The Dickwolves Controversy: Everything you need to know and why it’s important
Let me first start by saying that I was not initially offended by the original Dickwolves comic. The comic strip created by Penny Arcade’s, Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, titled The Sixth Slave did not trigger any feelings of victimization for me, nor did I initially think someone could be hurt by this comic if it exists in a vacuum. The problem lies in that fact that Penny Arcade and their comic strip do not exist in a vacuum. Their media is visited by over 3.5 million people per day and is absorbed by a society that does not treat rape as seriously as it ought too. Krahulik and Holkins media is constantly digested by a culture rife with jokes about rape which normalize and effectively minimize the severity of rape, thus perpetuate a rape culture. The goal of this paper is to catalogue the events of the Dickwolves controversy, in order to discuss why the comic itself is not the problem. Rather, the problem lies in the hyper-gendered atmosphere of hegemonic masculinity that permeates the digital gaming world in which the comic exists.
Before proceeding with the Dickwolves cases, which Anastasia Salter contends, "highlights how the hyper masculine discourse encourages the overt privileging of masculinity over femininity and discourages women from engaging in gendered discourse within the community," let me first present a definition of hegemonic masculinity that I believe encompasses all media:
Hegemonic masculinity is about the winning and holding of power and the formation (and destruction) of social groups in that process. In this sense, it is importantly about the ways in which the ruling class establishes and maintains its domination. The ability to impose a definition of the situation, to set the terms in which events are understood and issues discussed, to formulate ideals and define morality is an essential part of this process. Hegemony involves persuasion of the greater part of the population, particularly through the media, and the organization of social institutions in ways that appear ‘natural,’ ‘ordinary,’ ‘normal.’ The state, through punishment for non-conformity, is crucially involved in this negotiation and enforcement (Donaldson, 645).
The world of digital gaming substantiates hegemonic masculinity through patterns of exclusion toward women, who are continually presented with background roles to support or deter the ultimate completion of a man's heroic quest. While the public identity of gaming originally stemmed from an outsider group mentality, "their in-group dynamics have expanded upon women-hostile concepts of masculinity within the larger social sphere. This discourse, as amplified across social networks and in public online spaces, allows for extreme and virulent lashing out against those who are perceived as others, most notably women"(Salter, 402). When a prominent female blogger spoke up to say she found a comic strip poking fun at a commonly used gameplay mechanic which made a rape joke to be hurtful, an extreme and virulent lashing out is exactly what she received.
On August 11, 2010, the webcomic and blogging website, Penny Arcade published a comic which features a (white, male) slave begging to be rescued by another character. The slave pleads, "Hero! Please take me with you! Release me from this hell unending! Every morning, we are roused by savage blows. Every night, we are raped to sleep by the dickwolves!" The hero then reports to the slave, "I only need to save five slaves. Alright? Quest complete." The prisoner objects, "But…." Only to have the hero interrupt him to say, "Hey, pal. Don’t make this weird."
The comic which takes place in a setting that resembles World of Warcraft, drawn by Krahulik and written by Holkins was uploaded, according to Penny Arcade, to comment on the silly conundrum in games like WoW in which you often receive quests to, "kill ten of these bad people" or "save five prisoners." Because the game has millions of players, these quests are effectively undone as soon as you complete one so that other players can do their good deeds too. Additionally, the absurdity of only meeting the quota outlined by the quest does not lend itself to reality. The comic was an effort to, “point out the absurd morality of the average MMO where you are actually forced to help some people and ignore others in the same situation" (Gabe, 2013).
Immediately people began to express displeasure with the joke. The most prominent response, written by Shaker Milli A. on Shakerville, the progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, and social justice, cites a myriad of reasons the comic was inappropriate and insensitive. Specifically, Shaker called out Penny Arcade for not providing a warning they were making a joke about rape. Without any warning rape survivors who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder- and who might not necessarily feel like seeing a rape joke mixed in with their usual dose of video-game satire run the risk of being triggered (Myers, 2011). Additional problems that Shaker brings up from the comic include: 1) Rape is not part of the game, so for the slave to explicitly state that he is being raped is meant as a "humorous" exaggeration. 2) A slave being raped is a real thing that happens every day, and is not a humorous subject to joke about. 3)Because rape survivors exist among us, and after being victimized by rapists, they are revictimized by a society that treats even real rape like a joke. They are forced to live in a culture where rape victims are often doubted, mocked, and insulted openly not just in satire (Shaker, 2010).
Shaker further condones the comic because rape jokes can trigger some survivors of sexual violence. Additionally, clarifying that being triggered "does not mean "being upset" or "being offended" or "being angry," or any other euphemism people who roll their eyes long-sufferingly in the direction of trigger warnings tend to imagine it to mean. Being triggered has a very specific meaning that relates to evoking a physical and/or emotional response to a survived trauma" (Shaker, 2010). Being triggered may forced someone to experience anything from a brief moment of dizziness, to a shortness of breath and a racing pulse, to a full-blown panic attack. Moreover, jokes that normalize and effectively minimize the severity of rape, only prove to perpetuate rape culture.
