On Trigger Warnings, debacle.tumblr.com, Dickwolves and Ratings Systems, Including Our Own
This post is to try and get a lot of the stuff that’s been buzzing around my head in the context of the Dickwolves discussion down onto the blog so I can get back to our core mission of Zombie Rights agitation.
1) On ‘Trigger Warnings’
Having never heard of the term before the discussion on the Dickwolves post, I grabbed the wrong end of the stick and assumed that people were advocating the general, socially-mandated adoption of these ‘warnings’ on any and all blog posts discussing unpleasant topics. That doesn’t seem to be the case; it just seems to be a tool used by certain blogs and communities within their own policies.
Fine. However, I still think putting warning labels up before you discuss a topic infantilizes your audience. Here at the ZRC we believe in discussing even unpleasant topics, like, say, Capcom, while assuming our readers can handle it. I have, on occasion, put things behind cuts. Mostly just to keep the front page of the blog free of clutter, but on occasion, because the material was particularly disturbing. Isn’t that comparable?
Well.. slightly. I would maintain that there is a difference between displaying a primary, disturbing source or actual recording and a discussion of that source. There are grey areas here, so, again, feel free, Internet denizens, to use these warnings. It’s not like I have any authority to stop you. But we won’t be doing so here at the ZRC. I still feel, as I discussed with exhominem, that there are an infinite number of potentially offensive things within any discussion of absolutely anything, and so, an infinite number of these ‘triggers’ to warn against.
Perhaps that’s where the real objection comes in, for me: this idea that people who’ve lived through trauma are somehow roboticized, that if you press button A they cannot help but react method B. I agree with Amanda Marcotte that treating whole groups of people this way reinforces the notion that they are ‘ruined and broken’ by their negative experiences.
The whole terminology just reeks of Skinnerian Radical Behaviorist garbage anyway, and that sort of thing always appalled me.
2) Debacle.tumblr.com
These fine individuals linked to us in the context of a very long timeline relating to the Dickwolves affair that is, shall we say, pretty obviously slanted against the Penny Arcade guys, to the point where they try to read significance into Gabe’s iPod playlist.
(And yes, you did do that, people. You elevated trivia, the background music from an mp3 player during a Ustream session, to the level of relevant information to the discussion. Don’t try to pretend that that isn’t a selection bias, and that the bias isn’t relevant to your point of view. You didn’t mention what drawing tools he used or what room he drew in; those were also trivia, and you ignored them. You mentioned his music because you thought it gave insight into his mind, and was another example of him ‘mocking’ rape. Only, there was no evidence to support that belief.)
That being said, the ZRC would like to note a slight clarification. We didn’t just ‘take issue’ with the Penny Arcade decision, we tried to leverage it for our own Cause and clients. We’re far too proactive to settle for taking ‘issue’ with something like this.
We’d also like to thank you for the traffic.
3) Ratings systems
In the extended discussion with Exhominem, we drifted gradually on to the topic of ratings systems. I ranted as I often have against the ESRB and MPAA systems as censorship. The Comics Code too, but no one I’ve ever read seriously argues that it wasn’t censorship; a handy hint is that they published strict guidelines on what was, and was not, allowed to be published within their industry. Kind of gives the game away.
What, then is the difference between their systems and ours?
Primarily I think it’s this: we explain our criteria openly, discuss each reviewed piece extensively, and above all else, do not control the possibilities for distributing your work to a wider audience. If you don’t get an MPAA rating, or get the wrong one, you cannot get a major theatrical release in America. Period. The theatre chains working in concert with the MPAA are a cartel, function as a near-monopsony. The ESRB is even worse. In both cases, their control over the markets is fading fast, and hopefully they will become irrelevant, and then historical oddities, sooner rather than later.
The day that Gamestop or Amazon cease stocking works based on ZRC ratings is the day I retire the system. Period. We provide our guides to help shape conversation and encourage good behavior, as well as to help deter bad behavior; we neither want, nor will accept, the responsibilities of a censor. There are times when you really do need to watch The Birth of a Nation or The Night of the Living Dead. We don’t want to stop you, we just want to provide context.
You know, on the Romero movie. Birth of a Nation is odious but not our field.
4) Arguing with strawmen
I generally like this Amanda Marcotte piece, which I quoted from above, about the Penny Arcade thing, but I disagree with her analysis of the second comic in the Dickwolves series, where Tycho and Gabe facetiously apologize for the Dickwolf comic in the first place.
