- A CDC sex study spanning 2006-2008 has been released with the results of interviews of 5,300 people between the ages 15-44 – but so far, mainstream media seems to think it’s only about teens. Ignore the teen sex hype, this piece is the best on data points so far: Young Wait Longer for First Sexual Activity (webmd.com)
- This galley is quite NSFW, and poorly translated, but I lingered: Mexicans enjoy annual erotic festival in Exposex 2011 (Demotix.com)
- Facebook takes more steps against users and sexuality, removing and penalizing reputable retailer Pleasure Chest’s event for a cunnilingus class – and goes on to reveal Facebook’s ban on words such as “anal.” This is getting ridiculous, people. Is Cunnilingus Obscene? Facebook Says Yes. (thepleasurechest.com)
- This is a disturbing exploration and a must-read: what kills me is that a hetero husband (and father) made “team rapist” t-shirts and didn’t relent until he was anonymously threatened (unlike the woman involved, who was terrorized beyond the point of reason). Gaming, rape culture, and how I stopped reading Penny Arcade (Boston Phoenix, via moneda)
- On the topic of games this week, strange erotic-fidelity game Catherine is finally formally headed for North American screens: Catherine Officially Cheating on Japan With U.S. (escapistmagazine.com)
- Remember a while back I posted about The Naked Consultant? She’s re-branded herself, and some therapists and none too pleased: Naked Therapy or Just Cam-Girl Soft Porn? (World of Psychology)
- Extra credit, indeed: at the end of the session, someone used a Fuc Saw on a ladyfriend: Class sex toy demonstration causes controversy (The Daily Northwestern)
- Ran across this excellent post giving basic advice for moms who are prepping for the sex talk with their kids: Time for the Big Sex Talk (geekmom.com, via Scarleteen)
- They are observing muscular contractions during orgasm – and this is their first graph. I know little else except they are local, and one is a SFSI educator… (twitpic.com)
- I want to attend this event very much – it is in New York, on Thursday, March 24th and presented by the very cool Morbid Anatomy peeps: Hey, Where’s My Robot Girlfriend? An Exploration of Sexual Robotics, Teledildonics and Carnal Technology (observatoryroom.org)
- This is an interesting study showing that frequent sex in a relationship helps negate the negative effects of generally being neurotic – it seems sex has a calming effect and we are not terribly surprised: Frequent Sex Protects Intimates From the Negative Implications of Their Neuroticism (spp.sagepub.com)
PS: here is some porn using that educational sex saw.
Image from the sumptuous shoot China Girls by Mert & Marcus for Interview March 2011.
Saying that gaming has a “rape culture” because of a loud group of kids who toss around a word that, let’s be honest, they really, really just don’t understand is really pretty unfair to gamers and gaming culture. What was initially a few understandably sensitive individuals reacting to a joke they thought was in poor taste set off a demographic of young, ignorant, sheltered, angry boys, who did what they will always do when roused: they tried to antagonize. This is not actually about rape at all. It’s about pushing people’s buttons. And it worked.
It’s also really not reasonable to expect anyone to censor an entire concept because certain readers might have negative associations with it, which, though you might try to frame it as a “wonderful gesture,” is exactly what you’re calling for, moneda. I’d go so far as to contend that the initial strip wasn’t in fact “a rape joke” at all because you could literally have interchanged “rape” with any other bad thing whatsoever and it would not have changed the function of the joke in any way. The POINT was that rape is a bad thing.
And as regards Gabe and Tycho, let’s recall two things: first, that they have always, in all cases, responded to criticism with which they did not agree with mockery. This is not new. Jack Thompson received the same treatment. This does not mean they’re pro-rape in any way. This means they think that the attacks being leveled on them were so obviously spurious as to deserve no serious response, and in this case, as regards the earliest initial incident, I’m inclined to agree. Second, can we also remember that these are the same guys who, apropos of nothing, founded and still direct the Child’s Play charity? They are not bad people. They do not like for anyone to suffer. Tarring them as “rape apologists” and accusing them of all sorts of misdeeds that were in fact committed against their explicit wishes by anonymous third parties is not helping the cause of sexual violence prevention in any way.
