I'm kind of torn... I've lost a child to SIDS, but I would not tell people that they can't make dead baby jokes at risk of revictimizing me. So many people have a pain point of some sort in their lives that if we go down that route there will be nothing left but PC-compatible sayings perfectly fit for a poster in corporate America.
But at the same time the reaction to the controversy around the comic has been all types of screwed up by Gabe.
Right or wrong, people have made it clear that the dickwolves thing makes them feel physically uneasy (at best). Whether it's right for people to feel that way is basically immaterial by this point; the argument was lost long ago, and Gabe is chasing after a train that is long departed.
So while I don't doubt that Gabe (and Tycho) do not literally support people being raped, they have been told in no uncertain terms that is how many people perceive support for "Dickwolves". Any further push for 'free speech' there must come as a package with instilling a culture of rape... again, even if that's not how they mean for it to be perceived, that doesn't change the reality of how it is being perceived.
I empathize with Gabe's greater point, but the fact is that he needs to start choosing different battles if he wants to win this 'war'. This particular battle was lost long ago.
I think that you're right that the real controversy wasn't over the comic, but rather his reaction to it.
After reading the original strip (embedded in the article), I wasn't offended, and thought that it made a particularly good point about the screwed up ethics of quests. But, even though I wasn't offended, I could see how others might be and might want to express that.
But then instead of simply explaining what the point of the strip was, and leaving it alone, he went off and made a big deal of it and tried to play the victim. That's where he is clearly in the wrong. He needs to listen to people who are telling him to stop talking about it. He lost, move on.
So, did anyone actually read the comic? A slave is pleading to be rescued, and brings up that in addition to being a SLAVE he also gets raped.
There is nothing 'supporting rape' in the comic or the joke. Rape is used because it's literally the worst possible thing, that if even being a slave wasn't enough to make the hero care, maybe that would.
The joke is "The hero only cares about his quest, not the suffering of the victims". Slavery and rape were used because they were the two worst possible things the victims could be suffering from. How does anyone go from that to suggesting the artist is supporting rape?
Only a few people were hurt by the original Dickwolves comic, and I think a realistic apology for triggering bad feelings in sexual assault survivors would have made this a non-event. Like, "A number of people have written to express that they felt hurt or threatened by yesterday's strip. Please know that we had no intention of that. We wanted to express how incredulous it is that a game can use the threat of violence, death, enslavement, and implied rape as a motivation for a quest then cast aside those people you have ostensibly just been charged with helping. It was not our intention to hurt people in the real world by discussing this incongruity in games and we sincerely apologize to those of you who were hurt."
Boom, done, wouldn't have been an issue.
NOW, what happened after that was THIS strip: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/13 An incredibly insincere apology which makes anyone reading question whether they have their heads screwed on straight. On top of that, they make a t-shirt for Team Dickwolves. Then Mike NEVER FUCKING LETS IT GO, for damn near three years.
Only extremely recently has he even expressed that he might have been handling these sorts of situations incorrectly and considers that he may be hurting people. Well, great buddy, but you've already screwed a lot of things up. It's gonna take a lot of work to undo the damage you've done and a bunch of people will never trust you regardless.
Even the second comic I can understand. The fact that they have to go out of their way to explain that no, they don't actually think raping people is OK is pretty distressing as it should have been plainly obvious from the first comic IMHO.
What I don't understand is why you'd then go and make a shirt, and bring it up again and again. What good could possibly have come of that?
I doubt very many people thought the first joke was an exhortation or endorsement of rape. They were using it as an extreme, to skewer MMO morality. And I see what they were trying to do, but not long after that point it should've been obvious it didn't work.
So the second comic comes out and it's a straw man. "so you're saying we are pro-rape? that's absurd. look at how absurd you are." If you're trying to make people understand something, can you imagine how frustrating it must be to hear that for the eleventy-billionth time?
It's fair to call people on making light of rape. I also think it's fair to disagree, though I have a caveat: IMHO, given the quality of dialogue around the issue, most of the disagreement is reflexive and rooted around the perception of this as a niche issue, mostly germane to women (Patton Oswalt had a good bit about this).
In trying to evoke sympathy, people ask if you think it'd be OK to say such and such about your mother, sister, or daughter. An addendum which may (sadly) work better for some people could be: ask yourself if it would change your perception about, say, prison rape jokes if it happened to your father, brother, or son. Then imagine if someone's response to your feelings was to say "hey dummy I'm not pro-rape I just think rape jokes are funny." And so on.
Sorry, but I think the second comic is completely tone deaf and deeply unfunny. I remember reading it and thinking, "Jesus christ guys, way to not get it."
The shirts are just... fucking hell. Y'know, the crazy thing is that there were like 10 people in their office at that point. And I am pretty sure that about half of them could have, at some point said, "What the fuck are we doing here?"
THey made the shirt because they didn't see the first comic as offensive. They thought a "dickwolf" was a funny idea. Raping is not (to them) an essential/defining characteristic of a dickwolf any more than "mauling" is an essential/defining characteristic of a bear. Having invented this absurd (and mildly offensive) dangerous animal, they thought it was a funny idea that some sports team would choose it as a mascot.
Yes, they may have made the shirts partly to annoy their detractors, but they also just thought it was funny for reasons having nothing to do with rape. And they want the freedom to sell funny stuff to other people who like that stuff - being forced to censor themselves was difficult.
On the other side, people who think raping is an essential characteristic of dickwolves can't see any humor in the shirt and think it was just created to spite them.
There is no way to resolve this conflict because dickwolves don't exist and will never appear in another strip and the detractors have already discounted the opinions of the people who came up with the idea.
If you think this is about the comic itself, then you should get brought up to speed on the issue. It's this type of shortsightedness/inattention to detail/poor logic that sent the author down this path of scorched earth bullying.
>How does anyone go from that to suggesting the artist is supporting rape?
What are you referring to when you say that? The comic? Again, people on the other side of this issue are no longer talking about the comic. This is about the author's bullying and mobilizing others to bully victims & people sympathetic to victims that their opinions don't matter. It's about people in a position of power who would rather abuse that power than try to make something good come from it. It's about turning a deaf ear to decency & tact in the name of stubbornness (and monetizing bullying).
Also, from the article: @Teamrape wrote, “And remember, since @cwgabriel [Krahulik] will wear his dickwolves shirt, it’s okay to wear yours. We will show those that want to crush free speech"
That's from @teamrape, not @teamfreespeech. What's the issue here again?
I read the comic. I thought it was funny enough at the time. I didn't think it had anything to do with trying to make rape itself sound funny. It was an over-the-top gag poking fun at the weird ethics of WoW-type games, Mission Accomplished.
But the comic isn't really the point anymore, and even the detractors don't seem to be focusing on the comic as much as on the reaction to the criticism by Gabe and others at PAX.
At this point the reaction is basically telling people they shouldn't feel the way they do. But I'll bet most of those people really, really wished they didn't feel the way they do, that if they could flip a switch and just see past all of it that they would.
They've at least been fair about telling Gabe this too. Whatever else Gabe thought about how people would interpret not just the comic, but the shirts and jokes and etc. around the comic, that's not how they actually are interpreting that. Given that he knows that and does it anyways, you have to ask what he's really trying to accomplish.
I think of it as a different type of dog whistle. Gabe blows on it and doesn't hear much, but there are people who hear fingernails on a chalkboard. And they are telling him that, and begging with him to stop, and then he goes selling shirts with a dog whistle on it. WTF?
