Can "rape" occur in SL?

This particular case I posted more than usual. I was staring at my screen incredulous at some of the things I had read.

If consent is such a grey area for people, then perhaps all rape RP does need to be banned.

it was like a sexgen rug, so if urt already on a pose, it only takes someone to change the position, and u move with it.
Please note i DID say 'kind of raped' not 'i was raped'

No...I was posing a question that I came across when thinking about this subject. I find rape to be an evil thing and don't know why anyone would want to act it out, but I figure if everyone involved is legitimately consenting and it's done in a place where unwilling observers can't easily stumble upon it then it's all good...well, all passable.

I consider rape to be a hate crime just like gay or racial bashing and wanted to see what everyone's thought was.

I do it because they pay me, and I see it as just roleplay.

Why he does it, I can only speculate, and I try not to.

I agree that there is no rape in sl ( and thankfully no griefer has found a way ) but I disagree that internet porn take away a desire to rape women... I thought
any images that teach men to see women only as sex objects and to degrade and demean them encourages rape... it is a violent act and has a lot to do with a hatred and lack of respect for women... I fail to see how images of porn helps cure that?

Elinah

If that's the roleplay he wishes to pay me to participate in, no problem.

Wow thanks for telling me thats really nasty bust to only use the free hug you attach to yourself. There is also a mud wrestling pose ball set that turns unexpectedly sexual...

Elinah

I have two words for this: "common carrier."

Why is LL moving away from that, or are they? If they do, it makes no sense IMO.

I stil dont understand .... dont you have to get on a pose ball to have sex? Did she leave her av naked on a sex pose ball?

Elinah

What if someone hacks into your account, goes thru all the motions of you having sex, doesn't change your password so you can get back in later but then posts a video of the crime?

That's called "hacking".

And yes, she left her av naked on a sex poseball when she went idle to take her RL shower.

Sounds like neglect to me!

Men view women as sex objects, and women view men as sex objects. Unless they're homosexual. I'm trisexual, and view both genders and all stages between them as sex objects. Where's the problem? People like to be objects of desire. They even get depressive when no one views them as sexually attractive and desirable. I fail to see how desiring someone's body before considering their personality possibly leads to hatred or encourages rape.

As for porn... I really don't get it. Why would someone who jerks off to porn or online roleplay be more likely to rape or mistreat a person afterwards? It makes no sense, no matter how you view it.
Psychologically, porn is a bit addicting in the sense that people get used to certain behavioral patterns, i.e. achieving satisfaction through masturbation instead of wasting time with RL courtship.
Biologically, someone who just masturbated needs sex less badly than before. Furthermore, sexual satisfaction lowers the overall level of aggression.
Anthropologically, apes (our closest relatives) masturbate while watching their conspecifics copulating, which prevents aggression within the group (i.e., avoids stress with the alpha male for chasing one of his females); you could call that the origin of porn.

Arguments like yours usually stem from "My god wants people to keep their hands above the blanket and wait until marriage". In other words, masturbation is a "sin", so let's find reasons why porn could be bad and evil. There is no other reason to be against pornography or sexual online roleplay. The opposite of your argument is the case: if a person lacks alternative and easy ways to achieve sexual satisfaction, they are more likely to vent their sexual frustration in RL, possibly in ways that conflict with the law.

Period meaning: I stated my fixed viewpoint and I'm not open for reasonable arguments anymore?

Comparing pixel sex to rape is just laughable. If I'd be in the situation you described above (the SL situation, not your in no way comparable RL example), I'd be a bit upset as well. But how can that possibly be rape? I'm sitting at home at my desk, no one touches me, no one is able to force anything on me. I can just have my avatar stand up and walk away. If it happens on my land, I can even ban the horny goon.

I'd find it worrying if you identified that much with an avatar in a computer simulation that you start to feel with a polygon figure, up to the point where pixel humping becomes as traumatizing as a real, physical rape.

