Consent should matter in SL
Opal Velvet
Edit: to any Linden Lab staff reading this -- this post is a continuation of support ticket #2471863. You can go there to see more information.
I want to start off by saying that I am a very sex and kink positive person both in SL and RL. Sexuality can be explored in many ways and platforms, and I support any safe and healthy ways that adults wish to do so. I am not interested in having these things removed from SL, or in punishing others for seeking them out. My concern here is about consent, so I wanted to make sure to establish that arguing
against
the sexual side of SL, and arguing for
consent are two separate things.I've been in SL a long time, and some time ago, I think before COVID, things like nudity, fetishwear, sexual attachments, sexual animations and sounds, and other sexual or kinky things were usually confined to the appropriate places where everyone was able to consent. In sex-focused locations, kink regions with rules allowing for such things, and so on. These boundaries have since eroded, and for me and many other people I've spoken to, it has made it very difficult to exist in SL unless we completely seclude ourselves to desolate places. In popular shopping events, fantasy sims, performance/music events, art exhibitions, sandboxes, various G-rated sims, and beyond -- there has been an influx of people in various states of undress, with sexual attachments, doing sexual things in public and non-sexual spaces where no one is able to consent. I have been flashed, sexually harassed, had people touch me inappropriately without invitation (spanking, groping, etc.), and even had a friend of a friend a while back attempt to sexually assault me after my friends left the region, because the guy would not hear me saying no to his advances. I report people to region management and to LL when these things happen, but the behaviors do not stop. Sims and parcels rarely have easily visible rules against such behaviors, and even if they do have rules, they are often not enforced. Or if they are enforced at all, it isn't enough. The management struggle to handle the amount of reports coming in about the inappropriate behaviors in their spaces, so they often get frustrated and wind up doing nothing. And so the abuse continues.
Lately I have been looking for G-rated sims as a means to avoid these problems, but that isn't working. When I search for ONLY G-rated sims via the search function in-world, M and A sims also show up in the list, with very few actual G-rated sims visible. When I go to the few G-rated sims listed, there seems to be more nudity and sexual behaviors happening in those places than almost anywhere else. Female avatars with nipples/areola and/or genitalia visible, and/or male avatars with erections, people spanking eachother, dragging kink partners around on leashes in public, having sex, masturbating, saying gross things to me in my DMs, etc. I, many friends, and others I've spoken to are utterly exhausted. We don't know what to do or where to go in order to be social, to share our creations, to interact with other peoples' creations, or even to simply exist without having our consent routinely broken by people who face no consequences for their rapey actions. Things that would land people in prison IRL seem to be perfectly acceptable in SL now.
Being in the BDSM community for well over a decade now has taught me a lot about consent, and when it is or is not being given or respected. This issue in SL has become so pervasive that it has even affected the market for things like clothing. For womenswear, it has become increasingly difficult to find clothes that cover your nipples, genitalia, and butt completely. This massively over-sexualized world and community has become an ouroboros of abuse, lack of boundaries, and consent-breaking behaviors that is constantly reinforcing itself and telling everyone who tries to refuse it that they should just shut up and get over it. I don't want to do that, and I would like to have at least some nice spaces in SL that I and my friends can enjoy without being flashed, harassed, or assaulted.
I'm very much hoping that the folks at LL can help come up with something to deal with this problem that is affecting so many of us. Please help keep us safe from these abusive people who lack boundaries and do not care about consent. Direct them to the places they belong, educate them on consent, and help us find and maintain spaces where these behaviors are not tolerated. We don't want to take away from anyone's fun, we only want our consent to be respected. If we are not opting to seek out nudity and sexual activity, it should not be forced on us everywhere we go.
Thanks for taking the time to read my concern, and please let me know if you have any resources or advice to help me and others like me find places where we can feel safe without having to isolate ourselves.
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Beatrice Voxel
Whenever there's a call for more 'social rules enforcement' I have to ask, how would this be done? What measures would LL have to implement beyond what's already in place, and how would those measures affect everyone else?
This is me speaking from a very adult, kink-positive mindset. I'm VERY familiar with the idea of not condemning someone else's kink, as long as they are behaving appropriately in a given space (leashing your girlfriend on the subway might be exciting for you, but to all of the other passengers, it's uncomfortable as their consent to be involved has not been asked.)
So, with the above firmly in mind, as long as people are making personal choices about their own sexual expression, LL should stay out of it. When those decisions start to affect the rest of the Second Life public sphere, then and only then should there be any kind of overarching governance.
Currently, if someone's 'behaving badly' in General or Moderate spaces, they can be asked to leave, ejected by land managers, or AR'd, in increasing order of severity. I do not believe that we need "morality cops" patrolling General or Moderate regions at this time, and if we did, there's the question of 'who would pay for them' as I don't think LL would task Moles to do this.
