Japan, a country where such drawings and animations of child sexuality are sold in a huge number of comic book and animation stores, the ranking on per capita child sex crimes is well below countries where such material is not generally available.  Indeed, it seems that countries where "drawn child pornography" is illegal are the countries that end up with the most child rapes and abuses per capita.  The figures work the same way for other crimes as well: rape, for example, is also very low in Japan, despite Japan being notorious throughout the world for catering to almost any strange and inexplicable sexual fetish imaginable (can you say "live action tentacle porn?" Yikes!)  Through the efforts of Yes To Freedom, we have been handed all the evidence we need to logically conclude that having more and freakier porn available in a society means less illegal sexual acts taking place in that society.

Unfortunately, Equality Now has chosen to follow a path of deception, cherry-picking, and outright ignoring all evidence and arguments that go against what now appears to be merely a political agenda.  While Yes To Freedom and their supporters have collectively authored a very useful series of letters and documents explaining why Equality Now's attack on fictional pornography is not only pointless, but in fact is truly counterproductive to both their stated mission and the lowering of sexual crime rates in general, Equality Now has refused to respond to their concerns entirely.  Instead, they have spent their time looking over websites such as Sankaku Complex or 4chan that maintain open forums that allow generally unmitigated freedom of speech, where some may voice very extreme opinions or even crack jokes (and even "inside jokes" that are out of context when read by regular participants) about the topics at hand.  They could have engaged in a real and honest discussion on these topics by quoting relevant lines from Yes To Freedom's "Arguments" page and responding, such as "87% of citizens were noted as desiring Manga “obscenity” prohibition, but a closer analysis of the survey’s unscrupulous approach proves foul play, and a later polling without these issues reveals a literal 180 degree turn in the survey results!"

Equality Now chose instead to quote, out of context, the most damning inside jokes, extreme misogynists' viewpoints, and tongue-in-cheek remarks they could find: “Women are stupid creatures who don’t know how to do anything other than cook us dinner. This just proves their stupidity; they need to realize that the word ‘equality’ was a word created by men for men, and was never meant to be used by, referred to, or given to women.” (Online game blogger responding to Equality Now’s Women’s Action against rape simulator games in Japan) and "By the way I played RapeLay (doing the 13 year old was best).” (Email to Equality Now) and “The only way to defeat women’s rights and make things to the advantage of Men again is to brutally, publically, murder women’s rights activists en masse. Don’t you want young females of child bearing age as your wives (females gain the ability to have children at age 12, 13, or 14 commonly)? Yes you do. Don’t you want her to obey you? Yes you do. Don’t you want her to be nice to you? Yes you do (whatever “nice” means… probably quiet suffices). The only way you have a shot at getting any of that is if all feminists and those who support them are dead or ineffectual (dead really helps here as well).” (U.S. online gamer railing against Equality Now’s Women’s Action)

Interestingly enough, they call them "online gamers" and "bloggers" when really, all they are is random comments on Sankaku Complex: The first quote's here... and the third quote is here! From the same page as the third quote, isn't it odd that while they clearly found all the emotion-inspiring commentators, they totally chose to "miss" comments like this one: "Reducing the rates of sexual assault has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the availability or prevalence of erotic literature or entertainment media. Numerous studies have proven this. If porn is supposed to be inducing horndogs to rape and pillage at will, then why is it that countries with less stringent laws governing adult entertainment media have sexual assault rates that are so much lower than those of the US? The folks at Equality Now are likely mum about facts that contradict their agenda."

Notice how they're all "online gamers" and "emails to Equality Now."   Not one single message they cherry-picked to post was relevant.  Equality Now ignored literally thousands of email messages sent by the anime and hentai fan community expressing opposing views in a polite, reasonable, logical manner, instead choosing to lump them in with the "hate mail" they have received and ignoring them outright.  A community member, after reading reports of literally thousands of opposing-view messages sent with not one single reply, tried a little experiment using a different email address and a specially crafted "sympathy" message to determine if Equality Now is only accepting messages that fit their agenda.  According to this little exchange, it seems that they indeed do not care about women's rights so much as following a specific political agenda (click if the image is not clear):

Other questions are being asked about Equality Now's actions and their choice to attack drawn and animated pornographic fiction (which the community calls "2D" to differentiate from "3D" pornography which involves real human beings):  "Why does Equality Now focus its efforts and finances on eliminating fictional depictions of rape when there are parts of the world in which rape is a well-known and very serious real-world problem?"  "Why does Equality Now target depictions of rape and child sexual abuse in video games and comic books, yet they completely ignore violence and murder in the same forms of media such as those seen in the Grand Theft Auto series of video games?"  "What about the often ignored issue of male-on-male and female-on-male rape?"

Pulling a copy of Equality Now's 2007 tax returns also shows that they receive funding from many other organizations that have interests which do not align with Equality Now's attempts to ban fictional expression that they don't like.  Many of these other organizations seem to be specifically targeted at other abuses of women, such as female genital mutilation.

I wonder how these groups would react if tipped off that Equality Now may be spending those funds to attack harmless fiction instead?

Equality Now's modus operandi is very obviously politically motivated.  They are blatantly ignoring clear-cut proven facts regarding the subjects they choose to advocate for, and they are making false claims that run contrary to the available research and information on those subjects as well.  From their own website: "Equality Now was founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with national human rights organizations and individual activists, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and mobilizes international action to support their efforts to stop these human rights abuses."

So, I must ask: how are the human rights of women being violated when a video game that depicts the rape of non-existent, completely fictional women is marketed and sold?  How is it discrimination against women, or an abuse of human rights, to make a purely fictional work that graphically depicts the rape of women?  Furthermore, does Equality Now not realize that women take active roles in the creation of these games, most noticeably the voice acting for the female characters?  What about the rights of women who enjoy male-on-female rape fiction themselves, or find therapeutic use for such fiction in dealing with their own personal experience of being raped?  (Yes, there are some women that actually find rape fiction therapeutic in dealing with rape trauma.)

It seems that Equality Now is not sticking to their mission statement.  Rather than promote the human rights of women around the world and preventing them from discrimination, Equality Now is actively choosing to be the discriminator, following what appears to be a political agenda commonly known as that of "the religious right."  For a nonprofit organization that is supposed to be in place to promote the general welfare of women, this behavior is completely unacceptable.  The decision to ignore the truth about how pornography availability can lower the number of rapes per capita means that Equality Now does not care about preventing rape after all.  And isn't rape one of the human rights violations that Equality Now is supposed to be working towards minimizing or preventing altogether?

If you donate to Equality Now in any capacity, you are essentially funding the opposite effect of what you intended, and there is only one way to correct this.

Until Equality Now agrees to engage in a frank and open dialogue with groups such as Yes To Freedom about how we can all work to end sexual abuse, I, along with the rest of the community at large, call for all groups and persons that currently financially contribute to Equality Now to immediately cease all funding and contributions to them.