Member Discussions

This is a sort of spin-off from the "Based on the book..." thread over in General Discussions. While discussing early Anne Rice works, and whether or not the sexual content (incest and underage) makes one feel queasy, we had the following remark:

Jindrak:
> As for the underage sex, it's just a part of our society
> and I don't remember giving it much of a second thought

This sparked a question in my head: to what extent can in-character behaviour be justified that violates out-of-character morality? There seem to be some interesting double standards, here.

People will tolerate many types of IC behaviour that would be wholly unacceptable in a real-life situation. A typical example would be a dwarvish character who says that all the pointy-eared elves should just f*ck off back to Alfheim and stop stealing honest dwarvish jobs. Most people would probably regard that as a perfect valid piece of role-play, and would not necessarily assume that a person who plays the character of a racist dwarf is a racist in real-life. By contrast, if someone expresses an OOC opinion that all black people should go back to Africa and stop stealing white jobs, that is (correctly, I think) regarded as an unacceptable comment, and the person who says it should expect to be disciplined.

Similarly, we tolerate highly antisocial behaviour within MUDs because "it's not real". Theft, muggings, even outright murder, barely even raise an eyebrow. The in-MUD society may be one that tolerates murder, or there my be detailed in-game consequences. Either way, role-playing a murder is not something that is regarded as problematic, despite the awful nature of real-life murder; and the fact that a mud allows virtual murders to take place is not taken as any sort of indication that the MUD admin believes real-life murder is acceptable.

But suppose that someone were to set up an imaginary online society which had a very different sexual morality from our own, including a belief (in common with the beliefs of a great many real-life human societies) that it is perfectly reasonable for a girl to have sex at the age of 12; and suppose that players were permitted to roleplay sexual encounters between adult characters and child characters (with all child characters played by adult players).

Such a MUD would, I suspect, be greeted with almost universal revulsion and condemnation. Perhaps I'm wrong; but assuming I'm right, why is it that in-MUD murder doesn't trouble people in the slightest, while in-MUD consensual intergenerational sex would result in the MUD instantly ceasing to exist and the MUD admin facing anything from prosecution to having his house burned down with him in it?

"Such a MUD would, I suspect, be greeted with almost universal revulsion and condemnation."

I believe you're right about that.

I think it's because different folks have different
gross-out levels for different things. I think it's
really that simple.

Let me give you an example. There's a bunch of people
I know that are perfectly happy to look at
the worst kinds of atrocities that can happen to
people, and talk at length about the most disgusting
subjects under the sun.

But if they see a picture of two consenting adult
males engaging in...um, congress, they completely
fly off the handle and threaten violence.

Why? Differing gross-out thresholds. Another group
of people might find the...congress...interesting
and worthy of discussion, while being revolted by
footage of captured Russian soldiers in Chechnya.

Remember how the us govt has been trying to
outlaw CGI images of underage sex? There are people
of good conscience who find the depiction of this
sort of thing criminal, regardless of whether
actual underage folk were involved. You can argue
that it cheapens our society to tolerate it, etc,
but that's the same slippery logical slope
that has us sending gays to re-education camps.

So really I don't think there's that much "logic"
to the opposition you'd get (and boy you *would* get it).
It's roughly on par with this CGI pedo stuff, and
people just hate it, period, end of argument.

It's a preference and taste thing. IMO.

Awesome question btw.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

"People will tolerate many types of IC behaviour that would be wholly unacceptable in a real-life situation"

Many muds use a sci-fi/fantasy setting that can include other times, other worlds or other universes. Maybe it is easier to distance yourself from moral issues when the playing field is radically different from real life.

"But suppose that someone were to set up an imaginary online society which had a very different sexual morality from our own, including a belief (in common with the beliefs of a great many real-life human societies) that it is perfectly reasonable for a girl to have sex at the age of 12"

I think the problems would arise because of context. Yes, there were and are societies where this is acceptable but the 12 and 13 year olds in question are/were considered and treated as adults.

- "while in-MUD consensual intergenerational sex"

In our society, the 12 or 13 year old would never be considered an adult so the perception is always going to be that the girl or boy was unable to give consent.

