Rape Cyberspace

Did Bungle commit rape?

This question is extremely difficult to answer and indeed, probably has no real answer at all due to the ambiguity of it. What is rape? Who is Bungle? Could he have commited rape? All these must first be answered in order to answer the greater question. Firstly, in a biological sense, rape is the physical sexual violation of one person's body by another person without the other person's consent. However is cyber-rape rape? Technically, no real bodies came into contact with one another, nobody was really forced to do anything. By the same token, Bungle is also not real in that he has no physical being, his heart does not beat, his lungs do not breath, he does not feel. He is merely words on a page, or computer commands.

However if one were to look at this as a kind of story unfolding, not physically happening, it is possible for characters to rape other characters in a story. Bungle could rape other players' representations in the game. It does say, that he commited these acts without the players' consent and therefore without their creations' consent. So, yes Bungle commited rape.

The only problem with this answer is how we see Bungle. I see him as a character in a story, but others might see him as an extension of the person sitting at the computer and in doing so, say that that person commited rape. But that is physically impossible. Yes, the players' emotions, the trust in the MOO was violated, but was that person physically raped, no. In that sense, Bungle did not commit rape and could not commit rape.

So to answer, your question, maybe. In the sense that Bungle is merely words as are his victims, then yes, Bungle commited rape. However, in the other sense that Bungle represented the person who created him, then no, Bungle did not commit rape.