Predators and Roleplaying Communities

[Aria]

@Wizz said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

Very few people who did not grow up as girls are fully aware of this problem.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail as I find it honestly upsetting to remember, but I did want to say that both my own experiences with older players who knew sexually explicit discussion/roleplaying with me was not appropriate given my age – which I openly admitted to anyone I regularly RPed with – were with women, or at least players that presented as women.

I am not trying to dispute ratios or anything like that, but I did feel like I should represent the fact that men typically vastly underreport sexual abuse in RL and it’s likely the case in the hobby as well.

I shouldn’t need to say this, but…

Yes, I can vouch that this is 100% true. On more than one occassion, teenage me offered to play the role of “weirdly territorial girlfriend” for guys I knew. It wasn’t a good way to handle it, but teenagers. We didn’t exactly have much in the way of appropriate skillsets for addressing the real problem.

[junipersky]

My experience was not Mu*, but was on a government simulation forum. That is about as far as I would like to go.

[DrQuinn]

Let’s not overlook the fact that much of the media that we roleplay about and take in at very young ages makes this process a lot easier for those people that want to exploit others. If he’s* troubled, you just need to love him enough. If he’s treating you badly just stick it out and in the end it will all be worth it. If he’s being possessive and jealous that just means he LOVES you SO MUCH and you mean SO MUCH TO HIM.

We’re pretty careful with what my oldest takes in. She’s still in single digits and expressed shyly to me the other day that she really likes the villain we’re watching in a cartoon series. And I was immediately like IF ANYONE EVER MAKES YOU FEEL LESS THAN OR INSULTS YOU YOU SHOULD NOT LIKE THEM OMG NO! It’s not okay for someone to tease you because they like you! Or pull your hair or punch you or pinch you ANYONE THAT DOES THAT IS NOT WORTH YOUR TIME.

Spoiler

spoiler
My first real boyfriend was incredibly abusive in all ways, shapes, and forms. He was a serial abuser that left a long string of very smart, capable women absolutely crushed in his path. And I stayed for way too long because I didn’t want to see myself as a victim, because tv shows and movies and books had taught me that if I just loved him ENOUGH he’d stop being an asshole and come around to see how great I was and how great this love was and I didn’t want to have wasted so much time on him and see myself as having stupidly fallen for someone that was just so terrible.

All the red flags were there and I thought I was being so smart and careful because I asked him a ton of questions before we started dating. He isolated me from my friends instantly. Wouldn’t meet them. Wouldn’t introduce me to his. Prefaced that with how troubled he was and how I was the only one to ever reach him and he had NO ONE except for me to believe in him and what would he do without that? He love bombed me for the first month then literally turned to me after handing me a gift in the car and said, “So. Now what are you going to do for me?” because nothing was really a gift, everything had a price. Told me flat out once that I was too good for him so he needed to bring me down to his level, like he was doing me a favor.

ButI wasted at least five years of my life on someone that was never, ever going to change. We started like a little support group of ex girlfriends because his MO was to break us down, wait awhile, then come back with sweet apologies when he was bored of whoever he’d move on to next. But since we were all in contact, we knew he’d do it to multiple exes and we were able to move on.

*just using ‘he’ since that fits with my experience. Could be she or them!

[Cobalt]

@Aria said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

My first memory of being exposed to a predator where I realized in the moment that something was wrong but didn’t know how to voice it happened when I was eleven. I was in a school play at my very small, very Christian school. Afterwards, my father told me that my friend Kim’s dad had been sitting near them and at some point during the evening, had told him that he’d “been staring at me in my dress all night because I had legs like a grown woman’s.”

To this day, I don’t know what I’m more shocked by: the fact that this man had the nerve to say something like that to my father without expecting to be punched in the face or the fact that he was right and my father, who’d been abused himself as a child, passed this on to me as a compliment I should be happy about. A “compliment” from forty year old man, whose house I had slept in more than once when having overnights with my friend. A “compliment” that just meant that I was growing up and men were going to fawn over me. I should be so happy!

That he said this about an elementary school child.

I’m so sorry this happened and that your father allowed his abuse to make him someone who did not adequately protect his child.

While I have lingering anger about my father allowing me to be involved with men told old for me as a teenager. At least when I was a child he protected me. The next story is not related to the roleplay community but is related to the general topic of predators.