(cue Warriors for Innocence and the inevitable 'kill the kiddie porn site' war)

Of course it could all come down to the thing where violence is acceptable but sexuallity is not. We watch a lot of anime and while the 'sanitized' versions for cartoon network are extremely violent and gory, any nudity is edited out. (I am sure the -imaginary- anime women appreciate this effort to protect their modesty...cough)

All rational discussion aside, I have a 12 year old. Finding a mud like you describe would seriously squick me out. No matter how many strange cultures I have rped in, I am still a product of mine. For me, an adult with a 16 or 17 year old might (depending on the circumstances) have me saying, 'good grief, don't you have ANY self-control', but an adult with a 12 year old would have me saying, 'no no no..bad bad, sick bad'.

Kitkat -

There is one but I don't know about underage sex since the mud won't accept
my request for a character. Here is the url: http://hell.game-host.org/

Here are the reviews from mud magic that piqued my interest.

I have been trying to find a good, Christianity-themed MUD for some time
now, and from the name I thought this might be what I was looking for.
Imagine my shock when I finish the character creation and enter the world,
only to see someone throw a rock at Jesus for a quest! It only went downhill
from there, with the game immediately directing me to go murder helpless
orphans for money, and other players encouraging me to violate the corpses
after doing so. Needless to say, I quit playing immediately. I strongly
suggest you avoid this MOO.
http://www.mudmagic.com/listings/game/1132/board/2014/2014.html
----------------------------
I've been a dedicated disciple of our great father Allah for many years. When I
connected, I was disturbed that they had the heretic Jesus in the MUD! I
immediately stoned him and got what seemed to be a reward, thank
goodness. After wandering around a while, I found some jihadists like myself
who then proceeded to wage suicide attacks against the infidels. After my
brothers had perished, I retreated to what I had figured was a nearby town,
but it ended up being a nightmare. Scientologists appeared out of what
seemed thin air and began to attack me. I was near death, so I praised Allah
as the cord on my prayer-vest went off.

I highly recommend you stay away from this spawn of Satan.
http://www.mudmagic.com/listings/game/1132/board/2017/2017.html
----------------------------
Intro promo:
HellMOO is a fascinating "future history" of post-apocalyptic 22nd Century
California. Corporations, having taken over, have neigh-perfected cloning
technology to repopulate the world. They need consumers for their products,
after all.

The players start as teenagers emerging from their fallout shelter, naked and
with few resources. One of the first quests available is to kill orphans that
have gone rabid from neglect. The killed orphans will be cloned in perfect
health again, and the player gets paid by the nun running the orphanage for
each rabid child he puts down....... (cut short)
http://www.mudmagic.com/listings/game/1132/board/2015/2015.html
----------------------------


So it seems as you start out as a teenager and are treated to various sick and
twisted (albet maybe fun depending on your perception) "activities".



ps. If anyone from hell moo sees this tread Create a Character by any name
and enter my email for the password to be sent to. firewall_(at)hotmail.com

Thanks

Coincidentally I am listening now to Javelin's latest
podcast ( see community.pennmush.org, I mirror
them at http://lpmuds.net/files/tinytalk/ ) which
involves some talk about bible stuff in mushes.

And it occurs to me that a mud faithfully based on the
xian Bible could be just as objectionable to
our contemporary morality as one that is intentionally
trying to outrage the conscience. For example,
killing your own son because you hear a command from
god nobody else does? Owning slaves? Lot's daughters?
Casting "slay first born male"? The list goes on
and these are just the "good guys".

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net



(Comment added by cratylus on Thu Sep 6 13:01:57 2007)

Speaking of alternate morality: http://lpmuds.net/obiwan_shocked.jpg

Is nobody worried about violating the big guy's copyright?

Okay, now to get serious for a second... While I've always preferred to keep my own characters firmly on the light & fluffy side, and more often than not they've served the sole intensive purpose of being comic relief, I don't think any setting is quite complete without at least a few aspects that are dark enough to at least mildly disturb the average player.

I'm not speaking for or against anything in particular here, but without a dark underbelly to the theme, the 'good guys' don't really serve a purpose, and the 'bad guys' are usually restricted to just being generic asshats. Which is why, at least, I think, theft and murder are so 'welcome' on MUDs. Of course, they're a little too common to have any real impact, so the only 'villains' I've come across in my MUDding career that were any fun to oppose were of the manipulative type.

I think I got sidetracked a little too much, so this post is probably useless. Ah well...

But suppose that someone were to set up an imaginary online society which had a very different sexual morality from our own, including a belief (in common with the beliefs of a great many real-life human societies) that it is perfectly reasonable for a girl to have sex at the age of 12; and suppose that players were permitted to roleplay sexual encounters between adult characters and child characters (with all child characters played by adult players).

