rpg

[TW: Sexual Assault]

In my previous post, I published the results from my harassment policy survey. Among the group that responded to the survey, they overwhelmingly felt these policies were important or very important (228 out of the 319 total responses). Twenty percent had witnessed or experienced something that made them wish there was an anti-harassment policy, and 15 percent had felt harassed or assaulted at a con. It's important to note here that nearly 72% of the respondents identified as primarily male/men and out of the 49 people who responded that they had felt harassed or assaulted at a con, 15 of them identified primarily as male/man.

As I pointed out in the last post, I can't extrapolate too much using these results. This wasn't a random survey. People shared them among their friend networks, starting with my own. People had their own reasons for deciding to click on the link and responding, sometimes because they were already in favor of the policies and sometimes because they were firmly against them. However, I have to say I'm not surprised by the responses. At the very least, I think it points to the fact that among some communities within the larger gaming umbrella community, this is a real issue and their lived experience.

Whenever we try to have a conversation about why these things occur, the topic of "rape culture" inevitably comes up along with it the numerous misunderstandings and misinterpretations, many of them based on little more than defensiveness. So, I'd like to talk about my experiences with rape culture a bit and my understanding of it.

Those who don't really understand the phrase often like to take the words as separate items, look them up in a dictionary or rely on their own knowledge of the meanings, and try to deduce the meaning of the term from there. This makes things really difficult. Rape culture encompasses far more than a culture that promotes rape. You can exist in a rape culture and never rape or be the victim of rape.

Like many academic terms, rape culture is rather abstract and can be difficult to identify in the real world. There aren't hard and fast boundaries. Here's a definition from Transforming a Rape Culture via Rape Culture 101 on Shakesville:

A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.

That seems really abstract to some people and I get that. Here's an extract from a recent fantasy (as in the genre) novel (not a book meant just for adults) by a mainstream and well known publisher. The woman in this scene is the trainer of the "younger" man. I say younger because while his body is relatively young, he was reborn and had lived a rather full previous life and kept all the memories from that life. So, yeah. During a previous training session, the woman had kissed him, seemingly to distract him and win the fight. We also have hints that she is unsure about her feelings for him but seems to like him. R is the male character and D is the female one.

Why did you kiss me?"

She started to answer, but R's expression turned dark and he continued, "What did you hope to gain from it?"

D fell back another step, but then came forward aggressively, dropping her blade and putting her hands on her hips. She stood barely inches from R staring at him coldly.

"You cannot be mad at me!" R insisted.

"You have shown me-- you have taught me! You have taken me to those noblemen's grand parties and shown me how to use your charms to mainpula--"

D's hand came up faster than R could react and slapped him hard across the face.

She huffed and swung around to run away, but R caught her by the shoulder and tugged her back around, throwing himself at her. And when they crashed together, he hugged her tightly. He saw the moisture in her pretty brown eyes, and kissed her.

She twisted to get away. She pulled her mouth back. But R pressed in harder and rejoined the kiss and D's tension gradually melted away, and then she was kissing him as passionately or more.

"Do you doubt me?" she asked, and she twisted suddenly, dropping them both to the floor, her atop him.

"Have you never kissed any of them? Isn't that part of the game you play?" R asked.

This is an example of rape culture on at least two levels. Obviously, it sexualizes violence. The whole thing is violent from her slapping him to him being willing to gamble on committing sexual assault. If you want to quibble with that statement, reread the passage again. He doesn't know when he kisses her whether or not she's going to be ok with this. In fact, she has given plenty of signals that she says she is not ok with it at that moment.

Secondly, even after giving all of those signals. Even after all the "not being sure," she in the end gives in. Of course she does. Because that's a frequent rape myth, that, in the end women really want it.

Once I read this passage, I had to force myself to finish reading the book and I only did that because of other commitments. It sickened me and I couldn't believe that an author who often talks about the things he won't put into his books because he's mindful of his younger audience would put this in.

