In a competitive setting that is about reaction time, skills (as in memorization of game mechanics and specific, often lengthy series of button presses) and generally heightened levels of awareness, 'rape' might be a word that is often used, belittled but not truly misappropriated.
However, in this setting, it's not the first thing that springs to mind, and I consider myself to be on the rather intimate you-and-you level with rape.
If my skills are obviously bigger than your skills,
if I am clearly better than you,
I pummel you,
I smash your face in,
I humiliate you,
I dominate you
I degrade you,
I finish you,
I kill you.
Not for real, though. It's just a game, see. It's fun! Trust me. It really is fun. I can't tell you how many hours of Tekken (pretty much each incarnation ever since the first one came out) I've accumulated so far, but we started out printing, what, text lists of moves we downloaded from BBS's and ftp sites, and we sat in some random fellow players living room, playing Tekken for hours upon hours until we got a firm grip on the characters we liked. After all these years, I still do Paul, Nina and King, because I can still string up all the fun combos. Somehow, I eventually lost grip on Yoshimitsu, but I'm still a clear and present danger to your health bar with a rough 20% of his combos and cheap shots.
In a mostly male dominated world (yeah, there, I said it), I enjoyed playing Street Fighter II or Tekken around the world, playing for an hour or even longer just on one quarter while males honourable and not that honourable wouldn't take losing to a girl/woman/ladyperson well. I had my damn fun, and, trust me, some of them I raped pretty well. Raping a prick feels really good, take it from me, if you so will.
I was dabbling in open warfare feminism for a while. I thought it was the right thing to do. The very moment I realized that a lot of folks go down on the declared enemy with the elegance of the Iranian Guardian Council and the manners and self control of your average mushroom-induced berserker rage Viking Fury of Doom, I stopped having fun. Well, that sort of innocent fun, direct action, dreaming of a better tomorrow and giving innocent folks a hard time for all their life's decisions, the way they walk, the way they talk - that whole intolerant Nazi asshole crap, really.
I don't think 'rape' was the word they wanted you to think of.
So, why not swallow a little book of calm and come up with better, less offensive words.
I have some for you, above. I'll repeat the ones that seem to fit best:
humiliate
dominate
degrade
PUNISH
Sure, I won't use them when playing, say, Flower or Journey. But even Puzzle Bobble lets me boil my blood and make me want to gouge your eyes out, all in a family-friendly setting and right before we skip to making babies, baking a cake or having a nice cup of tea.
Those are household words that usually wear their meaning and true intention right on their imaginary sleeves, right as the sounds are muttered and the letters written.
Humans and a whole lot of other animals have eventually adopted to go for sexual dimorphism. In some species, the differences are dramatic and, quite frankly, offputting and damn scary. In humans, I find our differences to be interesting, fun and OK. Even if we had peanut-sized brains and no language, we'd still be made up of fuckers and the fucked. There's nothing bad about that. So, chill, sister, chill. There's plenty of stuff to get riled up about, this here is not a good excuse to blow up in anybody's face.
