It's everywhere

[Editor’s note: This article contains explicit descriptions of rape and various forms of sexual abuse.]

I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077, which is excellent and also includes gratuitous amounts of rape. At first I told myself it was making a point, but then I stumbled on this in-game webpage about dolls, a.k.a. sex slaves. These are human beings with doll chips, programming that pauses their consciousness while they perform intimate acts with a client based on the client's profile of needs, desires, and kinks, then immediately erases their memory of the event. On the in-game webpage, the writer talks about their favorite way to “hack” a doll, a.k.a., how to rape a doll, by using their safe word to wake the doll up from their trance during an encounter: “Use your safeword mid-session and you’ll have a real person in front of you, and at least a few minutes before security arrives. Use those minutes well.”

This is rape in either instance, to be clear. In the former, the doll’s body is being used without their consciousness's consent; in the latter, the doll is becoming conscious during the sexual encounter. Unlike sex work in real life, or even the game's Joy Toys (who don't have doll chips), for dolls, true consent is impossible in this framework. In theory, the dolls consent to being dolls and all the job entails, but affirmative consent happens ongoingly, not ahead of time. They don’t know what their future clients will want, and once they find out, they’re wired to say yes.