Her take:
3) That said, the guys at Penny Arcade responded in officially the worst possible way to respond. As Melissa correctly notes, they attacked strawmen, and this time they really did make light of rape. Jokes where you condemn rape in a sardonic tone really do imply that rape isn’t a big deal. In the time it took them to write the response, there were probably like 10 rapes in the U.S. alone. The cartoon implied that rape is less common than it is, that rape culture isn’t real, and that the whole subject is beneath you. This was tone deaf, sexist, and stupid.
The logical flaw here is that she thinks it’s significant that Penny Arcade attacked a strawman. That, in fact, is 90% of what they *do* in the comic.
This is a comic strip where they routinely draw the ‘CEO’ of a major gaming firm plotting Machiavellian treachery against their customers, or where they decided that Divx players were such an affront that theirs comes to life so it can belittle and harass its owners.
This is also a comic strip where they have Jesus as a major character so they can have the god-figure of the world’s largest religion endorse Mario Kart.
Gabe and Tycho are themselves straw-men, extreme caricatures of the duo behind the strip. Tycho’s rabid atheism (despite, as noted, being friends with Jesus), Gabe’s ignorance and impulse control problems, their proclivity for violence and amoral, sociopathic disregard for human suffering? None of that is realistic. No one would ever want, in real life, to associate with Tycho or Gabe. It’s not healthy.
Given that, yes, they responded to people who criticized a comic strip in an over the top fashion with their own over the top response. Considering that it’s Penny Arcade we’re lucky Jesus didn’t chime in at the last panel mentioning that there’s a special place in Hell for people who don’t like PA, or something. In other words, they were playing with kid gloves.
Now hopefully we can all get back to talking about Zombies.
About The Author
Yes, they’re so slanted against your position that they linked to your article. It’s funny because I’ve been seeing the feminists giving them crap about being slanted *toward* your side.
Anyway, cute take on the whole thing, what with the zombies and all.
I don’t really care about their slant, but trying to pretend that the dig at his iPod playlist wasn’t intentional is silly. If you have a position, be proud of it, and don’t exaggerate to try and prove it. Be honest but forceful, like we are about Zombie Rights.
On that subject: cute take? We have adorable undead mascots but we don’t use them for this controversial stuff so I’m not sure what you mean. I was just trying to get some leverage for The Cause, as I said in the first post.
Don’t misdirect. If there so slanted against you, why did they put you article on there, hmm? Answer me that before you start bs’ing about ipod lists.
They’re not slanted against *me*, they’re slanted against Penny Arcade, and Mike/Gabe specifically. Honestly the whole ‘watching his Ustreams, noting the songs played’ thing is kind of stalker-creepy.
I don’t know why they included us, or how they found out about us for that matter. I jumped on the bandwagon shamelessly because, well, said bandwagon was rolling down the hiill and our Cause can always use some PR. Plus if for some reason Penny Arcade really did concede to our demands it’d be hilarious.
<redacted>Am I right or am I right, brother?
No, you’re not. The ZRC will not allow its blog to be used for obscene comments calling for the sexual assaults of one’s ideological opponents.
Congratulations, you’ve earned the first ever commenter ban from the ZRC. Enjoy the distinction.
It seems like you’ve made a lot of progress on this one. You’ve certainly made a good-faith effort to understand what this whole brou-ha-ha was about. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it can really go further than this, it seems like some people have been mollified by them removing the shirt, and others only incensed by it. I’m not really sure what the solution is, though I’m hoping PA will pick a side and stick with it. Either the shirt was a mistake, or it wasn’t. I dunno. I guess we’ll see how it all shakes out.
I agree that universally mandated trigger warnings would be pretty much a huge waste of time; I don’t think that’s what was ever up for serious debate, though.
I support PA’s right to make whatever jokes they want. As a fan, I just hope that in the future, when folks exercise their own rights of free speech to provide commentary, they will react better.
Which means not trolling the critics’ site by deliberately flaunting the posting rules and putting up material that’s inappropriate to that forum. Which means responding to “Man, X makes me uncomfortable” with “I’m sorry; I did not mean to do that. I can’t promise I won’t do that again in the future, but I didn’t intend to upset you.”
I support folks’ rights to make or wear whatever shirts they want. I also think that PAX being a welcoming and inclusive environment helps gamers overcome the negative stereotypes they have to put up with. And while I support someone’s right to wear a dickwolf shirt, I think they’re an ass if they think that particular joke is so funny it’s worth damaging a victim’s calm even a tiny bit. Should they have the RIGHT to? Yes. Do they NEED to? No, not in this case. It’s just common courtesy.