I’m not saying that real assholes didn’t come out of the woodwork once this issue took off. They most certainly did. A lot of unforgivable things were said and the conflict escalated way beyond all reason. I just think that a flamewar that spiraled out of control is no damn reason to accuse gamers of harboring this secret, seething culture of sexual violence. Misogyny and abuse are endemic in American culture; there’s a minority of disrespectful dickheads everywhere. The fact that this particular incident was focused on a gaming-culture issue doesn’t mean that it’s indicative of anything except that gaming culture is susceptible to the same failings as any other part of humanity.
Just wanting to chime in here on the G.I.F. and “gamer culture;” this is a sidenote, but thought i’d chime in before we all site here and judge a group based on their lifestyle preferences. ;)
The G.I.F. applies to the _internet_, and, more broadly put, anonymity, not to _gamers_ specifically. You see the G.I.F. come up when people comment anonymously on YouTube. When a big crowd at a soccer game turns violent. When drunk frat boys get rape-y.
“Gamers” is a broad group. It includes a lot of 16-20 year old men. It also includes a lot of 35-45 year old housewives (anyone out there follow Zynga or Facebook?). When you decide to say that there is a “gaming rape culture,” you are making a very broad and very hurtful assertion about a broad group of people based on the fact that a minority of them act just like people have been acting in anonymizing sitations for thousands of years.
@Gamer Person: I will grant you that there are clans, guilds, or groups of gamers that are generous, polite, well-adjusted, mature people both online and off. I like to think of myself as one of those, and I certainly can say the same for my real-world friends whom I used to game with. Even when we were all still in our late teen’s early 20’s, never once did I witness a friend of mine tea-bag his online opponent, or use a racial or sexual slur of any kind to demean a fellow player.
But I maintain that the overall impression generated by online gamers is one of vulgarity and obscene hatred. I believe there are two reasons for this:
Reason 1) You’re absolutely right: aggressive young males in competition is a big factor in all of this. I don’t know if most gamers are 10-18 year-old males, but I do know the majority of 10-18 year-old males are gamers. It’s apparent that they are the root cause of this problem to me, because of the stark difference in atmosphere of in-game chat depending on when you play. But I do object to the statement that boys are like this the world over. Not only will I cite the subjective example of myself and my friends growing up, but also again the time-difference equation regarding behavior.
Let me see give you an example. The last online game I played online regularly was Call of Duty: World at War. Had a lot of time on my hands, and a lot of insomnia. So, playing between 2:00 AM and 6:00 in the morning, it was not only lacking in immature assholes, but I would go so far as to say full of nice, sociable people. A lot of them were late-shift working Americans, but I met quite a few teens from Australia and Asia. All of them were quite civil; none of this, “Dude.. you’re such a fucking faggot!” crap that dominates the game atmosphere during the same time frame in the afternoon. (Interesting side note? The negative atmosphere would come back about the time the British started getting on. Seems whatever problem we have with our young men, they have as well.)
Reason 2) I think the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (hereafter shortened to G.I.F.) creates an atmosphere where there’s a very vocal minority. All it takes is two Fuckwads going back and forth on the chat channel, and I take my headset off. (For the non-game players here, let me clarify this: for a lot of online games, the ability to talk with your co-players isn’t just for socializing or chatting, but also to discuss team tactics, enemy locations, request aid, etc… So obviously, not having access to this puts you at a severe disadvantage). I know a lot of people who are like that as well; once the game’s chat reaches a certain immaturity threshold, off comes the headset and on comes the mute button. I feel like what this does then is make those of us who can’t tolerate that sort of atmosphere distance ourselves from the gamer community. So in effect, what’s happened is that perhaps only a handful of thirteen-year-olds with bad parents have run off a lot of decent video-game playing people. Older, more mature people are much more capable of having more going on in their lives, so don’t depend on having the “gamer” identity to define themselves by. 13-18 year-old boys, on the other hand, do not, and so are more likely to dominate the gamer scene (and bring all their insecurity baggage with them). And it doesn’t take many to ruin things; I mean, can you imagine throwing a wine-tasting party, and having two or three teenage American boys there who are given complete anonymity and who are free from consequences of any of their actions?
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah… no, not all gamers are bad. But their image has been shanghaied by the most immature and insecure amongst their number. I also doubt that the amount of good they do as a community outweighs the bad (in terms of verbal abuse, harassment, etc…)
… that went on for much, much longer than I expected. Sorry about the rambling!
@ Bef with an F: 150% agreement with you on what you said. Especially that last part!