Anti-pattern: individuals determining what is and isn't offensive to large, non-uniform groups of people.
I get that you posed this as a question, but if you think that people who find it offensive are just humorless and don't get the joke, you're just doing a variation on the aforementioned.
So, I think that rape brings up some pretty unusual feelings and behaviors.
For a while, I was in a relationship with a girl who had been raped by a friend several years before.
What happened next was: essentially all of her friends told her there must have been a misunderstanding and her college threatened her with libel for accusing the guy of rape.
Of course, this girl had one of the darkest senses of humor of anyone I've ever known, and wouldn't have batted an eye at the comic in question. I didn't find it particularly offensive either.
But it's worth thinking about why jokes about rape can be particularly difficult for rape victims. The thing is, unlike crimes like robbery or murder, victims of rape very rarely find that society is "on their side." For one thing, rapists hardly ever are held criminally responsible for their actions--this is not necessarily because we are a pro-rape society, it's just that it's essentially impossible to prove that you didn't consent to sex. And that's true outside of the criminal justice system, too--many rape victims find that even close friends and family cannot know whether a rape occurred, and choose to believe that it didn't. So the rape is compounded by the abandonment that comes afterwards.
Then you have the fact that our culture, and perhaps our genetic nature, glorifies aggressive men, men who understand that women want it no matter what they say. And on the other side, we have the fact that our culture, and perhaps our genetic nature, encourages women to engage in "token resistance"--saying no when they mean yes--to avoid the appearance of "being a slut."
I honestly do not know if this situation can be improved much. Being raped is tough because you can't prove it happened--well, I don't think the answer is to weaken the presumption of innocence. Rape is more likely because we glorify aggressive men--well, I don't think those traits are going away anytime soon.
But to victims of rape, when people call rape "literally the worst possible thing," it can't help but feel hollow. Because everyone says that, it's like a cultural tic, but when you were raped, no one came running to help you, no one believed you, no one even stayed your friend. They explained it away, they left, they told you that you were just guilty about cheating on your boyfriend.
There's this painful, terrifying juxtaposition of a society that says both: "rape is the worst thing ever" and "you were raped? well, goodbye." That might explain the reactions to what, in isolation, is a pretty innocuous joke.
I'm kind of torn... I've lost a child to SIDS, but I would not tell people that they can't make dead baby jokes at risk of revictimizing me.
Sorry to hear that. A key difference there is that SIDS is a medical problem whose incidence is unaffected by whether people make jokes about it or not. Rape (and sexual assault in general) is a crime whose perpetrators may feel more emboldened to act if there's an atmosphere of amused tolerance around it. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who behave poorly when in a crowd and try to excuse their poor behavior by saying it's just meant in a spirit of fun.
I wholly agree that the original comic was mildly but unintentionally offensive, but making a sticking point out of it and repeatedly reviving the issue comes off as little better than trolling.
1. "making the joke": they did not even made a joke! they did made the joke several times in the past with the fruit fucker, raping oranges. nobody cared. In this particular comic, rape is described as, well, rape. A very bad thing, mentioned from the victim as 'hell'. so, no joke was made about rape. period.
2. "the response": it was never a response to rape victims. It was a fuck-you to people that monetize on rape victims and all other society victims for government and charity money. They were the ones creating the noise. They are the disease. They deserve a fuck-you.
> Any further push for 'free speech' there must come as a package with instilling a culture of rape... again, even if that's not how they mean for it to be perceived, that doesn't change the reality of how it is being perceived.
Instilling implies a real effect, not just a perception of intent. In other words, culture must become measurable more pro rape as a result for there to be real harm. I haven't seen the evidence of this anywhere: the only effect it has had as far as I can see is people who are against mentioning rape at all getting angry about their perception of it (not changing anything).
Should Obama be held responsible for the actions of his Naval officers if he declares we should pursue missile strikes in Syria?
I mean, saying something and then your fans going overboard is one thing. But everytime 'dickwolves' gets mentioned the fanatics pull out the big guns again... maybe at some point Gabe and Tycho should anticipate that women out there will be the target of those same fanatics if they push the D.W. button again?
If I say something that offends a certain religion and those people burn down a building in response, and I knew they would do that, am I responsible for that?
I used to think so -- if I didn't do X then bad thing Y wouldn't happen, so I could stop it, right? -- but it was some liberal friends of mine who convinced me otherwise. All you can be responsible for is yourself.
Point taken, and I actually try to preach that mantra myself. But I agree with jlgreco about the greater credibility our law seems to give to public figures with regard to incitement.
Certainly it's a problem I'm glad that I don't have to worry about, and I feel bad for Gabe in that regard just like I tend to pity many celebrity figures who just want their privacy back. :-/
This is a nice piece of self-help advice, but it's a self-delusory trick to reduce the level of mental insanity that comes from a full acknowledgement of responsibility.
Keep in mind that you're presuming a direct chain of cause and effect from your offensive words to the building-burning. When there isn't such a direct chain, then you have a much less direct responsibility. Which is the point. The strength of your agency in the causality is precisely what obligates you to make a meaningful decision.
If you didn't know that committing a diff would result in someone losing all their money, then it's not really your fault. But if you did, then it is.
It's liberalism's most detestable idiocy that everyone really is an island unto themselves and fuck the promontory that sinks into the sea. If you ever speak to anyone with the intent of persuading them at all, even if it's an evangelical-style "if only you'd read the Bible, you'd recognize that Jesus is your savior" except with facts and figures, you're somewhat responsible for the consequences of that persuasion.
I'm not convinced that we can map the ethics used with situations involving the military chain of command to situations involving informal mobs.
Now, we still have concepts like "inciting imminent lawless action" that are fairly non-controversial, so clearly there is at least some sense of blaming people who tell others to go make a mess, but I don't think that is nearly as clear-cut as your example.
Do you really think that's what this is about? Do you really think that people are against any discussion of rape? It's typically the opposite.
The qualifier you're missing here is something like "non-trivializing" or "respectful" or ... It's not a joke for some people. Lest you bucket this as a women's issue (and thereby dismiss it as n/a for you), think about prison rape. Even if you personally would not find it offensive to joke about it were you a victim of same, is it really all that difficult to imagine someone else finding such jokes in poor taste?
Mm, not really sure rape is a great hill to make your stand on when it comes to freedom of speech in America. It's not like there's legislation prohibiting same, much as nakedly racist language is still legal. It's just socially unacceptable because a large class of people find it offensive.
So, again, rape seems like a really poor area to draw a line in the sand. There's a vast chasm between a pain point like "I broke my leg" and "my ex physically coerced me into having sex." Remember, people aren't upset about the mere mention of rape, but jokes that trivialize it.
As far as re-victimizing you, well, that's your choice to make. I don't think an individual ought to generalize their own experience to everyone else's, whether they're a victim or not. Some rape victims may have reached a point where they're fine with jokes about it, and some aren't. I'll bet you could find a number of people with similar experiences to your own who would not be comfortable with that flavor of humor.
"So let me start by saying I like the Dickwolves strip. I think it’s a strong comic and I still think the joke is funny. Would we make that strip today? Knowing what we know now and seeing how it hurt people, no. We wouldn’t. But at the time, it seemed pretty benign. With that said I absolutely regret everything we did after that comic. I regret the follow up strip, I regret making the merchandise, I regret pulling the merchandise and I regret being such an asshole on twitter to people who were upset. I don’t think any of those things were good ideas. If we had just stopped with the strip and moved on, the Dickwolf never would have become what it is today. Which is a joke at the expense of rape victims or a symbol of the dismissal of people who have suffered a sexual assault. the comic itself obviously points out the absurd morality of the average MMO where you are actually forced to help some people and ignore others in the same situation. Oddly enough, the first comic by itself is exactly the opposite of what this whole thing has turned into."
