illas said:
Rape is not intrinsically female victim issue, but it is (quite justifiably) a far more emotive issue for women. Because, to put it bluntly, women suffer it hugely more. Couple this with the fact that men generally display significantly lower fear of violence or physical attack (despite being overwhelmingly more likely to suffer it) and you are left with a predictable outcome. Although rape happens to men, men simply do not fear it. Men have no reason to believe it will happen to them, and normally they're right.
Put yourself in the shoes of a woman for a moment, someone who genuinely does fear rape. If you walk into an environment where guys casually use the word, are you going to spend your time trying to work out what they mean by that. No, you will get the fuck out. Why would you hang around people who treat your worst fear as a trivial thing?
We all say we want more women to play games, but I don't think we really want "women" to play games, we want gamer girls who will fit inoffensively into the preexisting culture and adopt our attitudes and who will never demand that we grow up or behave differently. That probably isn't going to happen. Women won't look at guys using the word "rape" and dismiss it as harmless fun, just like many gay people can't hear the word "fag" without feeling an emotional reaction. It's not about "manning up" or "getting offended over nothing", because this stuff isn't "nothing" to those people.
It will push them away, and it will ultimately lead to the gaming community continuing to be regarded as nothing more than a dumping ground for poorly socialized manchildren. That alone, I think, is reason to stop it.