Anna Timmerman
The tools to fix your problem in your feedback are already there: you block and derender, takes 2 seconds, and they are forever gone from your SL.
LL can not get involved every time you get offended, use the tools! They work!
Deb Mercury
At the adult hub, I prioritize consent as a non-negotiable standard; when a refusal is given, interaction must cease immediately. However, I have experienced persistent violations where users disregard my boundaries, safe words, and explicit 'no's. This has resulted in real-world harassment, including demands for personal information and a feeling of coercion. Blocking these users proves ineffective, as they frequently return via alternate accounts to continue their abuse and target others within my network.
Furthermore, mentorship is scarce, and when reported, these incidents are often dismissed as 'cultural norms.' This is incorrect; such behavior constitutes abuse and harassment. Regardless of community customs, Second Life operates under United States jurisdiction, and these actions are legally unacceptable. Additionally, the platform’s infrastructure is failing: portals are non-functional, and the help section is buried and difficult to locate. With an influx of new users requiring assistance, the current environment is chaotic and unsafe. Immediate intervention and structural reform are required.
Opal Velvet
Deb Mercury I am saddened to hear that these things have happened to you too, and I think you're exactly right. As I said in another comment somewhere below, the fish rots from the head down. LL sets the tone for how things go in SL, and they must be accountable when abuses like this are continuing to happen. I hope LL are following this post and discussing what to do about it. I also hope they are noticing the amount of people who hear us saying we're being flashed, harassed, and abused, and choosing to victim blame by telling us what WE can do to prevent or respond to these things. Other people abusing us is not our responsibility.
I wish us both luck, and I hope change will come swiftly so that we can feel safe again.
NaluriMurai Lust
I understand yours, and your supporters in this petition/request's concerns. As someone who has been a sexual deviant in SL since time immemorial, I've been in an ambigious consent area on both sides of the fence and yes - giving, I have felt hesitation even though I have had prior sexual encounters or discussion with someone - and receiving, where I both want to satisfy my partner, but they're starting to rub me a bit of a wrong way.
That being said - in SL, you have much more authority and autonomy over your experience than in RL. Direct sexual assault can be avoided by restricting RLV to people you trust, not sitting in public spaces on lewd furniture, and blocking and/or derendering (on TPVs) people who refuse to cease and desist when requested, are harassing you or are flashing you - and lock down or refrain from wearing strippable clothes or slappers, spankers and the sort.
Consent does matter, make no mistake. And I'm sorry you feel this way. But sadly Linden Governance is very, very ineffective in enforcing the TOS. This is an issue that goes beyond sexual consent and into multivarious domains. The first step towards resolving this, is demanding Governance do better, period - especially when people face incessant stalkers, are defrauded of L$, and abuse the systems in place to persist in harassing and even disseminating disturbing material to unconsenting parties.
MMarti Benelli
Actually I understand your frustration, but I have been SL for almost 20 years. I have not had these experiences you speak of. I have been in many different sims over the years from G - A and still have not had anyone touch me without consent. I am partnered and run a club in SL, I'm not sure where you're going but you admit to being active BDSM and sometimes, I am too, and still have not had your experiences.
Toothless Draegonne
This is a digital medium, and not a physical presence. There are no "vulnerable" classes of people here. You all have the ability to remove abusable items. You all have the ability to choose items with whitelists and blacklists. Even exploiting bugs in products can be dealt with by not using the product in public.
You have the ability to enforce consent already. Even the most powerful pushcannons and orbiters can do nothing against sitting down and rooting yourself like an anchor to the floor, and dumb particle cannons and graphical shenanigans can at worst be dealt with by teleporting out. Everyone has the power to control their own experience, and there really is very little the lab needs to do. Learn the tools and use them. And as a last resort, ARs for if everything else fails.
Anne Forbes
LL can enforce region ratings and ToS violations, but they don’t control what attachments residents choose to wear or what scripts you personally allow on your avatar. If you’re wearing a spanker or allowing physics interactions, that’s something you can disable in your own settings.
A lot of what you’re describing falls under region moderation rather than platform governance. LL can’t police fashion choices or adult attachments across the grid.
Iskrin Nightfire
Thinking a little more about a workable solution to the 'aesthetic' issue, I wonder whether content creators could be required to give a maturity rating to attachments and clothing. Then in a user's personal settings they could select a safe-mode such that avatars wearing items tagged M or A cause the user wearing them to be automatically de-rendered or rendered as clouds for the user with the safe-mode setting on.
The marketplace already requires maturity ratings on listings, so the framework partially exists. Of course it's sort of shutting the gate after the horse has bolted given the volume of existing unrated content, but it would be an approach to solving the issue of trying to police people's appearance in a way that doesn't limit freedom of expression, and would put a tool in users' hands to experience SL according to their own content preferences without requiring anyone else to change how they present themselves.
