Oh Boo-Fucking-Hoo!
The Fallacy of Cyber Rape

When the internet became wildly popular it brought with it a new wave of cyber crime. Thieves had their job made worlds easier with everyone's credit card and personal details frighteningly easy to obtain and more than a few stalkers found a great tool in the internet as well. Terms like cyber-stalking and cyber-fraud are now part of our collective vocabulary. And, admittedly, these are real crimes with real victims.

Then someone cried cyber-rape.

In 1993 Mr Bungle made his mark in the annals of internet history when he committed what soon came to be referred to as the first cyber rape. It happened in the LambdaMOO living room, an internet MUD (Multi-User Dimension). Though no transcript has ever surfaced, the facts have never been disputed. Mr Bungle went into the living room and, with a wicked mind and the MUD software, forced one of the characters to sexually service him. His advances, demands and manipulations grew increasingly warped and violent until another character, Iggy, who had the power and know how to use the MOO software to silence him.

Later, one of the victims of this attack, exu, posted a public announcement to one of the message boards in LambdaMOO which concluded, "...Mostly, [this type of thing] doesn't happen here. Mostly, perhaps I thought it wouldn't happen to me. Mostly, I trust people to conduct themselves with some veneer of civility. Mostly, I want his ass." Some time later, a woman in Seattle revealed that not only was she exu, but that as she'd been posting that message the tears of post traumatic stress had been streaming down her face.

That's how cyber rape was born.

Now, to be fair, I've never seen any evidence that exu - or any of the characters involved in the events of that evening - were the first people to start bandying the term cyber-rape around as the newest banner for the "I'm A Victim Parade" that never seems to end. (But that's really a whole different rant for another time)

Luckily, women whining about being cyber-raped haven't gotten the same sort of legal attention as the will-power deficient people who are now able to use excuses like 'internet addiction' as grounds for court disputes (and, no I'm not kidding - check it: http://www.netaddiction.com/attorneys.htm) But these women exist and their numbers are growing.

As a woman I feel it's my responsibility to say: STOP IT! STOP going out of your way to paint yourself as a victim! Stop turning every sexual advance into a harassment issue. Not only are you making yourself look foolish but you're painting ALL women as over-reactionary bitches. Not to mention the fact that you're also totally trivializing the pain of REAL victims. Here's a tip ladies - if someone is pestering you online - tell them to fuck off. Don't be nice about it - just tell them to fuck right off and that you're not interested. If they persist use the function most (if not all) chat rooms and Instant Messenger services have to report and/or ban them from contacting you. Or change your screen name. Better yet, get offline for awhile and read a book. Do anything BUT start screaming about cyber rape. Not only is it NOT a real crime, it sounds about as absurd as cyber-murder. Some crimes just do not translate into the cyber realm.

A crime like rape is simply impossible online. Can you be sexually harassed online? Yes. Can you be stalked online? Yes. Can you be raped online? Don't be ridiculous. Rape is a very physical crime. Women who live through it often have to deal with long term and all too real consequences, like the possibility of STDs or pregnancy - not to mention concerns over their own personal safety. They don't have the option of simply walking away. They're stuck - right where they are.

But there's another angle to this. Some people are trolling around adult chat rooms and then throwing a fit over what they see. (For a good example of this, check this site) These people are much more insidious and do far more damage than the women who just overreact to online sexual harassment. These people are going out of their way to find groups of people who offend them. That, in and of itself, isn't so bad. I think we all occasionally go out looking for trouble. I'm a big fan of it myself. The difference is I don't then freak out over it and demand something be done. I don't condemn them and turn the issue into something more than it is.

Debra Michaels' page, mentioned above, is a prime example of this. She saw a room named 'Rape Fantasy' went inside, saw what was happening (a fantasy rape scene with an all too willing female participant), spat out a comment about the participants of engaging in something 'sick' and then seemed surprised that she received a less than favorable reaction. She goes a step further and brings up this whole idea that these people aren't just engaging in sexual fantasy - but that these people are all potential sexual deviates, a gnat's cock away from lurking in the shadows and pouncing on some poor, unsuspecting woman. This holds about as much water as saying that if you listen to angry, screaming music you're going to end up hacking people to death with a machete or shooting up a post office building. Charles Manson listened to folk music and The Beatles for Chrissakes!

Without a doubt, there are sick and twisted people on the internet. And chances are good that more than a few of them use chat rooms. But not everyone who enters an alternative or adult room is a totally psychotic sexual deviant on the verge of committing a violent crime. The vast majority are simply people with a sexual kink. Big deal! I'm not sure why it is that people who don't have these kinks feel the need to seek out those who do and then condemn them. You have every right to think they're a bit strange, but you don't have the right to start condemning them and labelling them dangerous. I think people who eat peanut butter with bananas are weird, but I'm not about to then say that they're so warped that society as a whole needs to be protected from them.

I know that a cyber-life can seem very real. I know that people you meet up with in chat rooms and know only online can become real friends - people you count on. The internet is indeed a community. But it's important to remember that it's simply not real. Your computer is not your universe, no matter how attached you are to it. It's a luxury - a twenty first century toy. Granted, it's a rather powerful toy and one most of us have come to think of as a necessity rather than a perk, but it's really not.

It's just the internet, people. So get over it and stay out of chat rooms that don't interest you in the first place. If you see a link to join in a chat room named 'Eat my shit while you fuck me up the ass' and you're neither a shit-eater nor an ass reamer the stay the hell out of there.

Email responses regarding this article

Yeah, this is about your article on cyber rape. Clearly you don't know shit. Men (and people pretending to be men) on the net can really fuck with you. And you say it's so easy to just shut off a computer, but for some of us it isn't. We have what you'd call an addiction and it makes turning off the net like turning off our lives - so what would you suggest WE do? Not everyone is the same you know and it's people like you - people who try and trivilaize the emotions and upsets of others who make this world really fucked up and hard to live in. DIE YOU BITCH!

Oh please! You're exactly the kind of person I wrote this article for. It's people like you who insist on forever bveing a victim that make me sick and give women a bad name. Perhaps you should go volunteer at a rape crisis center so you can see what it's like for REAL victims. Guess what ... if you're 'addicted' to the net, you can solve that really easily - turn it off and do something else. And, if you can't do that, then just buck up and tell these men to fuck off. Speaking as a woman I'm here to tell you, it's very liberating and you can always just ban them. Instant Messaging programs and most (if not all) chat rooms have an 'ignore' function. Learn how to use it.

You're not a victim. You're just a lazy, ignorant bitch.

But don't let me tell you how to think ... check out these links and form your own opinion ... and then let me know what you think.

A Rape In Cyberspace
http://www-cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects-98-99/controlling-the-virtual-world/history/rape.html

Cyber-Rape: How Virtual Is It?
http://www.terry.uga.edu/people/dawndba/4500CyberRape.html

CYBERRAPE
http://www.uiowa.edu/~rhetoric/student2/amber/

The Case of Mr. Bungle and the "Cyber-rape"...
http://www.albany.edu/faculty/rpy95/webtext/bungle.htm

Justice Takes a Holiday for Real Cyber-Sex Victim
http://www.cybercase.org/justice.html

Feel free to Google for more
http://www.google.com