First of all I would never remove the strip or even apologize for the joke. It’s funny and the fact that some people don’t get it, or are offended by it doesn’t change that. People complained about the strip and that’s fine with me, my response as always is “if you don’t like it don’t read it.”that apology? I'm pretty sure if someone says "I would never apologize and if you don't like it, don't read it" it's not reading like an apology. It's just an explanation.
Bullshit. It was nothing but a self-righteous "well I'm sorry if you took offense but I don't think I did anything wrong" non-apology, intended not as an apology but to bat the responsibility away from the offender to the wronged.Well, I should hope that's all it was. People who manage to get themselves offended by comics on the Internet truly do not deserve any more.
"Every night we are raped to death by dickwolves" is a rape joke. The humor comes from the absurdity of the horror. We are meant to chuckle at that line, as the little joke that comes before the full punchline, which is an established comedic structure. The thrust of the comic is not a rape joke; the comic could have completely omitted any mention of rape and been just as funny.
Really? What is it about comics on the internet that should exempt them from consideration? If I draw a series of webcomics about how Jews should be tortured to death, should I respond to anyone who objects by saying "It's just a comic on the internet, go fuck yourself"?Yeah, honestly, why not tell them to fuck themselves? What conceivable benefit is there in humoring someone who would bother to react that way to your stupid, trivial comic?
Again, what is it about the fact that an idea is expressed in a comic that makes it trivial?Comics (especially web comics) are a poorly-respected entertainment medium. They have little if any cultural weight with people who matter.
Oh, get out of here with your elitist twaddle.If you really do take seriously things you read in web comics, that might be the biggest joke to come out of this.
The comic, the shirt, the resulting discussion are a great PR tool for gamers.Honest question: Why do gamers need PR?
The medium through which ideas are expressed does not make those ideas invalid or trivial, kthx.I look forward to your followup screeds about a joke you read in a bubblegum wrapper.
Not being an asshole doesn't make you a loser.It really kind of does if it leads you to being vocally offended about "dickwolves". Hitting that point should be a wake up call, "hey, maybe I'm not enough of an asshole."
Metafilter: The rape is pretty much irrelevant.Just for reference: If anyone reads this post or my other posts in this thread, I REQUEST THAT YOU DO NOT ASSUME I HOLD ANY OPINIONS THAT I HAVE NOT EXPLICITLY STATED.
Two things:
Number one, fuck this shit right here. Just because there are greater ills in the world does not give you the right to be a lesser ill, nor does it make people who attack those lesser ills wrong.
Number two, if you had any ability to observe the world and connect the things you see happening, to figure out how the events around you relate to one another, you'd understand that jokes which make light of rape are both the product and a perpetuator of a culture in which rape is not taken seriously and in which rape victims are routinely minimized, harassed, ignored, and condemned. Rape culture is rape culture, and every bit of it must be attacked and torn down, not just the most egregious examples of it.
Again: the word "dickwolves" is a funny word. Outside of context, it's a great team name as a joke.
No one's calling for the Carolina Hurricanes to change their name, are they?
"The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure".We do it because we don't want to think about it, because it is so fucking horrible, because we can't contemplate our destruction, so we turn it on its head. It is actually a beautiful thing, and that's how most of us soldier on through life while carrying our baggages. That's why these jokes rub us the right way.
I love Penny Arcade. But what have we got to lose by having some respect for people's feelings in our community when they speak up and ask us to hear them? I don't want to be part of a community where people say "hey, we're really hurt," and we say, "shut up, bitches."posted by danb at 9:58 AM on February 2, 2011 [21 favorites]
If the subject of that statement equates calling-out behavior/actions (what you're doing is a racist thing) with name-calling (you're a racist!), then there really isn't much hope for the dialogue, but that problem is the subject's, not the person who's doing the call-out.I hope that makes more sense.
The structure of mainstream US sitcoms almost always involves foolish dudes who are called out for their behavior by beautiful intelligent women. Occasionally they spice it up by having the foolish dudes be astrophysicists, or by having a gay couple fill the same roles. While that's sexist in its own way... if you can see rape culture in sitcoms, you can probably see it just about everywhere.Are you saying that rape culture doesn't turn up in sitcoms? 'cause, well, it does. The most recent one I can think of (and it's why I now leave the room when #$% My Dad Says comes on) had the foolish dude blackmailed into going onto a date, where he was locked in a room and held down (after trying frantically to leave twice) before the fade to black. The next scene, he stumbles in, clearly traumatized. But, hee! It's funny 'cause the woman was the aggressor! (*retch*)
Here is the thing, okay? Coming into a feminist conversation with, “Have you considered that sometimes [terms like "rape culture" are not immediately understood by the layperson]?” is like walking into graduate school during Philosophy finals and saying, “Have you considered that the color blue that I see may not be the color blue that you see?”In case it's not quite clear, I replaced the original point with one related to this thread (in brackets).