Spoiler

When I was a child I lived in a small town and my father had several friends who had children around my age and my siblings age. One of them was a single mother who had three children. A girl two years older than me, a girl a year older than me, and a boy born the same year.

I spent a lot of my time at their house. And would sleep in the same bed as the middle girl. There are large parts of my childhood who are blanks.

At one point we lived in some apartments, and a new neighbor moved in with a little girl-- younger than me. My friend freaked out when she saw him and I was confused as to why.

She sat down with me and my father, and both explained that he had used to date her mom and were confused as to why I didn’t remember him. Then, she told me and my father that one night he had crawled into bed with us. That the very next morning she had told her mother, and her mother put a bullet through the floor right next to his head and told him to get lost.

I have absolutely no memory of this incident nor of this man. I don’t know what my father did after he found out about this, but pretty soon after this that man was no longer our neighbor.

[SpaceKhomeini]

Rather than echo a lot of things that have already been said here, the only thing I want to add is that while I’ve never been involved in the Camarilla (or any other LARP organization or that whole scene in general) I’ve been adjacent to it just by virtue of people I’ve known who’ve been involved over the years and the number of horror stories I’ve heard come out of that organization since like the 90s just paint it as a nest of fucking creeps.

I really wonder how high up the rot goes but I suspect the answer is pretty fucking high.

[somasatori]

@Aria said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Wizz said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

Very few people who did not grow up as girls are fully aware of this problem.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail as I find it honestly upsetting to remember, but I did want to say that both my own experiences with older players who knew sexually explicit discussion/roleplaying with me was not appropriate given my age – which I openly admitted to anyone I regularly RPed with – were with women, or at least players that presented as women.

I am not trying to dispute ratios or anything like that, but I did feel like I should represent the fact that men typically vastly underreport sexual abuse in RL and it’s likely the case in the hobby as well.

I shouldn’t need to say this, but…

Yes, I can vouch that this is 100% true. On more than one occassion, teenage me offered to play the role of “weirdly territorial girlfriend” for guys I knew. It wasn’t a good way to handle it, but teenagers. We didn’t exactly have much in the way of appropriate skillsets for addressing the real problem.

I was thinking about this yesterday, and I imagine that a lot of why my own experience was able to advance so dramatically (flying across state lines, and part of the ocean besides) was due to my being male. My dad did a decent job in protecting my sisters from abuse but there was that gender-enforced blind spot, I think. It makes sense, given that for a long time the prevailing attitude – which is thankfully on the decline – is that men/male-bodied people can’t be sexually assaulted, or it was often played for laughs in media. Gets a litle rough behind the tag.

Spoiler

There are still men who say they wished that an older woman gave them sexual attention when they were teenagers/underage, including men who have recently said this to me in person after a recent sexual misconduct thing with female teachers to male students. I don’t typically disclose, but I use the “I’ve heard someone say to me…” and then list one of my experiences. To that end, I also had pictures taken of me. I was told that the polaroids would be scanned and uploaded if I were to stop talking to this person, and then later, if I told anyone about the relationship. Also that no one would believe me because “men” (I was a boy, but I distinctly remember this term being used) don’t get assaulted by women. I used to make so many excuses for her, and even during this whole thing I found myself writing things like “she was deeply misunderstood by her family and very isolated” or “she was only 21, so barely out of her teens herself,” “she told me that she had really bad self-esteem and couldn’t approach people, but I was different,” and more. We met in person once for a long weekend. She got mad at me on day 2 because I expressed some concerns about sex. She said my hesitation actually was because I wasn’t attracted to her, which is a bonkers thing to tell a child.

Anyway, I think the big thing for me was that she said I was “mature for my age.” I really wanted to be taken seriously by adults back then and I was absolutely very precocious. She also complimented my writing and I desperately wanted to be a writer. It felt really good to be validated and to have someone tell me they loved me, I didn’t get much of that after my mom died. Not intended to be a piled on part of the story, just stating the facts.

A lot of competency was assumed for me by my dad. He still is very proud that I got myself up, dressed, fed myself, and took myself to school and got myself back home starting age 11. My guess is he thought I had things under control/knew what I was doing. He obviously would not think that about my sisters at age 13-14. In fact, he tells a story about the lengths he went to to prevent my oldest sister from going to a concert when she was 14 because he was worried she would get assaulted.

