Penny Arcade Markets Rape Culture
In August, Penny Arcade posted a strip about “dickwolves” committing rape. Whatever the point of the joke, rape was used as humor. This got some pushback, to which Penny Arcade gave a [RAPE TRIGGERS] non-apology that may have included the word “apologize” but not in the sense of an actual apology.
This story was covered pretty thoroughly by Geek Feminism and Border House.
As it turns out, Penny Arcade is now selling a “dickwolves” t-shirt. Yes, Penny Arcade exploited rape culture for a cheap joke in August, and is now set to sell t-shirts glorifying rape culture:
(Trigger Warning for attempts to coerce laughter through foul language, Dungeons, Dice rolling, contempt for Hydra’s bodily autonomy,Dragons,)
Next post from Tycho:
2. [Our new] Dickwolves shirt.
Wwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllpppppppppp! I’m done.
Gabe is now officially just mocking the entire populous’ offense with and attempt to forget the issue. LOL TRIGGER WARNING ok now buy our rape shirts.
Here he goes out of his way to mock people with PTSD. I am sorry, there is no fucking way you can do that straight-faced and not look like a total asshole.
I could kind of see the Dickwolves as a straight-up joke of wolves made out of dicks mascots as a hockey team, but Gabe and Tycho aren’t even pretending to give a shit. They are bold-facedly telling everyone in the world, “Yeah, fuck your problems and concerns and post-traumatic stress disorder. I’d rather make money.” People who have been raped are now their new beating stick. They are celebrating the “Dickwolves” connected to the PR from the rape comic. What the jesus fucking shit.
It was clear from the apology strip that they didn’t even bother to find out what rape culture is, choosing instead to mischaracterize the idea as “if you read about rape, you might become a rapist,” rather than the use of rape as humor trivializes rape as the traumatic assault it really is, and that a culture where rape is not taken seriously means that rapists are not taken seriously which means that rape survivors are especially not taken seriously. Selling t-shirts glorifying rape humor is exactly the kind of rape culture-supporting bullshit I expect from the so-called “gaming community” these days, so I can’t say that I am disappointed.
I have no expectations that (cis het white male) gamer culture* is capable of handling itself with maturity or any awareness of its own oppressive bullshit, but I would really appreciate it if they’d at least stop and think for ten seconds about how their behavior makes gamer culture a not just unwelcoming, but actively hostile space for women, people of color, trans people, people with disabilities, etc. who are unwilling to go along with the thousands of cuts made against them by people who think they’re edgy, big, and clever.
Seriously guys, rethink this bullshit. Stop mocking mental illness (PTSD), stop mocking the reaction to the use of rape as humor. Stop trying to sell rape culture. Try to understand what people are saying instead of just amping up the offense because it gets you pageviews and sympathetic laughs from guys who think that gaming = deep misogyny. Plus that part where your fans trolled everyone who criticized you, and I don’t recall that there was much criticism of this behavior from you. It seems pretty clear where you stand, I just wish you’d reconsider standing there, you know?
* I’m a gamer, I’ve participated in gamer culture. I know a lot of gamers get it and are not immature douchebro assholes, but the culture itself is almost defined by being a douchebro, and seems almost to be a defense mechanism against acknowledging or listening to any viewpoints beyond the cis het white TAB NT male perspective. This is why gamers on XBox Live focus on harassing women with rape jokes and, why a lesbian was banned from XBL for saying she was lesbian in her profile, why this kind of thing is so pervasive all over the place, and why any critiques of this bullshit gets such hard, aggressive, defensive pushback. If none of this applies to you, it’s not about you. I am sorry if anyone feels like I am mischaracterizing them, but I am talking about real trends.
Edit: Don’t bother trolling, you’ll go straight into spam. You have the entire rest of the internet in which you can be an asshole. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here, etc.
Edit 2: People responded to these strips because that prompted the reaction. In the past, there wasn’t a Border House or a Geek Feminism blog or this particular blog, or really much discussion in feminist blogs about gaming or gamer culture, and thus not much direct discussion of Penny Arcade. This reaction does not mean that people suddenly decided to find PA’s rape humor funny in that particular strip, it means that particular strip prompted people to talk about it, and PA’s dismissive response fueled that conversation. Continued mockery from this past week continues to fuel the conversation.