The hard part for me is I've lived this. I've been held hostage in a room because I wouldn't pay a kiss a toll to be able to leave the room. I've woken up with a male friend on top of me, kissing me, because he thought I really wanted it. At a dance, I had another man take my hand and put it on his erect penis not once, but twice, even after I said no. The second time, he forcefully held it there until I could pull myself away. I've had men, dozens of them, tell me that I don't have the right to tell people not to bother me because their right to try to bed me superseded my rights as a human being to live my life and network with my professional peers.

And this life imitating art imitating life reinforces that. This scene in the book, didn't need to be written this way. It didn't add anything to the story except that R is a complete idiot because after they have sex he has this realization:

He felt the fool for ever doubting this amazing halfling lass. She was playing no game for him; her feelings were honest.

*facepalm*

What scares me is as I looked through the reviews for this particular book, many of them glowing, not a single person pointed this out. And that's the problem with rape culture. There's an acceptance that this is the way romance is done. That acceptance, in turn, is what allows sexual violence to happen at the high rates we see. It's why some try to differentiate between "forceable rape" and lack of consent. They don't know how consent works.

And among a portion of the people who commit harassment and assault at cons, this same lack of awareness holds true. After a well-publicized assault at a tech conference and the harassment and blame the victim received when she came forward, O'Reilly decided to look into the problem at their conferences. They noticed that among the people they found had done these things, had even admitted to doing them, a large percentage of them had no idea what they were doing was wrong. No one had ever questioned this behavior around them. Nothing they read had ever caused them to question it either.

That's why we need more stories like Saga, Sex Criminals, and Rat Queens. Take these panels from Sex Criminals #1:

Enthusiastic Consent - Sex Criminals © Milkfed Criminal Masterminds, Inc. & Chip Zdarsky

Checking In - Sex Criminals © Milkfed Criminal Masterminds, Inc. & Chip Zdarsky

In the first panel, the male character checks in to make sure everything is still good with the woman. She gives her enthusiastic consent. I find that pretty awesome. In the second, they are about to do something they haven't done before. He again checks in. Super sexy!

In this panel in Saga, two of the main characters are having a disagreement.

Going Off Script - © Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples

As couples often do, Alana tries to us sex to distract. Marko breaks our typical narrative by pointing this out and turning it down and continuing to work through their issues.

Why do we need more of these? Because we use all of these ideas, regardless of their source, to figure out our own ways of interacting with the world, especially at a con. Think about how many times you've repeated a line from a movie or book that you thought was freaking awesome and smooth. Now think about the number of lines that follow the "silence is sexy" script rather than the enthusiastic consent one? That doesn't mean no character can ever be the former, but it would be nice if the work was self-aware about it.

I've only scratched the surface on this one, I know. But I'd like to ask you to consider how at a con centered around a genre, the way that genre presents and deals with romance and sex might have an impact on how the people act at that conference. Let's create some fantasy characters we can actually aspire towards when it comes to sex and sexuality.

Recently Rat Queens #1 came out. I had seen a lot of ads for this one, especially in the back of Saga. It's what happens when you create a comic around four tabletop RPG characters, all of whom happen to be women. Our cast of characters are Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric and Betty the Hippy Hobbit Thief. The quartet are known for causing trouble around town and find themselves thrown in the dungeon yet again. They might be able to secure their release...if they complete a quest. Fail, and they are banned from Palisade forever.

The bargain - © Kurtis J. Wiebe and John Upchurch
Of course, they aren't the only group. In addition to the Rat Queens, we have Peaches, Four Daves, Brother Ponies, and Obsidian Darkness. Of course, we soon find out that there's more going on here but I don't want to spoil that for you. Besides, if you don't mind spoilers, Weird Girls did a great review of the issue in this video.

There's also a free preview issue that introduces the characters and gives a sneak peak into their world. There are two pages from that preview that I particularly love.

