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[Dragmire]

Ok that's interesting. Why do comedians need to push peoples buttons and boundaries? I can understand how by making light of some situations such as homosexuality and racism it can help break down boundaries and show us how ridiculous certain situations can be but how exactly is making a crude joke about rape doing anything for anyone or leading to any personal growth for the comedian?

I hate you.

 

[Majima Everywhere System]

So apparently rape is the problem and not "dickwolves" which is an assault on Penny Arcade's furry fanbase?

It's kind of like making 9/11 or Holocaust jokes. The joke itself needs to be detached from any actual imagery of the events. The audience just laughs at whatever the dumb joke was and says "that's terrible".

I'm thinking something about how this strip was drawn actually calls to mind the actual experience of rape, which then makes its funniness questionable.

 

[FutureZombie]

Those two comics had me laughing on and off for 3 minutes when I read them. I pray someone is working on concept art for a dickwolf.

 

[Hellsing321]

Those two comics had me laughing on and off for 3 minutes when I read them. I pray someone is working on concept art for a dickwolf.

Amir0x has got you covered.

 

[SouthernDragon]

don't like it?

don't read it

 

[OnimaruXLR]

The one where Tycho accidentally killed his wife is probably still the most awkwardly weird off-color strip they made

 

[Roto13]

I'm pretty sure he meant that there will always be someone somewhere who is offended by any joke.

I made a joke about Bjork in a YouTube comment and some guy got so totally offended by it. It was awesome.

 

[Neuromancer]

For the record, I don't think it counts as rape if the victim is a piece of fruit.

 

[Flavius]

For the record, I don't think it counts as rape if the victim is a piece of fruit.

ah-ah-ah...you said victim...thereby acknowledging the fruit as sentient...

 

[cosmicblizzard]

Oh yeah this is really fucking funny.

The original comic would've been just as funny (read not at all) with some random over the top phrase. Their apology comic pisses me off though. An apology laden with snark is hardly an apology.

Yeah, they didn't go far enough. When will people realize that the apology needs to be more offensive than what was said in the first place?

 

[Hot Coldman]

I made a joke about Bjork in a YouTube comment and some guy got so totally offended by it. It was awesome.

You comment on YouTube videos? Leave this place and never come back.

 

[BobTheFork]

Oh yeah this is really fucking funny.

The original comic would've been just as funny (read not at all) with some random over the top phrase. Their apology comic pisses me off though. An apology laden with snark is hardly an apology.

Just pretend you meant this ironically and it's all good.

 

[Jenga]

So apparently rape is the problem and not "dickwolves" which is an assault on Penny Arcade's furry fanbase?

wait what

 

[Cipherr]

"Every night we are raped to sleep by the dickwolves" is the best line on PA, EVER

Yup, I am STILL laughing at "raped to sleep" sweet jesus :lol

 

[Hot Coldman]

Yeah, this was probably their funniest comic since E3's 'NINTENDO BITCHES' comic.

 

[spwolf]

if you are offended with this, you have a lot of fucking issues. In fact, I dont understand how can you go through the day if this makes you outraged...

It is fucking silly. I dont get this new world anymore.

 

[Kurtofan]

I take it those people never watched Law and Order.

 

[DonMigs85]

I just hope they don't tone down future strips because of this incident.
Sure rape ain't nice, and we're all really sorry for any innocent person who had to experience it, but I still think war and murder are much worse. And it's not like Tycho, Gabe or the dickwolves actually raped anyone in real life.

 

[Vamphuntr]

:lol the apology piece is funnier than the ''offending'' one.

 

[thetrin]

I wonder how many letters of complaint Louis CK gets in the mail.

 

[Talyn]

if you are offended with this, you have a lot of fucking issues. In fact, I dont understand how can you go through the day if this makes you outraged...

It is fucking silly. I dont get this new world anymore.

Clearly you don't realize that it's yet another example of the disgusting rape culture that festers in our fair land. So proclaimed the blogger that apparently started this outcry over on Shakesville. They also took umbrage over the so-called "apology."

 

[Kurtofan]

Clearly you don't realize that it's yet another example of the disgusting rape culture that festers in our fair land. So proclaimed the blogger that apparently started this outcry over on Shakesville.

Wow that kind of person makes me cringe.
If you listen to that moron you wouldn't be able to make jokes about anything because you might hurt the feelings of someone.

 

[Arozay]

"Mythological creature whose every limb was an erect phallus"
:lol

 

[Haunted]

Clearly you don't realize that it's yet another example of the disgusting rape culture that festers in our fair land. So proclaimed the blogger that apparently started this outcry over on Shakesville. They also took umbrage over the so-called "apology."

:lol I hope that's a joke site, like those Rapture forums and the Hillary site.