No, absolutely not. We're turning into a nanny state where we legislate morality, we legislate safety, we legislate the fuck out of everythingWho, exactly, do you think is trying to legislate anything? How is a feminist blog saying "this perpetuates rape culture" meaningfully different, in terms of free speech, from your saying "feminist blogs shouldn't say that things perpetuate rape culture"?
Just out of curiosity, was anyone's mind changed or opinion reversed on this topic after reading the 800 or so comments here?
I don't think it's up to the rest of us to make a judgement about whether a life was 'destroyed.'
When you initially mention it, and someone responds with, "Mentioning that is rape apologism and re-victimizes the victims of rape", right off the bat, then defensive outrage is entirely justified.
"I'm sorry if I was a jerk to you earlier. That was unnecessary and had nothing to do with defending the comic. I was just being snarky." -cwgabrielposted by pyrex at 11:13 AM on February 3, 2011
One of the most important essays I’ve ever read is by Philip K Dick, entitled “How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later.” In it, he describes his idea that people can experience reality in such different ways that they lack a common language and therefore can’t relate to one another. He’s talking about schizophrenia, but he’s really talking (as is his way) about all people, everywhere.posted by XQUZYPHYR at 11:40 AM on February 3, 2011 [4 favorites]
The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown of communication... and there is the real illness.
If I haven’t been seen to discuss The Matter Of Dickwolves, this is the reason why. I’m not entirely certain that a conversation is possible. This isn’t mere cynicism - this is a fully rational assessment of the situation. The perspectives in play, the lenses, are too different: one side believes that not according the issue of rape the proper respect fuels a kind of perverse, perpetual engine called rape culture. There is a vast, specific lexicon and hundreds of tacit assumptions that gird it. The other side (that’s me, but not just me) believes that when it comes to expression nothing is off the table. It is the creator’s prerogative to create something - even something grotesque - out of anything they can find.
The fact of the matter is that the strip that started all this is about how empty, amoral, and borderline vile electronic heroism actually is. When I look at it now, it’s hard to imagine the chaos this comic stands at the center of. To the extent that it discusses rape, it is in the context of men and an imaginary creature. It’s certainly not the “joke.” The depicted scenario seemed so ridiculous to us, so unmoored from reality, and its indictment of player “morality” so complete, we felt like it was worth doing.
I have to tell you that we could never have conceived that people would construe the comic as pro-rape; this unfortunate fact may help you to understand everything that followed. I have a daughter who is not yet two years of age, and I am flooded with hormones every time I look at her which say “this, this is why you are here.” I don’t have any intention of going into specifics, but speculating about my own sexual history or the sexual history of the people we know is profoundly unwise. I will also tell you that people deal with horror of this kind in different ways, and one of them is with humor. There’s no monolithic “woman” just as there is no monolithic “feminist” just as there is no “man,” no “true” way of dealing with tragedy. We think of the strip as one of those glass tanks with the gloves that reach in, a safe place to experiment with dangerous ideas, which we’ve more or less been doing continually for twelve years.
We make disgusting, immoral comics on occasion to be sure; we’re used to correspondence in that vein. But when mail started to come in to the effect that we were perpetuating a fundamental social conspiracy to rape, we couldn’t believe what we were reading. That is the entire point of the second strip, which some people took as a literal response or apology, neither of which was its intended purpose. The only people who are pro-rape are rapists. The idea that you would have to specifically enunciate an idea like that is almost overwhelming. It’s self-evident. Hence, the comic.
I’ve received an incredible education during the ordeal, and been exposed to an amazing range of thought, from so-called “radical feminism” to a wholly opposed, Lewis Carroll, through-the-looking-glass mode of thinking called Men’s Rights Activism. It’s my default position to figure out what is wrong with me so that I can make peace, and the web has been very good to me in this regard. I have learned many new words and been altered irrevocably by the months long process. I’m not certain we’ll ever see eye to eye. But they’re not evil, or mendacious; I understand their intent, why this happened. I’m not interested in a repeat performance.
