Cerise Magazine

In 1993, Julian Dibbell wrote about a rape in cyberspace. At that time, the idea was completely foreign to most of the readers of The Village Voice where the article was published, and this was still basically true five years later when it became the first chapter of his book My Tiny Life. Today, the idea of virtual rape hits a bit closer to home, especially for gamers. In fact, just last year, Belgian law enforcement officials investigated a claim of virtual rape in the online game Second Life.

The obvious first question is: wait, how does that even work? Apparently, whereas the sophistication of the technology has improved dramatically since the early nineties, the sophistication of these virtual rapists has not. In Dibbell’s LambdaMOO, an early multiplayer online game, the rape involved a “voodoo doll”; a subprogram that allows for the attribution of actions to other characters that their users do not intend. In the text-based game, this meant text scrolling on the screen while the victim-users were forced to read the awful things that their characters were supposedly doing. In Second Life, a virtual rape can occur in much the same way, with the “voodoo doll” code taking the form of a seemingly mundane Second Life object, such as a book or an article of clothing. When the player uses the item, control of their character is given over to someone else. Granted, in Second Life players do have to give consent for someone else to take that control, but anyone who has ever played can vouch for the fact that the interface can be somewhat perplexing, and persuading a new user to click a certain button would not be a difficult task.

Many roleplayers can attest to just how close they become to their avatars, especially for hardcore gamers; if you spend nine hours of a day as your character, that may be even more of your waking hours than you spend as yourself.

And even though Second Life may not be considered a “game” in the traditional sense, this kind of behavior can happen in less-obvious forms in any virtual world where players have control of avatars. I read in one World of Warcraft player’s blog about how she was approached by two male characters on a boat taking them to another continent and spammed with text about how they were “raping” her while their characters chased her around the boat. Although she knew that neither she nor her character were in any actual danger, she felt a sense of helplessness from being trapped there. In another example, apparently in the World of Warcraft beta – when there was no language barrier separating the two opposing factions – a game named “Strip or Die” became popular. Imagine being a relatively powerless new female character suddenly jumped by a group of much stronger opponents who demand that you strip to your underwear or they’ll kill you. Refusal may not just mean death – a relatively minor inconvenience for WoW players – in this case, but being targeted and continually harassed, essentially destroying your gaming experience for the day.

Don’t mistake me; I am definitely not saying that these events, whether the term “virtual rape” is appropriate or not, are anything like real-world rape. I am not suggesting that abusive WoW players be thrown into jail as sex offenders. However, even if not as serious, these acts do have real impact on the victims. Many roleplayers can attest to just how close they become to their avatars, especially for hardcore gamers; if you spend nine hours of a day as your character, that may be even more of your waking hours than you spend as yourself. The potential psychological damage of watching someone who is basically an extension of yourself in such a position is very real. This is to say nothing of the real life victims of rape and sexual harassment playing these games as well, who might be forced by this type of virtual behavior to re-live real life trauma.

One of the problems with this kind of sexually victimizing behavior is that it can often be incremental. Maybe it starts with the gamers who insist upon asking every character whom they expect is a real-life woman if she wants to have cybersex. Or maybe it starts with “consensual rape” in a game like Second Life, where players can purchase rape pose-balls or hire virtual prostitutes who will allow their character to be controlled. Granted, there are woman who legitimately have rape fantasies and use virtual worlds as a “safe” way to live out these fantasies, but there is no way of knowing that the person the other end is thinking of it as just a “fantasy.” Last year, an investigative reporter infiltrated a group in Second Life who traded in “virtual” child pornography and participated in age-play – Second Life avatars can be made to look like children – and the group eventually offered to put him in touch with real-life child pornographers. If this sort of behavior can leak into the real world, then perhaps the violence against women can as well.

After all, it’s not unheard of for the virtual world and real world to collide. In his book I, Avatar, Mark Stephen Meadows wrote about an experience of a female friend who roleplayed as a slave in Second Life. Somehow a group of virtual slave traders found out some of her real information and began contacting her on an instant messenger; though she refused to give them any further personal data about herself and eventually canceled her account to deter them, she found out later that the group was known for collecting slaves through roleplay and then tracking them down in real life. Just this past August, a woman who began a relationship with a man in Second Life drove to his workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint. The fear of this kind of thing happening suddenly became very real in 2006 when hackers gained access to Linden Lab’s database of the real-world names and addresses of 650,000 of Second Life’s users.

Even outside of Second Life, it is simply becoming easier and easier for cyberstalkers to get information about their victims. In late 2007, a 20-year-old man met a 15-year-old girl through playing Halo, and from some small amount of personal information that she revealed, was able to find her brother’s MySpace page. A few more Internet searches gave him what he needed to drive forty hours to her house, where he left her a text message threatening to rape her. A couple of months before that, a man was charged with stalking a 16-year-old girl that he met in World of Warcraft. He played a female character in the game, and got to know the girl through a guild where he went by the name “Vera” and posed as a female Canadian college student in order to gain the girl’s trust. Once he found out where she lived, he drove thirteen hours to her school, where he tried to pass himself off as “Vera’s” best friend.

…as a socially conscious gamer, I think that it is important to be on the lookout for victimizing behavior both so that we can protect not only ourselves, but the rest of the women who play these games.

As girl gamers, we are used to dealing with certain behavior, and this can cause us to become desensitized to it. After a while, we might get used to the endless offers for cybersex, the lewd jokes and propositions. We may even choose to play as a male character or disguise our voices over chat programs to avoid these things. But as a socially conscious gamer, I think that it is important to be on the lookout for victimizing behavior both so that we can protect not only ourselves, but the rest of the women who play these games. Don’t let other players get away with sexual harassment. If someone does go so far as virtual rape, be sure to report them, and be sure that something is done about it. If the system fails you, look to the community: most gamers (and yes, this includes most male gamers!) don’t want the world to be a place of fear, for women or otherwise. Sometimes the repercussions of a public outcry can be as serious as any official action.

And above all, remember: this is our world too. We will not let our games be a place of discomfort or fear simply because of our gender. The virtual world may be one of the last frontiers where we have to fight to fit in and gain equal footing with men, but we have every right to be here. That doesn’t mean that anyone has the right to make us victims.

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This Is Our World Too: Preventing Real Victims of Virtual Rape

Winter 2009 Issue

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