Can someone be sexually assualted in VR? (WARNING - could have triggers in thread)

[Lamb]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/24/tec...-assault/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool

I was reading on CNN that a woman claims she was sexually assaulted in a Virtual Reality game. What do you think of this?

Please do not be vulgar in this thread or use terminology that could be considered profane.

 

[psalms 91]

Mentally yes, physically no. Also was this role play? If so then it was a game she was playing and not an assault

 

[MarkFL]

To me, this is no different than harassing someone over the phone or through a window...it is an unwanted advance. In my opinion, if I make obscene gestures to someone without actually touching them and without their consent, I wold be no less guilty of lewd behavior. If I even send drawings of such gestures to someone (whether by traditional mail, or email or other online messaging), I would feel guilty of some kind of assault on that person. I have no idea what the laws are about this kind of thing, but it doesn't take much empathy to see this is not correct behavior.

 

[Stravinsk]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/24/tec...-assault/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool

I was reading on CNN that a woman claims she was sexually assaulted in a Virtual Reality game. What do you think of this?

Please do not be vulgar in this thread or use terminology that could be considered profane.

Provided she added the qualitative adjective "virtually" to "sexual assaulted" then I don't have a problem with the statement - " I was virtually sexually assaulted" via (video game/phone call/other non-physical communication). Then one has to ask exactly what that entails. Copping an unwanted feel is a form of sexual assault, and so is full on rape - but they are obviously not the same.

While what may or may not have happened in the video game is unquestionably unethical - it's important to remember that it *is* a video game, and not life. One can choose to turn it off, play a different game, not play online or multiplayer etc. It's also not really the same as a phone call or unwanted snail mail or emails. Most video games allow you to create a new character with a new name and one chooses whether to communicate personal info (such as the sound of one's voice) in the game. Someone with your phone number/personal email address/residential address can keep sending you things that is largely out of your control without some kind of active intervention.

In summary, I agree that it is unethical (what she describes), but I also think equating it to real life sexual assault is just as much unethical because of what is implied by that accusation.

 

[Rens]

She should have given him a virtual kick LOL.

 

[Rens]

It's disgusting, but the weird thing is if he had killed her as part of a game it would have been considered fun.

 

[MarkFL]

It's disgusting, but the weird thing is if he had killed her as part of a game it would have been considered fun.

LOL! You make a clever observation and an excellent point on that.

 

[Stravinsk]

It's disgusting, but the weird thing is if he had killed her as part of a game it would have been considered fun.

"I was virtually killed in a video game" just doesn't carry those boo hoo victimization attention grabbing headlines though.

 

[MarkFL]

It can be said though, that people who enter such FPS virtual environments fully expect to be stalked and killed, but they aren't necessarily expecting to be made the subject of representations of sexually oriented behavior.

 

[Rens]

It can be said though, that people who enter such FPS virtual environments fully expect to be stalked and killed, but they aren't necessarily expecting to be made the subject of representations of sexually oriented behavior.

She was chasing zombies. No that's not something you'd expect.
I think they reacted quite stupid though. She was laughing and made joking comments when she told him to stop and her husband saw it and laughed too. That's not smart from her and from a husband I'd expect a bit more protection.

https://m.mic.com/articles/157415/m...harassment-in-tech-jordan-belamire#.odYdh9Bq4

 

[MarkFL]

Well, sometimes laughter can result from nervousness rather than humor. I sometimes laugh when others think it inappropriate, but not because I think an awkward situation is funny, but because I find it to be awkward myself, and that's how I react.

 

[tango]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/24/tec...-assault/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool

I was reading on CNN that a woman claims she was sexually assaulted in a Virtual Reality game. What do you think of this?

Please do not be vulgar in this thread or use terminology that could be considered profane.

Honestly, this just seems silly.

In real life it's clearly not on to expect someone to change their fundamental lifestyle to avoid unwanted and inappropriate behavior. I don't doubt for a minute that this kind of thing happening in real life is distressing, and it's entirely right that the perpetrators face consequences for it.

But here we're talking about a video game. A game. A character that isn't real, in a world that isn't real, facing unwanted contact from another character that isn't real. If the not-real "abuser" had made some comments about the appearance of the not-real "victim", would that be considered harassment? During my time (many years ago now) playing online games I found a lot of women pretended to be men because they didn't want to get hit on, a lot of men pretended to be women to mess with the people who seemed to genuinely believe that "female, online" meant "available, interested", and so on. In the more advanced world of modern games you can be black or white, male or female, create your own persona and chop and change as often as you want, so to say that one of your characters was "abused" just seems off the silliness scale to me. Especially since, as Rens mentioned, your not-real character could be attacked and killed by another not-real character in the game and nobody would bat an eyelid.

