Virtual Rape Research Articles

Legal Dimensions of Virtual Rape: Contemporary Issues and Challenges

The realm of virtual environments has introduced novel challenges to the legal landscape, particularly concerning the phenomenon of virtual rape. This paper delves into the intricate legal dimensions surrounding virtual rape, exploring contemporary issues and the challenges they pose. Through a comprehensive analysis, it examines the evolving nature of virtual interactions, the complexities of consent in digital spaces, and the legal frameworks governing such offenses. By scrutinizing law, theories, philosophy, and jurisprudence, this study sheds light on the multifaceted nature of virtual rape and offers insights into navigating its legal complexities in modern society.

Virtual action

In the debate about actions in virtual environments two interdependent types of question have been pondered: What is a person doing who acts in a virtual environment? Second, can virtual actions be evaluated morally? These questions have been discussed using examples from morally dubious computer games, which seem to revel in atrocities. The examples were introduced using the terminology of “virtual murder” “virtual rape” and “virtual pedophilia”. The terminological choice had a lasting impact on the debate, on the way action types are assigned and on how moral evaluation is supposed to be conducted. However, this terminology and its theoretical consequences, while sometimes resulting in correct results, lead to absurd results when applied across the board. It will be suggested that these absurd consequences can be avoided by a different answer to the question what people in virtual worlds are doing. Alleged virtual actions are first and foremost the creation and modification of data-structures and the resulting output in computer hardware. Such modifications of data structure and imagery can be performed with different intentions, purposes and styles, which will influence the type and moral evaluation of a user’s actions. This reinterpretation allows for a more complex analysis of the moral reasons for praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of actions in virtual environments. This analysis takes not just harm and effects on character into account but the peculiar ways in which speech acts can be morally wrong: e.g. agitatory, deceptive, bullshitting.

The Case for a New Statutory Regime Addressing Revenge Porn in India: Exploring the Disputed Terrain From a Feminist Perspective

The recent rise of online feminist activism, including the #MeToo Movement has been a catalyst for driving attention globally to issues concerning women and their everyday experiences of violence and harassment in the virtual world. However, in a developing country like India, the severity of a crime like non-consensual pornography was brought into public gaze only after a path breaking decision by a District Court in West Bengal in a ‘revenge porn’ case, namely, State of West Bengal v. Animesh Boxi ( hereinafter referred to as ‘Boxi’). The NCRB 2017 data shows that almost 6.7% of cyber-crime cases registered were for the motive of sexual exploitation. While men have often been victims of non- consensual pornography through unauthorized sharing of explicit pictures of themselves, revenge porn predominately impacts women. Not only are women more likely to be victims of revenge porn, but the effects are also far greater on women due to socially constructed belief that women who are victims of sexual assault must have provoked the incident. Furthermore, the victims’ sexual autonomy is criticised since it is believed that women should not have sexual impulses but the viewers and even the general public, who witness the crime, are reluctant to accept that an image might be shared with a partner voluntarily but not for public dissemination. Women are expected to take responsibility for their lawful personal choices rather than placing responsibility on the perpetrator of their inexcusable action. This form of non-consensual pornography not only institutionalises male supremacy but also sends a message that the survivor deserved the consequences while the perpetrator rightfully disseminated the intimate media, thus further promoting objectification of the female body. The fact that Boxi brings with it the first conviction in India, throws light upon the larger picture of how survivors who do not fit ‘ideal victim’ stereotypes are never brought to justice. The Hon’ble Court has vehemently termed this gender-based violence as ‘virtual rape’ highlighting the fact that it somewhere has a connection with the socially constructed expectation of gender. The lack of scholarship in this particular area resonates the struggle faced in recognising domestic violence in India and subsequently bringing about a specific legislation. Not only have allegations of revenge porn been dismissed like domestic violence, but revenge porn is often a form of domestic violence, rather intimate partner violence, in and of itself, with abusive partners threatening to expose explicit pictures of their significant other as a form of control over them. Drawing on the example of Boxi, the author makes an attempt to offer a fresh perspective on the efficacy of the existing legal regime by putting forth feminist legal arguments and exploring the possibility of situating such an act within the scope of civil remedies and criminal prosecution available for copyright violation (considering the fact that most images clicked these days are ‘selfies’) and defamation, respectively. The paper is designed to challenge the underlying normativity that operates as a dominant thinking pertaining to an ‘ideal victim’ of intimate partner violence and examine the ‘rape-shield’ theory of evidence vis-a-vis ‘revenge porn’ since the Court has equated the offence to ‘virtual rape’. The author also makes an attempt to inquire how women and men live through the meaning of their experiences/ understanding of this issue by recording responses of 100 participants (between the age group of 15-40 years) vide a structured closed questionnaire in order to demonstrate that the hegemony of sexual stereo-typing not only resides in the legal but very much in the social as well. While various feminist advocates have been mooting for introducing a specific statute, the author offers a close appreciation of how it might not be the most plausible solution to curb the menace.

