Really? I could have sworn it previously credited her as the creator, but I think the theme changed since I last looked at it. It does have her personal tumblr linked prominently in the sidebar. In any case, even if it is just a supporter of hers, we can hold her responsible for the content using the same logic employed to hold Gabe responsible for @teamrape, no?
Eilonwy
1942
The original comic did not offend me, because I did not think the main topic was rape. However, releasing a Team Dickwolves shirt certainly shifted that for me–where PA hadn’t made rape the central focus before, they certainly were now. The PA guys aren’t new to the internet, they ought to know how to handle themselves better. Especially Mike with his twitter account. He fanned the flames and made people crazy and brought his wife into it and it was okay until other people also brought his wife into it and made him feel uncomfortable and then the issue was quickly taken off the table.
Do I think Mike is a monstrous human being who rapes women on the side? No. But whereas I found him a likeable asshole before, I find him far less likeable now. They should have just let it go at the second strip instead of fanning the flames because they thought it was funny until it suddenly wasn’t for them.
It’s a safe bet it’s not her. The person who runs it uses the phrase ‘butthurt’ occasionally. Considering that the phrase is suggestive of anal rape, I doubt Ms Stanton would be too apt to toss it around.
Agreeing with mmalloy. I actually thought the original dickwolves joke was a good poke (no pun intended) at questlines in a typical RPG.
The problem is that I was not at that time recovering from a sexual assault. One in four women in the US will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, and when you take into account demographic data (like the average age of the victim cross-sectioned with the average age of a Penny Arcade reader), I think it’s a pretty fair assumption that there is a not-statistically-insignificant number of Penny Arcade readers who are in some stage of recovering from sexual assault and might be a just a little bit sensitive to people making light of rape. So while I didn’t have a problem with it (and a woman who had survived sexual assault from a long time ago and had gotten over it and moved on with her life might not have a problem with it), I’m not going to point to women who are in the thick of things, trying to get their life back together (like maybe by going to read a webcomic that they like) that they need to just get over it already. An appropriate response would have been “hey, we’re really sorry that our cartoon upset you, that wasn’t the intention, in fact, we were trying to make a larger point about the absurdity of the hyperbolic morality-quests you get in an RPG. But the fact is that it caused distress to some of our readers and we are sorry for that.” Maybe link or make a small donation to RAINN to prove good-faith. Because really, what human beings wouldn’t be sorry if they had inadvertently re-opened a very traumatic wound for another?
But not only did they not do that, they basically sent their flying monkeys after the people who were upset. Nothing says compassion for rape victims like setting the troll hordes against them. Which is why even though I didn’t have a problem with the first comic, and the follow-up made me frown and sigh, at this point I’m going to call their bluff and stop reading. They really are making a concerted effort to divest themselves of readers for the stupid purpose of whipping up interest in a T-shirt.
WarrenM
1945
I had the same reaction. When I saw the word 'butthurt" on that blog it immediately lost all credibility.
Actually, Bahimiron, “butthurt” means a very specific thing, and it isn’t anal rape, no matter what ED says. When people use the phrase “butthurt” they are specifically referencing a toddler being spanked for doing something wrong, and then crying because they were stopped from doing something wrong. So for example, if I start writing angry blogposts about how I got banned from XBox live because I was calling people faggots and pussies and I got reported, then I would be acting “butthurt.” Anyone who uses it to describe someone legitimately injured is using it in the wrong context.
WarrenM
1947
Sure, but if you’re reading a blog about rape and rape victims and dickwolves and then you see the word “butthurt”, it WILL mean something different in your mind at that time. It’s a poor choice of a word for that blog.
That’s a fair point, but I’ve really NEVER thought of it outside of a spanking-a-misbehaving-toddler context unless someone tries to say it could indicate anal rape which seems ludicrous because the context is always that the person is acting like they’re really the injured party when someone simply told them they had to stop being an asshole. So if that context doesn’t exist for someone, then I don’t think it necessarily has to be as loaded any more than watching “Throwdown” on the food network has to be.
Huh. Okay. Well, when I first heard the term it was back on EQ and was meant to reference someone who was whining because they’d just gotten their asses kicked and/or fucked by another guild or an ubermob. It was tossed around in the same casual context as rape tended to be at that point. As in, “The God of War just raped our guild and now our guild head is all butthurt about it.” or “Blood of the Spider just fucked us over by stealing Ragefire and now our clerics are all butthurt.”
(If a member of BotS is reading this, unless you’re Decidarius or Curt Schilling, you can eat a bag of hell.)
I was thinking about that after I made a cup of tea and I think you and WarrenM are probably right: For certain crowds, where language of dominance tends to be sexualized (“I totally raped him at Halo”), butthurt probably does mean anal rape. It’s interesting how language evolves that way (and I will spare you my feminist theories). After all, I can’t help but giggle every time they mentioned the darkspawn “taint” in DragonAge.
What appalls me the most is the implication that all dickwolves are rapists. There is no proof of that beyond the suggestion in one web comic that some dickwolves might be rapists.
I for one will not stand for an entire race of fictional creatures being generalized. Just as some dickwolves are rapists, I am sure some dickwolves are loving and caring even when all their limbs are engorged.
I’m disappointed to see that the official PA shirt established dickwolves as some kind of literal wolf analogue. That seems to lack imagination. Of course, you couldn’t make a t-shirt out of some of the more imaginative stuff, I guess.
This shit keeps delivering.
So are we talking mainly dickwolves of the male gender? Or do the females have dicks too?
I assume they’re some kind of unearthly demonic horror borne from hatred and desire, so they aren’t necessarily gendered.
Similar to the naming of the Koala as a bear (when it is a marsupial), the dickwolves are actually more closely related to the hyena, placing them closer to the feline genus.
I don’t agree with a lot of the stuff being said on the fuckpennyarcade tumblr thing and I really tend to believe that the person’s point of view is being diluted by including strips that just say ‘haha, I don’t like Penny Arcade’s art style’. If you’ve got a point, make it, but don’t Zylon the place up with needless comments about the way they draw. That said, I can find a lot to agree with in her response to Gabe’s ‘apology’.
And in this thread…
So they’re an allegory for rape from the very beginning.
That makes sense, since female hyenas have penises.
erikg88
1958
Everybody has a right to react to this how they wish. As malkav pointed out to me, and as I saw further examples of elsewhere, some rape survivors found no problem with the comic. So it’s fine some can laugh at this. It’s also fine that some can get really, really righteously furious about it. She set up a straw man? Well sure, why not? That strikes me as therapeutic; especially when she makes no pretension to be changing anybody’s minds or playing by the rules of debate club.
Also, the shit about neckbeards is funny.
sinnick
1959
Yeah, pop culture has ruined the word “taint” for me. Bastards.
I believe they are called vaghounds. Sort of like the names for peacocks and peahens, but with junk.