 

[Neuromancer]

Clearly you don't realize that it's yet another example of the disgusting rape culture that festers in our fair land. So proclaimed the blogger that apparently started this outcry over on Shakesville. They also took umbrage over the so-called "apology."

This is why I'm a humorless feminist. Because rape jokes killed my sense of humor.

=o

 

[UraMallas]

Oh yeah this is really fucking funny.

The original comic would've been just as funny (read not at all) with some random over the top phrase. Their apology comic pisses me off though. An apology laden with snark is hardly an apology.

It's as if your funny bone was taken out of your body and your sarcastic meter is broken. I bet you're a riot at parties.

 

[Shanadeus]

I actually found this changing my mind on the matter, they kinda have a good point:

Yesterday, Shaker Milli A wrote a guest post about a Penny Arcade strip that included a joke about rape. The two authors, in response to criticism of said comic, then published a follow-up, in which their avatars simply peer out at the audience and say the following:

Tycho: Hello, this is Tycho Brahe, of Penny Arcade. We recently made a comic strip where an imaginary person was raped imaginarily by a mythological creature whose every limb was an erect phallus. Some found that idea disturbing.

Gabe: We want to state in clear language, without ambiguity or room for interpretation: We hate rapers, and all the rapes they do. Seriously, though. Rapists are really the worst.

Tycho: It's possible you read our cartoon, and became a rapist as a direct result. If you're raping someone right now, stop. Apologize. And leave. Go, and rape no more.​

Quite a pithy—and familiar—reaction. It encompasses the three same old tired strategies that defenders of rape jokes typically employ:

1. Misrepresenting critics' primary objection as the assertion that rape jokes "create" rapists and/or "cause" rape.

2. Summarily treating that idea as absurd.

3. Concluding that critics are thus hypersensitive reactionaries with no legitimate critique.

Most critics of rape jokes object on one of two bases, neither of which are "your rape joke will directly cause someone to go out and commit a rape." (That idea is absurd—which is why it's so appealing to defenders of rape jokes to deliberately misrepresent critics' arguments in such a fashion.) One criticism is that rape jokes are triggers for survivors of sexual violence (and/or attempted sexual violence). The other is that rape jokes contribute to a rape culture in which rape is normalized.

It's that second objection that tends to get repackaged as "your rape joke will directly cause someone to go out and commit a rape," which is, of course, a willful and dishonest simplification of a complex argument. The rape culture is a collection of narratives and beliefs that service the existence of endemic sexual violence in myriad ways, from overt exhortations to commit sexual violence to subtle discouragements against prosecution and conviction for crimes of sexual violence. The rape joke, by virtue of its ubiquity, prominently serves as a tool of normalization and diminishment.

No, one rape joke does not "cause" someone to go out and commit a rape. But a single rape joke does not exist in a void. It exists in a culture rife with jokes that treat as a punchline a heinous, terrifying crime that leaves most of its survivors forever changed in some material way. It exists in a culture in which millions and millions of women, men, and children will be victimized by perpetrators of sexual violence, many of them multiple times. It exists in a culture in which rape not being treated as seriously as it ought means that vanishingly few survivors of sexual violence see real justice, leaving their assaulters free to create even more survivors. It exists in a culture in which rape is not primarily committed by swarthy strangers lurking in dark alleyways and jumping out of bushes, but primarily by people one knows, who nonetheless fail, as a result of some combination of innate corruption and socialization in a culture that disdains consent and autonomy, to view their victims as human beings deserving of basic dignity.

That is the environment into which a rape joke is unleashed—and one cannot argue "it isn't my rape joke that facilitates rape" any more than a single raindrop in an ocean could claim never to have drowned anyone.

But let us pretend for a moment that rape jokes do not convey and sustain the rape culture. That still leaves us with the other criticism on which critics' objections are based: That rape jokes trigger (some) survivors of sexual violence.

Being triggered does not mean "being upset" or "being offended" or "being angry," or any other euphemism people who roll their eyes long-sufferingly in the direction of trigger warnings tend to imagine it to mean. Being triggered has a very specific meaning that relates to evoking a physical and/or emotional response to a survived trauma.

To say, "I was triggered" is not to say, "I got my delicate fee-fees hurt." It is to say, "I had a significantly mood-altering experience of anxiety." Someone who is triggered may experience anything from a brief moment of dizziness, to a shortness of breath and a racing pulse, to a full-blown panic attack.

A survivor of sexual violence who experiences a trigger is experiencing the same thing as a soldier who experiences a trigger, potentially even including flashbacks. Like many soldiers who return from war, many survivors of sexual violence are left with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Unlike soldiers, however, they are not likely to receive much sympathy, or benefit from attempts to understand, when they are triggered. Instead, triggered survivors of sexual violence are dismissed as oversensitive, as hysterics, as humorless, as weak.

