Can "rape" occur in SL?

I beleive what she is saying is -

Gaybashing is a violent act that happens in Real life.
The victim is unwilling.
The Virtual depiction is replaying an act of unwilling circumstances.

Rape fantasies are a sexual act that happens in Real Life.
The Victim is willing.
The Virtual depiction is replaying an act of willing circumstances.

Thus they are not the same.


However -
Rape is a violent act that happens in Real life
The Victim is unwilling
The Virtual depiction is replaying an act of unwilling circumstances.

So the question (to me) becomes are they roleplaying Rape Fantasy , or Roleplaying Rape?

I dont think they are roleplaying the latter since in the later the victim does not enjoy the experience and is traumatized for life.

Its an intricate point, easy to miss.




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Personally im okay with them banning depictions rape and rape fantasy- both roleplay and also the animation molestation situation.

But I can also see where rape fantasy would be allowed since its a completely consensual activity. Also places where it occurs are pretty clearly marked so you can avoid it.

wow - yes this is definitely wrong.

It should be actionable as harassment if you reported it. Of course things like that can be difficult to report.

This would count as Virtual rape to me.

This is a very insentive , condecending and belittling remark.

Someone should be able to go afk without someone coming along and doing this to their AV.

although i understand your outrage over this Colette, its not rape. it was a dumb move on her part(may i ask Sara, how was your ava moved to a sexual position? weren't You already on a cuddle poseball? was it in your home?)but not rape. annoying as hell, but not rape.

I -am- a woman. Somehow I missed the 'need to be coddled' lessons, though, and it has never failed to amuse me that I'm apparently supposed to think and behave differently than I do.

I've also had my experiences with assault, of various kinds, in RL. No need to go into details. All I really need to say is that it hasn't affected my ability to go play WoW and get my character killed or otherwise removed from my control; it hasn't affected my ability to laugh at a would-be griefer in SL and make him wish he'd never bothered; it hasn't made me afraid to work as a maximum security prison guard or kick the crap out of someone that tried to snatch my purse.

I'm not saying every woman should be like me. However, I don't like it to be assumed that certain activities are inherently damaging to me or my tender psyche unless I specifically, individually, have said so.

I have friends who have PTSD from war experiences. One of them nearly leaped out of his skin when he heard someone on my computer in SL firing a machinegun. I feel for the man, but I don't think that says anything about the need to not let people play with guns in SL, or about men in general.

I'm also not so sure on the 'rape is scary because of the risk of pregnancy' thing. Many women are on the pill or otherwise not going to have random babies, but that's probably not the issue on their minds during the assault.

Anytime people want to bring in the 'nature of men and women' or 'culture is the culprit' arguments, it has to be understood that the debates are highly theoretical. The truth is, we don't know the answer to those things. I'm not even going to argue that part with you because I'm actually not interested in getting into that level of unprovable theory in this thread, even though believe me, I've gone around and around the issue in secondary education with endless debates, classes, tests, and statistics.

I just happen to know that I am a woman, and nearly everything you've said women need and do, do not apply to me. There are -many- women playing online games that do not feel like they are being emotionally assaulted when something happens to their avatars.

No, I don't have a wacko chromosome, and I appear quite feminine in real life.

Colette...it wasn't real...it was just in SL...SL isn't real...it'll be okay!

thank you Fiona

I'm a little confused about this too. I don't see how it can be done.

C'mon......while maybe no one else will, I expect better than that from you. A little empathy and sensitivity never hurts. While calling it rape may be a stretch, at the very least it is extremely rude and obnoxious.

Some of the sexbeds and cuddle rugs have a "switch" function where you can control both avatars with one click.

i think the point that SOP was trying to make was common sense would have prevented that.

but arent those controlled by the owner(s) only? and she would still have to be "moved" if thats the case to the new poseball?

Ah, gotcha. I wasn't aware of that.

Though it sure seems like a good lesson in not going AFK while being on one of those! And definitely, that jerk needed a good AR and banning.

Hmmm, you may have a point there. I use plain poseballs as opposed to integrated furniture, so I'm not sure.

I understand his point, and might even agree to it but I still think it could have beem conveyed better. But I am not always the most tactful person either I guess so I'll shut up on this one.

oh wait it just occured to me what you were talking about, there is a set of pose balls that can move you with one click as long as you are both on them. (smacks my forehead).

but i love your tactlessness, it makes my day

I wasn't debating that it was obnoxious and rude but common sense could have prevented the whole situation from happening.

I was also stating possible motives for the person that did it. I take allegations of rape (in any L) very seriously and don't think it should be thrown around the way she did. She was basically accusing someone of wanting to violate her and take a part of her life away (that's how I see the basic idea of rape) when he was probably just walking along and said "hey a naked chick on a sex bed! She's away! How careless...I'm gonna do my thing and send pics to her!"

She can't legitimately feel hurt about it since it was her neglect that allowed it to happen. With rape the victim rarely has any recourse.

I understand you being a male, your sensitivity to the word rape being thrown around carelessly,. I'm actually agreeing with you in the idea of your post, I just thought it might have come off better. Would you have behaved that way in a similar situation. I don't think so, I think you have more class than that. . You just came off a little too accusatory. But in th end she was griefed, rudely, tastelessly and obnoxiously, and it was uncalled for, no matter what she did, or did not do.

I would have cuddled with her to keep her warm and safe until her man got back in a dinosaur av so no one would want to try anything!