Such a MUD would, I suspect, be greeted with almost universal revulsion and condemnation. Perhaps I'm wrong; but assuming I'm right, why is it that in-MUD murder doesn't trouble people in the slightest, while in-MUD consensual intergenerational sex would result in the MUD instantly ceasing to exist and the MUD admin facing anything from prosecution to having his house burned down with him in it?

It's already been done, and not only is it not reviled and condemned, but the game is one of the bigger ones out there. (Well it might be both, but it's still big.) :)

Shangrila at shangrila.mushpark.com 9999. And such "age play" is disturbingly popular.

Hrm...So many good points have been brought up, I especially found a lot of the stuff Crat has said quite interesting.

I hate to pick on one specific point, but I found this quote by KitKat kind of interesting:

> In our society, the 12 or 13 year old would never be considered an
> adult so the perception is always going to be that the girl or boy was unable
> to give consent.

It brings up a lot of the various hypocrisy of society. We try to 'protect' the underage children, but it wasn't that long ago a child of 12/13 would have been wed and starting their own family.

We are willing to say that the individuals are old enough to go to war (for the minors of the 18/19 range) and die but not drink alcohol and in some cases even smoke cigarettes.

Yet we are more than willing to charge minors for sexual assault and as adults for something as simple as slapping somebody's 'rear-end'.

I think far too many people have taken it upon themselves to become the enforcers of other people's moralities and these new standards seem to fail far too often.

It's already been done...
Shangrila

Yep.

It brings up a lot of the various hypocrisy of society. We try to 'protect' the underage children, but it wasn't that long ago a child of 12/13 would have been wed and starting their own family.

No not really. At least not in my readings of history. Just a couple of examples... Shakespeare's Juliet was an unusually young 14 (for Elizabethan times) and the youngest wife among Biblical characters, Ruth, was also 14. The common age of marriage for women in Europe throughout medieval times was 16, for men it was much higher, mid-20's, than even today.


(Comment added by Tyche on Fri Sep 7 0:06:27 2007)

Of course there was Mohamet and his six year old bride.

Ancient Egypt had some really young marriages (a few brides we know of
were 8 years old, and quite a few others were 12-14.)

A lot of those were both dynastic and incestuous, though. I can't really think
of any cultural where it was routine for 12 year olds to get married and start
a family. It seems to be either an exception to the rule, or limited to political
necessity. A historian I am not, though.

16 year olds and such getting married doesn't really bother me (at least, in a
moral sense)...what I find detestable, personally, are these fashion shows
where they dress 14 year olds up as some sort of adult sexual ideal to lust
after. And don't even get me started on the beauty pageants these parents
force their six year olds to go to...or Brittney Spears...or Christina Aguilera...

Best stop myself before I get really wound up. =)

-Kuros

Tyche:
> No not really. At least not in my readings of history. Just a couple of examples... Shakespeare's Juliet was an
> unusually young 14 (for Elizabethan times) and the youngest wife among Biblical characters, Ruth, was also
> 14. The common age of marriage for women in Europe throughout medieval times was 16, for men it was much
> higher, mid-20's, than even today.

There actually wasn't a Europe-wide consensus on this. In Britain, for example, people in Elizabethan times tended to get married in their early 20s - marriage wasn't connected to sexual maturity, but to the ability to achieve economic independence. In Italy, on the other hand, marriage at the age of 12 was quite commonplace.

This wasn't purely an Elizabethan issue, either - it was still not at all shocking for Italian girls to be married at 12 as recently as Victorian times.

If you look outside Europe you find that the Western perception of children being entirely non-sexual creatures is by no means universal. The Muria tribe in India, for example, were famous for their "Gotul" (or "Gothul") which was a sort of communal dormitory for the children of the tribe where they lived almost entirely separate from the adults. Between the children (although admittedly not between children and adults) sexual behaviour and indeed high levels of promiscuity were strongly encouraged; and this is talking about children as young as 8 or 9 right up till their late teens.

(Oddly, once leaving the Gotul, the Muria marry for life and become strictly monogamous).

The Sambia people of New Guinea had (and, to a degree, still have) a system where boys from the ages of about 7 and 13 are expected to routinely fellate and suck semen from older boys (aged 14 to 18) in order to build up their strength and become men.