His response to why he said pulling the merchandise was the mistake:
> In hindsight all this did was open the wound back up and bring on a whole new wave of debate. Any action we took at the time just dug us deeper regardless of what it was. What we needed to do was stop. just stop.
My guess would be he internally translated the message to mean "That we don't know about". Since he has previously said the whole incident was a mistake, he was probably thinking that this last bit was new to people.
And I think all the points of this blog post are why they have changed their stance on a lot of those things. They were reacting as if they were defending their free speech, and they weren't incorrect in isolation, the problem was they thus enabled other people to act out in more extreme ways. Finally when people got annoyed at them for starting the whole thing, they assumed it was for the initial strip (which was fine by most people's standards, which is why it is still up), rookie mistake, but probably one they took to heart.
> They were reacting as if they were defending their free speech, and they weren't incorrect in isolation, the problem was they thus enabled other people to act out in more extreme ways.
I think this was the real issue for Gabe, and I'm glad to see that he seems to realize that himself.
In essence, the dickwolves went off-message quickly, and what he thought he was defending against wasn't really the point of contention, and what he and Tycho were trying to say with the comic itself wasn't really what all of the comic's supporters had in mind.
I suspect this is what it might feel like to learn that a favorite shirt suddenly became a polarizing insignia within a gang battle you hadn't even known was active on the streets. The shirt means one thing to you but something completely different outside your front door.
If you don't think that's funny, I hear you. But the people who are all "I'm so open minded about offensive humor until he starts talking about dickwolves" ... I don't get it.
I found that comic you posted to be funny. I am a father and I abhor violence against children. If the comic really happened, that would be outrageous.
But it isn't real, and it isn't trying to justify violence against children, nor is it making fun of victims of violence.
I suppose some will label me a sociopath for my opinion. Perhaps I am one and just do not realize it.
Holy shit this article is so bad. Let's see here we've got
* taking quotes from troll accounts and implying those views are the same as Mike Krahuliks
* calling out Penny Arcade for failing to address an incident of sexual assault among enforcers (spoilers: the offender was quickly kicked out and banned from PAX, which isn't even mentioned in the article)
* implying that everyone who supports Mike makes rape and death threats
There are far more viewpoints than the 2 extremes that seem to be outlined in this article, and I'm not defending either extreme. I think the original comic was funny if a little off color. I think the initial reaction to the comic was vitriolic and overblown. I think Mike's response to that vitriol was unprofessional and, as he put it "a massive AOE that hurt a lot of innocent people". That said, he's not a villain. Despite what people want to believe, Mike has owned up to his mistakes in the past (see his handling of the transphobic comments he made) and genuinely seems willing to learn from these experiences and be a better person. This whole controversy seems to be perpetuated by some very vocal minorities from opposite spectrums, each taking what the other extreme said and freaking out. Mike certainly didn't help the matter with his original comments, but people calling him a bigot and boycotting PAX are also (in my opinion) overreacting based on articles like this that get pageviews by fanning the fire.
Hang on, learning from experiences? They talked about how they would've persisted with the offensive merchandise. How is greater insensitivity becoming a better person? I was happy to read his comments about trans stuff, but it seems to me that he's still a shoot first, ask questions later person. In fact what prompted the trans apology originally was more deliberately incendiary commentary.
He's not a villain but I don't really see this as anything except a very slow process involving a cycle of deliberately offensive commentary followed by recrimination followed by apologies. It's just sad to see that in this case it seems he wasn't all that sorry after all. So what's next? Another "not sorry" response regarding trans folk?
I would restate the first point as follows: the trolls have the same view as Mike/Gabe. And that particular view is that, what, social censure is censorship? It's not an uncommon view among the angry (predominantly white) male gamer crowd. @teamrape is just one particularly good example of a bunch of people organizing behind this principle.
Did you see the Q&A? Did you read his follow up comments? He regretted everything that happened after the intial comic. You're also confusing "they" with "Mike".
Yeah he's made mistakes. You can take his apologies as genuine and believe he wants to get better or you can think he's just playing lip service in order to save face. Having met the guy and talked to him several times, as well as listened to him on the podcasts/PA show/strip search, I believe it's the former.
See my reply to my own comment regarding the first point. (Not sure what HN best practice is on this one.)
Regarding the trans stuff: I did really read it, yes. For what it's worth, I've been reading Penny Arcade since 2000, and it's been in my RSS reader as long as I've used one. Did you any of what he said on Twitter?
The man's sincere in his contrition, but his shoot from the hip style without thinking about what other people think plus his penchant for lashing out is insane.
I don't think he's just paying lip service. I think he's probably a nice guy at heart. If you want my honest opinion, I think he's unaware of a lot of (dare I say it) privilege that he has, and reacts with hostility when called on it.
So again I am willing to take his trans apologies at face value. But it's part of a pattern, and maybe after stepping in it a few times, the guy could take at least a little more care.
I don't think this makes him a villain, and I suspect he'd find this criticism fair, as he has explicitly discussed this in the past. I give him credit for being self-aware.
Maybe I can summarize it like this: it's strange to hear people (not necessarily you) intimate that a) he has nothing to apologize for because he's a flawed but nice guy, and b) he's apologized so stop with the criticism. We wouldn't be here in the first place if the guy maybe thought a little bit more about how he communicates. And neither of the above invalidates this as a jumping off point for a discussion about the widespread insensitivity/hostility in gamer culture when it comes to folks who aren't cis, hetero, white males.
Yup, I totally agree. And I don't think people should stop criticizing at all, I think it's a valuable thing to do and is part of bringing about the change we want to see. I just wish there was less overblown under-researched clickbaity criticism.
I think pulling the merchandise might not have been good for PA as such, but I think it was better for the PA brand overall and as a peace offering. It demonstrated some amount of respect and contrition, in a very tangible way.
It's hard to determine whether or not Krahulik wants to learn to be better. His apology says that the mistake was engagement, but really, the mistake was that when he found out he'd hurt people, his response was to rub it in. He doesn't seem to recognize that the problem wasn't that he produced a follow-up strip, but that the follow-up was deliberately hurtful.
Maybe he's trying and he's just not there yet. Maybe he's just responding to the firestorm and doesn't really want to learn. I sure as hell can't tell the difference.
So I had to think really hard about it and the only time I could remember really thinking he made a mistake was when he told us we had to pull the Dickwolves merch. I didn’t really get a chance to elaborate on why that was though, and unfortunately by not doing so it created a bit of a firestorm on the Internet.
What does he mean he 'didn't get a chance'? He was being interviewed on stage, with his partner, by his business manager, at his own conference. I'm pretty sure he could have sat there and discussed it for an entire hour if he had felt so inclined, and it doesn't seem like the stage was in danger of being rushed by axe-wielding feminists or anything.
> * taking quotes from troll accounts and implying those views are the same as Mike Krahuliks
Judging by the comments on the article page, those trolls are way too common. At some point if you're Mike Krahuliks, you have to ask yourself, why do I attract so many sociopaths?
Frankly, if they are any indication of the attitudes of those who attend PAX, I wouldn't attend either.