Betty
Betty - Rat Queens © Kurtis J. Wiebe and John Upchurch

Violet
Violet - © Kurtis J. Wiebe and John Upchurch

As some of the sample images show, this is not a prim and proper comic. The world is dark as is the comedy. There will be swearing, drinking, drugs, and sex. They are adventurers after all! Oh and lots of bad ass women. I also love that the characters, in my opinion, aren't drawn for our viewing pleasure and yet still obviously have sexual desires and sexy fun times. The comic is often self-aware about this at times.

© Kurtis J. Wiebe and John Upchurch

So, if any of this sounds appealing to you, I urge you to check it out. You can find the free preview on the Image Comics website or through Comixology. Kurt Wiebe has previews and other information on his site. Issue #2 comes out on October 23rd.

Talking about PAX and Penny Arcade is never easy for me. The D&D podcasts with the Penny Arcade/PvP crew are what convinced me to finally play D&D after watching it be played and supporting others playing it for nearly 2 decades. While I'm not ok with every joke they make, I'm actually a big fan of irreverent humor amongst friends, as long as that humor isn't used to punch down. As someone who wasn't always great with understanding how to deal with racism, transphobia, homophobia, and the like, I have some amount of sympathy for those struggling through it and not being sure what to do. I was going to sit this out in part because everyone else is doing such a great job covering it.

However, after Mike's clarification, I've noticed a few things that I'd like to address and, yeah, I'm going to take advantage of my platform to say them. First, for those of you who don't know about the Dickwolves situation, here's a very short explanation. Penny Arcade released a comic that intended to demonstrate how messed up MMO morality is if you really think it through. Most quests rely on you doing something x number of times and forget about anyone hurt by the x+1 thing you didn't have to do. They decided to make this point by using rape through a made-up monster called the dickwolf.

This upset and hurt some people. I get that not everyone understands how this can happen. To some, in a perfect world, people would read a comic like this and not do the internet equivalent of scream obscenities at the creator. I'd argue that in a perfect world we wouldn't live in a world that constantly trivialized rape and creators wouldn't use it as a punchline in a joke that doesn't address the very real issues surrounding rape that many people face, especially without warning them first, but the main thing to remember is, we don't live in a perfect world and when people are hurt, they are allowed to express that anger, at least to a point. I'm not trying to defend all expressions of anger here; I know that some people said some rather nasty things about Mike, Jerry, and their families.

So, we had this wide range of response to the comic. Some brought up points in a calm manner, some brought up the same points in a more impassioned tone, others threw feces. In response, Mike and Jerry went after those they felt were throwing feces but in a way that included everyone speaking up. They went pretty nuclear. They weaponized the dickwolves concept. It now became not a symbol of how utterly fucked up MMO morality is and became a battle standard in...something. I still haven't quite figured out what. To add to this, t-shirts were created and there was a movement in the message boards for the Penny Arcade supporters to wear those shirts to PAX East to show those...those...PEOPLE that they weren't welcome. Because, in the end, that's what it was about. It was a statement to even people like me, who merely wrote about why the topic of rape is such a sensitive matter, that we weren't really welcome there.

When people pointed this out to Penny Arcade, it appeared that they decided to pull the merchandise. I thought that it was because they could see that it would mean that PAX would no longer be the inclusive space they claimed they wanted (and the apology supports this). I felt comfortable attending because even though I knew that there was this group who would hate me on sight if they knew who I was, I wouldn't be surrounded with messages. I wouldn't be forced to run games for people wearing the shirts. I wouldn't see them in my panels as I was trying to speak. It was a big deal.

Fast forward to just a couple of days ago. There have been other issues with Mike, but people have always been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt by and large. And now he says on stage that pulling those shirts was a mistake. And the crowd cheers. Not only does the crowd cheer, but someone feels confident enough to then ask for the shirts to be brought back. (Yes, both Mike and Khoo said no to that on stage). I get that Mike wishes he had said more. I even believe that he didn't mean to make it sound like that was the only thing he regretted. These things happen although I'd like to think that he has grown enough as a professional to have a full response to the dickwolves thing rehearsed. But it is what it is.