That anyone is talking now does not mean that no one ever found earlier strips problematic or that they all laughed along with them. It does not mean that no one ever said anything in any context. It does not mean no one cared about it until now. Think about the dichotomy you’re setting up here by demanding that in order to criticize episodic art, you have to criticize every single episode that has been made. That’s what this question implies.
Also, to clarify the first edit: I won’t be approving any comments that qualify as derailing or sidetracking. I especially won’t be approving any comments suggesting that I (or anyone else responding to this) are oversensitive, too angry, reading too much into it, or that not approving those comments is somehow censorship. If you can’t say what you want without descending into personal attacks, you don’t belong here.
I appreciate the link – glad to see the word being spread around. I’m surprised but very honored that my little corner of the internet I yell into caught your attention and got a link and a quote. Very eloquent post, much more than I could muster up at the time (barely was coherent before typing that out).
Mirai
6 Oct 10 at 5:43 pm
I think they’re making completely jerk decisions here, and as both a gamer and a web-comic fan, I’m not going to continue reading Penny Arcade.
However, that doesn’t mean I appreciate the characterization of the gamer community. Like any sub-culture, our membership is broad and varied. We’re white and black and asian and mexican. We’re men and women. We’re straight and bi and gay and lesbian. We’re cis and trans. We’re understanding and we’re assholes. Don’t lump individual’s decisions with a wider group, any more than you’d like others doing to you.
myself
6 Oct 10 at 5:48 pm
myself,
I’m a gamer too, and I thought this:
would make it clear exactly who and what I meant. And the culture is like this, it’s extensively documented. Obviously not everyone who is a gamer (and even not all cis het white male gamers) is like this – Border House is full of gamers who are not. I am not. You are not. But it’s still all over.
Mirai,
Thank you for dropping by. I wasn’t sure I managed to say everything I wanted to say, but I am glad I got the point across.
Lisa Harney
6 Oct 10 at 5:53 pm
I am henceforward using the word douchebro all the time in appropriate circumstances, cuz it is awesome. Also fuck PA, it’s off my bookmarks.
genderbitch
6 Oct 10 at 6:39 pm
I never liked PA.
I do, however, occasionally find myself feeling an odd kind of pleasure when my original gut feelings are proven right, even as I’m sad to see that I’m right about people being dicks. Le sigh.
Fierceawakening
6 Oct 10 at 7:53 pm
[...] When is a Joke Too Much? [...]
The Power Geeks #70 - ThePowerGeeks.com
6 Oct 10 at 9:54 pm
Truly “douchebro” doesn’t even begin to describe.
The mocking of trigger warnings was just a ::blinkblink:: moment. One of my loved ones lives with PTSD and I’ve seen that being triggered is not just some catchy, fluffy PC carebear idea as the august authors of PA seem to think it is: it’s an occasion of genuine suffering that can be very painful and completely ruin your day or week; warning about such things is a simple act of decency. As much as the original rape joke I think that pretty much ends my time reading PA, that level of contempt shouldn’t be rewarded at all.
Needless to say, I am disappoint.
Quinnae
7 Oct 10 at 5:40 am
Should have linked this in the post.
Lisa Harney
7 Oct 10 at 5:58 am
Not to excuse what they did, but I think you need to address the point they make that they’ve had equally if not more offensive things in the past and the same people who are upset with the comic in question laughed with everyone else at the previous comics because it didn’t affect them. Just because these other comics touched on topics that are less prominent/affecting less people doesn’t make it okay to let those slide and single out this one.
PTSD is not a joke, but rape is not the only thing that can trigger it. Where was the outcry for the other stuff?
Joe
7 Oct 10 at 7:01 am
That’s not a good point at all. Of course they’ve done other things that were offensive. Not addressing those when they happened could mean any number of things, many of which have nothing to do with this concern trolling about people picking and choosing which strips they find offensive. This argument is about setting some kind of fake quota which people have to meet in order to criticize Penny Arcade at all and don’t you think that’s exceedingly onerous and completely unreasonable?
