The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
The current plan is to attempt to start the Holiday Forums on December 23rd sometime during the day. During this time, the Future State Planning Center will remain open. The Holiday Forum merge will last (if Vanilla cooperates) until January 3rd.
Getting offended: the new national pastime
Posts
It's really weird to complain about the sensation of being expected - not obliged by force or anything, just your own sense of being expected - and to propose that the solution is to replace this with expecting people who are offended to just shut up and take it.
You worry about society-wide self-censorship but of course this is hardly the outcome; we (rightfully, I think) treat different spheres of communication differently. To be practical about this, a lot of the yelling involved goes toward moving people who are likely to be offended by something and people who are likely to create offense about something into different arenas. So I'm fine with it. If every anti-rape-culture blog rallies to condemn PA on their front page and every gamer blog rallies to defend PA, then more of some given group of people who don't want to immerse themselves in a culture that entails rape jokes can know not to bother, and more people who don't care about rape jokes can go ahead. So, you know, great.
Perhaps there are situations in which harm is done by someone other then a criminal?
How about there examples then. Here or here. Both stolen from this post with even more examples. I also think its a little hypocritical that you think its ok for a woman to get offended by a rape joke, but not for a Muslim to get offended when you make a joke about his/her religion. Especially considering people have been persecuted for their religion for centuries.
Other ninjas may be offended by your ninja bias.
But fuck those ninjas.
On another note, I'm very much a "thick skin" kind of guy and I'll tolerate plenty of harsh language and risque humor, but the "I can't be offended!" argument is nonsense. Look up "offend" in a dictionary! If you don't take offense at anything you are probably a robot, and not one of those cool robots that can dance and sing and eventually learn to love but one of those crappy robots that probably don't even explode when shot.
From one side it's used as a sort of stealth-censorship tool.
From the other it's used to get away with saying heinous shit and claim the reason people are mad is because they want to censor you.
The only useful thing to take from it is that you should be sensitive to the impact of the words you use. Which is basic common sense.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200508046911#ht_500wt_1139
Political correctness is a term that I think may actually be completely devoid of meaning. Maybe the closest thing it has to an operative definition is "stuff other people do when I say things I think are funny but they don't" or "things other people do when I disagree with them that I don't like."
I think a good general rule is "don't be a dick." If someone makes a faux pass, let it slide. If someone is bothered by something you're saying, unless it is important that you express yourself or your opinion in an offensive way, say things more carefully!
Just don't piss in anyone's cereal. Unless they really deserve it. Or your toilet is busted. Or they're eating CINNAMON TOAST CRUNCH because then you can be all "Do you see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Because I have a special theory..."
Peer pressure is a real thing, now I only took one class in psychology but I distinctly remember a study that showed that a majority of people would go along with the answer given by the group they were in even if they knew the answer was wrong.
I think that a persons reaction to being offended is with the demaraction line for a lot of this debate falls. I think there is a difference between people who for whatever reason are offended by some comment/picture/song whathave you and react either by ignoring it or saying hey man not cool what have you and then there are people who fell that they are somehow Entitled to not be offended and that if anyone makes any comment no matter how inoccent or how outof context that comment is taken than the "offender" is an evil person who has enfringed on their god given right not have a life devoid of all offense. I.e. the bible thumbers, the shouters, the petitioners, etc etc.
I had no idea how to respond. I soooo wanted to make a rape joke. "Well let me buy you a drink, I have a few roofies left!" But I didnt...
And its ok to not like a joke, or feel uncomfortable about one because it hits a bit too close to home. Hell, if someone makes a joke about bad acne I always cringe a bit because Ive dealt with it my whole life. But I dont get angry or upset, its just a moment of not being comfortable.
Where is the line drawn? I mean, if 9 out of 10 people are going to get enjoment out of something, do we take away their enjoyment to preserve the emotions of that 10th? I mean, clearly the lines do exist. No matter how many people get enjoyment out of intentionally hurting someone, it shouldnt happen. But if its arbitray? If its not aimed at that person?
