Being raped to sleep by the dickwolves.

Gelzo

Remember that time Penny Arcade caught a ton of flak for this phrase? That was weird.

Nyktos

Yeah, I can understand not liking rape humour, but the whole thing was a bit ridiculous. Though the PA guys' handling of the situation was...not ideal.

Malkavian

It's what I like to call 'extremism on both sides hurts everyone'.

Gelzo

I don't think I have all the details, but the weirdest parts about it to me were that it wasn't even close to the first time they've made a joke about rape or something worse, and that there were accusations about sexism against women despite the victim being a man.

Icalasari

Are dickwolves wolves that are dicks, wolves made of dicks, dicks that are wolves, or dicks made of wolves?

Nyktos

I believe the canonical interpretation was that they have dicks instead of hands and feet.

Gelzo

Description in panel one.

Malkavian

I think that comic, while it's funny, misses the point. What the critics were complaining about wasn't encouraging rape, but encouraging apathy about rape.

Gelzo

As I said, the comic jokes about worse things than rape. Do you read it?

And then, the whole reason the comic was funny was because the situation of the victim was so horrible and the player treated him with cruel apathy.

Malkavian

Yes, I do it read it. Thanks for the condescending assumption. Those worse things don't have a culture of sexism and victim-blaming.

Scythemantis

I didn't know this happened, I thought it was a hilarious phrase/visual and their reaction comic is especially funny.

Gelzo

^^It was an honest question. I wanted to know if I had to bother describing it further and searching for examples.

Scythemantis

^^^There's too clear a line between reality and fantasy for humor about ANYTHING to offend me, and frankly, I think that's the only reasonable way for anyone to be.

Malkavian

^I don't disagree. I've already said that overreaction existed on both sides. I'm pointing out why the overreaction on one side happened and why the comic Gelzo posted (while amusing) missed the point.

Gelzo

^^Well, there are times when people do hold awful opinions and use jokes to communicate them. It's the "funny because it's true" sort of humor instead of the kind that's funny because it's just absurd. You can usually tell the difference, and in cases of the latter I definitely agree with you.

^Okay, I think I missed that you weren't necessarily sharing their opinion. That was my mistake.

Schitzo

Sniveling bitches, every side.

Beholderess

The ones who complained about the joke clearly overreacted. I mean, how is using rape as a stand-in for "really bad thing" supports or trivialises it?

And then, the whole reason the comic was funny was because the situation
of the victim was so horrible and the player treated him with cruel
apathy.

This, pretty much. Do not see any support for rape here.

But the way authors handled that reaction is idiotic too.

Elbeem

Yep, this is one of those cases where things would not have gotten nearly as huge had things not escalated on both sides.

I'm pretty sure that if Tycho and Gabe had it to do all over again, they would have responded with a simple statement ensuring the readers that the original comic was in no way intended to trivialize rape or make fun of rape victims, and apologizing to anyone who may have been offended.

Whether or not you agree that PA was in the wrong, a statement like that would have saved them months of headaches, and would have prevented the damaged reputation that the PAX conference suffered as a consequence.

Elbeem

Since this seems kind of relevant here, I thought I would post a blog entry I came across that has really made me rethink my position on the acceptability of rape humor recently. Since I found this on another forum and the original author wasn't attributed, I don't know who to give credit for this to.

(The subject that brought this up was the recent firing of a mixed martial artist from the UFC for tweeting rape van jokes.)

To all those men who don't think the surprise sex jokes are a problem:

I get it—you're a decent guy. I can even believe it. You've never raped
anybody. You would NEVER surprise sex anybody. You're upset that all
these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something, or connect
you to doing something, that, as far as you're concerned, you've never
done and would never condone.

And they've told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women
is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can't let every time
someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?
Especially when it doesn't mean anything. surprise sex jokes have never
made YOU go out and surprise sex someone. They never would; they never
could. You just don't see how it matters.

I'm going to tell you how it does matter. And I tell you this because I
genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don't want to hurt
anybody, and that it's important to you to do your best to be a decent
and good person, and that you don't see the harm. And I genuinely
believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you
think surprise sex really is a very bad thing.

Here is why I refuse to take surprise sex jokes sitting down...

Because 6% of college-aged men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to
raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word "surprise sex"
isn't used in the description of the act—and that's the conservative
estimate. Other sources double that number.

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists.
That's not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men surprise sex, and
other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who
really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the
rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like surprise sex
jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of surprise sex.

If one in twenty guys (or more) is a real and true rapist, and you have
any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, then it is
almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends
and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW
guild, in a pick-up game of basketball, at a bar, or elsewhere, you were
talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can't tell a rapist apart any
better than anyone else can. It's not like they announce themselves.