You have never been raped , must have no friends who were raped and I of course doubt you have raped anyone youself so you dont understand the mindset of a rapist. Porn and women in porn movies, porn magazines etc... give a rather sleazy impression of sex , and give the impression to some men that the women involved want to have sex with any man anytime anyplace.It encourage some men to have a disrespect for the women who engage in it... There are men who put women into categories of good girl/ bad girl or who hate certain women in general and porn encourages them to believe that those women they desrepect dont deserve anything better or even that they ask for it some will even think they like being raped or that they cannot be raped because they like sex all the time with anyone anyplace... you have to see this ... its not about seeing another as a sex object in a good way its about seeing another as a sex object in a bad way if you can understand what I mean.

There are also issues of control involved... that a man should control a woman .And its a violent act as well so there is anger or hatred involved too. Porn encourages all of those feelings.

Elinah

I wouldn't go THAT far...it definitely doesn't discourage objectifying the opposite sex...but it isn't always promoting such attitudes...otherwise there would be much more rape going on today.

I do agree with your overall statement, though, that it leads to/is the result of looking down on the opposite sex and getting used to being in the mindset that they want it even when they might not seem like it.

I say "opposite sex" because there are plenty of women that are into the same kinds of porn that many men are.

I disagree, I've almost been raped in RL and was saved because of the police arryving. Yet was beaten and bruised....I've been in a situation in SL where 2 avi's pushed me into a wall and asking me all sorts of gross stuff and what they wanted to do to me. Sure I tp'd out, no problem there but the experience itself shook me up pretty bad. So pls do not say it's laughable...

Mandy C

What makes a rapist a rapist or misogynist are typically experiences during childhood and youth (same with most other mental problems). In other words, it's their parents who mess them up - but you won't see me arguing that all parents are evil for this reason.

Porn seems to be quite bit far-fetched as a cause, as far fetched as a heat wave during the summer months or stress at work. But let's assume that porn really was the cause that a few nutjobs show violent behaviour - should we forbid it for everyone?

The argument "something can, under certain circumstances, be dangerous, so let's outlaw it" is a dangerous one, because it also affects and possibly criminalizes "normal", responsible people. It could also be used to prohibit cars, since some irresponsible maniacs drive too fast and cause traffic accidents.

I'm sorry to hear that. I have been harrassed at work for years (and before at school, by peers). Constant malicious gossip and hostility that led to a social anxiety disorder. I'm unable to work and rarely leave the house in RL. In SL, I sometimes get paranoid or even have a light panic attack in rather harmless situations, when I have the feeling that people are talking about me behind my back or make fun of me, or that friends are turning against me. I think I know what a trauma is, and how certain situations that remind you of traumatizing RL situations can be very stressful, although I can't really compare it to the ordeal that you went through.

What I accept is that it's me, not others. It's me who overreacts and takes some harmless remarks as a threat and a reason to feel fear and panic. I'm not saying that those jerks didn't do anything wrong to you; it's certainly enough to AR them. But you also react much stronger in a situation that most people would find rather annoying than threatening. I could imagine that someone who barely survived a gun shot feels the same way about combat RP and weapons. It's no reason to forbid combat sims or rape-themed sims, where people engage in consensual roleplay and everyone who could take offense simply stays out. Of course, both weapon usage and violent RP don't belong in any places outside those themed sims / parcels.

Very nice comments, Aleister. It's very hard to deal with issues that produce nearly uncontrollable feelings, and hard for most people to put it into perspective concerning other people and the practicality of how to get through life all the same.

A lot of people have awful emotional scars, physical scars, traumas, and chemical imbalances that make various experiences difficult to manage. I have total sympathy for all of that.

There are limits on what can be done about it in the greater population, however. I recall a situation in a text MUD that I play where a female character had a long, ongoing story of self destruction... degenerating into a possessed, destroyed, rotting figure, one that was no longer trusted and had run into trouble with the law to the point that she couldn't be in the center of things in most roleplay for perfectly acceptable IC reasons.

When, during roleplay, an investigator character had found out all the stuff she was up to
(completely IC things), and handed it to the IC authorities in order to keep the character in her exile (a completely normal, realistic response)...

She got very upset OOC, told the player she refused to play with him anymore, and that the reason was she was very much a victim in RL due to various horrible things that had happened to her and just couldn't tolerate her character not being trusted in the game. Not being loved. It was sending her into panic attacks.

