It’s About Making Babies!

Regina Lyn on Wired.com writes ‘Sex Drive’, a weekly column on sex and technology. Yesterday’s article was on ‘Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It A Crime?’ The Sex Drive Forum allows interested people to discuss sex and technology topics.

Call ‘virtual rape’ a conspiracy to commit rape — planning a crime. Or possibly assault, malicious mischief, mental abuse. Not all speech is free.

I doubt that fantasizing reduces the likelihood of the crime. We know that cruelty to animals is a danger signal for someone likely to commit violent crimes later. Avoiding committing crimes takes a paradigm shift, not practice. A bully is a bully, and seldom changes their tactics unless someone confronts them, successfully. A virtual rape pretty much requires the perpetrator to mentally commit a violent act against a helpless or unwilling victim. Nothing at all pretty here, and the victim has little recourse to defense, protection from further violation of spirit, or help in recovery. Pretty much the litany of trauma of flesh and blood victims. The wounds of the body often heal much quicker than the wounds to the spirit, on or off line.

An example. In a family oriented, social nude recreation facility anyone acting untoward gets thrown out and reported — to police, and to all area facilities. Such facilities work together to keep the wackoes from posing or touching kids, harassing guests, or causing injury. I don’t see a difference. The facility I observed such behavior and the action of the club (in California, naturally!) was considered a family haven, a place for adults to retreat, to heal. That spirit of protection and nurturing was protected by everyone there.

When you allow impolite acts you encourage the bullies and trolls and vandals. Virtual rape, obscene scripts, any unwanted intrusion damages the whole community. When someone is scared off they not longer contribute, and will be a continuing source of ‘I was hurt here’ reports. That is not really a good way to build a healthy experience, nor a way to attract healthy and respected people. But you will certainly build an organized crime group to run your Second Life.

Keep it clean, pay a bigger price later to try to clean it up, or lose it to the bullies, thugs, and trolls.

I also disagree with Gina Lyn, that this actually is a crime. Laws against porn SPAM, against damaging someone else’s computer (the server and community are damaged by every single attack) should do to start with. As well as laws against personal attack. If online pictures can be considered criminal child abuse, etc., then online attacks damn well better be taken seriously in the courts.

In my opinion.