Remarkably, rather than apologize or ignore the blogs post and hand full of offended emails, the authors of the comic with the released a new comic that “reframed the argument (of the critiques), suggesting that the only possible protest to the joke was the idea that it encouraged rape, rather than any underlying message of sexual violence or hostility” (Salter, 406).
The response comic released on August 13, 2010 , featured a bemused-looking Tycho addressing the audience directly announcing that if, "It's possible you read our cartoon, and became a rapist as a direct result. If you're raping someone right now, stop. Apologize. And leave. Go, and rape no more" (Krahulik and Holkins, 2010).
The sarcastic follow-up comic attempts to use the fundamental tools of rape apologia ("you're just humorless; you're oversensitive; you just don't get it") to argue they are not a rape apologist (McEwan, 2010). In a world where the primary means in which rape is normalized is humor, I can not make sense of why Krahulik and Holkins responded in this way.
On the same day of the response comics release, Melissa McEwan added to the Shakerville blog with a post titled, Survivors are So Sensitive. In this post she outlines the strategies that defenders of rape jokes typically employ: 1.) Misrepresenting critics' primary objection as the assertion that rape jokes "create" rapists and/or "cause" rape. 2.) Summarily treating that idea as absurd. 3.) Concluding that critics are thus hypersensitive reactionaries with no legitimate critique. Her outline essentially summarizes the Penny Arcade response, but then goes further to explain why these defense strategies are ludicrous. Starting with misrepresentation of critique as, "your rape joke will directly cause someone to go out and commit a rape." McEwan proclaim that the idea is absurd, which is exactly why it's so appealing to defenders of rape jokes to deliberately misrepresent critics' arguments in such a fashion. Furthermore, "the rape culture is a collection of narratives and beliefs that service the existence of endemic sexual violence in myriad ways, from overt exhortations to commit sexual violence to subtle discouragements against prosecution and conviction for crimes of sexual violence. The rape joke, by virtue of its ubiquity, prominently serves as a tool of normalization and diminishment"(McEwan, 2010). What's more, the comic is making an explicitly hostile mockery of the readers’ right to be offended, which thus fails to foster any legitimate forum for discussion.
The duo continued to create controversy through October 2010, when Krahulik cavalierly drew a dickwolf (a wolf with veiny penises where its legs and tail should be) during their "Make-A-Strip" panel appearance at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. Even so, what finally drove Krahulik and Holkin's PAX away from its perception as safe space for everyone, was creation and sale of Team DickWolf T-shirts on their online store. The shirts, which were designed to look like sports fans attire with the words “Penny Expo” and “Dickwolves” flanked across a growling blue wolf’s head, only served to "reinforce the hyper masculine associations of the Dickwolves by adopting a signifier of athletic masculinity"(Salter, 2015). Additionally, considering that the Dickwolves were introduced to society as rapists, the shirts implicitly suggest a team-spirit endorsement of rape as a joke, if not as an outright action (Salter, 2015).
Courtney Stanton, a project manager for Boston-based game developer DINO Interactive, a rape survivor, feminist, and advocate for marginalized groups in the game industry, critiqued the Dickwolves shirt, citing specifically that "the idea of being in a room full of mostly men, where some of those men are wearing it, feels like a threat against me. Penny Arcade has gone out of its way to make sure that the floor of PAX East is no longer a safe space for me"(Myers, 2011). Stanton suggesting that the intention of the shirts was in part to create an atmosphere of hostility at the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo declared she would be boycotting PAX East where she had been asked to speak on a panel. Just two days after Stanton's critique the T-shirts were removed from the Penny Arcade store. Unforeseeably, after the shirts disappeared from the Penny Arcade store Stanton's post went viral and within a few days had hundreds of comments and tens of thousands of hits.
Stanton and other rape survivors were then viciously harassed repeatedly on Twitter, blogs, and forums all over the internet for their role in taking down the t-shirts. Dickwolves advocates created Twitter handles like "@teamrape, @DickWolvington, and @rapefatchicks (that last one using Krahulik's dickwolf drawing from PAX Prime as an icon), and used these accounts to post pictures of mutilated women, to demand that Stanton provide "proof" that she had been raped, and to track down a police station near her house to report her rape for her"(Myers, 2011). These fans of Dickwolves stated that their reason for wanting to wear the t-shirts was the right of free speech. In an interview, Stanton commented on the harassment noting, "it stopped being people who would have read my blog anyway and disagreed with me. It became people who thought that I should be dismembered and all of my limbs should be raped. Which was, literally, a suggestion that I got. And that's where I think the reasonable debate kind of took a dip"(Myers, 2011).
While many members of the community stood fortified behind the cartoonists, doubling down on the idea that they were not specifically trying to alienate women audiences, yet should have the right to make rape jokes, many indeed harassed those who voiced Penny Arcade critiques (Salter & Blodgett, 2012). All the while, Krahulik and Holkins remained silent.