Well. Trivializing the concerns of a person whose traumatic experience of sexual violence has been triggered is a legitimate response. But it's not a very kind or decent one.

I will never understand why anyone wants to be the total jerk who evokes someone's memories of being assaulted by blindsiding hir with a rape joke (or image, or metaphor, or whatever), in the guise of "humor." No "joke" is worth triggering someone. Not if you understand what triggering someone really means.

Quite honestly, my objection to rape jokes is not even because I particularly find the jokes personally triggering anymore; I generally just find them pathetic and inexplicable. And while I'm bothered by the fact that the jokes normalize and effectively minimize the severity of rape and thus perpetuate the rape culture, I'm more bothered by the thought of a woman who's recently been raped, who's just experienced what may be the worst thing that will ever happen to her, and goes to the site of her favorite webcomic, or turns on the telly, or goes to the cinema, or a comedy club, to have a much-needed laugh—only to see that horrible, life-changing thing used as the butt of a joke.

I don't understand—and I don't believe I ever will—why anyone wants to be the person who sends that shiver down her spine, who makes her eyes burn hot with tears at an unwanted memory while everyone else laughs and laughs.

And I won't understand as long as I live why people who are told by survivors the damage their rape jokes do—on an individual, intimate level—respond by dismissing survivors as oversensitive, instead of considering the possibility that maybe being desensitized to the abject horror of rape isn't really rather worse.

That maybe it is not survivors who are too sensitive, but they who are simply not sensitive enough.

If Tycho and Gabe want to make rape jokes, that's their prerogative. I'm not calling for a repeal of the First Amendment or asking their strip to be censored; to be perfectly frank, I would love nothing more than for them to continue their comic with a newfound appreciation for why rape jokes fucking suck, and thus not use (or defend) them anymore by their own choice.

But, failing that, I'd like to see them at least be honest enough to admit that their critics are not accusing them of "creating" rapists or "causing" rape—and have the courage not to hide behind mendacious misrepresentations of why people object to their continued use of rape jokes, and the honesty to admit they just don't give a fuck about survivors.

 

[Zomba13]

Clearly you don't realize that it's yet another example of the disgusting rape culture that festers in our fair land. So proclaimed the blogger that apparently started this outcry over on Shakesville. They also took umbrage over the so-called "apology."

I see so murder is fine but not rape? She goes on about a rape culture where rape is normalised and yeah, that is worrying, but what about jokes about murder and killing people? She admits she has a dark sense of humour and enjoys the comic strips where Tycho and Gabe kill each other. Murder happens in the world right? And over small, petty things sometimes too.

I for one found the comic quite funny. The image of a Dick Wolf was quite funny and there would be another adventurer along in 5 minutes to save the guy anyway so he won't get raped anymore.

 

[Dark Octave]

What a silly thing to get wound up over.

 

[Saty]

Laughable.

 

[Flavius]

Lots of pain in all of those words. I feel compassion for that person, but it doesn't change my opinion here at all.

 

[FLEABttn]

:lol I hope that's a joke site, like those Rapture forums and the Hillary site.

I'm fairly certain it's serious.

Just showed my girlfriend the comic. It's officially unoffensive guys, we can go back to making rape jokes now without worry.

 

[legbone]

don't like it?

don't read it

this. it's not like the tv was on and they just randomly heard something offensive. for fucks sakes, they had to actively seek out that which offended them. people are dumb.

edit: and i was in a house fire when i was 15 that killed my best friend. images of fire trigger feelings in me that are terrible, but i deal with it and don't get offended when someone makes a joke about people burning up in a fire.

 

[dimb]

Rape isn't a product of culture. There is no such thing as a "rape culture". What a delirious notion.

 

[Arde5643]

I see so murder is fine but not rape? She goes on about a rape culture where rape is normalised and yeah, that is worrying, but what about jokes about murder and killing people? She admits she has a dark sense of humour and enjoys the comic strips where Tycho and Gabe kill each other. Murder happens in the world right? And over small, petty things sometimes too.

I for one found the comic quite funny. The image of a Dick Wolf was quite funny and there would be another adventurer along in 5 minutes to save the guy anyway so he won't get raped anymore.

There's no murder survivor, so she doesn't have to white knight them.

 

[timetokill]

There's no murder survivor, so she doesn't have to white knight them.

If I recall correctly, there are still "attempted rape" survivors too, so in theory there could be "attempted murder" survivors.

 

[BuddhaRockstar]

So even if jokes are responsible for "triggering" a rape victim, what about every other mention of rape? In the news? In a documentary? Are we supposed to censor all forms of violence, sexual abuse, and drug use in the media and from free speech so that no one ever has to think about a negative experience they had in the past?

What's really great about all this controversy is that the rapist in question is a dickwolf.