But I'm also tired of apologies and token efforts to make amends without real change and what our community needs is change. So Mike, I'm asking you as a person, as a fellow gamer, as someone who loved your work enough to name her first character after one of yours, please, please learn to be a better person. Not because people expect you to be a role model and not because you were thrust into a leadership role that you don't necessarily want. Change because right now, you are attracting to you the exact people you claim to dislike, the type of people who cheer like that over your misspoken comment because they assumed you meant that the only mistake was in removing the merchandise. You are attracting to you the types of people you lampooned in your League of Legends comic. You didn't ask to be their mascot but your actions have made you it nonetheless.

For everyone else, if you want to support Mike's clarification and apology and spread its good will, I might suggest this. Those people who heard Mike's initial comment, felt hurt by it, and spoke up are being hounded by some of the worst elements of the internet. They are getting all sorts of threats. Instead of defending Mike to everyone and anyone who might say even the slightest negative thing, how about standing up for those members of our family and giving them support? How about allowing them their pain and not trying to police them for once? If Mike actually made a mistake and he claims he did, we need people to be able to express their pain at it. But right now, Penny Arcade surrounds itself with a community that makes that impossible.

I recently finished A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles Through Islamic Africa by Steve Kemper. The book tells the story of Heinrich Barth, a German scientist who joined a British expedition tasked with exploring Islamic North and Central Africa. Over time, his two other companions on this trip died and he went on alone, eventually reaching the famed city of Timbuktu. Starting in 1849, the expedition took five and a half years and covered 10,000 miles.

What is amazing to me is how this expedition appears to be forgotten by history. As Kemper argues, part of this may be due to timing. The expedition happened at the tail end of the error of discovering the unknown and at the dawning of imperialism and some of Barth's research and findings undercut the beliefs required for imperialism. These include that at least the parts of Africa he visited had governance systems and histories, including some written. These were not exactly lawless lands full of people with no sense of history. Part of it is also Barth himself. He is a character and was not always as adept at navigating European politics as he was dealing with those he met on the trail.

While some might not appreciate the level of detail in the book, I enjoyed it, especially since one of the great values in Barth's work is that he took a snapshot of Africa before colonialism came through and made that impossible. I also found the details important in dispelling many myths about Africa and in presenting many of the historical figures as complex individuals making rational decisions given the reality of their world. Along with other works, I wonder if the details of the Barth's original books could be used to create an interesting historical setting that explains the world outlook in a way that makes sense to outsiders.

For instance, I loved the description of harems in some of the cultures. Concubines were part of a consumption culture. The women were an outward sign of wealth because 1) it took money to feed and house the women and 2) any children that resulted were entitled to full rights, the same as any of the other children. The women were concubines instead of wives because Islam limited men to a much smaller number of wives. Barth describes one man who collected women from each of the tribes and was interested when he heard about a new group because it meant he could add a new woman to his collection. Another man discusses with Barth how strange it is the European men drink alcohol so much to which Barth replies that since Europeans are limited to one woman, they must get their pleasures somewhere.

The book also touches on slavery, something that was important at the time. Abolitionists feature at times, although Barth often points out the issues with their schemes. He describes the devastation wrought by the razzia or raids, sometimes for livestock or other plunder but often for slaves. The whole system often relied on a neverending loop, plunder to get money for guns to protect yourselves from other groups doing the same things, all the while feeding the gun manufacturers. He also describes the differences between slavery as practiced in Africa and the chattel slavery practiced mainly in the Americas.

I also find the work important because it's an example not only of the fact that there were people arguing against the racism of the time, the same sort of racism we find in the foundational works of fantasy, but also what happened to those who stood up against that train of thought. Often when I try to discuss how our history is political, people try to argue that there wasn't a group trying to keep these sorts of arguments out. This book points out that the truth is probably at least a little more complex than that. Additionally, it means that for those who lived at the time and afterwards can't claim complete ignorance. These books and ideas existed. Barth did have some degree of popularity.

There are lots of interesting insights and contradictions with frequently repeated "facts" about Africa. Between the adventuring, politics, and descriptions of the land and peoples, there's bound to be a bunch of inspiration for games.