Rape...

[joo]

I think generally women in Cantr have always been treated as more or less equal to men, even from the most primitive societies, because the only difference is a name. They both have the same chances of being strong or good fighters, so there's no signal to men that woman are vulnerable or in some cases even worth the effort to rape. So in this sense, those who do rape are simply viewed as people who assault - do something wrong to - violate - another person, rather than imposing their masculinity on somebody in order to assert their domination and satiate their primal urges.

Another factor could be that rape is so stigmatised in today's society that players, on some level, have a knee-jerk reaction which causes their characters to be convinced that it's wrong, whatever the circumstances. Characters who've been assaulted might act with indignation and anger and immediately call out the rapist, instead of the more realistic case of experiencing deep shame, violation, hopelessness, fear, etc, in which case they should be more likely to stay silent about the abuse - especially if they know the rapist and he/she is still around them.

I don't claim to know anything significant on the subject, but those are my thoughts and observations.

[frenchfisher]

Okay, people, here we go:

Rape was pretty common in hunter-gatherer societies. It was seen as a normal part of war, basically (take their wives 'n' make babies!). But that didn't mean that people weren't extremely outraged when it happened to their people. In fact, lots of big battles started because some random male warrior came and "stole" a woman from an opposing camp—either through seduction (in which case that second tribe is losing an opportunity to make an alliance or something) or through good ol' kidnapping. Our evidence about this comes from the few hunter-gatherer societies left on Earth, especially the Yanomamö.

The problem with Cantr, then, isn't that rape is thought of as horrid (it has been, almost universally though not without hypocrisy), but that the family and friend associations that cause the retaliation that almost inevitably happens in game simply don't exist or aren't used as a reason to motivate the retaliation. Since the "family" hardly exists as a unit, that's basically out of the equation, even though it's crucial IRL. Friend relationships (as well as love), though, absolutely should be motivation enough to strike back; reciprocity practically demands it. But, "unfortunately", in Cantr even strangers rally to the defense of a raped person, even when they don't have any reason to think that their soon-to-be allies will care about their help!

Also, joo's post is very insightful. I won't get into what cognitive scientists think motivate rape—that's a discussion that gets way beyond what this thread should be about. But both of their (his?) points are good.

[El_Skwidd]

Knee-jerk is exactly the adjective I would use to describe so many such reactions in Cantr. I've used the word homogeneous to describe Cantr's morality, but lately I've been eating my words as more and more diverse characters start to surface. So, kudos to you guys for playing interesting characters.

But both of their (his?) points are good.

I'm pretty sure joo is a dude, or his pictures are a very convincing forgery.

[playerslayer666]

my character Exile raped someone. can't remember her name cause i can't get into cantr for some damn reason. i think now they are in love.