Needless to say, it's obvious that in this situation, the woman shouldn't have been doing something that she was in no way capable of handling. Everyone, including the staff, gently suggested to her that she really needed professional help and shouldn't be engaging in such emotionally risky activities, especially since nobody else had done anything particularly wrong.

What does this have to do with the thread? Am I saying that people with trauma shouldn't be in SL? No, I'm not saying that. I'm just including an extreme situation on the other side of the spectrum to indicate that there are many things we can do to help people, and then there are things we can't help with.

Finding that line is the real trick, which is why we are endlessly debating these things.

As another devil's advocate thing, I'm not 100% sure what to think when a girl goes to a party, comes on to a bunch of guys BEFORE getting drunk, rattles on about how she likes to get drunk so she can get freaky with all of them, passes out, some very drunk guys barely manage to have sex with her, and then she calls the cops on them the next day... which happened in my hometown.

There's a voice in the back of my head that says personal responsibility should enter into this somewhere. I don't think guys should ever have sex with a girl if they aren't 100% sure she wants it, but when she was basically telling them she wanted to, and then they were drunk as well, where inhibitions and perception go byebye (that's what alcohol does)...

I just don't know. It'd be nice if life was black and white sometimes. I mean, how I avoided trouble like that was by not getting blasted at parties. Worked perfectly.

So some thoughts percolating in my brain.

I do not believe that a man walking down the street with $1000 bill in his teeth and his hands tied behind his back makes it all right to steal. Stealing is still a crime, don't do it. But wasn't the man sort of responsible to not put himself in such a risky position? However, lately it sounds as if people are saying that women can never be held responsible for their part in making really risky, bad choices. While I don't think making bad choices ever excuses someone else committing a crime, perhaps it should be okay for us to say, "Don't do that, because it's risky behavior and you might easily invite a crime to happen."

I wouldn't want people to accuse me of blaming the victim for noting that maybe, just maybe, a person shouldn't wander down dark alleys in the middle of the night in the worst parts of New York. Male or female.

I'm a little nervous that by people saying that a woman bears no responsibility to avoid bad situations, they are placing her in the social position of children, who cannot be expected to take care of themselves and are always at the mercy of others. But I also understand the slippery slope of "she asked for it by wearing a skirt above the knee."

My point - this is not a simple situation.

/ramble

I never said to outlaw it... I just said I dont like it and gave you my reasons why. Actually youre right its not just porn ... there are respectable and well know movies and tv shows that have at times inadvertently done the same thing... have you ever watched a scene depicted of a women being kissed against her will and then she starts to like it? Or even a woman who is raped who eventually ends up with the very man who raped her ? I have ... and these were not men viewed as jerks or creeps either in the shows I watched...

For instance,years ago a soap opera called General Hospital had a very famous popular couple named Luke and Laura... well at first Laura was in a relationship with someone else and there was a scene were Luke forced himself on her... later Laura leaves the other man for Luke and they begin one of the most popular romances in soap opera history... I was once told that when the actor who played Luke went on tours girls would scream " Luke rape me rape me " ... the whole thing makes me angry... I know I shouldnt take this stuff too seriously but I think sometimes it does a lot of subtle harm.

Elinah

We have a whole network devoted to it. "Lifetime".

Can we virtually cut a rapist balls here? if that is the case, I am for it! Oh brother!... people are just stupid! This is a game, why dont we play it clean. Enough of too much sex and drama here. Linden Lab shuold do something about it.

Well, most start out without balls in SL so I would imagine it wouldn't be too hard.

If you try to rez your balls and you have the bug where it ends up in your crotch will you know the difference?

whatttttt? the f*** are you talking about? you said yourself its just a game so how about we let people play it how they want to and stop confusing real life rape with roleplay? People are stupid? yah i agree . . starting with you

I give up.
Humanity is lost.
I can no longer operate under the pretext that all this evolution was a good thing.
Sure, monkeys never build skyscrapers, write sonnets, or fly to the moon.
But monkeys also never make my brain bleed.

On the other hand, if the OP is right, if we just give child molesters truckloads of kiddie pr0n...