Having attended every PAX on the west coast, I can safely say that taking the opinions of twitter trolls as a barometer for the culture of PAX is a grave mistake. It's a very welcoming community that generally looks down on trolls, misogyny, and sexism. Many people say that when they get to PAX they feel like they've finally come home. Many of the panels are chosen specifically to encourage a culture of acceptance. Just from this year, see:
An example of the great 21st century American power struggle: a fight to define who has been victimized more, and can therefore assume the mantle of moral authority.
I don't read PA's critics as arguing from a position of having "been vicimized [sic]." Their status as survivors is incidental to their argument. I read the criticism as being about the lack of empathy of PA's authors for their audience. You could replace the critics' status with gender-minority, and you'll find a more recent incident where Gabe was unable to empathize with his audience (denying the existence of transgender). Some comedians bill themselves as jerks and carve out a niche for their audience, but Penny Arcade purports to provide laughs for all gamers.
While I am pleased that race-gender-sex-preference tensions are being discussed in public in the 21st century, but I find it highly questionable that this is a greater power struggle than the classic 20th century struggles of war and labor. Especially given that what is at stake here is mostly audience size and hurt feelings, compared to livelihood and physical anguish.
I must have missed the memo where I was told I have to care. Maybe my sense of social order is broken, but I tend not to care too much about who's trying to be king of that hill.
I clicked that link expecting to regret it almost immediately. I was pleasantly surprised. This is the most reasonable I've seen Gabe or anyone associated with Penny Arcade be about the subject in the almost 3 years it's been dragging on. And on... And on...
Well I actually read PA myself and so I'm not surprised to see Gabe being reasonable the day or week after his mouth gets him in trouble.
I /was/ surprised to see him get in trouble over this though as I thought he had learned to stay far far away from it by now. Here's hoping he holds onto this lesson for real this time.
> In that same panel with Robert he asked us how we feel about being role models. We don’t aspire to be role models, just normal people, but we try to do what’s best with the platform we have.
I think that's part of the problem here. They may not aspire to be role models, but because of their success and public visibility they have become them.
A week or two ago, a friend of mine mentioned going to PAX East and I was all for it. Now I'm not quite sure. I really think the quote by Rich Stevens in the article matches my feelings.
> I could get over the original comic if they’d just moved on or apologized, but they had to make merchandise out of rape just to poke back at people and then encourage fans to wear it to a convention that supposedly has pro-woman policies.
While I hear PAX is quite the event and it sounds like a lot of fun, being in the industry I already get a front row view of how toxic the game community can be. Emphasis on "can", there's a lot of great people in it, but they get drowned out. But lately it's been seeming like PA is more of the same toxicity and I don't want to support that.
fwiw, penny arcade also banned booth babes and generally seem reasonably feminist
my guess is that Gabe was taken aback by the (imo over the top) attacks against him and that comic by feminist bloggers and is simply going to blind in this area from now on.
This whole thing was blown way out of proportion. Sure, the comic's creator reacted poorly to the complaints and should have just moved on to other things, but I can't say I have sympathy for the persons who read too much into the joke and thought they should try to turn their private outrage in a public issue.
I don't believe being offended is a valid reason for pulling down something (assuming the thing in question is legal). If we start vindicating loud, sensitive or manipulative people who try to remove content that doesn't please them, I think society is going to suffer as a result. More PC is never the solution. I can totally empathize with rape victims, it must have been a traumatic experience for them. But it should obvious to anyone that the comic was not promoting or encouraging rape at all and that the appropriate response if you didn't like it, was to ignore it. Humor is in the eye of the beholder. To give you an example, I knew an American guy who thought 9/11 jokes were incredibly offensive but had no qualms about mocking Haiti earthquake victims. Whether or not a joke is acceptable depends entirely on the audience. There is no moral code that stipulates in absolute terms what is funny and what isn't.
If we start vindicating loud, sensitive or manipulative people who try to remove content that doesn't please them, I think society is going to suffer as a result.
Actually, I think Mike Krahulik qualifies as loud, sensitive, and manipulative when he used his platform at his own conference to whine about people who embarrassed and annoyed him three years ago. Why bring it up again?
Humor has no forbidden themes. Forbidding themes approachable in humour is a slippery slope we, as a society, should not wish to enter.
Uncomfortable themes that have been used in humour: death? Check. Religion? There's a whole subculture of it. Torture? Check. Disabilities? Of course. Dim-witts? Oh boy has it been used. War? The more war there is, the more it's mocked.
I've never been to PAX, have little interest in comics, and had never heard this story before.
But if this is any way an accurate telling, then this whole thing is completely obscene. Rape jokes? Mocking people who object? Merchandising rape jokes? What the hell is wrong with these people?
It is disquieting -- to the say the least -- how often rampant sexism shows up in the geek community. But this is so beyond the pale. Krahulik might be entitled to his rights as an artist, but no amount of pleading against censorship can ameliorate the fact that he has no ethical sense whatsoever.
Is there any appropriate response to this other than unqualified outrage?
I've never read Penny Arcade or been to PAX either, but reading this story, it seems to me as if a bunch of outraged people want the benefit from attending this guy's conference, but also want him to stop making art that doesn't agree exactly with their sensibilities.
To me, this seems like unnecessary policing of the worst sort. Yes, his art seems to be in poor taste and he sounds like an asshole -- please stop attending his convention and urge other people to do so.
I don't see any direct link between this and "rampant sexism in the geek community", unless I guess you expand 'geek' to include 'anyone who has ever drawn a comic'. It is a case of a particular artist drawing something that some people think is horrible, but dunno if it calls for "unqualified outrage".
I was referring to the parent comment demanding "unqualified outrage", and relating this to "sexism in the geek community", which I felt was a little excessive considering it was one asshole artist who had drawn some offensive comic strips consisting exclusively of male characters.
So, what you really mean is, people should not attend PAX if they have a problem with PAX, and they should urge people not to attend PAX if they feel the need, but they should make sure that their urging conforms to a set of standards you have about what is and isn't a valid argument.
> but they should make sure that their urging conforms to a set of standards you have
Not at all. I'm not saying they should do anything. I'm merely commenting that expecting an artist to stop drawing something you don't like because you go to his convention to sell something is a little ridiculous. But hey, if that's your thing, feel free to erupt in unqualified outrage :)
The geek connection is explained in the article. Penny Arcade is massively popular within the gaming community (because it's a comic strip about computer gamers), and the decisions to showcase your indie game (or not) at one of their conferences has a direct impact on sales.
I've never read Penny Arcade
Informing yourself before jumping to conclusions is more effective than arguing from ignorance. As with your question rape threats, you could perfectly easily use resources like Google and Wikipedia to get a handle on the issue.
FYI, the parent commenter had never read Penny Arcade either, hence we were interacting from a position of presumably equal information regarding it.
> Penny Arcade is massively popular within the gaming community (because it's a comic strip about computer gamers), and the decisions to showcase your indie game (or not) at one of their conferences has a direct impact on sales.
Exactly. What his critics are essentially saying is, "We want him to stop making certain kinds of comic strips, but we also want to use his platform to sell our games." For an artist, that is ridiculous.
No they're not. The article is titled 'why I'm never going back to PAX'; the author's position is that she's given up on it. She quotes and links to two other developers who already don't go or won't go there again for the same reason, and quotes a 4th person who says that not going is difficult because since PAX is the biggest end-user game conference, staying away impacts sales. Generalizing from that observation as you did is inaccurate and misleading.
Just because the other person is also uninformed on the subject doesn't mean you should skip reading the source article.
