Lum made a point about a real world-virtual world disconnect for some men leading them to treat women in Second Life like a controllable game construct and then there were the handful of men in the survey about utilizing the services of prostitutes who clearly had attitudes dehumanizing women including that old and extreme view that it is "impossible to rape a whore."
Some men in Second Life will treat a woman who frequently indulges in sex in Second Life as a "whore," not just the "whore" of the titillating bedroom dirty talk, not the "whore" of the escort clubs where women trade sex for Lindens, but as a societal "whore," who, through her actions, or the quantity of them, telegraphs to some men, and women, a message that she is no longer a woman making choices, but a creature for use by any and all. This is not specific to a virtual world. There are girls in real world colleges, high schools, and God help us, junior highs and middle schools, who find themselves in a situation with a male saying something like, "well you're giving it away to everyone else, so why not me?" before being assaulted.
There's a story making the rounds at SLU and SC MKII about an 11-year-old girl who may have been used for sex by as many 18 - 28 men for three days over a period of three months in an abandoned trailer. The girl has been criticized by some people in the community for being promiscuous and dressing and acting provocatively and for having a consensual part in what happened to her, and now, because they have been caught (a video again, natch), what will happen to the men involved.
There is, obviously, a HUGE difference between an 11-year-old girl being so horribly used in real life and a 43-year-old woman playing cybersex games on the internet, I know that and how, but I would argue that there is a common strain between the attitudes of some people surrounding both situations, an attitude shared by both genders.
p.s.
As with Nadia, I wanted to jump through the TV screen and go get this girl and intervene on her behalf. I see that she has been removed from her home and put into foster care. Another tragic and heart-breaking case.
Repost. LeeHere Absent, Mar 10, 2011 http://gotvirtual.net/community/threads/thats-what-she-said.772/page-25#post-33829
Thank you for your post, Don. I enjoyed reading it. This bit below particularly stood out to me as something that should be highlighted on that list of cyber do's and don'ts. Telling someone else how they feel in text. Telling someone how they feel at all, for that matter, but especially in text during a cybersex roleplay. It's a "don't." I've discovered during my cybertravels that this is a significant part of "cybersex roleplay etiquette 101." A major point for many people. Don't tell someone how they feel, let them do that.