At about the age of 18 the boys are married, with their partners typically being 14 or 15 years old. The married couples are forbidden from having coital sex until after the girls start to menstruate until after the girls start to menstruate (which is typically not till they are 18). In the mean time, the wives perform oral sex on their husbands, who also still make use of younger boys. Following the wife's first period (which indicates that her strength has been sufficiently built-up by all the semen she has swallowed to make her fertile) the married couple switches to coitus, and the husband no longer has anything to do with boys.

All in all, there isn't a great deal of consensus between cultures about the issue.

This wasn't purely an Elizabethan issue, either - it was still not at all shocking for Italian girls to be married at 12 as recently as Victorian times.

Well... no not Italian per se but more accurately Sicilian.

If you look outside Europe...

Sure but the poster's general point I was responding to was that there is some sort of modern vs. historical western cultural hypocrisy on the issue.


(Comment added by Tyche on Fri Sep 7 7:10:16 2007)

...until after the girls start to menstruate (which is typically not till they are 18)

That's a rare trait among human females. Something genetic? Maybe it's something in the diet of these semen drinking tribe?

> No not really. At least not in my readings of history. Just a couple of examples...
> Shakespeare's Juliet was an unusually young 14 (for Elizabethan times) and
> the youngest wife among Biblical characters, Ruth, was also 14. The common age of
> marriage for women in Europe throughout medieval times was 16, for men it was much
> higher, mid-20's, than even today.

While Wikipedia is far from a completely reliable source, I found the following at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent:


Social (and the resulting legal) attitudes toward the appropriate age of consent have drifted upwards in modern times; while ages from 10 through to 13 were typically acceptable in the mid-Nineteenth Century[1] , 15 through to 18 had become the norm in many countries by the end of the Twentieth Century.


I also find it slightly strange you picked examples from literature.

Mortality rate rises, more children around, children are coddled, maturity comes slower when at all, And there's no need to grab the first person you see and marry them just so you know name continues.


Yeah, I'm just waking up, so if that makes sense only to me, I won't be surprised.

*It brings up a lot of the various hypocrisy of society. We try to 'protect' the underage children, but it wasn't that long ago a child of 12/13 would have been wed and starting their own family*

Maybe instead of crying hypocrisy you should look at the infant mortality rates and the death-in-childbirth rates of those time periods. The reasons to marry your daughters off early just don't exist in most of our modern society anymore. As someome who can now be married and/or pregnant by choice, instead of by default I appreciate the changes in society.

Kitkat -

> Maybe instead of crying hypocrisy you should look at the infant mortality rates
> and the death-in-childbirth rates of those time periods. The reasons to marry your
> daughters off early just don't exist in most of our modern society anymore. As
> someome who can now be married and/or pregnant by choice, instead of by default
> I appreciate the changes in society.

While you're at it, name me one other species on this planet that places 'rules' on when/how somebody can engage in sex and procreate.

"While you're at it, name me one other species on this planet that places 'rules' on when/how somebody can engage in sex and procreate."

First, let me say I'm not one of these Moral Majority
types. I'm a fan of consenting adults doing their thing.

However. I suspect that rules about where your
bits go are not necessarily based on hypocrisy. Let
me explain.

Kitkat brings up the excellent point that in some
circumstances, it is to a society's advantage to
promote some kinds of sexual behavior, and discourage
others. In a society with more men than women (perhaps
too many girl children left outside the walls?), it
may simply make sense to acknowledge and support
man love as a kind of inevitable outlet.

On the other hand, in a nation under frequent attack,
encouraging maximum birthrate seems logical and
necessary...such than wasting seed is tantamount
to treason.

You let these habits of mind percolate a few hundred
or thousand years, and all we're left with is the
irrational partisanship of what is good sex and what is
bad sex, divorced from the reality that fostered
this prejudice.

Since exposing children to sexual attention is
something they do not need to be healthy members of
society, and since it can introduce mental problems,
and since they can't reproduce anyway, I think
we've just learned over generations not to mess
with them, and become highly emotional over the issue.

People tend to want to think the same way about
as many things as possible, and I think that this
sense of total justification when thinking about
children being protected winds up getting projected
on other kinds of sex, so that just because you don't
like it, it now is linked in your mind with
"abomination".

The USA is a special case of this, because the original
settlers were a bunch of grim faced ascetics happy to
kill each other for the crime of having had fun. To
this day I can't buy a sixpack of beer on Sunday,
because of this legacy of puritanism.

You add this mortal fear that someone somewhere is
enjoying themselves to this primitive prejudice
about what Right Sex is, and you have a nasty mix of
people compelled to express one thing with their mouths,
but helpless to avoid expressing something else
with other parts.

