Sexual harassment has always been a rampant issue, especially if you're a woman working in a corporate world.
In fact, according to a survey, 35% of women working in the United States have been sexually harassed or reported a certain event of sexual harassment to their employers, thus, making 98% of companies offer programs and seminars in line with how-to-not sexual harassed co-employees.
However, it seemed like only 32% of women are satisfied with what companies are doing when an actual sexual harassment case pops in their surroundings.
This issue is now turning out to be a 'normal' thing that people do to get attention from different women or men that they see.
What's more shocking is that sexual harassment seemed to be evident-- not just on a physical world but also to the virtual reality world.
What Female Players Experience on Virtual Reality Games
If you're a woman and you'll dress up as a woman playing a character on a virtual reality game, there will be times that you will experience harassment in many forms through this technology.
In an article written by virtual gamer Taylor Lorenz in 2016, she detailed her story of being harassed on virtual reality as if she was 'ripped' and 'transported back to middle school.'
According to her, she was playing AltspaceVR-- one of the leading VR games-- at the time.
She entered the welcome room wherein a few minutes later, she received an unsolicited 'virtual kiss' from a random playing character. After this, Lorenz's character was already surrounded by other male playing characters asking whether her physical appearance on the game is the same with her-- while rubbing their hands along with her virtual body.
Though Lorenz knew that VR only gives slight sensation to real bodies in order to feel the game, she felt sexually harassed after playing on AltspaceVR-- just like they literally touched her body with their hands.
Although she did not enjoy her first time playing AltspaceVR, she soon played it again and turned out to be a fun interaction game as long as she will not be bumped in with a group of men characters.
Do We Have to Worry on Playing VR, Especially if you're a Woman?
Technically, a lot of VR companies already advised all players that experience any forms of sexual harassment on the game.
Most of them put an easy blocking tool for players to block a certain character and report them on the stream as sexual offenders or such.
However, this tool only seemed to be an exit for sexual offenders to continue doing horrible sexual acts (through verbal and virtual touch) to any female characters they will soon again encounter.
A writer from The Next Web teamed up with her girlfriend to come up with a book that can be a guide for most VR companies to fight against the fast-growing incidents of sexual harassment on VR spaces.
A book called 'Ethics in Design and Communications: New Critical Perspectives' explained the importance of 'Proxemics' for most VR players and how people should be respecting everyone's spaces-- just like in normal life.
Another tip that they shared is that VR companies should include a 'granular control' on their VR spaces that will give easy access for players once they felt that a certain character or group is getting too much close with their personal space.
If that how VR works, maybe sexual harassment can be a little problem for most gamers, isn't it?