It’s not even controversial that they’ve done offensive things before. No one should have to provide signed affadavits as to what they were doing instead of calling out Penny Arcade in previous cases, let alone discussing whether they laughed along with those strips or also found them in poor taste. I don’t even think you can reasonably argue what anyone’s reactions actually were to previous strips unless they actually tell you, so why even try to go there?
This post only covers the strips to provide historical context. This post is actually about Gabe’s choice to mock mental illness and trauma survivors and their decision to make t-shirts commemorating their initial mockery of rape survivors.
Lisa Harney
7 Oct 10 at 7:16 am
My confusion seems to be that Penny Arcade used the word ‘trigger’ not rape.
Because I used to read Penny Arcade years ago when I worked in the Gaming industry and not only were there long and elaborate rape fantasies, sometimes against gabe or tycho, but the word was used constantly – thus the creation of their first t-shirt with the ‘fruit fucker’ which I found offensive in, 2001?
But then, trying to convince the 99 guys that you just got ‘your ass owned’ by a GIRL or headshot by a girl usually started a barrage of graphic dialogue towards you (which oddly made head shooting them easier as they were so busy typing in all the sex acts they were going to do to you before cutting you up). Yeah, welcome to the wonderful web of gaming. And those were the moderated sites.
So I dropped penny arcade, I did solo gaming on my PC.
Gabe and Tycho like controversy, as it sells stuff, and they make a living doing their strip before noon (they describe that in detail in book 6 – which I picked up for the library – check, still horrifically offensive, still making South Park look like a sensativity class in comparison, dropped book off unfinished).
So why the issue now? Because they are openly mocking rape? They have been openly mocking male rape for at least seven years (which is what the strip is about). Is it good. No. But then, this is exactly the kind of culture that homophobia, male agression, transphobia (they have a lot of that in the strips too) shows up.
Do I think Con’s like Sakura-con should stop inviting them – yes. Do I think hospitals should hold press confrences about not taking money from their charity to help abuse and sex crime victims in hospital while mocking them in the strip? Yes. Do I think that they should be picked up and jailed for hate crime language – yes. They make a living of the word, and the word is often under the classifications of hate crimes.
But it is ‘Satire’ right? No. Because Satire is what highlights the plight of those without voice, not the whoops from a group that is bullying. Swift’s satires regarding Ireland are a good example (or his entire work).
Elizabeth McClung
7 Oct 10 at 7:20 am
What I said above:
The trigger comment is in context with the two strips linked in the post along with the Geek Feminism and Border House responses, which places that firmly in the context of rape humor.
I’ve edited the post to answer the “why discussion now?” question more clearly.
I am very tired right now so I am sorry if this doesn’t have a lot of depth.
Lisa Harney
7 Oct 10 at 7:33 am
Oh my FUCKING God. Horrible.
Joe
7 Oct 10 at 7:48 am
I’d just like to point out that the joke in the strip in question was not that the prisoner was being raped, but that the player didn’t care because he’d already rescued enough prisoners to complete his quest. Rape is not the joke here people.
Michael Wilson
7 Oct 10 at 9:29 am
I’ve interacted with Gabe and Tycho before, and something struck me that made me uncomfortable. They’re two men essentially on the top of the white male nerd hierarchy — wealthy, successful, recognizable — but they’re also textbook examples *of* the white male nerd. There’s nothing transcendent about them, or about Penny Arcade. They’re socially awkward and not sensitive to social/cultural issues.
As exemplars for success, they’re great, but as worldly human beings? Not so much. And this makes them dangerous. When you have an audience as large as they do, you’d think you’d strive to be careful what you say and do, lest you set a bad example. Sharing a rape joke between you and your buddy is one thing, but sharing it with millions who look up to you as the arbiter of Things That Are OK For Me And My Subculture To Do? That’s different.