The other reason I didn’t speak about it is because I didn’t want to draw unwanted attention to the sources of complaint. Apparently, there are people who imagine they’re doing us some kind of a favor being jackasses and saying terrible things to critics of the site. Well, I’m a big boy, and I can handle my own shit. If you’re a reader, and not somebody just out for a scrap, if you love me at all you’ll put an end to that kind of bullshit. When someone believes something about you that isn’t true, the optimal strategy isn’t to prove to them time and time again that they were actually right all along - that you may be dismissed out of hand, that you have no merit. I assume that’s the opposite of you want.
Can we all agree that threatening to kill someone’s wife and children, as happened yesterday, has no place in any fucking society? This is why I had to say something: because people who imagine themselves to be “agents” of each side have now graduated to threats of actual, physical violence.
I don’t expect to mollify anyone with this - I think we’re long past that. When I look at the state of play now, dialectically, I don’t even recognize it: in the absence of my participation, in the abdication of my responsibility to communicate, the entire dialogue is based on a sequence of assumptions about each party so long that it’s impossible to untangle. It’s entirely possible that we will have lost readership, or worse, we’ll acquire a unique new demographic hungry for rape material that will be profoundly disappointed by jokes about tabletop wargames or treatises on forks. As I said, so much of this happened because I assumed that a genuine dialogue was impossible. Maybe I was wrong. It’s certainly happened before.
But I am who I am, in the end; the comics I make are the result of my damage. I can’t put it any more succinctly than that.
[...]While I'm glad he wasn't really involved with this brouhaha (I was under the impression it was both of them doing the trolling), I'm surprised someone as articulate and well-read as he is doesn't understand that they were being accused of trivializing rape, not promoting or defending it. The latter criticism applied more to the shirts than the comic, but he never addressed that issue.
The only people who are pro-rape are rapists. The idea that you would have to specifically enunciate an idea like that is almost overwhelming. It’s self-evident."
For me, the most problematic part was this: 'The only people who are pro-rape are rapists.'
...when mail started to come in to the effect that we were perpetuating a fundamental social conspiracy to rape, we couldn’t believe what we were reading. That is the entire point of the second strip..."fundamental social conspiracy to rape" - that is his term for rape culture, right? And he's talking about this second strip, right? And saying that it is a response to a criticism that the original strip is an example of rape culture.
When I have a sense of humor, it is a little offbeat. I have liked, for example, Penny Arcade's comics about the numerous times they've killed each other. I have a dark sense of humor, and I'll admit it.posted by electroboy at 2:33 PM on February 3, 2011
No, one rape joke does not "cause" someone to go out and commit a rape. But a single rape joke does not exist in a void. It exists in a culture rife with jokes that treat as a punchline a heinous, terrifying crime that leaves most of its survivors forever changed in some material way....It's an astonishing disconnect that a population that's quick on the trigger to indict Beck, Palin, and McCain for fostering political violence can't understand the notion that many people feel the same way about rape jokes.
That is the environment into which a rape joke is unleashed—and one cannot argue "it isn't my rape joke that facilitates rape" any more than a single raindrop in an ocean could claim never to have drowned anyone.
If Tycho and Gabe want to make rape jokes, that's their prerogative. I'm not calling for a repeal of the First Amendment or asking their strip to be censored; to be perfectly frank, I would love nothing more than for them to continue their comic with a newfound appreciation for why rape jokes fucking suck, and thus not use (or defend) them anymore by their own choice.posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:54 PM on February 3, 2011 [11 favorites]
But, failing that, I'd like to see them at least be honest enough to admit that their critics are not accusing them of "creating" rapists or "causing" rape—and have the courage not to hide behind mendacious misrepresentations of why people object to their continued use of rape jokes, and the honesty to admit they just don't give a fuck about survivors.
"When Mike tweeted that he planned on wearing his Dickwolves t-shirt to PAX, I was done," Corvus said. "I was now officially angry. Members of the gaming industry had reached out quietly and respectfully to the PA crew. But instead of trying to understand the issue so many people were having with their actions, they continue to mock the very notion that the concept of rape should be taken seriously."posted by ShawnStruck at 3:36 PM on February 3, 2011 [12 favorites]
Unfortunately, the "Dickwolf Debacle" has cost PAX several potentially interesting panels and sessions. Corvus himself was intending to present a panel with the International Game Developers Association at PAX East entitled "One of Us," featuring "members of the gaming community who are underrepresented and often subject to verbal abuse because of it. The panelists will share the coping strategies they've developed and tactics they've used to deal with the effects of being part of a larger gaming community that can be hostile."
