I note that Sheelzebub a coblagger at Jessica Valenti's feministing says that online harassment of women is WORSE than being falsely accused of rape.

In that world, you're damn right that online rape is a crime.

is a very dangerous slippery slope. Once "crimes" which don't involve actual people or acutal events can exist literally anything can be a crime. Actually "we" are already on this slope given the criminialization of virtual kiddie porn, so maybe we a seeing the slide start to accelerate.

No matter how disturbed you are by a brutal sexual attack online, you cannot equate it to shivering in a hospital with an assailant's sweat or other excretions still damp on your body ... I can't see us making virtual rape a matter for the real-life police.

But suppose you don't shiver, and the assailant doesn't sweat or excrete? Does that mean you don't suffer? Does that mean it was okay? Is rape more okay when less body fluid is involved?

Rape trauma is something that occurs in the brain. In the hippocampus. It's called PTSD and PTSD isn't caused by sweat or other assailant excretions. PTSD is caused by the sensation of utter powerlessness. It's fear literally burned into the brain.

I don't think the criminal justice system is equipped to deal with this kind of problem however. This would be a tricky kind of law to enforce. Under this kind of law, Nabokov could be prosecuted for forcing readers to collude in rape. Even I wouldn't recommend that.

People choose to belong to these virtual communities. If users are allowed to make the virtual experience traumatic for other users, then that could destroy the community. Just like in a real community, who is going to feel safe with a rapist on the streets?

Hopefully the people who run these virtual communities will feel as strongly motivated as people who run real communities feel when confronted by this issue.

crazy....toys in the attic you are crazy

Tracy claims to have "learned" that "virtual characters can force other virtual characters to have sex against their will."

This is simple false. One hundred percent not true. Made up. Regina Lynn knows it's not true. It is gibberish, it is nonsensical, it is utterly fantastic. It cannot be done, period.

I know there's a certain cohort of feminist writers who want to see rape everywhere, but it is simply unconscionable for both writers to trivialize rape and violence by comparing it to a computer game.

Yes, women can be sexually harassed and insulted and intimidated online, with words. But the idea that there is non-consensual sex involving Second Life avatars is so transparently stupid you have to wonder what Regina & Tracy are thinking of.

virtually raped in divorce court by women.

This is a case of language being twisted to a point of view. Being harassed online can be troubling, upsetting, threatening, and many other things, but it cant be a sexual physical violation, and using the word "rape" is a semantic trick by someone who is trying to create a false equivalency. This happens in propoganda in all walks. We need to call it out for what it is.

This doesnt mean that online harassment cant be a serious violation of a persons sense of calm and safety, but the facts of those cases need to be judged on their individual merits for what they are.

forced by the state to be separated from your children, most of your pay taken from you and given to someone who you believe does not know how to properly care for the children, your life ruined, and all on the basis of "no fault" with no dv and no anything,

nothing virtual about that rape brightstar

you rolled into my implied conclusion!

women have a problem attributing pain and hurt to men, so they natually think men cannot feel. It is a genetic mechanism of millions of generations of them choosing certain men for certain reasons.

But imagine if 90% of women had their children taken away from them when and if they JUST A LITTLE strayed from the husband's demands in the marriage, and then they were told to work to support the child they can no longer see except on alternate weekends and only if they do the chicken dance a certain way. "Oh, and **SMILE** when you do it".

Women would literally break blood vessels in their little heads over the injustice of it.

So, from this example, one can with quite a bit of certainty say women have little to no feelings for men (unless they personally favor a specific man at a specific time and personally gain themselves from the favoring).

I just wanted to point out that I can't find any source that claims the "virtual rape" is being investigated as the crime of rape. I could see a variety of possible crimes that this could be. If this was a case of a script in an object causing an unauthorized action, this could fall under laws against viruses. If the perpetrator was personally know to the victim, this could even be part of a harassment or stalking charge.

Until we have more details, it seems silly to go off the hook and make assumptions about what is really happening here.

Okay, so if I play an online shooter game, can I accuse someone of "virtual murder"?

People should realize that (a) if something is possible in a game, someone will do it - if you don't like the rules, you can always play a different game; and (b) that 6' 4" hulking male game character that just "raped" you might in reality be a 15 year old female. Game play is not real life.

No, it's not. Whomever was the idiot that thought this up should take a pill.

So get some virtual cops, some virtual lawyers, and some virtual jurors, investigate the virtual crime, and if the accused is convicted, put him in virtual prison! I'm sure some players would love to play any of those characters. And it could be fun! Put all those hours watching CSI to some entertaining use.

Good grief, they're PIXELS. People are actually putting serious thought into this?