Mike
7 Oct 10 at 12:03 pm
Michael,
Yeah, it’s well past the original joke, though, isn’t it? What about the second strip? That one seems pretty direct, doesn’t it? And the fake trigger warning? And being sure to keep the whole thing in cultural currency with the t-shirts?
At this point it’s not really possible to condense this down to just the first strip.
Mike,
The other thing is that particular kind of humor serves as a kind of barrier for a lot of people’s involvement in that subculture. I mean, I don’t think Gabe and Tycho want to encourage people to avoid gamer culture, but I think this kind of humor has that effect, ultimately.
Lisa Harney
7 Oct 10 at 12:43 pm
I’ve been raped and have PTSD but it’s obviously just a joke. It in fact made me laugh.
Certainly some people will react differently than others. Joking can be offensive to others and a healthy defense mechanism for others.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it should be taken down. If you read all their other strips, you would know it’s a joke and that they don’t take it seriously. Just reading the few strips would lead one to jump to conclusions.
Obviously the immature people will take it out of context and use it to say that they support rape but we don’t really care about the immature ones as they’ll probably just jump to that conclusion anyways.
Bith
7 Oct 10 at 1:27 pm
I didn’t say anything about taking down the strips, just to be clear.
Also, in case anyone else asks, I didn’t call for a boycott either.
Also, please do not assume I have not read many Penny Arcade strips. I have read a large number of them over the years. I am not jumping to conclusions when I say the second strip is over the top.
I’ll also point back up to where I said this is not directly a response to the strips, but a response to Gabe’s comment about triggers and the merchandising. The strips are cited for context.
Lisa Harney
7 Oct 10 at 1:29 pm
And it’s not about people using the joke or any other media to say they support rape. It’s about maintaining an environment in which rape is not taken seriously at all, in which it is treated as little more than a joke. And how this makes things more difficult all the way up to actually taking rape accusations seriously, not putting rape survivors on trial, and actually getting convictions.
Lisa Harney
7 Oct 10 at 1:39 pm
Michael, Bith, etc: when it came to the original ‘dickwolves’ strip, I, personally, was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. As Michael said, I read the joke as being about the player character’s lack of real concern for the slaves he was sent to save, and poking fun at RPG conventions by exaggerating for comedic effect.
This, though?
This is making fun of the entire idea of people objecting to rape jokes, and in particular, people with PTSD being triggered. This is Gabe and Tycho suggesting people coping with trauma are oversensitive sissies.
And that’s just not on.
(Also, I’m totally in agreement with Mike here. This might be a ‘roll your eyes and move on’ situation if it were just two guys in a bar, but this strip is one of the best-known webcomics on the internet. They might not have created the douchebro gamer subculture or its flippant attitude to rape, but they’re happily doing their bit to perpetuate it.
I always saw PA as being a cut above the vast mediocre swarm of gamer comics, but not any more.)
Tab
7 Oct 10 at 2:41 pm
[...] an update to yesterday’s discussion, Mirai has written a second – more coherent – post at Devil May Rant: From the outset, [...]
Randomly Assigned Open Post at Questioning Transphobia
7 Oct 10 at 8:44 pm
I was on their side with the original strip — it’s not like I expected sensitivity from them, and they have the right to make the jokes they want to, no matter how tasteless or potentially damaging — and, as others have pointed out, the joke wasn’t about the rape, it was about the enforced callousness often inherent in MMOs — you have to save some slaves, but there’s always more, and it will only let you save your allotment, or if it doesn’t restrict it, you achieve nothing and people who actually have the quest will likely be annoyed by your messing with it. I’m even willing to accept the shirt — there is a joke inherent to a sports team with such a creature as a mascot. But the mockery of trigger warnings is just beyond the pale. They aren’t just some cute oddity. They’re an important tool to warn people with PTSD away from things that might trigger their condition — the consequences of which can be devastating. Just the flood of emotions can be horrifying… and their “flashing back” to the incident that caused the disorder, blind to the outside world as they relive it as if it was happening right then is not just a literary device, and it’s not the slightest bit funny in real life.