Other people who have decided not to attend PAX includes developers Deirdra Kai and Courtney "Kirbybits" Stanton. Writer Arthur Gies of Rebel FM has also decided to abstain from the convention.
It's been fairly clear from the beginning that they don't understand the criticism levied at them and are reading it as "you said rape, you support rape", which is so obviously ridiculous that one can understand their confusion that anyone would take such an accusation seriously.*blinks*
Whenever I hear Gabriel typing a lot, I get... nervous.Some of the new posts on the Debacle timeline (in the FPP) have focused on the inadequate nature of the apologies. I alluded to that right after they posted them, and have mixed feelings, especially for Tycho's. I think he genuinely gets the controversy, and regrets that he didn't try to de-escalate it before it got hugely out of hand and began to threaten the public image of his big event, but for whatever reason thinks that a full and sincere apology would look like an admission of weakness and abdication of his artistic freedom. I can sort of get that.
12:06 PM Feb 2nd via Twitter for iPhone
The comic premise is the gap between comic reality and the real reality.
Any time you have a comic voice or character or world or attitude that looks at things from a skewed point of view, you have a gap between realities. Comedy lives in this gap.
You don't need to go into much detail about what's wrong with what they're doing in order to tell them to stop.Of course you do, because if you don't, you get the whole "you're just being hypersensitive, making mountains out of molehills, not explaining to me what I did wrong, not educating me enough" etc., etc., etc. rigamarole. If we don't explain, then it's not their fault that they don't change, because we haven't explained why they should change. If we do explain, then we're threatening their sense of themselves as righteous people and making them feel bad and making them think about hard concepts, and so they won't change. And, conveniently, either way it's our fault that they don't change.
I find the best response to that is something along the lines of, "Cut this shit out, or I will [not attend your convention|no longer patronize this establishment|quit this job|etc.]"And then you will conveniently be dismissed as a hysterical feminist reaching for her smelling salts for no reason at all, demonstrating once again that feminists are weak, pathetic people who engage in recreational outrage because they enjoy it. Your boycott won't be effective, because you can't organize or explain it without discussing why you're boycotting, so it's just going to be you. This is a recipe for not accomplishing anything and in fact for discrediting your objections.
But if your main objective is to get people to, for instance, avoid feeding the @teamrape trolls? Probably better to take a behavioral approach. Say what'll convince your target.
Now, I think the original comic was funny. I don't think it's offensive. ❮snip❯furiousxgeorge, I just wanted to mention that I've really been trying to come up with a good defense of the PA guys - throughout the thread, I've basically been publicly agreeing with the things that unambiguously seemed wrong to me, but privately still tried to think of something that I would consider a valid defense of them.
So don't be a jackass about it, okay?
- You "survive" cancer, because cancer can be a fatal illness. You don't "survive" rape.And I had blithely skimmed this and I was already on the next post downthread when suddenly that last sentence, and that sentence only, synaptically connected, and I did not know why. It's like, somehow I had forgotten that people can get raped to death, and after a split second of thought, I realized how lucky I am, too, to not be dead yet. That's my privilege. And I gagged. I put my hands over my mouth and tried to not throw up. And then I cried for a long time. I don't know, maybe the long slow burn of reading the whole goddamn thread, and the sleeplessness, but also the realization that I have never really understood rape, at all, or the anger, even though I have had plenty of opportunities to add up all my assaults and multiply by my urban fearfulness and really try to 'get' it.
- For the sake of someone I knew, I should point out: sometimes, you don't survive rape.
...but by my way of thinking the strip does not do that on its own.
we disagree on the importance/centrality of offendednessit kinda sounds like you're proposing that you think that the people here don't understand something about the criticisms of the original comic or are mistaken in thinking that the other stuff is extremely and vitally important (much more important than the joke content issue, in fact), or that you are saying that what you want to talk about is more important than whatever those criticisms really are about, especially when you link to something you wrote a year before the original comic came out that appears to be arguing against a kind of science fiction book that
promotes ideas that are untrue on their facecontaining bolded phrases about "what truly matters in the public sphere" and about how "people can be offended by anything."
Would the PA comic be okay if it was behind a click-through trigger warning?
What I was thinking was that even if feminist blogs don't all agree on the need to use trigger warnings, then why should we expect that of, e.g., a web comic?
If you cater to one group and not the other aren't you saying much more than one that doesn't cater to either?
They are definitely objecting loudly.
...it simply would demonstrate that they care about people who have been raped as much as they care about someone whose experience of a movie, game, or book might be spoiled.
