My Thoughts about Online Rape

After reading the article about how rape occurred in a living room in LambdaMOO, I first felt the implications of how rape can occur online. Mr. Bungle (who was really students consisting a whole dormitory floor at NYU) utilized a VooDoo doll to trap fellow LambdaMOOers in the room and make them do horrible things to themselves, as well as to him. By VooDoo doll I mean something that gave Mr. Bungle control over the functions of other people in the room.
The women in the room were traumatized over the ordeal, more so than the man who was involved, and to me this makes sense. Other than the rare occurrence, women are typically the victims of rape in the Real World. Take our class discussion on this article for example. The opinions on whether or not a person can be raped online were divided…between male and female. The men in the room did not consider the advances online to be anything comparable to rape, but the women felt what was done and said in the living room was disturbing enough to make a person feel victimized.
Another perspective entirely comes from people who have actually experienced rape in the Real World. The idea of being raped online may seem to be an inconsiderate, as well as ludicrous, belief. Online you can walk away anytime you want? You are never in a position where you have to endure such torment? Just leave and go to a different chat room, website, or whatever, right? Wrong. People spend a lot of time online chatting with online friends or playing games. For someone who has spent time and money on an avatar for their favorite game to just quit and start over somewhere else because someone is harassing them is not an easy thing to do. If the person physically gets up and walks away from their computer the only thing that solves is them not having to see the rape occur, but anyone else around can still see it. That can be equally demoralizing. In the case of LambdaMOO, physically walking away from the computer was the only option, but utter disbelief may have kept the victims from averting their eyes.
I really don’t know whether any laws should be created to attempt to keep people from performing online acts of rape, because I have to say that I would like to think that people have more common decency than to do so. Rape is a disgusting act. Don’t do it. End of story.