To summarise:

My not-real character is attacked by a not-real character = normal gameplay
My not-real character is robbed by a not-real character = normal gameplay
My not-real character is given lots of gold by a not-real character = normal gameplay
My not-real character is tricked into helping a not-real character with a quest only to not get a share of the spoils = normal gameplay
My not-real character is killed by a not-real character = normal gameplay
My not-real character is fondled by a not-real character = sexual assault

Really?

 

[MoreCoffee]

One can be offended online and one can take offence online but one cannot be assaulted online. The idea that sexual assault can happen (in a legal sense) online is absurd. Yet some people are probably claiming it.

 

[Rens]

While virtual worlds may be vulnerable to the same negative human behaviors that the real world faces, they also include potential solutions that do not exist in real life – like virtual shields and super powers.

When the developers of QuiVR, Aaron Stanton and Jonathan Schenker, learned about Belamire’s experience of harassment, they updated the game’s code to include an expanded “personal bubble” that they believe will prevent future gropings.

The pair came up with the idea of a “power gesture” – a physical movement a player can make within the game to activate their personal bubble as if it were a super power.

“It’s active re-empowerment – something that they can do to reclaim power for themselves with a strong visual component that clearly transacts power back to them,” Stanton explained.

The pair plan to open-source the code for the gesture and are proposing that other developers consider adapting it to their own games. They have written about their proposal for the power gesture as a universal “911” for VR on the industry site UploadVR, and the response so far appears to be positive.

“I absolutely love this feature idea … it is so innovative and powerful,” said Belamire. “Getting too close? Zap, now the harasser has disappeared from my world.

https://www.google.nl/amp/s/amp.the...exual-harassment-online-groping-quivr?0p19G=e

 

[Lamb]

My thoughts on this...

She was not personally sexually assaulted although her character in a game was. Because of her past it bothered her more than it would other people.

Instead of blaming the men who are doing vulgar things in the games the article blames the creator of the games who are men. As if it's their fault entirely? I don't buy that. Certain cultures are more touchy feely and are also make more advancements on women I've come to realize. When my sister-in-law returned from a trip to Italy she complained about how often men would grab at her as if it was a normal routine. I was appalled. To them though, that's how men were.

Rens quoted that the makers are coming up with some ideas to help women so they don't lose that clientele and I really like the bubble idea. My bubble in real life is larger than others'

I think that men need to be educated in how to treat women and not just in real life. Society is now technology driven and is our new world where we dwell for many hours. Guys, don't mess it up for us Not that all of you do but if you see a guy mistreat a woman online, call them out on it.

 

[tango]

My thoughts on this...

She was not personally sexually assaulted although her character in a game was. Because of her past it bothered her more than it would other people.

Instead of blaming the men who are doing vulgar things in the games the article blames the creator of the games who are men. As if it's their fault entirely? I don't buy that. Certain cultures are more touchy feely and are also make more advancements on women I've come to realize. When my sister-in-law returned from a trip to Italy she complained about how often men would grab at her as if it was a normal routine. I was appalled. To them though, that's how men were.

Rens quoted that the makers are coming up with some ideas to help women so they don't lose that clientele and I really like the bubble idea. My bubble in real life is larger than others'

I think that men need to be educated in how to treat women and not just in real life. Society is now technology driven and is our new world where we dwell for many hours. Guys, don't mess it up for us Not that all of you do but if you see a guy mistreat a woman online, call them out on it.

Part of the problem here is that the very nature of these games is that people are allowed and indeed encouraged to do things that aren't acceptable in real life.

In real life it's not considered acceptable to go around stealing stuff and killing people and yet in role-playing games it's a standard part of gameplay. In real life if I find a big chest with a lock on it I leave it alone; in a role-playing game I use whatever means I have at my disposal to break it open to get at the contents. In real life I might expect an alarm to go off if I forced the chest open; I wouldn't expect a booby trap to fire a poison dart at me.

With that in mind it does seem strange to say that during gameplay it's perfectly acceptable to rob someone blind or to kill them but to fondle them is an offense so grave it needs to be eliminated by whatever means necessary.

In this particular situation we're talking about a person who was presumably sexually assaulted in real life and therefore had a stronger reaction to a similar incident during gameplay. But where do we stop trying to protect people from things that imaginary characters do to their imaginary characters? If the individual in question had been mugged would we suddenly expect other characters to avoid attacking them in the game? What if someone had been robbed - would the opportunity for people to rob them in the game suddenly be taken away?

In real life when something happens to us we have to deal with it because we can't just walk away from our reality. In a virtual reality you can be pretty much whatever you want to be. If you're a woman who doesn't want male attention, create an ugly character or a male character. If you're a man who likes to mess with people, create a female character. If you insist on representing yourself just as you are in reality then at some point the question has to be asked why you bother with a virtual world at all. On that basis I can't help thinking that the solution to disliking what happens in a virtual world is to simply not go there, or to go there as a different character. If that causes economic problems for the creators of the virtual worlds they'll come up with a way to address it that works for everybody.

 

[Lamb]

Right, tango! They can play a different game