The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
It happened to me when I played Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’d played it since the beta and finished the story with all classes but I decided to play as a female sith warrior and I constantly got messages from dudes complimenting my thick ass or wanting me to humiliate them and be their dominatrix mistress. It really put into perspective the shit women go through. Especially since my character didn’t even have a skimpy outfit.
I’m a woman who has played SWTOR since its inception 12 years ago and I’ve never had anything like that happen. I’ve played through the whole story on 16+ toons, one for each class/sex combo. I’m not surprised by what you say, just lucky I’ve never experienced it.
Happened to me multiple times on that character. Never with any of my male characters.