I'm not sure what we're left with here is
necessarily "hypocrisy" because I'm not sure we
can help it. I think it's a kind of pathological
self-delusion.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

"While you're at it, name me one other species on this planet that places 'rules' on when/how somebody can engage in sex and procreate."

Hmmm...Meercats and wolves come to mind. ;)

Seriously though, you must have slept thru Anthro 101...

Other species don't become physically sexually mature until it is actually safe to reproduce. Humans are not so lucky. Walking upright is a nifty thing, but it does cause some reproductive issues. Add to that a typical modern western diet and you have progressively earlier onset puberty and progressively less safe ages where pregnancy is possible.

Kitkat -

"Other species don't become physically sexually mature until it is actually safe to reproduce. Humans are not so lucky. "

Unfortunately, I think that the kind of games that
would permit age play would not be especially
picky about puberty.

It should be noted also that animals engaging
in, uh, nontraditional sexual behavior are
usually doing it with outcomes to their advantage
*in addition to* their urge-gratification.

I'll have to doublecheck, but the last time I read
on this sort of thing it was male dolphins forcing
dominance on each other, and some small female
critters establishing whose job it is to stay
home and whose job it is to go out, this sort of thing.

Not arguing with anyone, btw. Hope I'm not
coming off as argumentative. Just mentioning that
we might be starting to talk apples and oranges.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

"Unfortunately, I think that the kind of games that
would permit age play would not be especially
picky about puberty."

True. We are winding back and forth between several different isses. Age roleplay like the original poster is talking about is never going to produce actual diseases, babies, or other real world probelsm so my view is probably not a good argument against that kind of a mud. It leaves me with 'but that rp is creepy and icky" which may be how I feel but again, my feelings alone are not a valid argument.

Kitkat - wishes that 'just because' was an acceptable point -

I also find it slightly strange you picked examples from literature.

What's wikipedia? At least I pick good literature.

While you're at it, name me one other species on this planet that places 'rules' on when/how somebody can engage in sex and procreate.

Hobbitses. Even though one ought not leave one's children or lawn gnomes alone with hobbitses, lest they mistake them for other hobbitses, they do seem to have some 'rules' regarding sex and procreation. This is somewhat surprising to me considering they are soulless creatures created in the pale image of man.

"Hobbitses. Even though one ought not leave one's children or lawn gnomes alone with hobbitses, lest they mistake them for other hobbitses, they do seem to have some 'rules' regarding sex and procreation. This is somewhat surprising to me considering they are soulless creatures created in the pale image of man."

You don't find the Hobbit practice of 'Second Breakfast' to be a stunning example of higher social consciousness? ;)

Kitkat - off to have 'first lunch' -

Jindrak:
> While you're at it, name me one other species on this
> planet that places 'rules' on when/how somebody can
> engage in sex and procreate.

Almost all animal species do. To take a random example, red deer. Various local males compete with each other in contests of strength and endurance. The one that is the strongest and defeats all the others mates with all of the available females, and none of the other males are allowed to mate at all. Those are the rules.


(Comment added by shasarak on Fri Sep 7 14:30:49 2007)

Or, there are many species of bird that mate for life. That's another rule: lifelong monogamy.

Shasarak:
> ...until after the girls start to menstruate (which is
> typically not till they are 18)

Tyche:
> That's a rare trait among human females. Something
> genetic? Maybe it's something in the diet of these semen
> drinking tribe?

Actually that's not unusual for humans living in stone-age conditions. (This is a tribe from the jungles of New Guinea we're talking about). In fact, if you go back only a couple of centuries, British girls were typically having their first period at 16. It's odd to reflect that the Italian girls getting married at the age of 12 in Elizabethan times would have been incapable of bearing children till several years after that. Clearly marriage and sex were not regarded as an exclusively post-pubescent phenomenon back then.

Pregnant 12-year-olds are a uniquely modern problem.

Just a thought about the original question, and sorry for coming in late, but...

Maybe the reason age play is frowned on so heavily is because there is no way to tell who is running the char. It might be a 40-year-old man behind the innocent 12-year-old character, or it might actually be an innocent 12-year-old.

Mud murder isn't shocking because there's no way you will actually have murdered someone at the end of the day, but sexual role play with an unknown person on the other end may actually be sexual role play with a minor.

Mind you I am speaking as one who had never heard the term "age play" before this thread, so feel free to tell me if I'm way off base :)