@David I got the impression that @moneda was speaking about how rape culture, in general, manifests itself within gamer culture, specifically. I don’t believe she was saying gamers are rapists/rapists are gamers [I know that’s not what you were saying, but I can’t make it fit into any other words], but rather that there is a rape culture, and this is how it comes in to play in this specific instance. I’m sure @moneda could also speak about rape culture in the performing arts, given the inclination.
Not being a gamer myself (but having loved one for the last three years) I cannot speak to the culture of hate comment specifically, but I can say that it does fit in generally with what limited exposure I have had to gamer chat. I plan on giving that some future thought & possibly allowing it into the basis of my worldview. Thank you.
All have, indeed, made/continue to make very interesting and valid points, and I appreciate that VB has created a forum where we can have debate where intelligence and thought are valued over scandalous comment, and that everybody makes their best effort to avoid seeming like a troll. I appreciate all of you.
@David:
I think that saying gamers have a culture of hate is also not accurate. I’ve seen Quake Clans support people with cancer and make donations to for a funeral. Also, the success of Childs Play is only possible because the same gamers who read PA also want to give to needy children.
I think the real issue is that there is a well documented phenomena where adolescent males compete with each other for dominance. No mater how civilized we are, this still occurs in every society I’ve ever studied. The competition takes on a myriad of forms, but one universal is that admitting weakness loses status. It’s not suppressing that young boys/men in a competitive game environment end up creating a very aggressive culture that tends to emphasize any perceived weakness. I think it’s only to be expected that when the internet allows this aggressive proving ground to come into contact with an emotion support issue that there will be conflict.
I’m sure some people would talk about how the aggressive adolescent male is negative and should be changed or suppressed. But I’d just remind people that behavior is part of our human nature and trying to deny or suppress it is no more healthy than puritans who try to deny their sexual nature. We need to accept these aspects of who we are as a species and channel them to healthy expressions.
I think that we’d all agree that someone who was feeling sensitize about rape should probably not visit a bondage club. I think it’s also reasonable that someone who is emotionally vulnerable should avoid video game forums, or at least go in with the understanding of what that culture is and preparedness to not let it overly effect him/her.
@moneda: I’m sure someone gets offended by every comic they make. The one I just went and looked at mixes romance with defecation. It would probably offend a lot of people. Jokes about rape might offend rape victims, but the same is true for jokes about cancer (as Bef points out), or jokes about race, or jokes about pretty much anything. They don’t apologize for any of those things and in fact they pretty consistently take the position that if you’re offended then you’re too sensitive. So they are not “pro rape” any more than they are “pro cancer”. They quite clearly are “anti over sensitivity”.
The latest VB post is about “Rough Sex” and shows one woman pinning and gagging another. Should I get really mad at say that VB is promoting rape? If I did, how should she respond? Should people censor their sexuality because rough sex images might offend some people?
The PA guys are insensitive jerks… but they always have been and they are pretty much equal opportunity jerks. Anyone who gets offended by their cartoons should simply not read them. The expectation that they should be sensitive to rape victims or any one particular group of people pretty pointless.
I really wish people would stop using the term “rape culture in video games”. It’s incredibly misleading, and not at all an accurate representation of the problem with gamers.
It seems to me that people who are not regular video-game players could look at the situation, and how it was responded to by a significant portion of Penny Arcade readers, and think that these people were actually sick, twisted, pro-rape fanatics. The one comment that stood out in the article I read was someone saying that the feminist blogger who was objecting to the comic, “should have her arms and legs chopped off, and every part of her body raped.” This person clearly has issues.
Ironically enough, though, it was Gabe from Penny Arcade who coined the “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”, and that is what we were seeing in effect regarding the Dickwolves controversy. The theory states that a Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad. This is the truest thing I’ve ever read. If you have read articles on this debate, but have not played a video game since consoles had wood paneling, you owe it to yourself to go to a friend’s house, and borrow their child’s XBox or Playstation 3 for a while. Pop in a copy of Call of Duty, Halo, or anything really that supports online multiplay. And just listen.
It’s not that video gamer’s are part of a rape culture, per se: it’s that they’re part of a culture that abhors respect for anyone. Period. I grew up in the deep south, and have never heard racial slurs used like they are in in-game chat, and they’re used relentlessly against anyone perceived to be different than a suburban white adolescent. “Faggot” is used so frequently it is almost benign– nay, almost a pleasantry– compared to what you’ll hear if you hint at any sort of offense at the term. Many women gamers deliberately pick gender-neutral online names and refrain from chatting to avoid the most vulgar harassment imaginable. What people fail to realize is that this lack of respect and constant verbal abuse is not just directed at women or minorities: it’s directed at anyone who complains about anything, and can escalate at a very scary rate. Political affiliation, being perceived as being too good of a player, being perceived as not being good enough… hell, I had one guy follow me from server to server on one game, constantly interfering in my play and harassing me, all because I commented he had his mike too close to his face and we were getting a lot of noise interference.
