Emotional Responses to Traumatic Events (Was Re: [Mud-Dev] Logical Mud Areas)

[Peter Yu]

On, Mon, 14 May 2001 18:37:29 -0400, Phillip Lenhardt wrote:

> Has anyone bothered to analyze and compare cyberrape to obscene
> phone calls? That seems a more fitting parallel to me than actual
> rape. You can terminate a phone call, the other party is anonymous,
> an obscene call violates the normally innocuous nature of the
> medium, etc.

Yes.  The emotional response to an obscene phone call is _not_ the
same as a "cyber" rape.  I speak from second-hand experience, where I
observed a female friend's response to both types of events.

She could mock an obscene caller and hang up, never giving the phone
call any more thought.

She could not, however, recover from the other experience as easily,
though she herself downplayed the effects of the "cyber" rape greatly
due to the same prejudices against it as you mentioned.

In fact, while the event was happening, she was sitting there
slack-jawed, and constantly and repeatedly asked the perpetrators to
stop, just like what one tends to do in an actual rape.  She knows,
after the fact, that she could just log off to "escape" -- or, in her
case, even move to a different part of the game, as the game did not
have the rules to allow anyone to "pin" anyone.

The shock that someone she felt she knew (after all, they were playing
in the same game, and she did chat with them before, and they were
generally nice people) would actually violate her rights in such a way
just robbed her of all "reason" at that moment, so any attempts to
escape just did not occur to her right then.

So no, the emotional investment in accepting an anonymous phone call
is not the same as those of playing an online game.  So, yes, besides
for rape, this could be extended to any other types of highly
traumatic events. (Which, I suppose, is one reason to argue against
permenant death of player characters within a game, as well.)


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