Cyber-Rape: How Virtual Is It? (From Technology and Society, P 113-117, 1999, Dianne Fallon, ed.)

• NCJ Number: 186312
• Author(s): Debra Michals
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 5 pages
• Sale Source: Coursewise Publishing, Inc
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article discusses the nature, possible effect, and prevention of violent sexual messages and interchanges in the chat rooms of the Internet.

Abstract

Chat rooms created by individual users of the Internet can run the gamut of sexual scenarios and violence. The author, for example, entered a chat room entitled "Rape Fantasy." Five men were writing about brutally raping a woman participant in the chat room who seemed to be encouraging them. When the author challenged what was occurring in the chat room, she was barraged with negative input from chat room participants that jammed her computer. Similar scenarios of sexual violence are created in other private chat rooms. Because the Internet is still fairly new, it remains to be seen how such violent role-playing will affect sexual relationships and the larger goals of ensuring male respect for women. No doubt, the Internet makes it easier for disturbed people to find each other or to identify unwitting victims. Participants' risk of being victimized is heightened by the fact that the Internet also encourages a false sense of trust and of what is real and what is make-believe. Notions of power and freedom under the protections of cyberspace and relative anonymity are at best an illusion in cases of online violence in which women users are submitting to their own violation. Regardless of how "powerful" these women users may feel, they are still following a patriarchal cultural script that reaffirms gender hierarchy and validates the assumption that all women really want to be treated this way. Groups of women can counter such use of the Internet by chasing abusers out of chat rooms. Users can also insist that Internet providers prevent users from changing their online names and profiles at will. This would prevent behaving abusively under one name and then taking another name as a cover. With computers and the Internet becoming an increasing presence in the lives of children, it is important to educate them early about the prevalence of sexual violence online, as well as about the difference between fantasy and reality.