A kind of further note here is that I used my early MU* experiences to experiment with my sexuality since I was afraid of the bullying some of my out friends experienced. Maui is basically a giant small town and everyone finds out everything about everyone else. My dad was far more protective of me with older men when we moved to Oregon, but that was probably due to homophobia and the social expectations of what an abuser looks like. I did tell some of the men I roleplayed with my age.

By the time I was 17 and an androgene goth kid, my age became more of an enticement for the men with whom I interacted. Nothing progressed past explicit roleplay at that point, but not out of lack of trying. Things became deeply unpleasant for me at home and I left around then, someone convinced me to move to Seattle. It was a bad decision. I won’t go into detail, but I think I’ve mentioned my difficulties with substance use in the past.

I wanted to say: I’ve talked about these things in therapy before but for some reason I feel a stronger sense of catharsis from this group discussion/topic. I guess I always felt alone in my experience, even though I knew I wasn’t, so thanks to everyone for being as vulnerable as you’re comfortable with here.

[Rucket]

I’ll add to this thread.

Back in 1996-2000, I was RPing in AOL chat rooms and starting my MU RP journey. I had a number of cyber/TS scenes throughout that time when I was 15-17 with people who were admittedly in their 20s and 30s. There were people who knew I was not 18 and would still engage. They presented as female.

At the time, I thought it all very fun and exciting but I was also a horny ass teenage male, so you know, my brain wasn’t thinking of whether or not such things were appropriate. My brain was very much like sexsexsexsexsex.

I lived in rural Atlanta at the time and I even had invitations to see some of these people at Dragoncon. I never went, and over the years I’ve wondered what might have happened. Now, I just look back on it and am kind of like “What the fuck”

As an adult, I’ve strictly tried to keep any RP with people who are 18 and up. I think 18+ is generally the best policy for a MU or RP game simply because there ARE people who would do creepy stuff. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that I think RPing as underage people is super borderline to me and I will never play someone who isn’t at least 18 or 19.

[Adora]

I know no one is meaning to undermine the experiences of those of us who didn’t grow up as girls, but I just need to address this.

Spoiler

Current numbers place roughly 1 in 6, or about 16.6% of men as having experienced Child Sexual Assault as a child. I’ll be referring to it as CSA from here on out.

That number goes higher with bisexual and gay men at roughly 1 in 4 or 25% (though some studies suggest as much as 59%) experiencing CSA.

Two in three trans girls, 66% experience CSA. As a trans woman, myself, I am absolutely one of those numbers. I didn’t “grow up a girl”, but I definitely didn’t grow up a boy. Society did everything it could to make sure I knew I was not and could never be a ‘real girl’, but my experiences still more closely resemble those of my elementary and middle school girl friends than they did any of my cishet male friends.

Plenty of people who didn’t grow up girls know what it’s really like, even if we’d desperately like to forget.

[Arkandel]

@Cobalt I am really sorry this happened to you. We only crossed paths over the years sporadically but I still had no idea. I don’t know what to say. I am glad you are in a better place now.

The early years of this hobby were absolutely wild. Everyone was discovering what being ‘online’ meant; games were spawning under every rock and there was no supervision, no precedents or other people’s mistakes to learn from, unchecked anonymity for predators and very few consequences for truly vile behavior.

[Popes]

@SpaceKhomeini I have been. My membership is expired now because they swapped to Discord during Covid and it sucked and I found out I enjoyed having my Saturday nights back.

When I joined, it was fuckin bad still. Not in my area, but at cons we never let the women from our domain, or any of our friends from elsewhere, go anywhere alone. I will say that it’s vastly better now, they’ve yeeted a whole mess of creepos in the past five years or so.

[Gashlycrumb]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

I don’t really care to go into details either. Suffice it to say I’ve been trapped in friend-relationships at least three times who turned out to be narcissist abusers. Apparently, I’m a sucker where these people are concerned – too autistic to tell that they’re lying, I guess.

Autistics are often targeted by abusers, but it’s probably more because we come pre-isolated and pre-groomed to accept the idea that our feelings and behaviors are inappropriate. We’re also probably extra-satisfying, because our attention can be extra-intense or something.

