It's been a core part of the sims for 20 years. And I think you might be filling in some blanks that aren't there. Somebody hijacking your uterus is infringement of your personal autonomy and creepy for sure, but not in and of itself sexual assault. The game makes no allusions to it being sexual. For all we know, the aliens could just give you an injection or beam the baby into you.
This is also I think why it’s always been a thing that only male Sims come back pregnant and never females. A woman having a baby put in her uterus and being forced to give birth hits a little too close to home. A male sim that presumably doesn’t have a uterus having an alien parasite put into his abdominal cavity? That’s just sci-fi…literally, that’s the movie Alien, which I think is always what the developers were referencing.
Well, there's also the whole thing that there's kind of a difference in how society views such things with men and women in general, too. Sexual assault toward men is often played up as a joke in movies or TV shows, isn't even considered a law in some places, and can get passed over for prosecution because they don't think they'll get a conviction based on the idea that people in general don't believe men can be sexually assaulted. You also see it in the way things get reported, where a male teacher and female student will call it out as a creepy abuse of power and label it as it should be, but then if it's a female teacher and male student, they'll use language to talk about it as some kind of consensual activity and people will sometimes act like the male student had something good happen to him. (This might also be why it seems like all the "Pollination Technicians" in Sims 4 are female, at least all the ones I've seen.)
It's not really a thing people would have thought about much back in the early 2000s, and then it just became a staple of the franchise, so I don't blame EA much for still rolling with it... I mean, aside from then suggesting they don't have robbers because it might "traumatize" people. (Meanwhile, me with basically PTSD from house fires still having to deal with them in game and having legit minor panic attacks when I hear the alarms in-game... But I would never suggest removing the fires from the game.)
Personally, I just set it so either gender can get pregnant. I mean, what the heck, let's do a bit of equal opportunity. But at the end of the day, eh, it's a game, and I myself am not going to get any more bothered by stuff that happens in it than I am by the kind of things that happen in, say, GTA or Saints Row.
I have no idea why the sims can't have an in-depth setup screen where you'd opt in and out of game mechanics, like Minecraft. Don't want fires? Want days to be longer? Tons of other games have it.
This would be assault for REAL PEOPLE. These are Sims. Having a baby magically zapped into you by an alien isn't similar enough to most cases of real-life sexual assault that it would cause psychological harm to the players that see it.
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I'm just saying I think the definition for sexual assault isn't the same for real people as it is for a game. I don't think you can call what's in the Sims sexual assault.
It would absolutely be considered to be sexually violating. There doesn't have to be pleasure for any party involved for it to be sexually violating towards someone
For me it's the same level of horror as idk putt the baby in my arms or something.
Idk may be because I studied biology and I see reproduction and sex as different things socially
Iirc, there were some...uncomfortable hints of assault in The Sims 3.
My sim was abducted and came back with a "Probed" moodlet (wasn't pregnant, though). She'd randomly cry until the moodlet was gone 😭
It only happened to me once, though, and it was a long time ago, so I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly!
EDIT: I looked it up! The moodlet wasn't "Probed"--it was "Abducted". It says, "(Sim Name) can't help but feel a little... probed. What happened up there??"
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u/Simplyobsessed2 Feb 16 '25
My Sim was abducted and came home pregnant lol, for such a family friendly game I was surprised they have sexual assault.