Seriously, I can’t state this strongly enough: if you’ve not played video games online, find one to sign in on sometime (preferably something aggressive, like Call of Duty, and preferably between 4:00 and 8:00 PM, when all the kids are home from school). You don’t have to play, just listen. Throw out a complaint about something… anything… and see how frighteningly bad it gets. Not all gamers are like this, but enough of them are that I no longer play online.
So this is how I see the situation. Gabe and Tycho made a joke in poor taste. People got offended, as is their right (and as I would had someone I known been raped). People complained. The two dumbasses try to make a joke out of the complaints. This pisses people off more, AND cues the hordes of immature fuckwads that are the bulk of online gamers that someone, somewhere is complaining about something. And what follows is what comes naturally to these types: a flood of vulgarity and vile hatefulness that would make the Westboro quacks take a step back. But this is what I’m driving at here: it was some “other” perceived as attacking their culture that prompted the ugly statements it did, not some “culture of rape”. If somehow or another a Jewish man had been involved in that comic, and the Anti-Defamation League complained, it would have been wall-to-wall kike and gas chamber jokes. Blacks? Slavery and welfare jabs. Hell, if somebody had complained that no wolf had ever raped a human, you would have seen thousands of people swearing they were going to go rape spotted owls to death just to piss off the tree-huggers. Gamers don’t have a rape-problem, they have a hate-problem.
I just feel the whole thing was a bad situation all around. Yes, the Penny Arcade guys handled this extremely poorly (especially Gabe, who seemed to enjoy being provocative and stirring up shit till it was HIS family that was getting threatened. Hypocritical asshole.) But I also feel for them because they are products of their own culture. In the video-game societies, do admit even a little bit of defeat, or to concede just an inch to someone’s complaints, is opening up the window for a WORLD of harassment and verbal abuse that a lot of people aren’t aware of. So, their natural reaction was to blow it off, and be defiantly flippant. To be honest, it wasn’t even their most offensive comic (google the “Fruit Fucker” strips they did sometime). It just so happened that this one issue snowballed, and now to admit defeat would not only cost them standing in the eyes of their peers, but may very well affect their livelihoods.
So… I dunno. I think the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is the best explanation for all of this. I don’t think Gabe or Tycho are bad people; hell, they started and run a charity that raises millions of dollars a year to buy toys for sick children. But yeah, they screwed the pooch on this one though.
There wasn’t a shirt that actually said “Team Rapist” — but the shirt in question was styled after athletic team shirts, and it did say “Dickwolves,” and the sum total knowledge of the mythical “Dickwolf” in the PA world is that they rape people. So “Team Rapist” is a very short stretch indeed.
I saw some of the flame war go by the parts of the internet I inhabit, and to my mind the central point was not so much whether “Gabe” and “Tycho” did or didn’t do anything wrong — and Tycho has admitted, at least, that he handled the situation poorly — as it was people on feminist blogs trying to convince gamers that rape culture is a real thing that exists, and gamers in general responding in a spectrum ranging from disbelief to mockery to savage mockery to (a few, but vocal) threats to rape and kill the women posting about it.
At what point was there ever a shirt that actually said “team rapist” on it?
I think I get your gripe, Bef, but I never got the impression [though I never went back to the original posted complaints] that anyone wanted to control either the internet or what was posted at PA. I thought the initial rumblings amounted to “reading this put me in a bad mood/reminded me of something awful,” not “PA should take this comic down and never mention rape again!” I personally believe it would’ve been a wonderful gesture to the put-off section of their fans to not use rape as a tool to make light of other things in the future, but I’m uncertain how many people, if any, actually asked that of them.
Also, the subject of free speech shouldn’t ever really come up if the government isn’t involved, IMO. The “right to free speech” protects us from unjust censure from the government, not criticism from other citizens; and my position on rape culture dictates that I always criticize it.
@moneda
I agree with you 100% on your eloquent points about the problem being with Tycho & Gabe at this point in time, and that they probably should have made a less blame-the-victim apology.