My thought process has always been, democracy- if more people are enjoying it then being offended, then let the offended people leave and not have to deal with it. If more people are offended then enjoying it, you should probably knock it off, you're doing more harm then good.
Harm is not limited to bruises and cuts and broken bones. But as a poli sci major, you should know that ideology is far more powerful than fists and guns, and that fists and guns generally do what they do because of language and ideas.
Verbal abuse often has lasting, severe effects, just as much as physical abuse. Language can alter your identity and your sense of self. The subjugation of women in past times, for example, was largely carried out through language and ideas, moreso than physical violence or threats. And yet it caused profound harm, and continues to do so today on a wide scale.
I admit, I lol'd.
Although I see why people might find this offensive.
Well define "harm" I mean there are varying degrees of "harm" but there are only certain things that our society collectively has decided to punish criminally, and I can say with the exeception of fruad (which is really an act, but can envolve the use of words) there is no criminal statute that will punish you for hurting someones feelings.
and in fact: Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971) FUCK THE DRAFT!
You are the only one talking about a court of law here. Everyone else is talking about being offended by something.
Theres also the fact that in one scenerio, people are intentionally harming someone.
Yes, if you are sitting at dinner with a group of friends you invited over, and one of them is a rape victim, lay off the rape jokes. Heck, if one of them is balding and wears a piece, lay off the hair-piece jokes.
However, if I am out in public with my friends, should I not make a joke about hair pieces because some balding dude might be around and hear?
I get rape and balding are not the same level of pain for the person involved, but the principle is the same, and the question becomes where do we begin to censor ourselves?
there are many criminally punishable acts of verbal harm
harassment, threats and intimidation, etc
in many countries hate speech is illegal
I don't mean to make this in to a criminal law argument, my point is at what level of "harm" do we as a society decide that we give a shit? that cite is Cohen v. California one of the most important first admendment decisions ever reached by the U.S. Supreme Court, which basically says if you are out in public then you have no expectation of not being offended and if some dude wants to were a jacket that says fuck the draft then hey deal with it.
So were do we draw the line, how harmful does something have to be were we decide thats it, and your speach should be regulated and or apologized for?
...wasn't it pointed out in, like, the second post in the thread that offense is an emotional reaction rather than something that people choose to do?
Like a couple of others have in this thread, Gabe noted that PA's content is hardly family-friendly:
Thinking about it, maybe there is something somewhat unusual about Wednesday's comic - in many previous comics the joke is the sodomy, or whatever; very direct. But in this case the joke was the incongruous behavior of the hero; the rape is the throwaway - dare I say it - trivial detail. Neither inoffensive nor so offensive that it can't be taken seriously. Maybe this flipped all the wrong switches for a lot of people, I dunno.
But in those cases its not the "speech" that is being punished it is the "act" of thearting harm, and there is little legal test that goes along with it to determine likelyhood of causing harm etc etc.
Hate speach isn't illegal in my country, and guess in some counties its illegal to critique the government, in fact in some countries its a capital offense.
Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong, and just because it is legal doesn't make it right.
Hiding any type of speech creates the possibility of stifling debate and creating out of the lack of debate poor public policies. There are legitimate areas where acts meant to coerce or control people should be limited. Preventing general debate and discourse because it touches subjects which are considered hate speech though only hurts the development of ideas which could create good societal change.
Alternatively, PA has a relatively higher population of people who have either been raped or have personally known someone who has been raped, and thus a higher frequency of out of outraged comments.
So why spam Gabe with emails now instead of during the previous numerous rape-joke comics? What made this one so special?
I think you're right. This was the one comic where rape wasn't the joke being made, but just a throwaway line that added nothing to the premise... except Dickwolves. Glorious Dickwolves. I think this is what others meant by trivializing rape, in that it was a throwaway comment that wasn't necessary for the punchline.
