Women's avatars are being gang-raped, groped, sexually harassed in Metaverse platforms
Oh, brave new world, that has such "people" in it!
A story out today from Yahoo! Entertainment, which is one way of looking at it:
Women’s Avatars Are Being Sexually Assaulted in Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Platforms
Antoinette Siu
Thu, May 26, 2022, 2:24 PM·3 min read
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/women-avatars-being-sexually-assaulted-182436343.html
A woman’s avatar in Facebook parent Meta’s new Horizon Worlds platform was sexually assaulted, according to advocacy group SumOfUs’ report.
The 21-year-old woman, who works for SumOfUs as a researcher, was in a virtual room on Horizon Worlds, a metaverse platform released last December in the U.S. and Canada. She was in the room with two male avatars that were making obscene comments to her, and one of them was very close to her. SumOfUs included a clip of the event in its report this month focused on sexual violence, hate speech and content moderation issues at Meta.
Sexual harassment has been an ongoing issue that SumOfUs is researching. Earlier this year, another woman named Nina Jane Patel reported being “virtually gang raped” within a minute of logging onto Horizon. A group of three to four male avatars groped and “verbally and sexually harassed” her avatar, which became “a target for suggestive and lewd remarks due to her avatar’s outwardly female appearance,” the SumOfUs report noted.
It's not a new world--it's a very old world. Human beings have always had a very superficial veneer of civilization, particularly young males. Almost all social species of animals have a young male problem, which they solve in one of two ways--either by expelling them from the group (elephants) or submitting them to harsh discipline. Despite that, young males often rove in gangs wreaking havoc. Dolphins, for example, gang rape females with impunity. We are unrealistic if we are shocked that human males, when unsupervised, don't behave in a civilized fashion. This is why we have such a problem in the military with rape and sexual abuse. We need to stop being shocked and start getting real.
So just carry a virtual gun. Problem solved.