Virtually Rape: Should Cyber Sexual Offensiveness Constitute Rape?

Rape is the most severe sexual offense, involving one of the most feared and reviled acts a person can inflict on another. But what makes something rape? Initially, only penial-vagina forceful penetration; then, other forceful penial penetrations were added, oral and anal; and later the forceful insertion of inanimate objects as well. The requirement of using force lost its exclusiveness and much of its normative power, paving the way for other kinds of rape: sex by non-forceful coercion, sex by sedation, sex with incompetent victims, sex by fraud, and other forms of problematic sex. The normative debate about each form is ongoing, and in a manner of speaking, rape is a limitless idea. Where will the rape offense go next? Cyberspace, apparently. The Israeli Supreme Court has recently affirmed convictions of rape performed by distant words. The perpetrators conversed with children, teenagers and adult women online, using fraud and blackmail to manipulate them into masturbation and self-penetration. This groundbreaking judicial development is the inspiration to a normative analysis, revolving around Western notions of rape. Should such ill-intended communications constitute rape? The article will normatively scrutinize the virtual rape thesis. It will analytically deconstruct the normative notion of rape into three facets, and examine each separately: the physics of the offensive scenario; the settings thereof, the manner in which sexual autonomy is violated; and finally, the matter of proper criminal labeling. It will conclude that while sexual autonomy is indeed under attack in cyberspace, the framework of rape is unsuitable to handle this form of offensiveness.

Social and legal aspects on the topic of virtual rape

Social and legal aspects on the topic of virtual rape

Present and Future Instances of Virtual Rape in Light of Three Categories of Legal Philosophical Theories on Rape

This paper is about the question of whether or not virtual rape should be considered a crime under current law. A virtual rape is the rape of an avatar (a person’s virtual representation) in a virtual world. In the future, possibilities for virtual rape of a person him- or herself will arise in virtual reality environments involving a haptic device or robotics. As the title indicates, I will study both these present and future instances of virtual rape in light of three categories of legal philosophical theories on rape in order to answer the aforementioned question. I will argue that a virtual rape in a future virtual reality environment involving a haptic device or robotics should in principle count as the crime of rape; for it corresponds to rape as it is viewed under the liberal theories that currently dominate the law. A surprising finding will be that a virtual rape in a virtual world re-actualizes the conservative view of rape that used to dominate the law in the Middle Ages and resembles rape as it is viewed under the feminist theories that criticize current law. Virtual rape in a virtual world cannot count as rape under current law; however, and at the end of this paper, I will suggest qualifying it as sexual harassment instead.

Sources of Law and Modes of Governance: Ethnography and Theory in Second Life

Belgian police began patrolling Second Life, the virtual world, in early 2007, responding to a claim of virtual rape.[1] Few crimes evoke as much social revulsion and emotional harm as the powerful forcing themselves on the weak. But does it make sense to talk about an avatar-on-avatar sexual misconduct in familiar terms (i.e., sexual assault and rape)? Is it punishable? Who should take care of the punishing? [1] Benjamin Duranske, Reader Roundtable: “Virtual Rape” Claim Brings Belgian Police to Second Life, Virtually Blind, Apr. 24, 2007, http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/04/24/open-roundtable-allegations-of-virtual-rape-bring-belgian-police-to-second-life/.