You're reading the comic wrong then. You're a hero who sees someone going through the worst thing imaginable. A slave who is being raped by dickwolves. You choose not to help them because its not needed for your quest. I think the rape shows more emphasis on the audacity of the quests where you don't attempt to rescue all the slaves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmkHLiZMJeU
Would the joke of been as offensive if they said "fucked by dickwolves"? He is a slave, aren't we to assume he is being fucked UNWILLINGLY?
What if they said "fucked by dickwolves without my consent." is that just as offensive?
I am curious if the inclusion of the actual word "rape" is a strong motivator here.
Yeah, I am also not getting why the comic that generates outrage is the one that actually acknowledges rape as a terrible thing.
Though I get why rape itself is a sensitive topic; it's been built up as pretty much the worst thing that can be done to a person, even - I believe - outclassing murder. You killed someone? Wow, what a dick. You raped someone? You monster.
I mean, people joke about murder all the time, or use murder as a colloquialism. "You do that again, I'm going to kill you!" "Wow, that test today murdered me." Nobody bats an eye. Even if you're in a group with someone who had a loved one murdered, you can still probably get away with invoking casual murder as a joke. "Dude, I got raped in that ping-pong match today." Oh shit, now you've crossed a line.
Rape is a taboo, and it Shall Not Be Joked About. Fuck, I think Holocaust jokes are more acceptable to a lot of crowds than rape jokes.
The point of comedy, besides to make the audience laugh, like all art is to make the audience think and to make social commentary.
This strip points out that the "hero" in World of Warcraft is simply following a quest log which, at times, can be counterproductive to actual heroic actions (only freeing enough slaves to get quest credit). The hyperbole of the slave being raped is used to further accentuate the disconnect between the quest criteria and the actual morality of the scenario.
The thing I find interesting is how, in the game, you can actually KILL the slave, and this isn't given a second thought as to its morality, but using the word "rape" in a comic strip to satire this disconnect is offensive!
Tragedy is when I break a fingernail; comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. The purpose of most humor is precisely to joke about the things that are uncomfortable*; complaining about a joke that it's about an uncomfortable subject is a demonstration that you don't grasp what comedy is. And usually what this does is undermine whatever cause you're defending by making you appear knee-jerk, intellectually shallow and offense-prone. (And also, as others have pointed out, curiously selective. How many times has Tycho joked about child abuse and domestic violence? Has that ever prompted a response like this? Does anyone really imagine fewer people are affected by it?)
That doesn't mean that all jokes about dark things are good comedy. But when it goes wrong, the problem is not generally that the humor has a dark subject, it's that it picks the wrong target. Generally speaking, people pointing and laughing at the poor and powerless are dicks and their jokes are stupid and unfunny; that's why Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh failed so miserably when they attempted comedy (in a brief episode that they're probably hoping everyone has forgotten). Laughing at and about the attitudes of assholes is often much funnier. When people who are getting ready to complain about an instance of comedy, they should always stop to think: who is really the butt of that joke?
Take the Penny Arcade strip in question here. The butt of the joke is fairly obviously the guy who can't take the time out of his day to save an extra slave, dickwolves be damned. Not the laugh-out-loud funniest of Penny Arcade strips, but was it worth the complaints? I think no.
* Not always, of course. But I'd hold that most good comedy is about dark things. Mel Brooks' "The Producers" is a feature-length Holocaust joke; if it wasn't about something apocalyptically horrible that had befallen millions of people, it wouldn't have been funny. (Same goes for much of the racial humor in things like "Blazing Saddles" or "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.") The "never go full retard" joke from "Tropic Thunder" works because it is twitting a horrible, ignorant attitude that affects the lives of millions of real people. Laughter is one of the primary mechanisms of coping with horror, and a very necessary one for the sanity in many cases. This is another reason why people tend to react negatively to being told to knock off joking about this or that because it might hurt someone's feelings.
1. Lots of people have been raped. Not many people get murdered, and once you're murdered, you're not alive to get traumatized by a joke. The holocaust happened a long time ago.
