Violence Against Women = Fun??

I was browsing Feministing and I came across a post about a Danish advocacy group’s new tactic to raise awareness about violence against women.  The tactic is simple: click to the website (entitled “Hit the Bitch”), use your mouse to virtually hit a woman as many times as you want!  Feministing provided a link to Feministe.  The article I linked below asks similar questions I asked myself. One of those being – aside from what I am assuming are statistics about violence against women, HOW does this do anything to stop violence against women?? In my opinion, it turns it into a laughing matter, a game even. What would this teach a child who got on the website and can’t understand or read the “intent” of the message?

See for yourself. The “game”, Hit the Bitch is linked in the article posted below (be patient, it takes a little time to load…that fake fist must need time to gain strength in order to beat the crap out of a woman!).  I took my hits and I was horrified. There HAS to be a better way to end violence against women.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/11/17/hit-the-bitch/

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 12:11 am and is filed under General Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Violence Against Women = Fun??”

  1. Colleen Peterson says:
    November 22, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    This was APPALLING. I can’t believe the creators of this site believe that playing a game to “hit the Bitch” will do ANYTHING to support the fight against domestic violence. The link to play the game did not work initially, and this message appeared:

    Dear non-danish visitor,

    Due to an extremely high amount of traffic “Hit the Bitch” has been limited to only allow users from Denmark.

    However, domestic violence is a global problem, so please support the fight against it in your local country.

    Thanks for your interest.

    Kind regards
    Children exposed to Violence at Home

    I would hope that the high traffic on the site is not sending the message that violence against women is okay, but after playing “Hit the Bitch,” I believe the game is having the opposite effect. As Leigh Ann mentioned, there HAS to be a better way to end violence against women. This website is not preventing anyone from ending domestic violence, but rather turning it into an entertaining game. The creators of this game should double check that their activities for website visitors are sending the appropriate message.