I have to disagree with you on a couple of points, B. First, I don’t think you can say that to ‘react better’ one has to say they’re sorry for offending someone. If it’s true, then they can, but quite frankly, if you didn’t intend to offend and don’t think your comments were offensive to a reasonable observer, why should you have to apologize? Politeness? If you disagree with them and your response causes additional offense, and you still feel the response was justified, why apologize for that? Apologies should only be given if you genuinely feel apologetic, not as a sort of pass back into polite society.
I also disagree that it’s common courtesy never to wear a shirt that might upset someone’s calm to a public forum. That would more or less leave us with blank t-shirts; everything upsets someone’s calm. In a society with a vigorous free speech tradition, we simply can’t afford to maintain public spaces as offense-free zones. PAX Is a very large social gathering. There will be shirts there that offend people. When we go to horror conventions for the ZRC we see a *lot* of shirts that are offensive or in poor taste, and not just to Zombies! In fact I’ve seen a few that I would say go far, far further toward promoting rape culture than the Dickwolves thing ever did.
But ultimately, once you start down the path of saying people have free expression rights but should never exercise them if they upset someone’s calm, they end up without free expression rights at all. We picket people at the ZRC. That’s bound to upset some, and we have had a few people get very agitated over promoting Zombie Rights, even arguing with us a bit.. vigorously. They think we’re idiots, or jerks, or insane, and that’s their right, but if I went by your standard and tried not to upset them, I couldn’t express our position either, and things would never get better for the poor Zombies.
I honestly don’t know what Mike/Gabe did or said in various forums in response to this controversy, and you haven’t provided any links, so I can’t evaluate that behavior. Nor do I really want to. I just want equity for Zombies at PAX, while we’re doing groups special favors, anyway.
Re: apologies – if any personal upset caused by my actions towards another party was unintentional, than clarifying that aspect of the incident is very easy, costs me nothing, and can only improve the situation by leaving less room for the other party to assume that it was intentional. I support your right to not do that, while thinking it’s a poor decision. Apologizing for unintentional offense does not make one a loser. Trolling the aggrieved party’s message boards certainly isn’t anywhere on the “improves the situation” list, though.
I support your right to think the original complaints were unjustified. That said, I will submit that someone who, statistically speaking, has a very low chance of being a rape victim may not be in the best position to be forming judgements and making pronouncements about how rape victims should deal with their experiences.
Personally, I don’t agree unconditionally with either side in this conflict. I have tried to understand both sides, though, and I would suggest that you gain a clearer understanding of the position you’re advocating against. If you choose not to, that is your right.
Re: providing links – there is ample documentation of the course of events in the debacle tumblr you referred to in your post. I understand your objection to the relevance of the iTunes entry. Even setting that one aside, I don’t think laboriously restating the info there is a good use of either of our time. You are, of course, free to provide examples of behavior that you think contradicts the information there. In fact, if there is missing info, getting it onto there would be good for all parties involved. As you mentioned, it seems to be getting a lot of traffic.
I did not put forth the argument that it was never appropriate to wear a shirt that some may find offensive; that’s a straw man argument. I’m specifically arguing that knowing the facts and choosing to wear a dickwolves shirt to PAX violates Wheaton’s Law.
If folks are looking to learn more about this and don’t want to sift through the full debacle timeline, the comment by Errant (and the ones that follow) here are quite good.
In a nutshell, no one is seriously arguing that one can never make these kind of jokes; just that it shouldn’t be done thoughtlessly or carelessly, and that in this case, the PA guys made a bad situation much, much bigger, and much, much worse.
Apologizing when you don’t actually feel sorry for doing something costs us *all* something, B: it delegitimizes apologies in general, cheapens discourse and makes our dialogues less honest.
That’s not a real apology, that’s a Hallmark card. You see this all the time in politics; “I’m sorry if my words caused offense, but…”
Which is only one of the very many reasons politics is such a debased arena.
I don’t really agree that wearing a Dickwolves shirt to PAX makes you a ‘dick’, as per Wheaton’s Law, so we part ways there. I would never have bought a Dickwolves shirt before all this, because I think the design is lame and uninteresting. If I had one now, I’d wear it only because so many, many people have said I shouldn’t wear it at all.
I absolutely and categorically reject your assertion that, because I am male, I shouldn’t form judgments or make pronouncements on this subject or *any other*. In case you were unaware, the United States has equal suffrage. I will not sit down and shut up because of my gender, and I don’t the appreciate the mealy-mouthed, weasel-worded suggestion on the ZRC blog. This is the only warning you get; suggestions that either gender should be limited in a conversation, any conversation, due to their gender, on the ZRC blog will not be tolerated. Period.
We actually believe in including people here.
That being said, you’re the one making straw man arguments about what I’ve said. I have never addressed rape victims specifically here. I’ve addressed people at large, and on the internet. I don’t put rape victims in some special category with special rules of engagement because, again, I believe in including people in our conversations *as people*. Period. Everyone gets an equal say here.