2. Everyone agrees murder and the Holocaust are terrible things. Rape, on the other hand—everyone has a negative reaction to the word rape, but many people disagree on what "rape" actually means. Until recently, a husband couldn't legally rape his wife. Many people have a condescending attitude towards rape victims (she was asking for it). Many people trivialize rape and ignore the lasting trauma it causes. Rape is controversial in a way that murder and the Holocaust or not. And jokes which casually use rape for childish humor reinforce the idea, if not intentionally, that people trivialize it.
People being offended by this comic and e-mailing Gabe and Tyco was the reasonable thing to do, people should voice their opinions if after consideration they feel just as offended as they were before.
However, it certainly is unusual for this case for people to have been offended by this comic just now despite many other similar jokes in this case..
As pointed out numerous times before in this thread, the only difference has been that the word rape has actually been used.
Now, we all live in different social circles. The one I live in it is okay to use the word rape jokingly when referring to a hypothetical situation or fictional characters, not only to imply sexual rape but even other uses of the word rape "My tuition has raped me financially" something a female friend of mine actually told me once.
As for the argument that this comic has "trivialized" the rape, I think people have missed the point of the comic. These slaves could be murdered, tortured, or whatever. The point was to address how odd it is that in quests to "save" people you are only required to save a certain number of people to fulfill the hero's quest, when really a hero would do his best to save everyone.
Basically the question for Wednesday's comic was "What if you were suppose to save a bunch of slaves, but only needed 5 to complete the quest and you just walked away after you were done with those 5. Despite what horrible things are happening to them and their pleas for help?".
Any rape victims or people close to a rape victim that were offended by this comic, you have my sympathies. I won't bother to tell you to "suck it up", but also do try to understand what perspective some of us saw this from. We didn't find this comic funny because "ha ha rape is funny" (and yes I do think it is funny in some contexts) but "ha ha game mechanics and morality clashing is funny".
To address a final argument: inexcusable. Murder and violence are also common, perhaps even more so than rape (although it is a form of violence) and I'm sure there are even more people who have first-hand experience or one-degree of separation from the two.
Despite this, violence and death is a common source of humor in comedy and PA strips. So why give rape the distinction of being 'offgrounds' because it is common as well?
I agree that dark humor can be hilarious and usually revolves around topics that make us feel uncomfortable. However, there's a pretty huge gulf towards the dark humor about incest in Arrested Development and a rape joke. I feel uncomfortable watching Arrested Development because I know that incest is wrong and taboo; the "discomfort" I feel is basically squeamishness.
The discomfort a rape victim feels upon hearing a rape joke is, at worst, a flashback to actual trauma.
I'm not saying "don't joke about rape," I'm saying do it very carefully, and if you offend someone, don't knee-jerk react like they're being unreasonable.
Well sure the definition of offend means everyone gets offended from time to time, but I think people are more using offend to mean getting offended by a non-personal thing. (non-personal in this case means friends or family offending you about your personal life)
For a relatively wealthy, young, white male it's incredibly hard to get offended. We simply don't have any issues to get offended on. I understand that that doesn't excuse one's behaviour but you gotta understand that when some slackjawed moron comes in saying "lolz why you womens offended? i never offended" they are being sincere and are basically right.
It's why racial slurs directed at white people don't have any effect. Being never discriminated or trivialized against, feeling offense is strange.
What do you think the murder rate is in America?
Not remotely what I meant.
Edit: El Jeffe said "rape" is even more reviled and taboo than "murder." I was agreeing with him, but only in the use of the word, and then pointed out all the bullshit surrounding actual rape in our culture that casual rape jokes exacerbate.
I believe the reason this comic has generated outrage is because of publicity.
Its a World of Warcraft comic and thus was circulated to a much larger degree than the rest of PA's comics featuring the word rape. Due to WoW's incredibly huge, fervent player base of all age groups and demographics.