Penny Arcade says, "Rape culture is hilarious!"
Has anyone else been following the Penny Arcade Dickwolf Controversy (as I've taken to calling it)? The whole thing started with this comic, posted in August, which many readers took offense to due to an unfunny rape joke. The argument was revived with new fervor recently, and it's still ongoing. Personally, I'm finding it really difficult to enjoy the comic lately, because of the way this whole thing has been handled.

A better and more thorough write-up than I could ever hope to put together has been posted here.

Edit: Via seiberwing: An interesting protest movement has arisen on Tumblr.
Edit again: A couple of comments have indicated that the Tumblr linked in the above post has malware, so tread lightly.

Edit 3: Via lady7jane: This isn't the first time that Mike has exhibited douchebaggy behavior. "I don't know, Love Systems doesn't seem so bad to me."

Edit 4: Via airawyn and alexa: Jerry responds.

Edit 5: Via number13baby, Mike calls for the discussion to end.

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number13baby
2011-02-04 01:11 am UTC (link)

It also bothers me that Mike seems to be washing his hands of the argument, even though at this point, it doesn't seem like he's actually attempted to have a serious, empathetic dialog about the issue without being "snarky, sarcastic and rude". Not that I've seen, at least. It finally got personal for him--enough to make he and his family uncomfortable--and now, he just wants to drop it and move on. But it's been "personal" for rape/assault victims since the get go. Their feelings matter too.

THIS

To clarify, I'm just speculating that this is what it took for Mike and Jerry to finally respond. The timing of their posts is a bit odd, right? It's what immediately jumped out at me.

I also don't think that the vast majority of people criticizing PA would ever encourage or condone threats against Mike's family. So for Mike to call on people on both sides to drop it was a bit disingenuous. If he had said something like "last night someone threatened my family on Twitter and this really made me think about what it feels like to be bullied like this and I'd like @teamrape to stop," that would've been one thing. I hate to make a tone argument, but something about how he frames the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way.

And, yes, I'm also bothered by the way he's washing his hands of the whole thing, like "well, I'm done with it now, ignore them." He didn't say "stop harassing people who are criticizing us" he said "ignore them." Which, yeah. All those people are trying to engage in a dialog with him because they expect better and his response is to ask that people ignore them? I'm pretty sure that it's not much of an improvement on being "snarky, sarcastic and rude." Just seems like yet another way of not engaging (and being straight up dismissive) to me.

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