[MD] Many Avatars, Many Selves

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ron]
As you just demonstrated, it is a matter of degree and perspective as 
to exactly what constitutes "harm". Ones harm is another's creative 
play. Where's the line? who draws it?

[Arlo]
Here, in Azeroth, in Norrath, the answer is the same, you do.

[Ron]
So if I draw the line at false identities who are you to call this 
value an illusion that is not real?

[Arlo]
You can think what you want, but when you impose on ME a realness 
that does not exist, that is where I step up and call it an illusion. 
If you wanted to think, for example, that my body determines my 
gender, go ahead. But if you tell others "the real Arlo is X" based 
on this, and make the claim that my gender otherwise is pretend or 
false, then I step up, most certainly. In other words, *I* determine 
what is "real" about "me". You can accept it or reject it, but you 
can't tell ME what is "real" and what is "not". But why don't you go 
ahead and tell me what a "false identity" is. What makes one "false" 
and another "real"? You continue to attack my position without 
articulating any alternative.

So do so now, Ron. What is a "real identity"? How do we determine 
what it is? What makes one identity "false" and another "real"? Give 
me something to use to make this determination.

[Ron]
Obviously you have never been raped or abused or you'd see the 
ridiculousness of that statement.

[Arlo]
No, I've never been raped. But one of my closest friends has been a 
rape counselor for years. And I've had other, intimate, exposures to 
this in my life as well. Rape is a crime against the body. Much of 
the trauma to the self results from conflating this assault with an 
assault on the "self". It is not. Healing begins with that 
recognition. When someone close to me was raped, she was the first to 
say, "my body was raped, but *I* was not". I have seen the ravages on 
others who are unable to disambiguate the act against their body from 
an act against themselves. If the "self" is destroyed in this act, 
Ron, it is because the self allowed itself to be, and it does so by 
confusing itself with its body.

[Ron]
the fact you think the realization of the act perpetrated on the body 
was not perpetrated on "you" begins a healing process one might find laughable.

[Arlo]
I'll be sure to tell my friend that "she" was, in fact, raped along 
with her body. But here again you lapse into rhetoric that makes me 
question my civility. I am trying, Ron, really trying to have a civil 
conversation with you, but you ain't makin' it easy. You want to 
start playing these games? You want to start with the little attacks 
and snide comments, well then so be it. From here on out, I'll give 
what I get, you want civility, then you better start giving it back.

[Ron]
So, when Bubba is raping you he is not getting off on screwing you, 
he is getting off on destroying your personhood.

[Arlo]
Which he can only do if I let him, if I am so weak that I allow him 
to, if I am so caught up in conflating my body and my self. No one 
can destroy my personhood, Ron, unless I allow them to. But I'll be 
sure to tell my friend that her personhood was destroyed too. She 
tells me it was not, but if you say it was it must've been.