But, here's the thing. It's very likely that in some of these
interactions with these guys, at some point or another, someone told a
surprise sex joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they
didn't mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

Or maybe you didn't laugh. Maybe it just wasn't a very funny joke. So maybe you just didn't say anything at all.

And, decent guy who would never condone surprise sex, who would step in
and stop surprise sex if he saw it, who understands that surprise sex is
awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed? When you were silent?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you
were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And
he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

ClockworkUniverse

Still reading the quoted stuff, but @that last bit: There's a button on the top bar showing the text getting tabbed to the right. It's got a little blue arrow on it.

Elbeem

Thanks!

MillerCross

That seems a tad...exaggerated. It basically means that at least one of two people who make rape jokes are rapists, for starters. 

I know enough rape victims in real life (one) and enough in webspace (We could go on for a while in there) to know that I shouldn't joke about it with them, same way you don't talk to soldiers about war in a jokey fashion and blah blah blah. And it's OK to respect that. In fact, not even OK, it's necessary, if you're gonna be their friends or associates, at least. 

but it seems ridiculous to assume that just because someone jokes about rape and doesn't get called out on it (Or if rapists do) then you're condoning their rape in any level but an unintentional one. And if we're gonna judge people by their non-intentional acts that don't harm people directly, then...welp, i guess we all here deserve an arrest in one way or another. for all those times we've made jokes that ended up condoning hideous acts. for all those times we went "Hey, let's not do this civic duty because boring" and so on. 

Elbeem

I definitely agree with you that it is ridiculous to think that someone laughing at or tolerating a rape joke is in any way complicit to the actions of a rapist in their social circle. I don't know that the intent of the blog I quoted was to assert that position, but I really can't say for sure since I don't even know where it originated.

I'm not saying that after reading that I will become a crusader against all rape related humor from here on out. It has just helped me rethink my position from a "I don't see too much of a problem with this" on things like the PA comic, to a more conflicted stance. It definitely helped me understand the feelings of those on the crusading side of the issue a bit better.

Edit: And I imagine thinking twice about things like that is very likely the author's intent.

InsanityAddict

@Quoted bit: the same mechanisms are probably at play with discriminatory jokes of all kinds, or peeps with violent psychopathic tendencies who take expressions of frustration like "I want to punch someone in the face" at face value and feel validated by that behaviour in much the same manner.

Like all tasteless jokes that come with a risk because the audience might be offended due to past traumas/family who was victim of, etc. or feel validated in troublesome opinions, it's a tabula rasa. The impossibility of guesstimating this correctly doesn't make it a relativistic free-for-all, just a personal choice. For me, the merits of shock humour outweigh the better-safe-than-sorry approach, but I can see and accept that someone would choose otherwise.

captainbrass

 "You don't talk to soldiers about war in a jokey fashion".

Well, most of us wouldn't, having never experienced it. However, there is a long tradition of black military humour about exactly that topic, between soldiers themselves. I very much doubt rape victims cope with what they've been through in the same way.

As for Elbeem's quote, whilst I can see the point, I have a real problem with anything that suggests that just because your response to something unpleasant that someone says isn't to instantly get on your soapbox about it, you somehow "become an accomplice". That's bullshit. The culpable people here are (a) the ones who commit the rapes and (b) the ones who joke about it. If you're going to try and lay this on any man who happened to be standing near (b) at the time, you might as well say "All men are rapists" and be done with it.

MillerCross

Well, most of us wouldn't, having never experienced it. However, there is a long tradition of black military humour about exactly that topic, between soldiers themselves

The same could be said about cops (Homicide: Life on the Street)

but you don't go to a cop say "Hey, --points at dismembered corpse-- that looks like an amazing piece of surreal art. XD" although a cop might joke about it to another cop whereas if it came from another cop, the first one would tolerate it at most. Mind, this is because of comraderie and a way to cope with the burden of the job. 

Of course, this is based in anecdotical evidence and doesn't apply to all cops (Or soldiers, for that matter) but the point still stands that you can tolerate a lot more things coming from people who have gone (or are going) through the same thing as you have.

Beholderess

Again, I would understand the trouble if the joke was about rape being "not that bad" - like those that call it "surprise sex" usually go. But in this particular case it really was an opposite

Ponicalica

I thought the phrase "surprise sex" was just an SA filter because otherwise they'd get really creepy ads.

Nyktos

Yeah, the "surprise sex" in that above quote was obviously a wordfilter.

captainbrass

Presumably the point is that, given that they had to put in a filter, the choice of replacement words is kind of a rape joke in itself, although to be fair I don't think Something Awful is generally tolerant of people who they see as apologists for rapists.

That's exactly one of the beefs some of them appear to have with some TV Tropes posters and indeed other internet users.

MillerCross

>Treating SA users as a gigantic monolith where everyone agrees