Dear Fiona,

I was speaking generally, based on experience of a variety of women. I was not addressing your particular case, because I cannot: I do not know you. You appear to need to feel capable and self-sufficient, and autonomously able to take care of yourself. I admire that, in both men and women. Self-responsibility is probably the most important philosophical-psychological-political question of our age. I hope you are successful in and satisfied with your life's course, and that it is fully self-determined.

However, talk to a variety of women, and not even that: Simply observe many of the posts in this and other threads. However successful they are in their chosen lives, please notice the sense of vulnerability is palpable in many women's posts, particularly in threads dealing in subjects like rape. I think it is pointless to debate to what extent it is "nature" vs. "nurture," because we are social creatures who lived together in social groups from the moment we became homo sapiens, and our biological ancestors likely did too: I think Nature and Nurture are utterly intertwined in us, perhaps hopelessly for those who wish to separate them.

Also, I certainly am not intimating that this particular sense of vulnerability in any way signifies women are in any way "inferior" or "weak" compared to men. Men have their own psychological issues about vulnerability and weakness, fully as profound, I suspect, as any women have. Your friend who was in combat and reacts like that to the sound of machine-gun fire can attest to that. After WWII there were men who could not attend their children's school pageant performances because the rustling sound of the stage curtain being drawn was too close to the sound of an incoming German mortar round that suddenly turned their buddies into dismembered grotesqueries of raw flesh and blood before their eyes and could have done the same to them. We could do a whole other thread on that. But this thread is about rape, and that touches on a vulnerability that is largely peculiar to women.

You mention the pill. Yes, it has had an enormous effect on social reality and sexual relationships and will have more. It has been in existence for maybe two generations now. We have been homo sapiens for some 50,000 to 60,000 years - thousands of generations - in which there was no pill or anything remotely equivalent. Now, at least partly because of it, we are entering an age in which women will need to be able to sustain themselves independently, if need be, and not necessarily be able, as women could, for tens of thousands of years, to count on husbands, or families, or clans, or tribes...There is still a lot of adjusting to do.

And yes, you are right, pregnancy is probably not the only issue on women's minds during a sexual assault. Personal physical survival comes to mind. Though again, the general difference in physical size and muscle power in the two sexes must contribute to women feeling, in general, more physically vulnerable than men generally do.

At the virtual level, I have played WoW, and Everquest, and Diablo II, and killing or getting killed, or ninja'd, in those venues is psychologically quite different from, say, getting caged and orbited in SL. I don't care for the latter one bit, and I'm sure neither do you. When I was a newbie, it was still easy for griefers to do that to new arrivals from Orientation Island and I got my share of it. If one of those idiots had tried to bully me on to a poseball for a little doggie style humping, however, I would have laughed at him and called him a fag to as general an audience as I knew how to reach at the time, and then come back and called him a fag again, and again, until he got the point. Something similar if, for the sake of argument, it had been some dominatrix type. Perhaps you would have done something equivalent. However, observe women's posts on this subject. The vast majority, in fact, do not react anything like that.

So I am not expressing condescension toward women in any way. I am expressing, or attempting to express, compassion. That applies to both men and women; in this thread, it happens the focus is on women.

Courage.

I agree!



I don't think you're belittling anyone, and I should be clear about that.

Thing is, I've known too many men kicked around by dominant women (to the point of scars, physical and mental) and too many strongly independent women to make any sweeping judgement that extends to the point of basing game policy on the nature of men and women and their vulnerability to harrassment.

If a woman loses control of her av in SL, I'm sorry, I just can't compare it to rape simply based upon the (supposed) fact that she's a woman and assume that any act of griefing in a virtual world is likely to trigger some basic female sexual tragedy.

I'm actually quite concerned about the effect of people constantly telling women and reinforcing the idea that they are innately predisposed to be victims, that they should be destroyed to their core if they are sexually affronted, and that affronts are inherently sexual in some way because they are women. I can't know which comes first, the chicken or the egg, but I don't see a benefit in doing this.

I'm perfectly fine with us disagreeing on the issue, and since it's a matter of opinion anyway, it'd be silly to try to convince you to see it differently. It's not like you're some jerk trying to justify poor behavior.

Suum quique, as I always say

Good for you. A lot of men would have seen a naked babe on a sex bed and done what comes naturally. A gentleman, however, if he knew she was afk and had succumbed anyway, would never have said anything about the encounter, to anyone. "A gentleman never tells." What you are describing as what you would have done goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Oh, and the idiot who took photos and bragged to her about what he had done to her av is beneath contempt. My best guess: A wimp and loser who can't make it with women in real life and is trying to feel like a "man" in SL. And failing.

I used the term "Virtual"

Just as the sex you have in Second Life is "virtual sex"

would the word "Cyber" clear it up better or "Pixel"

Its basically the rape form of what happens in Second Life when you have sex.

I gathered this was someone who was not her Boyfreind - so it was basically someone who came along saw her sleeping naked on a sexrug and took advantage of her in a cyber sense.

If that happens in real life - its called rape - so this was the cyber/pixel/virtual equivilent.

Im not trying to equate it to real rape - but im going to call it like it is.

In so much as cyber sex without masturbation is sex, what happend to her was cyber rape.

yet you want to ban virtual rape becuase of how it compares to virtual gay bashing?

Or were you simply asking to drum up support of "not real" gay bashing?

Her tone was serious she seemed somber about the ordeal she included "" her emotions were real if nothing else - I say no indication on her post she felt it was nothing, or that she was being sarcastic.

SO you were cuastic and condescending of her post.

It is never the victims fault when they are taken advantage of - reguardless of how much of a mark they make themselves.

Or would you consider a woman who falls alseep at a party fair game to be sexually abused?