Nezumi
8 Oct 10 at 12:06 pm
I wanted to clarify something I said in my previous post. I do not mean that it was not a joke involving rape (which is problematic in and of itself)… but that rather than simply being along the lines of “Haha, rape is funny!”, it was about MMO culture, using rape as part of an over-the-top portrayal of a somewhat problematic aspect of it.
Nezumi
8 Oct 10 at 12:19 pm
[...] that I can’t defend. These issues are fairly well covered by Mirai at Devil May Rant and by the great Lisa Harney at Questioning Transphobia. The two major things that happened [...]
Dickwolves, redux « Skyborne
10 Oct 10 at 6:56 pm
Here via Geek Feminism… Utterly disgusted by the horrendous disregard for bodily autonomy, for rape survivors, and for people w/ mental illness. Will definitely be signal-boosting the outrage.
Wednesday
16 Oct 10 at 11:18 pm
[...] Penny Arcade Markets Rape Culture: As it turns out, Penny Arcade is now selling a dickwolves t-shirt. Yes, Penny Arcade exploited rape culture for a cheap joke in August, and is now set to sell t-shirts glorifying rape culture. [...]
Linkspamming in a bubble (16th October, 2010) | Geek Feminism Blog
18 Oct 10 at 2:59 pm
[...] you might have heard that some folks are angry about Penny Arcade’s Dickwolves shirt. I ranted about it at length a little [...]
This is awesome – a better dickwolves response - Uncategorized - - The Sunken Library
20 Oct 10 at 9:23 am
[...] this, of all their content, is the first time people are speaking out. (Here’s one idea: maybe the landscape of the internet has changed enough over the past 11 years that the same audience that has been calling them out on [...]
Here is a shirt: Dickwolves Survivors Guild « Here is a thing.
8 Dec 10 at 1:22 pm
Oh, as I expected. The hypersensitive boys are upset about this again.
Just as a reminder: If all you’re going to do is throw a tantrum over the fact that I hold different opinions from you, your comments won’t be approved.
Lisa Harney
30 Jan 11 at 11:26 am
By deleting posts that argue against you is basically you throwing a tantrum over the fact that others have a different opinion from you. Being “over sensitive” to this IS a legitimate arguement. You make it sound like if people want to make a joke from a fantasy version of a real life evil deed that it’s an atrocity. You said that you are a gamer. Do you despise every video game that contains graphic violence/killing? Isn’t making an entertaining game about the death of other people similar in the same manner of desensitizing people to real life horrible things? There are far worse things in this world to complain about than a comic strip that makes a joke which includes rape.
Chris
31 Jan 11 at 9:52 am
Interestingly, this is nothing like what I, personally, read into the original comic.
Personally, when I read the original comic, I saw it as a humorous take on the common trend in MMOs to give quota related quests. Evil forces about to wipe out the town? Go kill 5 of them. There are 500? No matter, leave the rest. The town will have to handle those itself.
I didn’t see rape as being belittled, but rather that it was chosen -because- is was such a serious stark subject against which to depict this quota-quest behavior. I’ll save you, but not if I’ve reached my quota. I saw the comic as a comment on exactly how horrible this behavior was.
Now, I get the distinct impression you read this comic differently than I did, and certainly do not assume that my interpretation is necessarily the correct one.
Also as a disclaimer, I have not seen the shirt, as it was removed after a few people e-mailed Gabe and Tycho saying that it made them uncomfortable. It may have been less open to interpretation than the comic.
I realize you said you wouldn’t post comments that said you were overreacting, but hope you don’t mind ones that simply disagree with your interpretation. Given your interpretation, that they were making light of rape, your reaction is warranted. I simply question if that was indeed their intent. If you do post this comment, feel free to strip this last paragraph from it first.
Ray
31 Jan 11 at 8:33 pm
Chris,
No. You haven’t seen the comments I haven’t approved. It is not a tantrum to refuse to approve comments that suggest that I have a “pitiful life” and “need to get a fucking life.” If anything, those comments sound more like tantrums to me. Are there really people in this world who cannot countenance the idea that someone, somewhere, has criticized something they enjoy? Are their egos so fragile they must lash out and attack so irrationally?