Saphire Sweetwater
Iskrin Nightfire The problem I see with this idea is mesh body creators would likely need to mark bodies as Adult, given they display basic nudity/genitalia, which means anybody wearing a popular mesh body would be forced to be derendered/clouded as an unintended side effect. Or people with the adult attachments (such as genitals) that are hidden perhaps via HUD but would still register as being worn by the system.
Iskrin Nightfire
It is really awful that you (and so many users) have experienced harassing messages, unwanted touching, and people who won't take no for an answer. LL should be doing more when we report these things, and I agree the reporting system is broken.
As others have said, we're not completely powerless to protect ourselves, but it's also not right for the system to place the burden primarily on us to use tools with limited efficacy. The whole system could and should be better at protecting us from people mis-using it to harass, even though that could be hard to do without impinging on the freedom of users who are behaving appropriately. It clearly isn't a priority for LL to work on this.
I also agree that sim ratings should be enforced by sim owners, especially since they set the rating themselves. Repeated lack of enforcement should result in losing the G rating. And the search bug should be fixed.
Where I disagree is that you seem to group clear instances of harassment together with people making clothing or behaviour choices you don't like. These are very different things. Seeing something you didn't want to see on screen can be uncomfortable, but it is different from behaviour intended to harass you. How other people present their avatars in a shared space isn't quite the same as having your consent violated, and I think treating it as though it is diminishes the actual harassment and abuse you also cite.
I find your argument strongest when you focus on specific, fixable problems: broken reporting system, unenforced ratings, search bug, lack of consequences for targeted harassment. Those are things LL could act on as the system owner, but they don't seem to want to.
When the framing expands to include all unwanted encounters with sexuality as consent violations, it becomes a much harder ask and risks giving LL an excuse to treat this as an unsolvable cultural problem rather than a set of specific failures they could address.
As an aside, I strongly disagreed with the response from someone playing a child avatar. My reading was that because they choose to play a child, all adults around them should comply with that fantasy and behave as though they
are
a child, rather than a grown adult at a computer. Enforcing that principle would hugely curtail the freedom of other adults in the space in a way that simply doesn't reflect reality.Iskrin Nightfire
Edit to add: Having re-read the child avatar point from Caelan, I want to acknowledge that their actual point was narrower than I (mis)characterised it above. I realise they're saying G-rated sims should be G-rated, which is something I do agree with and I apologise for the aside above. I wanted to add this edit/comment rather than delete the aside to own my mistake.
Caelan Whimsy
Iskrin Nightfire Thank you, I appreciate your catching yourself. :) While it would be nice not to see this kind of stuff
anywhere
on the grid, if I'm outside of an area specifically made for child avatars I know it's not my place to say anything. Derendering and muting are super handy tools for when I'm out exploring.Zanya Resident
Whenever a new feature is requested, the first thing any dev should consider is, "How can this be used to harass other users?", and the answer here is very simple.
Someone, or a group of someones who decided they didn't like the LGBTQ, BIPOC, or whatever support in your profile, could de-render your clothing, claim you are "nude in a public space" or "nude around underage avatars", and get you banned.
Is that what you want? Because I guarantee you that's what WILL happen.
SL is janky. Always has been. When I joined, every time you logged in you were rolling a set of dice and hoping you weren't the only person who could see your clothes, and mesh hasn't made things much easier and very often I TP into somewhere at least a few seconds before my dress. It happens. If you find a nude body to be shameful and upsetting, the question you should ask yourself is, "Why?", and the second question you should ask yourself is, "Why should I make it everyone-else's problem?"
As an aside, I think what you call "consent" is actually a want to dictate control over other people's behavior and you're disguising it in more agreeable terms. As someone who's also been in the community for a decade-and-a-half, I've seen it before. Very often, in fact, and I think your relationship with BDSM and "consent" is not a healthy one.
Iskrin Nightfire
Zanya Resident Yes! There's an incredible amount of judgement in this thread. Remarkable conflation of actual examples of harassment and abuse that should be properly dealt with, and very personal aesthetic or behavioural disagreements with how some people present or comport themselves in the virtual space... but asking that both be treated as abuse and policed the same.
Iskrin Nightfire
Thinking about it more, your point about enforcement tools being weaponized is really really important. If the system allows users to report others based on how their avatar looks, that system will be used to target people for reasons that have nothing to do with protecting anyone. False abuse reports are already a problem in SL. More tools for policing appearance would make it worse, and the people most likely to be targeted are the ones who already catch the most grief.
This ties into what I think is the core issue with some of the framing in this thread and OP's post and that you rightly point out: "I didn't consent to see your avatar dressed that way" is not a consent issue. Applying the language of consent to that turns a personal preference into a demand that others change how they appear to accommodate you. And when you build enforcement around that kind of demand, as you point out, it won't be applied fairly.
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