VR Devs Add Shield to Protect Against Virtual Harassment

When I wrote about reports of virtual harassment of women in VR last Tuesday, it garnered snarky responses from some male readers as below, eerily similar to comments which swarmed social media when the original blog post went up:

[I]t is actually ludicrous. Of course she hung around like the big attention whore she is thinking, wow I'm going to blog about this for sure!!!

Which is not a surprising reaction, because many men have been socialized to disregard a woman's perspective, especially on this subject. (See: This year's Presidential election.) Fortunately, as Kotaku's Cecilia D'Anastasio reports, the actual (and male) developers are not disregarding these reports, and adding virtual barriers to protect users from future harassment:

Schenker and Staton made an adjustment that converted their so-called “personal bubble” into a “superpower” that players can switch on and off. They’re calling it a “power gesture.” When players put their hands together, pull both Vive triggers and pull their hands apart, they can now emanate a force field that “dissolv[es] any nearby player from view, at least from your perspective.” You can’t see them and they can’t see you. It’s a pro-active approach to preventing sexual harassment in VR, which has been generating buzz among women trying out the new virtual worlds this technology has to offer. Feeling violated in an escapist space is jarring, since these worlds are intended for enjoyment and fun. When some players feel the harsher aspects of real life bleeding through, it can be damaging—both to their play experience and welfare. Belamire [the original blog writer] said she felt unsettled for a week after the incident.

That's a good first step, though as Cecilia notes, "VR developers who are working to meet the challenge of sexual harassment are, essentially, erasing the appearance of it." Appearances are important, but they structural problems beneath them don't easily go away.

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Comments

[madeline blackbart]

To be fair I'm not surprised the article got the comments it did. I think it's unfair to act like the snarky comments were surprising or entirely unwarranted. I think a lot of men (at least from what I've seen)feel attacked because the male gamer populous is continuously characterized as "perverts who sexual harass women" by a lot of articles. They're also dismissed a lot anytime they complain about this portrayal. I think we need to take a step back and realize it's a small number of people who sexually harass others online and it's most certainly not ONLY men who do it. It's almost certainly going to be near impossible to approach this subject unless we collectively make a shift toward fixing issues rather then just point fingers.
This article itself comes off as point fingers. Almost like a "Oh these horrible men are at it again". I almost feel like you cherry picked the worst comment there. It's counter productive to do that in my opinion It's just going to start more arguments and widen the divide more.

[madeline blackbart]

To be fair I'm not surprised the article got the comments it did. I think it's unfair to act like the snarky comments were surprising or entirely unwarranted. I think a lot of men (at least from what I've seen)feel attacked because the male gamer populous is continuously characterized as "perverts who sexual harass women" by a lot of articles. They're also dismissed a lot anytime they complain about this portrayal. I think we need to take a step back and realize it's a small number of people who sexually harass others online and it's most certainly not ONLY men who do it. It's almost certainly going to be near impossible to approach this subject unless we collectively make a shift toward fixing issues rather then just point fingers.
This article itself comes off as point fingers. Almost like a "Oh these horrible men are at it again". I almost feel like you cherry picked the worst comment there. It's counter productive to do that in my opinion It's just going to start more arguments and widen the divide more.

[JohnC]

I amplify everything madeline said about the article
If something I had posted was singled out and called snarky, even if it was, I would not be a happy bunny.
The point I tried to make in my various posts is that this social problem will not be solved in VR, no more than it can ever really be solved in RL society. What is offered by the company above mentioned is not much more than the Block and mute options in SL. These are of course absolute basic necessities. But they are no more solutions to the actual problem than Mexican border walls are to immigration, or Zaphod Beeblebrox shades were to the elimination of danger
“They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.”

[sirhc deSantis]

'"made an adjustment that converted their so-called “personal bubble” into a “superpower”'

is that on the same lines as making WonderWoman a UN honorary ambassador?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/21/wonder-woman-un-ambassador-staff-protest

PR Bullshit at the max...

And terribly sorry JohnC but the old SL Mute is the answer. Its the single shared power. The one that All have. How people are socialised and 'pressured' because of peer shite to not use it is something that at 52 and 3 quarters I no longer care about.

[JohnC]

I didn't say Mute didn't work. for me it worked fine, and killed dead many wannabe griefers. I just said that it did not make crazy people sane, which is what is kind of implied when people talk about applying social value systems to Virtual worlds. In VR the hard options work best. Someone gives you grief, you nuke them. The application of the primitive.

[Cell]

So, in other words, they're adding basic block/mute functionality? Now all people have to do is use it, instead of choosing to still engage with toxicity, followed by filing an abuse report on the person they didn't block.