I find it sort of amusing people pick and choose the social standing of gaming depending on circumstance. Some days "gaming is mainstream now! This isn't the 80s anymore people, everyone games!", while other days there is "gaming culture" which is distinctly "geek".
I suppose the truth is probably somewhere in the middle (somewhere pretty damn close to "geek" I think). I just find the juxtaposition amusing.
Most humor is in "poor-taste" to someone. IMO, when certain topics are taboo that just a bigger indicator of a cultural problem: "move along, nothing to see here".
As an honest question, how do you feel about murder? How many people have been murdered? Know someone who has been murdered? Love someone who has been murdered?
Is murder off-limits? It's arguably more heinous than rape, and yet -- video game culture specifically and, more generally, all media culture seems to glorify it and often use it for humorous purposes. Dexter. Scarface. Pulp Fiction -- when they shot that kid in the face it was treated like a joke. And I see this stuff all over t-shirts. All over the TV. Internet. Music. Games. Etc. As a culture, we love entertainment involving murder.
Why do we have this reaction against rape jokes in particular? Is it because of the sexism angle?
Maybe I'm just a white American male and, therefore, don't have sensitivities towards certain things like sexism and racism. But that attitude feels awfully dismissive.
Because murder is equal opportunity and is generally seen as abhorrent cross-culturally, while rape is skewed towards specific marginalized people and is generally seen as not a problem.
1 in 6 women are sexually assaulted. 1 in 33 men are sexually assaulted. Rapes in prison are skyrocketing vs. any other form of violent crime in this country, men or women.
Check out "corrective rape" for an example of how rape is different than murder and, perhaps, is way worse.
Well, murder isn't generally perpetrated by one distinct group of people against another distinct group of people, so in that sense it's a universal problem. I don't think you're insensitive particularly, but surely you can imagine that jokes about rape come across significantly differently to men and women.
"Well, murder isn't generally perpetrated by one distinct group of people against another distinct group of people, so in that sense it's a universal problem."
Really?
I mean, it's certainly a much larger issue amongst certain socio-economic and ethnic groups in the United States, at least. The Trayvon Martin murder, for example, was very much about race and culture -- about the perception that murdering someone with a certain skin color is kind of okay because those people are inherently threatening.
And there are events like the Holocaust which absolutely were perpetrated by one group against another. (And that "Hitler's bunker"/Downfall video meme, which jokes about the ultimate perpetrator of that horror, went through a period of being beloved on the internet.)
And wasn't the original comic about a man getting raped?
Yes really. You are right about the controversy surrounding Trayvon Martin murder being very much a matter of race and culture. But that's one murder among many. You can find individual murders or groups of murders (eg the holocaust) or patterns of murder very easily. But murder in general is not so specific.
And for the nth time, it isn't really about the original comic.
Wait, wait... how did you get sexism out of this particular issue?
I'm not saying the dude isn't sexist or an asshole, but all of the characters in the offending strip were male, there's not specific reprisal against one particular gender of critics, etc.
So there's lots of assholery going around, but how did you get /sexism/?
There is specific reprisal against one particular gender of critics. Outspoken women who critiqued the comic and PA's response were sent rape and death threats.
To what degree exactly were they 'threats'? I have been hearing this phrase 'X received death and rape threats' a lot recently, but I have almost never heard of these being reported to the police, or arrests being made because of them (which you'd expect to be the case).
For example, randomcommenter123 saying something asinine like "you deserve to be trampled by a rampaging rhinoceros" does not constitute a death threat. On the other hand, someone who knows your address, or personal details about you is clearly dangerous and should be reported to law enforcement immediately. I would like the see the actual text of some of these threats before we assign them any actual importance.
Yeah, if you really wanted to know what rape threats read like, you could just Google it. Here's less than 5 mins of Googling for the term "rape threats":
Some examples (warning, some may find this content disturbing, turn back now):
"This is just the beginning. Over the next couple of weeks I receive a steady stream of violent abuse, including rape and death threats. At its peak I am getting about one threat a minute, with men discussing how they will rape me together, which parts of my body will be penetrated and exactly how they are going to kill me. They are still coming in now – the latest: a death-through gang-rape threat where I’m told to “KISS YOUR PUSSY GOODBYE AS WE BREAK IT IRREPARABLY”."[1]
"She wrote on her blog: "I just got one of those Twitter threats... 'Your house will be blown up at 10.47 tonight....'"[2]
"You better watch your back....Im gonna rape your ass at 8pm and put the video all over the internet," read one."[3]
"A BOMB HAS BEEN PLACED OUTSIDE YOUR HOME. IT WILL GO OFF AT EXACTLY 10:47PM ON A TIMER AND TRIGGER DESTROY EVERYTHING"[4]
"i will rape you tomorrow at 9pm .... shall we meet near your house??????< @MPSWForest and again….."[5]
Also, they are being reported to the police, the question of why no arrests have been made because of them should rightfully be directed at law enforcement:
"Professor Beard had tried to submit an abuse report to Twitter on her mobile phone but found the form refused to submit. She reported the incident to police, explaining to a follower: "Abuse is one thing (that's name and shame stuff), death threats are criminal and for the boys (& girls) in blue."[2]
Though it does appear sometimes they do get arrested[6].
Seriously man, if you were actually curious about how bad these threats are, this is trivially easy to discover. This is the internet. And this isn't limited to well-known authors or political figures too. Everytime something sufficiently controversial comes out of the mouth of a woman the violence and rape threats roll in, as if on cue.
But men don't exist in a culture that tells them to fear being raped, or that their physical appearance is what matters most about them, or that they should be demure and not like sex.
In no way was I saying "men didn't receive threats". But don't act like threats of rape to men and women are received the same way. They're not.
No, you're right. It's easy for me to say "A troll writes the same horrible nonsense to everyone", and I had forgotten about the impact upon the receiver of the message.
The hostility towards victims of rape didn't stem from the comic, it came from the response to the response to the comic.
That is to say rape victims said some not nice things about the comic and so they made a tee shirt about it, and started carrying on. Kind of a Streisand effect.
You'd be surprised actually. When studying the incidence of sexual violence in the last 12 months, the CDC's 2010 "National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey" study found that 5.3% of men and 6.5% of women were victims.
The CDC did a pretty terrible job of organizing and labeling their data, and the male numbers are skewed downwards because they don't have reliable statistics for the last 12 months for rape in which male victims were penetrated. It's true that the lifetime incidence of sexual violence is significantly higher for women, but talking about the average person today, rape is basically an equal-opportunity tragedy. Even leaving aside the problems with the study that bias male data downwards, making the claim that a type of crime is gendered should require a far greater disparity in the incidence per gender.
If I had two white characters in a comic strip, with one being a stereotypical "loser" being arrested by the police (let's say in a comical manner, over a single joint) and the other one joking about it, is it racist because the issue of the war on drugs primarily affects minorities?
Good question! I think that's getting into blurry lines territory.
Rape victims often suffer for a long period of time from the experience; people busted for a joint usually get over it more quickly. A reader of the comic is more likely to be suffering PTSD from rape than from getting busted.
Societal attitudes toward rape materially impact the likelihood of the occurrence of rape by creating a culture of safety or of danger; attitudes about drugs generally don't affect whether an officer will make an arrest (until laws get changed). Media shapes societal attitudes; therefore media creators have an obligation to be socially responsible.