However (and I know I’ll probably be stoned to death for saying this here, but here goes anyway), I am sick to death of people crying about how they don’t like to see something that happened to them in a humorous context. If my mother died of cancer, I probably won’t like the jokes about callous doctors, or research funding dollars being wasted. If I was robbed at gunpoint, probably any depiction of guns would upset me. Same with rape. I understand that.
But these people can’t think they get to control the internet just because something upsetting happened to them once. Free speech is for everybody, even assholes. And I, for one, got the joke: video games are appallingly violent. Not talking about it is not going to make it go away, and if you remind people of how bad rape/robbing people/burning down houses/cancer is in the same serious tone all the time, their hearing is probably going to shut off. Plus, it’s the damn internet. This thing is just a few points above a melee anyway so if you don’t like PA anymore, please exercise your constitutional right not to read it.
I AM extremely sorry for you about having already bought the tickets to PAX east, though. It must be really frustrating, and I’m not sure I know what I would do in that context.
Internet PErson, I believe your time was wasted. Not because your point wasn’t made, but because it’s irrelevant. Many people who were offended got the joke. The original comic wasn’t complicated in the slightest. Simply inserting the subject of rape into a comic without considering how it may affect some of the people who read their comic was only their first mistake though. They could’ve apologized for that and made a mental note to not use rape as a prop for their comic, if only in support of their own fans for whom that subject isn’t funny in the slightest. Instead came a comic seemingly mocking those who “couldn’t take” or “didn’t get” the “joke.” Then the drawing at PAX Prime, and the [Cthulhu help me, the fucking awful] tee shirts; and the deafening silence maintained by Gabe and Tycho while people like Courtney Stanton were receiving death threats, which was only broken when the pendulum of absurdity swung the other way and Gabe’s own family was threatened. Somewhere in that timeline is also a blog post where anyone who wants a refund for their PAX East ticket is [jokingly?] threatened with never being able to attend a future PAX.
What anyone who isn’t currently angry about this should understand is that the original comic is almost irrelevant now. Now the problem is Gabe and Tycho. They’ve alienated members of their own fan base with their own words and actions. I’m at odds with myself right now as I type this and stare at my PAX East 2011 3-day pass. I’m not really enthusiastic about going anymore, but I paid for it already. I’ve booked a bus ticket to Boston and a hotel room. I’ve got two people going with me and people with whom I’m suppose to meet up. I’ve got panels earmarked and game demos to look forward but my main concern right now is how annoying it’ll be to run into assholes wearing dickwolves tee shirts; and to be honest the only people I can think of blaming my annoyance on is Gabe and Tycho.
This explains the situation pretty well:
‘I find it incredibly frustrating that people still call the Dickwolves comic a ‘rape’ joke. Rape is used as a vehicle to describe how awful it is that you’re letting some slave sit behind while you finish your quest. The humor of the strip comes from how, in the game, you’re only allowed to rescue 5 slaves. Shouldn’t you be able to stay for more? “Nah, quest is done, I’m out.” ‘
The whole point was that in the game you are told to go rescue some people who are being treated terribly, but since you were only told to rescue 5 people you only can rescue 5. The rest are just SOL. To write the comic they thought of the worst thing they could think of so that the callousness of leaving people behind would be emphasized. The worst thing they could think of was rape. How does that equate to making a “pro rape joke” that needs to be apologized for?
Most of the people who are upset about this never read the joke and just repeat what someone told them. It’s the same as the ignorant people who don’t read one of VB’s essays and instead listen to someone give a confused summary about promoting sex ed and then they conclude that “VB promotes children having sex”. I don’t think VB every promoted underage sex and I don’t think PA ever promoted rape.
What PA did do, which was maybe not so smart was they made fun of the people who got upset. To a lot of people that looks confusingly like promoting rape, but I think there is a difference. Yes, it’s immature and a bit asinine, but it’s not promoting rape.
To continue the analogy, imagine that you wrote an essay about how condoms should be made available to 9th graders because if they are going to have sex then they should at least have safe sex. Then someone who is clueless claims that you were advocating that adults should have sex with 9th graders and calls you a promoter of molestation. The mature response would be to ignore them or make a serious response correcting the misunderstanding. But imagine you were drunk and instead made a joke about how stupid it was to think you wanted adults to have sex with kids. It still does not mean you promote child abuse.
Ok, this is too long. Either people get the point already or I’m wasting my time.