The Ethical Status of Virtual Actions

One of the most interesting features of the computer is its ability to create virtual environments. These environments allow us to interact with objects that are simulated by the computer and are not real. They thus allow us to realize actions that have no repercussions whatsoever on the non-virtual world. This seems to qualify virtual environments as an ideal playground to do all kinds of things that would be labelled ethically wrong if realized in the real world. Nevertheless, we have the feeling that certain types of virtual actions - raping computer simulated girls for example - are not right at all, in spite of the fact that we know that no actual person is harmed by this. In the light of phenomena like virtual rape and violence, philosophical reflection on the ethical status of actions realized in virtual worlds has become inevitable. This paper will provide the groundwork for such a reflection, by answering the following questions: Can we apply the predicates of 'right' and 'wrong' to actions realized in virtual worlds? And if this turns out to be problematic, how can we explain our feeling of discomfort with certain types of virtual behaviour, i.e. our feeling that there is something 'not at all right' about, for example, virtual rape? These questions will be answered in the three sections of this paper. The first section deals with the necessary condition for the application of the predicates of 'right' and 'wrong' to virtual actions: freedom in the virtual environment. In the second section, we will endeavour to demonstrate that the fulfilment of this necessary condition is not sufficient when it comes to the application of these predicates to virtual actions. The last section explains how we can still be uncomfortable with certain virtual actions, even though the said actions escape ethical judgment.

Feminist Views of Cybersex: Victimization, Liberation, and Empowerment

Cybersex can be defined as a social interaction between at least two persons who are exchanging real-time digital messages in order to become sexually aroused and satisfied. This article first describes video- and text-based cybersex as a new kind of sexual encounter with its own particularities. Then the feminist literature on cybersex is reviewed revealing two basic perspectives: The victimization perspective interprets cybersex as a heterosexist practice, and focuses on how women and girls as individuals and as a group are harmed by online harassment, virtual rape, and cyberprostitution. From this viewpoint it is the (heterosexual) male who seeks cybersex and forces it on the female, who is supposed to be online for all kinds of reasons but surely not for sexual ones. The liberation perspective, in contrast, focuses on the options computer-mediated communication offers women and girls who actively seek sexual pleasure online: Looks don't matter, it's easy to find mates, anonymity minimizes social contr...

Virtual Babes: gender, archetypes and computer games

ABSTRACT With the advent of new technologies expectations of new gender relations and (de)constructions also came. How is gender constructed in the age of the cyborgism? Do old gender traits and hierarchies prevail or do the fluid ether and augmentations of body parts allow for a move toward transgenderism or postgenderism? In fact, can we and should we move beyond gender? With the occurrence of phenomena such as gender swapping, virtual sex, virtual stalking and virtual rape online, gender as a construction, is still high on the electronic agenda. As Theresa Senft explains “You may not believe in gender, but gender believes in you”. This article will focus on the gender construction of selected virtual game characters, by implementing an archetypal psychological approach. The “virtual babes” that will be discussed are Lara Croft of Tomb Raiders, Elexis Sinclaire of Sin and All New Gen(der) from the Bad Code game. These virtual characters will provide interesting visual clues about the state of gender identity online. Without simplifying or predicting, most of these virtual characters are still handicapped by problematic fin de millennium femme fatale traits, whereas only a few playfully deconstructs traditional gender identities. Furthermore, the fact that most of these “virtual babes” are mainly created and absorbed at this stage by an adolescent male audience, contribute greatly to their specific gender characteristics. In fact, it seems as if the promise of experimental and interesting gender relations are not always realised and that the greatest part of virtual female characters are still portrayed with the same gender prejudices intact. It's gender as usual for most “virtual babes”.