As far as explosions in TV ads, if an explosion on TV or something like mentioning explosions while writing or speaking can commonly trigger a PTSD reaction in someone who was caught by an IED in Afghanistan, for example, then yes I'd actually say that an ad director doing that is a fuckwad; but I would wager that it usually takes something like fireworks, like an actual explosion happening in their vicinity. One thing that I do understand that they check for when making television ads is whether it contains blinking or other effects that might commonly trigger an epileptic reaction. (Got no cite for that offhand, though.)ChurchHatesTucker, in my original response to your question about whether someone setting off fireworks is responsible for PTSD reactions they trigger I didn't mean to propose a standard for when to normally or formally expected to use trigger warnings in that paragraph about shell shock, I was illustrating that in my opinion it would be appropriate to rudely call someone a fuckwad for doing something like that. I've been using the term "fuckwad" in these instances because in the GIFT it's referring to someone who isn't normally or inherently an asshole but behaves assholishly in certain circumstances and because per its use in the GIFT, in my personal version of internal-PA-community-speak it's an insult that is "sanctioned" for use in some circumstances... I think that if the PA guys understood what these criticisms were really saying, they would be entirely willing to point out and denounce the same things, even in a rude fashion, using words like fuckwad.
The context of this is people claiming that reading a comic a mention of a character having been raped, in a strip about the apathy engendered by out-of-character game mechanics contrasted with the scenarios presented by in-character game lore, is something that can reasonably be expected to set off their untreated PTSD. Reading a comic containing explosions and fireworks - things that have been shown, for decades, to trigger debilitating PTSD in veterans - is a perfectly apt analogy.
Tycho stopped just short of using that particular word, but he essentially did do just that to the 'teamrape' guys. Too late in the game, as even he appeared to realize.
I really didn't mean to bring up trigger warnings per se (although I find the subject itself interesting.) I was trying to address the issue of one's responsibility for the reactions of others, and that seemed like an obvious thing to invoke.
I retract all previous objections! Those women totally had it coming.and hence attributing to ChurchHatesTucker the attitude that raped women had it coming is sort of a different magnitude of rudeness above even most kinds of name-calling IMO, yet the thing you're replying to only seems to be a claim that it was a mistake to use jargon, a mistake somewhere on the level of spelling mistakes or bad SEO practices. I haven't been following what kafziel's been saying the whole way along but this seems disproportionate to anything that ChurchHatesTucker has said recently.
I've got a much better take on the language that Shakes et al. use now, so I can see that their original comment was relatively mild criticism. Let me tell you, it doesn't come across that way if you're not versed in it. I think they have to take some responsibility for that, especially since that's what they're essentially accusing the PA guys of.
Yup. I do occasionally agree with you.
BONUS!Good for her. Maybe next time the kid will realize that internet anonymity should not as an excuse to act like a complete asshole to people.
I was planning on doing a name-and-shame of the idiots who harassed me on Facebook using their real accounts. However, it just makes me too sad. If you’ve messaged me with gross images or the word “RAPE” repeated over and over in the body of the message or whatever, please consider revisiting your Facebook privacy settings. For several of you, I can see where you live and work. And one of you in particular is who I’d like to talk to right now:
Kid, due to your disregard for the overlap between your online trolling and real life, I now know what your high school colors are. I know your hometown, your entire employment history and what community college you attended. I can also see your girlfriend’s profile and the fact that you two now live in her hometown, not yours. I can see the names and profiles of your parents, your brother, and your three sisters. I can see your phone number.
I get that when you’re recently 22, you might feel like nothing you do could ever have consequences. I suppose if I really wanted to demonstrate how wrong that feeling is I could get in touch with your family or girlfriend to let them see how you treat women you disagree with. However, you’re a stranger, you’re several states away, and even though we’re both apparently fans of How I Met Your Mother, I don’t really worry about you having an impact on my day-to-day life.
But kid, let me promise you right now: if you ever try and use the computer programming skills you got in community college to work in the video game industry, I will be expecting an apology from you about the harassing tweets and disgusting images. I can have a long memory when I choose to, and since you made such a compelling case for me to do so, I’m choosing to now. I hope you eventually grow up, but in the meantime your behavior shows you to be exactly what this industry doesn’t need. I’m not afraid of making that fact known should you attempt to enter it. You wanted my attention; you got it. Enjoy the consequences.
« Older Why Mubarak is Out... | Everything is a Remix Part 2: ... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by dvorak_beats_qwerty at 6:21 AM on February 2, 2011