Your passive-aggressive assertion that I should gain a greater understanding of what I’m discussing here is also unappreciated. I do understand the things I’ve discussed; the shirt, the retraction, the portions of the reaction that I’ve talked about, the silliness of warning labels on blog posts, the utility of rating systems. I have not talked about what every idiot on earth has done on every Twitter or in a forum somewhere on earth because there are millions of idiots. Countless millions.
I’m not going to follow every link on that ridiculous tumblr page all day to try and suss out the specific events that you think have special meaning, either, because I have a life. I followed quite a few, and I didn’t see any really objectionable behavior from Gabe, save that which I already responded to: that he got down into an internet mudfight between two groups of reactionaries and compromised what he believed (rightly or wrongly) in an attempt to appease all sides.
Which is stupid, and never, ever works. That’s not morality, that’s strategy.
Again, you’re expanding my arguments beyond what I actually said. I do not assert that you should never form judgements. I assert that other people may be better equipped to have perspective on any given situation and that listening to those people is valuable. That’s all.
I think I haven’t communicated clearly, and I am sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that you were addressing victims directly. What I was trying to say is that we agree that trigger warnings are not useful in general. I’m not saying that you should be required to use them here, either.
Nonetheless, if someone sets up a community for discussion, and sets up certain guidelines for discussion there, knowingly violating them is a dick move. Gabe did that.
Re: debacle site – I don’t think it’s entirely fair to judge and criticize a site you’re not willing to really engage in, but I understand to a degree – it ain’t fun reading.
As a counterpoint, say what you will about the blog post that started this all, but the author copped to being a long-time PA reader, then critiqued a single strip. A lot of people genuinely did not understand that critique – including Gabe and Tycho – and made some poor decisions on that basis.
The link in my previous post does really do a great job of boiling down the issue in a small amount of time. I hope you give it a chance; not because I’m trying to “win”, but because I believe it helps make the Internet a better place.
I’m really amazingly tired of having this conversation with you, where you assume, in an incredibly arrogant way, that every point of contention between us is because of my ignorance.
I need to listen to this, read that, participate here, and if, oh if only, I do that, I will surely come around.
I have listened. I have read. I have, woe betide me, participated, indeed far too much for my taste.
I read the link in your previous post. It didn’t change my mind, and the author mostly agrees with me *anyway*.
The original PA comic is hilarious and not about rape. The followup is justified and stylistically appropriate as a rejoinder to people who misinterpreted the first comic as some sort of personal assault. Gabe’s biggest mistake in dealing with this whole mess was to ever, even for a moment, think he could assuage or convince his critics, the vast majority of whom are not there to be as assuaged or convinced, but to tear out as many sequential pounds of flesh as possible.
For someone who coined the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory this is an odd lapse in judgment.
Arguing over this topic has actually pushed me *farther* into the PA camp. I didn’t like the shirts, as is evidenced by the fact that I never bought one, didn’t even notice them when they were on sale, in fact, though I must have read the posts about them.
If I could go back in time now, though, I *would* buy one. And I’d wear it too; not because I’m in favor of rape, or rape culture, or anthropomorphic monsters, but because there is very little more irritating than someone who takes your free speech as a personal assault, and absolutely *nothing* more dangerous to the First Amendment than a group of such individuals.
Oh, and that Errant comment is stupid too. They say it’s ok for the Daily Show to say outrageous things because of the conventional format they’ve built up over the years.
Really. And Penny Arcade isn’t about saying outrageous things, parroted out of the mouths of their two sociopathic, misanthropic main characters or elsewhere?
A comic full of murder, carnage, violence and crazy conspiracy theories, populated by lunatics and caricatures, as well as evil machines that violate fruit, but, oh, this is different.
Because Penny Arcade never says absurd things about videogames, or responds to their critics and enemies with vitriol.
*rolls eyes*
I’ll just quote one last blog post and leave you alone.
Dear lord that person you’re quoting is stupid.
Censorship is not confined solely to governmental actions enforced at the end of a loaded gun. In fact, and I tire of explaining this to those woefully ignorant of western history, that form of censorship is HIGHLY UNUSUAL in the United States. Currently, it’s almost entirely illegal; look up ‘prior restraint’ if you like. Under ordinary circumstances you cannot bar the publication of virtually anything via governmental order here in the US. Period.
Ever hear of the Pentagon Papers? How about the Progressive’s H-Bomb issue?
Yes, that’s right. The US government couldn’t even (long-term) bar the publication of plans to build a FUSION BOMB, they had to drop the case.