Although rape doesn't only affect women, I estimate that it does affect them more disproportionately than the war on drugs disproportionately affect minorities. Men going about their day-to-day business aren't concerned with the threat of rape or related issues; white pot smokers going about their day-to-day pot smoking should be concerned with encountering the police (depending on local law).
> attitudes about drugs generally don't affect whether an officer will make an arrest (until laws get changed).
This is untrue: officers operating under the same set of laws within my state have disparate policies regarding arrest (and from the DAs, prosecution) based on the local social leanings.
> I estimate that it does affect them more disproportionately than the war on drugs disproportionately affect minorities.
According to the CDC study cited in another reply, you'd be wrong.
> Men going about their day-to-day business aren't concerned with the threat of rape or related issues;
This seems like it's cultural and about social attitudes, rather than about any actual danger level. (Based on the same CDC report.)
I'm not sure that I buy the argument that because one group of people is afraid of something that impacts a wider group of people, no one can make jokes about it.
Here's a few questions: would your opinion of whether the rape joke was "sexist" depend on if the male author had been the victim of rape and was making jokes about it as a therapeutic device (noting that all the rape jokes in the strip are about "dicks" and male slaves)? how is the joke existing different in this context? should he stop if people are still uncomfortable about it? why is this (not) okay if the author hasn't been raped, but has some sort of anxiety about it? where exactly does it become "sexist" again?
> I estimate that it does affect them more disproportionately than the war on drugs disproportionately affect [sic] minorities.
I appreciate that you're willing to be so open-minded about this stuff (in contrast to a lot of the conversation around both these topics), but the numbers that you're guessing and basing your assumptions on are just wildly off the mark. Black Americans are estimated to make up 13% to 20% of drug offenders in the US, but 35% percent of drug arrests are of black offenders. At the peak of the disparity (early 90s), black drug offenders were being arrested at FIVE times the rate of white drug offenders. The current disparity is between 3.5 and 4 times as much. Note that this is talking specifically about elevated arrest rates of drug _offenders_, so the fact that the amount of drug usage between the two groups may differ is not relevant. By the way, the disparity only increases as you look at indictment and incarceration rates vs percentage of population or percentage of offenders.
> Is there any appropriate response to this other than unqualified outrage?
Oh gee, I dunno, maybe trying to think critically about the issue and taking a measured look at what actually went down instead of believing that some people are really the villains that an inflammatory clickbait article makes them out to be?
If I could upvote this 100x I would. I know that stories like these should be covered because of it's importance, but the websites/news channels that publish or cover this story reap the rewards (just as much as Penny Arcade).
It's just perpetuating exploitation over and over again, and damn does that piss me off.
Just ignore them and let them wallow in seething hatred of things that are obviously not meant to be taken offensively. Give me a break. I wish Penny Arcade _hadn't_ removed that merchandise. I mean what the f*ck?
What politically-correct babies we've become. I'm sick of the outrage that happens when comedians make rape jokes or other "offensive" jokes. The Penny Arcade guys don't support rape. They made a joke. What's the issue?
The problem is that they followed up. I have no problem with anyone being intentionally or unintentionally offensive.
I have offended more than a few people in my life and have been annoyed from stuff other say way more than once and it evens.
When you see you hurt someone unintentionally you apologize. It is not hard. And then you shut up. That's it. Don't try to wiggle your way out from the situation or save face. Don't spin it or use "PR".
I used the word hurt intentionally. Because there is whole class of people whose job it to be professionally offended. And they are better ignored or teased.
Why do these people assume that raped people want them putting on such a noisy rape-is-bad awareness show of "support"? How about advocating for changes that make rape less likely and, if possible, the social consequences to victims less severe? For example: more men than women in the U.S. are raped (though a woman not in prison does have more to fear, rationally).
Getting offended by crude humor is fine as a personal aesthetic choice. Drawing attention to it seems futile.
It's not the original comic that's at issue. It's Penny Arcade's response to the criticism they've received about it.
It's not a "noisy rape-is-bad awareness show", it's protesting against a company that, quite literally, profited from a rape joke. And then said that they regretted not profiting from a rape joke.
As far as advocating against rape, that's what this is. Poking fun at people who've been raped contributes to rape culture. Rape culture contributes to the conspiracy of silence around sexual assault (i.e. "They're gonna make fun of me too").
It's not that all taboo topics are off-limits for humor. It's that PAX bills itself as a safe space except for those times when the creator of the property wore a shirt making fun of rape victims' fear.
I think his point is that the original joke was punching at video game heroes (and the humans who play as them, the same people who are presumably the audience of the comic...), not at rape victims.
What followed was obviously a bit less benign... but the original joke was not "punching down".
(Also, the quality of humor is pretty subjective, I don't think there is a productive conversation to be had there.)
Honestly, I thought the original comic was spot-on and loved it. The dickwolves thing didn't get past my rape joke barometer. Still doesn't.
Of course, I'm a mostly-white, cismale, upper-middle class programmer who's never been sexually assaulted so I'm skewered by all kinds of privilege here.
But I'm talking about PA's reactions, about what came after. So's the post on Wired. And it seemed clear to me that he was trying to bait me by throwing my words back at me without context without contributing to the discussion.
It seems to me that many people involved in this situation are purposely being imprecise to cause drama. Specifically there are two waves of people who got offended; the people who were offended by the comic, and the people who were offended by the reaction to the first wave. It seems like people like mhurron are purposely conflating the two waves to cause strive, though it is possible it wasn't intentional.
Whenever the word 'culture' enters into an argument like this I tune out.
The word is just not a useful label for anything anymore. It has been stretched far beyond any coherent idea it may have once described. It can be contorted to mean anything and often is, from argument to argument and even sentence to sentence.
Far be it from me to say that this is conclusive evidence or anything, but CDC data is generally accepted as quite reliable, and I can see why people would trust their data.
Part of the confusion about this is that the CDC's definition of rape does not included "made to penetrate" (though their data does separate it out). Most people reasonably include this in their definition of rape, since all the arguments against doing so are the same rape-apologia nonsense you hear all the time, like "well clearly his [or her] body was responding, so while it sucks, I don't think you can call it rape".
Also, the fact that rape in correctional facilities skews heavily towards men and is generally not included in statistics like this.
The one source I know of [2] claims 216,000 victims of "sexual abuse", but doesn't say specifically is sexual abuse means "rape" or if those numbers are only for male prisoners.
It's a 'rape' joke only insomuch as the word rape was used in the text. The comic doesn't encourage, make light of or invoke imagery of violence against women, so I humbly disagree that this is a reasonable example of sexism. If the word "sodomized" was used in place of the word "rape", the outrage would likely be non-existent.
For the record, I do believe sexism is a serious problem in our society, particularly in tech, but I disagree that the comic and the defense of it by its authors is sexist.
Yeah, I keep hearing that, but just because some people perceive sexism, doesn't mean that they deserve special treatment lest one be accused of sexism. Also, reports of threats from anonymous internet trolls is the common denominator of every internet controversy, I can't take that seriously unless PA was encouraging users to send out hateful messages.
I'm not sure how to engage with you on this because I'm not sure what you're saying.
It sounds like you're saying, "PA shouldn't be blamed for the Internet trolls that are out there already all the time." Or maybe, "Threats against women are garden-variety Internet trolling and not motivated particularly by their gender." You seem to also be saying, "People only perceive sexism; it doesn't objectively exist."
I'll start by responding to all three and please correct me if I've misunderstood your points.