 

[sumo390]

"Every night we are raped to sleep by the dickwolves" is the best line on PA, EVER

:lol :lol

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Dickwolves.

Dick.

Wolves.

In a Goddamn WoW comic.

Hell, the perspective Gabe drew it omitted chat, which probably had 5 things scads worse (and scads less funny).

 

[Joseph Merrick]

lmao raped to sleep by the dickwolves

it's been years since I laughed at anything pennyarcade, but that's gold

I actually found this changing my mind on the matter, they kinda have a good point:

it's a joke that includes the word rape (and the word DICKWOLVES ahaha), it's not a rape joke

 

[Stink]

shit happens, such is life. If you can't laugh about it then you might as well nail a bottle of painkillers and end it.

 

[DidntKnowJack]

I do find it odd there are some people who seem to think there are others who are actually in favor of, or advocate rape. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the majority of the people out there think rape is bad. Yes, even Gabe and Tycho.

 

[firex]

I don't get it

You need someone's halp

 

[bathala]

I'm offended by the lack of funniness. I'll never in a million years understand the popularity of PA.

Because you're empty inside

 

[spwolf]

I actually found this changing my mind on the matter, they kinda have a good point:

as i said before, if we lived in that kind of world, all the media, movies, and video games would be banned because at some point, they will hurt someones feelings.

How can that make sense?

I have deepest sympathy for people who were victims of such violent crime, but what does that have to do with comic? Should we ban the word rape now? What about people who had their loved ones hurt, killed, etc? Should we ban movies and games where someone gets hurt? What about victims of drug abuse? Maybe they will hear drug joke on Leno and what then? They might start using?

Lets ban the news at 9 too... lots of bad shit happening there.

Comic in question doesnt even deal with rape at all, it is pretty innocent and if someone cant deal with stupid comic, they should seriously get some help. Because they are definitely not dealing with the issue properly on their own.


Member of my immediate family died from rocket propelled grenade and well, it cant get much worse than that. It was quite a while ago and it is still often in my mind. But I am not relating COD with that, let alone some other products of fictions like movies, books or news. Person needs to be able to distinguish reality from fiction and if they cant due to some horrible experience they suffered, they need to seek help. It is harsh reality out there and they are not ready to live in it.

 

[ShinNL]

So even if jokes are responsible for "triggering" a rape victim, what about every other mention of rape? In the news? In a documentary? Are we supposed to censor all forms of violence, sexual abuse, and drug use in the media and from free speech so that no one ever has to think about a negative experience they had in the past?

What's really great about all this controversy is that the rapist in question is a dickwolf.

In the first form the word isn't taken seriously.

I'm going to stop checking this thread now, the amount of ignorant people here is unbelievable.

Consider using the word rape for a joke the same as using the word retard for a joke. Respect victims. It's not funny.

 

[EatChildren]

I actually found this changing my mind on the matter, they kinda have a good point:

They dont have a good point because, as stated by the Penny Arcade duo, rape has been a theme of many jokes in the past, along with all manner of other politically incorrect subjects.

The very fact this has warranted discussion is utterly asinine.

 

[Toski]

Clearly you don't realize that it's yet another example of the disgusting rape culture that festers in our fair land. So proclaimed the blogger that apparently started this outcry over on Shakesville. They also took umbrage over the so-called "apology."

Reading the comments is like... I don't know. This site is like a safe haven for super feminists or some shit. These people are so far to the left they became facists. Its like the mention of the word "rape" will set them off.

 

[Flavius]

Consider using the word rape for a joke the same as using the word retard for a joke.

Actually, it's reh-tard.

 

[SouthernDragon]

The situation in which said fictional rape occurs is absolutely ridiculous and is paired alongside other terrible occurrences (abuse, slavery), making the whole thing an absurd joke based on the NPC's suffering and the nonchalance of the wolf hero.

There's no glorification of rape. There is no concrete imagery for a rape victim to be traumatized by. In fact, the entire scenario is so absurd as to be almost impossible to imagine in a coherent form; how is one raped to sleep, and how does a wolf that has four erect phalluses for limbs accomplish this feat? The word "rape" is simply a tool, a word paired with other terrible words to impress upon you the ridiculously dire situation set for the NPC, and gives a starker contrast to the absurdity of the quest. Replace "raped to sleep by dickwolves" with "stabbed to sleep with knife wielding bears" and you get an equally absurd situation impossible to coherently imagine. Why would a bear wield a knife?

So why not use rape in this context, where all it really means is "this is a terrible thing that is happening to this character." We can't use the word rape anymore because the mere mention of the word might hurt someone?

Then that person should know better than to read Penny Arcade.

P.S. If you want to read something that will CONCRETELY impress upon you the horror of rape, read The Rape of Nanjing.

Shit, I was depressed for three days afterwards.