Of course I don’t hate every video game that portrays violence and killing, although I find that some games go over the top with how they portray that violence or killing. I generally don’t buy them, if that’s the case.
The argument that “there are more important things to worry about” is nonsense. This blog has 719 posts, exactly one of which is about Penny Arcade. Clearly, this is not the only matter I’ve ever considered worth addressing.
This post is primarily about the reaction to criticism, not the strip itself. And I think as someone who has been following Penny Arcade for a decade or more, that it’s certainly my prerogative to respond to how they address complaints, especially a complaint like this.
Ray,
That is what the comic is about – and the basic concept itself is funny. I wouldn’t argue with that. To me, where the problem begins is the decision to publicly mock those who criticized the comment.
I am fine with posting disagreement. The posts that I chose not to approve were filled with flames, insults, and personal attacks. I understand it’s easy to get the impression that I only want agreement, but that is simply not the case.
As for intent, I am sure that was not their intent, and I am sure that when others brought up the nature of the strip, that I don’t think many assumed they were intending anything. I think it was more about, “is it necessary to use rape as humor when something else will do?” PVP online did a similar strip several years ago that was played straight from City of Heroes. It was still funny. Admittedly, I wouldn’t expect purse snatching to work in WoW.
But the response was peculiar, when you have people saying, “as a rape survivor this bothered me” that many others responded with outrage, mockery, and derision. I’m not suggesting that rape survivors are delicate flowers who can’t handle disagreement, but that seems to me to be over the top.
And Tycho and Gabe participated in that, not perhaps to the same degree, but the mockery is definitely there, as documented in the post here and other posts I’ve linked to.
So really, my post is about the lack of sensitivity.
Lisa Harney
31 Jan 11 at 8:55 pm
Love the post and your even response to what I’m sure was some grade-A vitriol in your inbox over this.
What the cisgender white male hetero audience is really saying when they say you’re being “too sensitive” is “shut up, don’t question my beliefs or my viewpoint, because I can’t handle being wrong.”
I don’t know what marginalized people can do about this attitude other than to never, ever be quiet just because what you say makes someone else uncomfortable.
And you’re not “edgy” or “politically incorrect” by making a joke about rape, or race, or trans people, because these attitudes are the status quo. You risk nothing by making those jokes, and you can easily brush off the people who will criticize you for it and continue to make lots of money (see Penny Arcade!). It’s all a dog and pony show to hide who really has their hands tied by censorship, the people at the bottom. Why was Privilege Denying Dude taken down? Why do feminist comics get a fraction of the pageviews and advertising revenue as clone after clone website of dudehumor? Why do people of color who speak out against the oppressor get dropped from the cultural radar? Any indication that the invisible are trying to gain one percentage point of opacity is too fucking threatening to the dominant group. Same old story, different costumes.
chocolatepie
6 Feb 11 at 9:09 pm
[...] many have coverd this issue much more eloquently than I ever could. That said, I feel I must add my [...]
Dickwolves and Why They Are a Problem |
11 Apr 11 at 3:34 pm
I will state first, that I am Trans myself, however, the original joke, was just that, and among one of many, it took one person to decide, it was obviously aimed at them, to start this, although, I no longer read PA because of the response, which was the Jerk move that continued it.
Katrina Swales
1 May 11 at 9:49 am
I’ve only just found out about this whole thing due to a couple of hops from reading articles about proposed cuts to the length of sentencing for rapists here in the uk.
Anyway, I noticed a major cultural difference that you guys over the water may or may not be aware of. This tee-shirt – for sale here:
http://kirbybits.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/here-is-a-shirt-dickwolves-survivors-guild/
Would have a completely different conotation in Britain. That is, it would look as though it was made by the guys at PA to take the piss out of people who reacted negatively to the original story. In fact, I had to read the guys whole page just to make sure it wasn’t satirical. I know that there’s adifferent level of irony in humour in America but you do know what I mean don’t you? Basically I cracked up when I saw the shirt, then read a bit of the entry and was like, “No.. . Really?” It’s funnier than the original shirt to us over here is what I’m saying.
InTheUk
18 May 11 at 3:11 pm