Cohousing-L Mailing List: violent video games in CH

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

We have a small number of young teens who want to watch atrociously-violent 
first-person-shooter video games like Black Ops in the Common House. The media 
room has a windowed door and is right off the entry hall, so nearly every user 
of the common house passes by. Sometimes the viewing is accompanied by vulgar 
shouts. 

Not only does the gore turn the stomachs of adult passers-by, but our 
demographic has recently shifted to include a number of 3-9 year-olds (whose 
families don't allow their kids more than the smallest bit of --tame -- screen 
time of any sort). But a proposal to disallow video games in the CH has met 
with several people making a moral uproar about censorship, freedom, the need 
[sic] for boys to express their "thirst" for violence,  and analogies to their 
own innocuous childhood play of cops and robbers. I wonder if  other groups 
have dealt with this? One possibility would be to only allow it after younger 
children's bedtime, but I'm not sure that would fly. 

To me this is a no-brainer: something nobody "needs" to do, that disturbs a 
number of others, seems like we shouldn't do it. But I discover I'm 
vociferously disagreed with. Any great creative solutions out there? 

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA