With Mr Keng back from his work adventures (coming to BBC radio later this year, incidentally), children bored by Mum and delighted to cling to the Dad they missed for three weeks, I was delighted to grab some SL time again and catch up on what I’ve missed in-world. Incidentally, I have to say that I’ve nothing but admiration for women who are raising children on their own. Exhausting! And I even had some help from Gran.

The latest Cart Sale at The Wash (Fab Free headquarters, in other words) began on January 31st and runs until St Valentine’s Day. There’s always something to be got at the Cart Sale, with all items at L$10, that can be blogged and utilised in a naturist setting.

So I wandered around a bit, checking to see if there were any suitable poses or beachwear when something caught my eye…

‘Love’ scars?????

I’m sorry, but love should almost never involve anything that leaves a mark, with the possible exception of a hickey/love bite. It’s easy to get caught up in a moment of extreme passion where a hickey might be the result, but other than that…no. What sort of ‘love’ is that? Let’s call it for what it is – violence against women.

This sort of SL role-play is away off my radar, but for the sake of research, I went exploring and was shocked by the number of items that seemingly celebrate violence, almost exclusively against women, with a few ‘fem-dom’ ( a dominant female with total control over a ‘sub’ -sub-dominant- partner) exceptions.

 

I was quite shocked by the amount of BDSM stuff out there in SL and on the Marketplace. Shocked by how blithely it’s all portrayed.

‘Accident prone’? How often have we heard tales of women who ‘bumped into a doorway’ to hide their subjection to domestic violence?

I know there may be some who say it’s role-play in a safe environment, but I don’t buy that for a second. If someone wants to tie you up and slap you in SL (and I saw such animations during research) what does that say about the sort of person they aspire to be in real life?

Cue, possibly, arguments in favour, but I’m not listening. This has been a bug-bear of mine since The World of Gor was many people’s favourite fantasy/roleplay world, a world in which slavery was rife. Nowadays, it seems that a bit of violence can, theoretically, be re-enacted in people’s SL bedrooms.

The message is ‘no, ladies, refuse to participate’. Never be the victim of this sort of thing in SL.

I walked away from my inworld research feeling quite tarnished by the experience of what I was seeing.

Ella