Mark Kermode says we should be relaxed about adult themes in videogames (Should we avoid violent games?, 11 December).

He confesses to knowing nothing about these games: "I don't play them and probably never will." But he then says, "I do know something about horror films, and the moral panic they provoke," and takes issue with the "ominous sense of ill-informed outrage" about the modern videogames market. He then advises readers looking for a sensible opinion on the subject to refer to "someone who knows, someone who plays them, someone who actually likes them". In short, the fans.

My organisation, Equality Now, has heard a lot from the fans of some of these games. We highlighted the game RapeLay, produced in Japan, as one example of many that promote violence against women. In RapeLay the player manipulates an onscreen penis to simulate rape of a woman and her young daughters over and over again.

Our international campaign called on the Japanese government to ban games that promote sexual violence against women and girls. Fans of these games were outraged. They asked us why we were targeting RapeLay when, they said, it was mild compared to similar available games. In Japan there is a whole genre of extreme pornography, known as hentai, which takes in cartoons and comic books as well as videogames. Imagery includes women and girls being molested, stalked and gang-raped.

We received hundreds of emails from around the world, many calling for our own rape and murder. "By the way, I played RapeLay (doing the 13-year-old was best)", said one, referring to the pre-pubescent girl whom players "rape" in the game.

Kermode recalls media coverage in the 1980s – when horror movies were seen as likely to "deprave and corrupt" – and suggests that we now have a more sophisticated attitude to that genre. "With almost any genuine art form, the most important works can rarely be taken at face value," he asserts.

But if games such as RapeLay can now be classified as art, maybe the popular media promotion of sexual violence against women is so normalised that we don't even pay attention any more. Does "killing" a prostituted woman in Grand Theft Auto just reconfirm to a gamer the "lesser value" of women in prostitution generally?

What we know is that violence against women and girls is all too real. The NSPCC for example reported in September that a third of teenage girls in a relationship suffer unwanted sexual acts (including rape) and a quarter physical violence such as being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends.

Certainly the UN's women's committee believes that gender stereotypes, including those of women as sex objects, and gender-based discriminatory attitudes, contribute to violence against women. Will the players of RapeLay act on their threats towards us? It's just a game, don't threaten our free speech, say the fans who tell us to shut up or else. Maybe Kermode was right after all when he said we should ask the fans. They certainly gave us their answer loud and clear.