So, really . . . who IS that nice man "raping" you?

Ahhh yes. Of course. And true, the letters do not HAVE to mean anything provided there is an understanding.

In my day (/me pushes his walker along the floor) it was the activity that was more important, and not the acronym. /me chuckles

(I really need to stop avoiding the work day).

But I think that this thread has conclusively demonstrated that there is *not* a common understanding, which is not surprising when something covers a range of activities from being tickled with a feather to having a frozen chicken inserted in your nether regions. I am reminded of the fable of the three blind men asked to describe an elephant, which I am not going to repeat here.

Pep (But I will repeat that BDSM is not an acronym. )

Access to Second Life may not be a necessity or even high on the list of must-have luxuries. But the danger of excluding individuals on the the basis of a vague piece of information- appearance in a sex offender registry- is that isolating people from social contact tends to drive them to act in a more anti-social manner.

It is hard for me to imagine the dangers of which you are speaking in Second Life in the abstract. What is a scenario in which Second Life excluding someone in a U.S. sex offender registry prevents a dangerous situation?

One of the problems that I have with sex offender registries in the first place is that I cannot imagine the scenario in which they actually protect someone. The states Megan's Laws were enacted on the theory that parents could better protect their children if they knew were people previously convicted of sex offenses live. Does that mean that when Mr. Stranger moves in next door, and Parent checks the sex offender registry and does not find Mr. Stranger in it, Parent is now free to tell Child, "If Mr. Stranger invites you into his house to give you candy and pictures, it's safe to go ahead and do it?" I don't think so.

/me points to this really cool platform for personal experimentation, Second Life? Great place to explore societal subgroups that you would never encounter RL.

Scylla, you seem like you have a pretty strong sense of self. So, if you want to know about BDSM, go do some. It will not change you into some BDSM freak addict. I met many of the nicest people I know in SL when poking around bondage communities, and while some could easily hold their end up in a discourse such as that which you describe, they probably wouldn't bother.

One thing I learned is that BDSM had a huge set of online IRC communities long, LONG before SL came along. The variation in online practice, rationales, and preferences is, therefore, as wide as you can imagine. Many (not all) do adhere to a golden rule, tho: "Safe, sane, consensual" (SSC).

Bondage is not an intellectual exercise - you want to understand it, try it. D/S, same thing. If you are open about your lack of experience, and go to sims that have some long-term community, you will find well-informed people who will be happy to help you learn, including some who will be content to just discuss your questions.

Whatever you do, though, don't go to a school.

Quite apart from the fact that statistically they ought to be concerned about Uncle Bob or Auntie Barbara at the very least, if not their very own selves...

But on topic -


Nah, couldn't give a rat's - if they're playing with me, they're leaving some other poor bugger alone - assuming 'they' could be arsed to be here in the first place. For what it's worth, I'm chucking my hat in the same corner as Love, Lil, Brenda, Amity, et al.

Rather than all this angst about sex offenders, which surely continues to be blown out of all proportion, I would, like others, be more concerned about someone's emotional wellbeing - and then probably only if I knew them well. Thank goodness the wonder, excitement and sheer fun of exploring and learning and playing in my early days in SL weren't ruined by someone handing me a survival kit in case I might become, in their eyes, some kind of victim. I've had emotional ups and downs in SL, some of which have carried over into FL - but guess what? that's LIFE in any dimension, and I don't need another layer of well-meaning but ultimately pointless 'protection' to coddle me.

I leave you with one small but provocative thought, though - it seems to me that the grave error in the very phrasing of the OP's question is that of setting up a 'them and us'. In a virtual reality, it's impossible to assume we know ANYTHING about ANYONE we deal with. Thus, to illustrate:

In other words, are we REALLY so sure about the true nature of this nice "feminist intellectual" engaging in thought-provoking dialogue? Or is this all about pushing her own agenda, as can be witnessed in a number of SL-related blogs on the Internet? Perhaps it's a subtle form of survey - gleaning responses for research into virtual realities and the representation of violence and/or sexual assault for her thesis?

Heavens, might it be... ? but no, I'm sure you can extrapolate that one to the realms of the ridiculous on your own.

No slight intended in that example - I'm merely questioning whether there's any real value in using the forums for this type of debate. Fundamentally, I'm sure we all think we have a pretty good handle on many of the regular posters to this forum. But do we? And even if we do, who's to say whether the points put forward are truly held, or expressed in the role of devil's advocate? When an argument sets out to reinforce a binary oppositional mode of prey/preyed upon without any real idea of who the participants in the debate are, the exercise is surely rendered somewhat futile.

Can you take it on trust that any one of us is who or what we say we are?

[With apologies to the paranoid, to whom I have no wish to cause additional distress.]