The furthered hostile othering of Stanton and similar female activists in the male-dominated space of gaming was only finally alluded too by Krahulik and Holkins when an unfunny threat on his family convinced him to call out his alleged supporters for their behavior. A tweet comprised on Feb 2, 2011, by Twitter user, @ghostpostin, "A Funney Joke: Go to Mike Krahulik / @cwgabriel's house, Literally Murder His Wife and Child #jokes #funny #murderwolves."
Although, Stanton and similar users had been enduring far worse for months, the tweet finally caused the duo to break their long silence. In a post titled "Okay that's enough," Krahulik wrote:
We have people on both sides of this ridiculous argument making death threats and worse. Kara was certainly upset to see someone mention on Twitter last night that it would be funny to come to my house and murder my wife and children. I know there are people who see themselves as being on our side that have made equally disgusting comments in the other direction. I want to make it very clear that I do not approve of this kind of bullshit (Myers, 2011).
On that same day, Holkins wrote in a long post titled "On the matter of Dickwolves:"
If I haven’t been seen to discuss The Matter Of Dickwolves, this is the reason why. I’m not entirely certain that a conversation is possible. This isn’t mere cynicism - this is a fully rational assessment of the situation. The perspectives in play, the lenses, are too different: one side believes that not according the issue of rape the proper respect fuels a kind of perverse, perpetual engine called rape culture. There is a vast, specific lexicon and hundreds of tacit assumptions that gird it. The other side (that’s me, but not just me) believes that when it comes to expression nothing is off the table. It is the creator’s prerogative to create something - even something grotesque - out of anything they can find. The fact of the matter is that the strip that started all this is about how empty, amoral, and borderline vile electronic heroism actually is. When I look at it now, it’s hard to imagine the chaos this comic stands at the center of….As I said, so much of this happened because I assumed that a genuine dialogue was impossible. Maybe I was wrong. It’s certainly happened before. But I am who I am, in the end; the comics I make are the result of my damage. I can’t put it any more succinctly than that (Holkins, 2011).
The mistake I think, Holkins and Krahulik, made was that they did not provide any warning that the contents of their comic strip involved a commentary involving rape. Additionally, they were extremely insensitive to rape victims in their response comic, by essentially telling the victims the only plausible justification they could have for getting mad, is that the comic encourages rape, which of course it does not. What the comic and its response does facilitate, however, is a culture where rape is humored, effectively normalizing rape and minimizing it severity.
More specifically, Holkins and Krahulik erred when they failed to exposed/acknowledge the public dialogue created by the Dickwolves supporters. The Dickwolves supporters diminished the role of women within the discussion, by focusing more upon silencing and undermining their objections than actually addressing them. Women who spoke out against Holkins and Krahulik were belittled, verbally assaulted, and harassed from many areas within the gaming public. From the explicit creation of the T-shirt to oppose female voices, who felt threated by it connotations, to the reduction or removal of PAX and other public forums as a safe space for women to participate in public discussions around gaming. Dickwolves supports deliberately continued to reframe the discussion to avoid common ground, so that women, or feminine supporters, were made to feel ostracized and unwelcome within the bounds of spaces owned by dominant public, males. Any perceived transgressions to change the hyper masculine identity of Penny Arcade and its dominance of the space were met with hostility, from death threats to images of mutilated women in an effort to move feminists away from their space.
The rage we see expressed by the threatened individuals and groups seems to be based on at least two factors: sexism (as well as racist, homophobic and ageist) beliefs about the abilities of female players, and fears about the changing nature of the game industry. For the sexist threatened individuals, we need more documentation of the extent of those activities and analysis of what responses or actions tend to mitigate or eliminate their issues. I would call for more traditional research studies that not only document the prevalence of hate speech, but that seek out and investigate those who engage in such practices, to see how and why they do so.
For those individuals that fear the changing nature of the game industry; such as the growth of casual and social games, which are often targeted to women and fear that means that fewer budgets and development teams will be focused on traditional titles and genres such as First Person Shooters and Action games. What is needed here is more in-depth, critical research examining how players understand and utilize: how they make sense of the wider game industry universe, how they conceptualize their choices, and who is controlling those choices.
But you see, any community that is built upon commercial success and shared consumerism cannot afford to alienate members of its general audience. Hardcore gaming identity resists the incursion of casual and female gamers because sexualizing women, harassing, and objectifying them is a form of dominance, and it is a form of dominance that simultaneously shuts women out or makes them less meaningful then men. It isn’t until a greater number of individuals within the hardcore gaming public begin to address their adoption of a hyper masculine discourse that true progress will occur.
This discussion could have been started by Holkins and Krahulik. Because the issue of rape and how it is treated by feminists and non-feminist, to be a feminist issue- would be a great place to start a discourse on the gendering rape issue. Gendering rape inherently confuses the issue and I think Holkins and Krahulik knew this. The rape victim in this comic was intentionally a man, because even Holkins and Krahulik knew that if the slave in the comic was a female, no one would be able to laugh. After all a woman in distress is just meant to be saved, as video games have been teaching us for decades in games like Mario, Legend of Zelda, and so on. The comedy of the comic, however, is rooted in the image of a man in distress, begging to be saved in a world that stems from the kind of anxious, performance-based masculinity that pervades the gaming community as a whole.
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