This is why, in the United States and particularly in the modern era, censorship is largely done through industry cartels. The ESRB. The MPAA. The Comics Code, until Marvel got so sick of their garbage that they walked away.
An industry is allowed to consolidate in a manner that under normal trade laws would be illegal and anticompetitive, and then they are tasked with policing themselves. This is the standard, contemporary method of censorship in the United States.
That person ranting about censorship is so profoundly ignorant of legal theory that it actually makes me gasp.
Take a look at this gobsmacking stupid statement: ” It’s like how we recognize the difference between manslaughter and murder, but the penalty for manslaughter still isn’t a slap on the wrist and sternly worded warning. ”
Intent is KEY TO THE ENTIRE JUSTICE SYSTEM. Manslaughter’s penalty is in fact sometimes little more than a ‘slap on the wrist’; manslaughter is a very broad category of varyingly serious offenses anyway, not one crime. Murder on the other hand, in much of the United States, can get you strapped into a chair and executed.
I’d call that a fairly significant discrepancy.
Of course there are, in many jurisdictions, different degrees of murder too. Those are also often distinguished by, you guessed it, INTENT.
(To get technical, what we’re talking about are called aggravating and mitigating factors, and they usually boil down to intent in one form or another. This is good and proper, because the motivation for committing an offense is key to understand the odds that the offender will re-offend, which, again to be technical, is called recidivism.)
Dear dark gods. Censorship is defined by the action and not the actor. From Merriam-Webster:
censorship 1
a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring
b : the actions or practices of censors; especially : censorial control exercised repressively
See that? does it say ‘Government’ anywhere in there? Does it say ‘by force of arms’ or violence? No. Censorship is any system that practices censoring. Period. And no, it’s not always a bad thing (take wartime censorship of letters from troops to their families, a common and uncontroversial practice that helps protect intelligence).
I mean, for crying out loud, the Catholic Church was the primary censor in Europe for centuries. They were never the governmental authority for most of Europe; they did it anyway. Got away with it too.
I’m not sure why you brought up censorship with me, here. I didn’t say that the masses were censoring Penny Arcade, I said they were forcing Penny Arcade into self-censorship. I also said that the ESRB and its ilk are actual, bona-fide censors. Which they are.
And no, talking about censorship is not a ‘defense’, nor is it childish. Failure to understand the meaning of a word you can look up in any free dictionary? That’s childish.
On the other hand, angry, ill-tempered and ignorant, self-righteous mobs? Definitely a threat to free expression.
You sound like an awesome, sensitive guy who is no way a jackass taking things out of proportion. I hope I run into you someday.
While I’m driving.
Edit by Administrator: Threats of violence, implied or direct, against conversational participants or site operators are prohibited.
Congratulations; you’re Ban #2
I’ve been spending all day on the Pratfall debacle timeline. Of the links, about 4 were to the defense of PA. Every quote from the authors were showing them in a negative light, or were downright damaging to their reputation. It is clearly slanted in the direction of the feminists’ rights activists or allies. So. yeah. Slanted.
Not saying women’s rights are a bad thing. I feel stupid for having to point it out, but some of the more reactinary people tend to jump on any opportunity. Let’s just say that the dickwolves controversy was kind of a silly place to protest. Energy and efforts would be much better spent elsewhere. Also; of COURSE the PA guys reacted in a bad way to the accusations. I’ve been spending time on feminists’ blogs and wikis, and if you’re not a feminist or an ally, you WILL offend them. 95% of the time. It’s pretty much a prerequisite to becoming an ally. Stop being so hypocritical, people.
Hm. . . This might be rather old hat, but isn’t classifying all anti-dickwolves protesters as feminists somewhat limiting? I consider myself a feminist- indeed, anyone who believes in women’s rights (defined here as women having rights to, say, equality) ought to. However, I have been a fan of Penny Arcade for a long time and sided with PA on the controversy and their reactions. I too believe that if they were so inclined to create and sell a shirt for profit, taking down said shirt for the comfort of others is a slippery slope that should accomodage all groups- difficult for the type of humor that is PA’s bread and butter. There’s a difference between boycotting, say, a particular sportsteam that employs and idealizes a probable rapist and being against an imaginary exaggeration of magical sexual assault. Removing that difference makes them equally important. That’s just plain silly.
So, Chuck, it’s not some woman thing. It’s a subset of people within a group offended by a particular thing or string of things. Don’t blindly blame feminists; it’s like aming Tetris because Red Dead Revolver had a tasteless Zombie-oppressing add on.
Happy that you posted. Theres a exciting fashion art music network called FAM Digital we would love to showcase you.