[MUD-Dev] Character evolution

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <3.0.2.32.19970825222205.008c9150 at mail.tenetwork.com>, on 08/25/97 
   at 10:22 PM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:

>Would you take someone who had almost died in a mine cave in and
>nmake them roleplay suffocatign ina  closed dark space?  

"Make", as in "force or compell", no.  Offer, encourage them to,
absolutely.  It is difficult to deal with a situation you do not
comfortably confront, or avoid all references to.  Even an indirect if
strong reference, such as a book, story or game scenario dealing with
the area can and very often will help a tramatised individual begin to
confront his past life.

<<Yes, I used to work in the field>>

>Rape is an
>everyday horror of western dociety thatb far to many women have had
>to experience for it to belong in ANY recreational exercise.

This presumes that rape in a game is a direct parody or reflection of
rape in RL, sufficiently to engender similar effects in the "victim",
no?  I doubt if that is true.

My impression, and this is not well backed up with documentation or
verifiable research despite much time and work put into it, is that
the subjective effect (trauma?) of rape by "modern" western women as
vs women of other cultures (african various), asian (chinese and
japanese primarily), polynesian, etc) and earlier times is
significantly different.  My direct suspicion is that it is a cultural
and moral reflection, and not implicit in homo sapiens.  I have been
unable to determine that rape was ever treated as effectively an
ordinary occurence.  This is especially difficult with historical
times due to standard gender bias (males wrote the histories).  The
feel I get however, especially in most of the European (better
documented) cultures from about 2 centuries ago and further back, was
that non-concensual sex was not only a regular, expected, and implicit
aspect of the culture and times, but that due to that fact (its very
normality) was typically not severely tramatic.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...