1. I don't blame PA for hateful comments its community sent out to people asking them to apologize for a rape joke. I blame them for profiting off of it, for recognizing that this was happening and thinking that it might be a good idea to make money from it or make light of it by encapsulating the outrage as a shirt. While they weren't specifically saying, "Go out and threaten women with rape and death," they were saying, "We don't think enough of their complaints to treat it seriously." I don't think it's out of line to see the thought process there: "PA themselves were making light of it, so maybe this whole thing isn't that big a deal?"
2. Sex-based threats against women (rape, specifically) are of course different than similar threats against men. Just like the US judicial system makes distinctions between hate crimes and non-hate crimes, or distinguishes between pre-meditated murder and spur-of-the-moment murder, sex-based threats against women are treated specially. They are derived from circumstances of who they are and how they are perceived in culture, both things that an individual has no hope of changing. Of course any threatened class of people deserves special treatment for being threatened for being in that class of people.
3. Sexism well and truly exists. I'm not going to try proving that to anyone else with access to Google.
"Threats against women are garden-variety Internet trolling and not motivated particularly by their gender."
I am not saying this. Of course sexist trolling is motivated by the gender of the victim, that's exactly how trolls operate, they deliberately attack pain points that are specific to their target and it is damaging whether they actually believe what they say or not. However, none of this is the fault of the comic authors.
You seem to also be saying, "People only perceive sexism; it doesn't objectively exist."
I am not saying this. You clearly didn't read my entire post. Sexism is a real problem as I clearly stated in my OP. Stated another way: if reasonable individuals can agree that the comic is not sexist, then it follows that the perception of the comic as sexist is merely a perception that the authors don't have an ethical obligation to recognize.
I'm not sure what you're saying.
I'm saying that PA authors shouldn't be held responsible for trolls harassing individuals they disagree with because there is a flavor of troll for every controversial topic and they will always spout the most disgusting hateful thing imaginable for the target audience.
I blame them for profiting off of it
Why? Do you blame the author of this post or any of other dozens of blogs that have profited off this controversy? If the comic wasn't sexist, I don't see the problem with selling merch based on the comic. Will some perceive "Dickwolf" merchandise as an attack on women? Yes, but that doesn't make it true.
they were saying, "We don't think enough of their complaints to treat it seriously."
I don't think they are wrong for this. As I stated in my OP, the comic does not invoke imagery of violence against women unless you believe that the literary use of the word 'rape' is inherently sexist. If you don't believe that use of the term rape is inherently sexist, it follows that you might not take accusations of sexism seriously. You can't evaluate these two components of the story in a vacuum. Your argument boils down to "well, there isn't anything actually sexist about the comic, but dismissing accusations of the comic as sexist is sexist".
Nope, totally read your post. And then deleted my rather angry response because you've got a couple of good points; sorry to straw man you there.
All of your examples start from the comic. The rest of the discussion starts with PA's response to their critics.
I agree that the comic isn't particularly sexist.
I disagree that PA isn't responsible for their community here. Even Krahulik himself thinks so[1]. When he says, on the one hand, "We have worked very hard to make PAX a safe place," and then, on the other hand, says he regrets not selling rape joke t-shirts that specifically were released to antagonize his critics (the ones he was making the safe place for). What's up with that?
I think the t-shirt was purposefully created to make fun of people who thought the original comic was a big deal. Do you disagree? It's not about whether the original comic was sexist (I never said that, nor did Wired).
I also think there's a clear difference between PA selling the shirt and Wired writing a reaction piece. Wired didn't post a big picture of a dickwolf and put ads on it. They're not profiting from a rape joke directly... like you would if you sold a picture of a dickwolf on a shirt.
All of your examples start from the comic. The rest of the discussion starts with PA's response to their critics.
True, because I don't think it's logical to divorce the content of the comic from PA's reaction to criticisms of the comic. The content of the comic matters when evaluating the veracity of the criticism. If the criticisms are evaluated as invalid it reframes questionable actions like poking fun at critics and printing dickwolf t-shirts.
I agree that the comic isn't particularly sexist.
It is not sexist in any way. If you disagree, please elaborate.
When he says, on the one hand, "We have worked very hard to make PAX a safe place," and then, on the other hand, says he regrets not selling rape joke t-shirts that specifically were released to antagonize his critics (the ones he was making the safe place for). What's up with that?
PAX is an event that takes place in the real world in an environment (tech event) that has often seen women objectified and harassed; working to minimize objectification and harassment has no relationship to printing dickwolf t-shirts. Dickwolf t-shirts do not objectify women. Dickwolf t-shirts do not harass or encourage harassment of women. Women are not made unsafe by the comic or the selling of t-shirts based on the comic. Not all women agree that dickwolf shirts merit feeling threatened. If one feels threatened by a dickwolf t-shirt that's one's own prerogative. Yes, the t-shirts were designed to make fun of the critics but nothing is wrong with that if you disagree with the critic's assessment of the work.
I also think there's a clear difference between PA selling the shirt and Wired writing a reaction piece. Wired didn't post a big picture of a dickwolf and put ads on it. They're not profiting from a rape joke directly
Ok, I agree that selling shirts about the comic is not the same as linkbaiting for page-views, but my point is still the same; PA was "profiting from a rape joke" the moment the comic was posted, so if there is no problem profiting from the original comic, I fail to see why it's wrong to profit from the sale of t-shirts based on the comic. Either the comic is wrong and the merch is also wrong by extension or the comic is not wrong and the shirt is just a stupid shirt.
It's been a while and I don't know if you'll come back, but here goes...
It is not sexist in any way. If you disagree, please elaborate.
I know many women who don't find rape amusing. Most ugly rape jokes that I've seen (popular rape jokes? anyway...) are made by men.
The content of the comic matters when evaluating the veracity of the criticism.
This is our central disagreement, then. The original work could have been made in ignorance and been excusable. But some of Penny Arcade's own fans said, "Hey guys, can you not make light of the fact that some people actually are raped to sleep every night?" And in the face of those revelations by real people they decided to have a laugh. Their own fans exposed some vulnerability by admitting these feelings and the PA guys stomped all over them. They're just being bullies.
Additionally, the content itself matters less than its audience's reactions. This isn't some lunatic fringe pulling meaning out of nowhere, this is a demographic of people that PA has largely tried to defend through their policies at PAX. Except here, where they made fun of them when they were down.
The fall-out from this stretched on for about a year. Krahulik, via Twitter, demeaned the concept of triggers and, basically, denied that what these people were feeling was real.
Dickwolf t-shirts do not harass or encourage harassment of women.
This statement makes no sense. When women respond to a rape joke by saying, "Please don't say that," and you print a t-shirt in response to their criticism that depicts a (fantasy) rapist... how does that not encourage harassment? How does that follow in your thinking?
if you disagree with the critic's assessment of the work
> I regret the follow up strip, I regret making the merchandise, I regret pulling the merchandise and I regret being such an asshole on twitter to people who were upset.
When you say Women are not made unsafe by the comic of the selling of t-shirts based on the comic it tells me that you don't know what it is to feel unsafe or be a woman. I've read a lot of first-hand accounts of women saying they felt unsafe in a crowd of men cheering for rape.
I'm gonna put a lid of this one on my side. Thanks for the level-headed discussion, though, much appreciated -- especially because this shit makes me jump up and down.
So what? How is that sexist? I know many black Americans who don't find slavery amusing, does that make the comic racist too? Of course not, because the comic contains absolutely nothing in the way of allusions to race from any conceivable interpretation, the same is true of sex.
Most ugly rape jokes that I've seen (popular rape jokes? anyway...) are made by men.