But often nobody can tell when NPD/BPD abusers are lying, because they don’t think they’re lying themselves. I used to have to take notes about shit that happened because ex would say it hadn’t, or had happened once ever when it happened twice weekly. What he’d tell and what he’d omit to his therapist projected his own emotionally abusive shit onto me.

This is just how it goes. I did a couple years in support groups about this stuff, and all of these stories would get yes, this is how it goes reactions there. Nobody here is alone.

Emotional Support Wolf says, “If they think you’re their territory they’re gonna piss all over you.”

(It’s way more complex than that, but they is lil puppy.)

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Gashlycrumb Thank you. All of this is something I am only in the process of learning about now – at the age of 52, finally getting assessed for ADHD and autism. Turns out I very likely have both.

All those years of being told I’m just depressed or stupid. Sigh.

[Cobalt]

@Arkandel I appreciate the support but there is no need to be sorry. Very few people in the community knew the details of what was going on. You get conditioned to keep things quiet.

I have other thoughts about stuff re: trans women, male, and neurodivergent victims but my brain is a touch mush right now.

[Rucket]

@Cobalt said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Arkandel I appreciate the support but there is no need to be sorry. Very few people in the community knew the details of what was going on. You get conditioned to keep things quiet.

I have other thoughts about stuff re: trans women, male, and neurodivergent victims but my brain is a touch mush right now.

Yeah, abusers get off on things like control, and gaslighting people into keeping quiet is a big part of that. I am sorry you went through everything. My mom has been talking more about her experiences dealing with my dad and I think not only is it helpful for her to be doing so but I believe she has found some peace in trying to warn younger people about signs to keep watch for.

[MisterBoring]

Predatory behavior in RP communities is terrible. I hate that it happens, and I try to be there to support the victims where it’s appropriate. I’m lucky in that I haven’t had to deal with it, but I super hate that all this shit happened to all of you, and wish nothing but horrible things on your predators.

[Artemis]

Yo @Cobalt , just wanted to appreciate you for expressing this here. I feel like, had things gone just a little differently for me, I could’ve ended up in a similar situation with one of the online people I played and flirted with. I really relate to your bit about not having much of a social life in your teens and leaning on rp as a surrogate. Also got labeled slut/whore/whatever as a 14yo, though I did typically keep my age private. Anyway, though I’m no longer much a part of it, I do commend this community for how quickly and thoroughly they act on allegations of this nature, and you for your post.

[Gashlycrumb]

@L-B-Heuschkel I hope you get joy of it. Figuring out that I’m autistic and connecting with autistic community has been very good for me.

I don’t want to derail or dismiss the sexual abuse aspect of this thread, but it might be good to talk about this kind of thing in non-sexual friendships. That can be very damaging too. Also, the patterns of behavior tend to include manipulating entire friend-groups to turn on and isolate victims, and not getting lassoed into participating is probably one of the best things a person can do to prevent abuse of others.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Gashlycrumb said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

I don’t want to derail or dismiss the sexual abuse aspect of this thread, but it might be good to talk about this kind of thing in non-sexual friendships. That can be very damaging too.

There are many kinds of emotional abuse and manipulation. I have been fortunate enough to only experience sexual abuse offline (‘fortunate’…) but I have walked blind into co-dependent online close friendships no less than three times and gotten very badly burned all three times. Anything that helps us spot abusers, whatever kind, whether they’re self-aware or not, is good advice.

[Pavel]

@Gashlycrumb said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

it might be good to talk about this kind of thing in non-sexual friendships.

I agree. And, again, not to derail or diminish the impact of sexual abuse.

Many of you are aware of my past association with someone of such ill repute that they’re essentially persona non grata, with that association in part leading to me making rather immoral decisions in a position of authority.

It’s been a long time since then, but I’m fairly sure that counts as a predatory relationship. Like abuse of a sexual nature, it’s often so difficult to tell when you’re being preyed upon or manipulated that you don’t really know if you should, or indeed can, turn to anyone.

[Rinel]

@Pavel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

someone of such ill repute that they’re essentially persona non grata

This ranges from “Rinel in some places” to “SpiderVA” and you’re gonna need to be way more specific