Protos

wired.com has a story named “Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?”

I am not really sure what to think. Mostly it seems to me that the comparison between rape and cyber-rape is offensive in it self, which Regina Lynn actually writes:

But I have a hard time calling it “rape,” or believing it’s a matter for the police. 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.

but goes on:

That’s not to say I dismiss the trauma a person suffers after being raped online. Virtual rape is not just a prank, one the target needs to get over or expect as part of a role-playing world. (And if you are inclined to pooh-pooh this, first read author Julian Dibble’s chapter about a rape that occurred in a text-only MOO in the early ’90s.)

A virtual rape is by definition sudden, explicit and often devastating. If you’ve never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed.

Well, it’s just a very very odd article… Maybe people are just taking the whole on line think a bit to seriously.

I haven’t read wired for a while (since I don’t like to pay for 50% adds…) and I find that the quality of the product has dropped.