Most popular comedians are men, whether you chalk that up to a sexist society or not, an individual's joke doesn't become sexist just because the joke is mostly made by men, I think it's pretty obvious that all sorts of clearly non-sexist jokes fall into the category of "mostly made by men". I think, at a minimum, the intellectually honest way to judge a joke as sexist is if it's made at the expense of an individuals's sex (or at least makes any mention of or allusion to sex without consideration for women as a protected class). Anyone can be raped, in fact, male prisoners being raped (as is the case in the comic) is a very common trope. The comic is just not sexist at all, period. Also, what's with the "ugly" qualifier? Are some "rape jokes" ugly and others not?
some of Penny Arcade's own fans said, "Hey guys, can you not make light of the fact that some people actually are raped to sleep every night?" And in the face of those revelations by real people they decided to have a laugh.
That's pretty a revisionist version of events. A shit-storm of vitriol (on both sides) erupted over this comic, PA wasn't given a kind suggestion by the community, they were flamed as sexist rape culture purveyors straight out of the gate, they reacted by doubling down in defense of the comic, indeed poorly, but with earnest belief in the intellectual honesty of their argument: nothing is wrong with the comic.
Additionally, the content itself matters less than its audience's reactions.
That makes zero sense. Facts matter, especially when people are whipped up into a frenzy over the supposed nature of the facts.
This isn't some lunatic fringe pulling meaning out of nowhere
The segment of the audience who didn't favor the comic are not a lunatic fringe, they're just totally wrong about the comic by all objective measure. They were pulling meaning out of nowhere because we've already established that the comic in no way alludes to violence against women, period. The critics don't own the word rape.
Which Krahulik himself does not: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/09/04/some-clarification
> I regret the follow up strip, I regret making the merchandise, I regret pulling the merchandise and I regret being such an asshole on twitter to people who were upset.
Yes, he regrets all those things (except the original comic), that doesn't mean he agrees with the critics (he clearly doesn't).
When you say Women are not made unsafe by the selling of t-shirts based on the comic it tells me that you don't know what it is to feel unsafe or be a woman.
That's a considerably presumptuous and condescending statement. You'd feel pretty stupid right now if I told you that I actually was a woman (i'm not), but just because I hold certain beliefs (i.e. "don't be a dickwolf" printed on a t-shirt is not threatening) you presume that I couldn't possibly know what it's like to be a woman because of course we should reasonably expect that a normal woman would feel threatened by a passive line of text ironed onto a shirt. I mean, look at the first comment on the article, a female rape survivor who gasp doesn't read any threatening connotation into dickwolves.
Once again, women are not made unsafe by the t-shirt. Wearing a t-shirt doesn't make one a rapist, it doesn't encourage rape, it doesn't support rape, neither the shirt nor the comic depict an assault of any kind, and women in particular have a dubious relationship to the comic in any capacity (since it was a white male prisoner who alluded to being raped by a Dickwolf)
I've read a lot of first-hand accounts of women saying they felt unsafe in a crowd of men cheering for rape.
Yes, a crowd of men cheering for rape would be quite scary... except that never actually happened and you completely undermine your credibility when you repeat such falsehoods as truth. They cheered because they support the artist, the comic, and the perceived push-back against capitulation to pressure that pulling the merch represented. To say that those men cheered for rape is about as dishonest as it gets and it's that type of rhetoric that sends otherwise open-minded men into defense mode.
Anyway. Agree to disagree. Glad we kept it civil :).
Incidentally, there was a significant transphobic incident with Krahulik on Twitter a month or two ago, as well. I didn't see much of it, since I'm not on top of game news, but what I was pointed to wasn't exactly good.
I saw those tweets, out of context, and they were bad. But the context is important. A 17-year-old boy decide he gets to use the girls' room now, that's a different context than a transwoman talking about almost getting beaten to death.
The original joke didnt need an apology as it was clearly directed at the screwed up morality of games, ie rape only matters when it is part of a quest. Everything PA did after that was stupid and offensive.
It's really kind of sad that this sort of thing even needs to be explained to the tech culture. I can only hope that the apologists for Gabe grow up at some point; maybe when they have daughters of their own whose safety they have to look after.
It's never been about the original strip. It's always been about PA's reaction to their own community telling them that the strip was over the line. Rather than apologize, they made it personal, and set out to mock victims of rape.
It's not about free speech, and it never was. It's about what happens when a person who was picked on as a kid gets the power to bully back, even if he is clearly in the wrong.
If you have a community, you are responsible for setting the tone. That's your responsibility as a leader. Throwing gas on the fire by making merchandise, and still bringing this shit up 3 years later is not the way to be a leader.
Is Gabe responsible for his followers being assholes? No, not directly. But dredging up the dickwolves again isn't going to help matters at all. People are sheep, even the ones who think they are the smartest ones in the room.
Obviously, all the people arguing on behalf of PA showing zero maturity have never had a mother, sister, or daughter who have been raped. Otherwise they get over the intellectual arguments, and act like a human being.
All the other arguments excusing Gabe's unprovoked outburst are intellectual bullshit that no one cares about.
This entire incident could be taught as a textbook example of what not to do in public relations. You have everything: a demonstrated lack of empathy, attacking the victim, continued engagement over a long period of time, over-the-top antagonizing behavior (t-shirts? really?).
Had he upset a more powerful and organized group and had the same response, PAX would be finished.
If you're offended by words then you are taking life way too seriously. Especially when they're words in an internet comic, intended to be a joke.
The person that objects to the freedom to say whatever you want is the one being an asshole. The world isn't all sunshine and rainbows and no amount of denial or cognitive dissonance will change that.
I get that PA doesn't want to be seen as kowtowing to a mandate that they not push the boundaries of humor...but there were ways of handling this that are between the spectrum of being submissive and being "fuck you I do what I want"...and acknowledging that there is such a spectrum is not being a surrender monkey to the censors.
Similarly, I find it frustrating to see these debates devolve into "Well what, we can't ever mention rape except in serious legal cases, ever?" I don't have much to add, but here's what I think is a canonical example of how to include rape in humor, courtesy Louis CK:
I don't see how rape victims would find Louis CK's example of rape humor acceptable. Rape victims probably dislike thinking about the subject at all. Is it that casting the victim in his joke as Hitler is somehow better than a nameless slave NPC in an MMO?
I think we are missing the elephant in the room in that a lot of people find rape jokes funny -- to the point of being profitable enough to sell merchandise. But there is a small minority that are incredibly offended when the topic of rape is even broached. Where do we strike balance in that spectrum you mentioned?
To be fair to PAX attendees, at this point the only real relationship between PAX and Penny-Arcade is the name. PAX is very much a pan-gaming expo that happens to be organized by PA.
But at the same time the reaction to the controversy around the comic has been all types of screwed up by Gabe.
Right or wrong, people have made it clear that the dickwolves thing makes them feel physically uneasy (at best). Whether it's right for people to feel that way is basically immaterial by this point; the argument was lost long ago, and Gabe is chasing after a train that is long departed.
So while I don't doubt that Gabe (and Tycho) do not literally support people being raped, they have been told in no uncertain terms that is how many people perceive support for "Dickwolves". Any further push for 'free speech' there must come as a package with instilling a culture of rape... again, even if that's not how they mean for it to be perceived, that doesn't change the reality of how it is being perceived.
I empathize with Gabe's greater point, but the fact is that he needs to start choosing different battles if he wants to win this 'war'. This particular battle was lost long ago.