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While I'm not going to condone those kinds of comments in the workforce or elsewhere, I'm not quite sure what the general justification is for putting "rape ana

While I'm not going to condone those kinds of comments in the workforce or elsewhere, I'm not quite sure what the general justification is for putting "rape analogies" on such a pedestal compared to other major crimes. Murder - "That went so badly, we just got slaughtered in that meeting" Rape - "If we aren't careful the competition's going to rape us" Theft - "We need to put in a plan to steal their customers ASAP" What throws me is all of those are Big Bad Things, especially murder, but I don't feel like there would be anywhere nearly the same kind of pushback to anything except making a rape analogy. Maybe a slavery analogy would do it as well? People have gone through terrible experiences where someone they love has been murdered etc, so I'm not sure it's just about the level of trauma it can induce.

jrhurst 8y ago
I think that individuals might have more likely personally survived the trauma of rape. So it more likely going to be an asshole thing to say. It'd be like, "We're gonna smash the competition so hard they have PTSD." to room where 30% are Iraqi war vets likely insulting to some of them.
jonny_eh 8y ago
For the same reason you shouldn't casually joke about the Holocaust, it's a HIGHLY emotional/sensitive topic. It's easy for guys to joke about it, but for women it's an all too real threat they have to constantly worry about.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I think there are two things going on here. First, the general assumption is that rape is a gendered thing and that treating jokes about it as socially acceptable behavior helps to oppress women in specific. I'm a woman and I've done a fair bit of research on the topic. I don't think it helps to use this framing. When I talk about my opinions, I am often accused of being a rape apologist. Women often perceive me as the enemy. Many of them seem to want to preserve some special victim card just for women rather than acknowledge that lots of men are also sexually assaulted, though it typically is not legally defined as rape because in many jurisdictions the legal definition of rape does specify that it is something only done to a woman. Nonetheless, men who are sodomized against their will in prison will say they were raped. The word encapsulates something that no other word quite captures. Second, joking about being slaughtered in the meeting probably in no way increases the risk of actual physical violence per se, much less murder, in an otherwise civilized environment. But letting ugly and actively hostile sexual remarks become the social norm can start a slippery slope that can help make things less safe when it comes to sexual boundaries per se. Most sexual abuse doesn't begin with rape. In a worst case scenario, it culminates in rape. It begins with myriad forms of disrespecting your boundaries and that disrespect absolutely can begin as verbal disrespect and then move on to unwanted touching, etc. Rapists whittle away at your expectations of respect and act like you are being ridiculous to react negatively to their behavior. This is done very intentionally and persistently. People who stand idly by and do nothing as they watch things go down this slippery slope are complicit, whether they realize it or not. It can't happen if other people stand up and say "No, this is not okay as a social norm." I used to be a lot more affectionate and expressive than I am. But I did a lot of research and, these days, I try hard to err on the side of treating other people with respect first and foremost. I don't always get it right, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm too aware of how this stuff works to not feel that it needs to be taken seriously.
- trgv 8y ago
  edit - I'm removing this comment because I offended someone.
  - dogecoinbase 8y ago
    Is rape more common among gamers? This is an intellectually dishonest strawman. The GP comment asserts rather that these statements create a context in which sexualization and boundary violation become more acceptable. And yes, the last few years have demonstrated clearly that sexual harassment is a huge problem for the gaming community. Would I ever work in place where rape jokes are acceptable? Good lord no, but I'm okay with that place existing. Congratulations.
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    - lliamander 8y ago
      >> Is rape more common among gamers? > This is an intellectually dishonest strawman. The GP comment asserts rather that these statements create a context in which sexualization and boundary violation become more acceptable. I don't have trgv's original comment (because it was deleted) but I don't think your characterization of their statement as a strawman is accurate. More directly, I think trgv's question (at least the part you quoted) is relevant to the discussion. We may reject the objectionable statements/offensive jokes on their own grounds for simply being offensive and unconstructive (I do). However, when you say "these statements create a context in which sexualization and boundary violation become more acceptable" that sounds like you are making argument that permitting such speech also encourages more serious (even criminal) behavior. In that context, trgv's comment sounds like an invitation to test that hypothesis.
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keeler 8y ago
You're whitewashing it. Your example of a "rape analogy," which itself might be in poor taste (let's agree to be agnostic on that for the moment), isn't analogous to the rape joke that was said: "No doesn't necessarily mean no." The OP blog post implies that people were either dead silent out of shock at the rape joke, or they laughed at the rape joke -- meaning everyone understood it to be a rape joke. You mentioned a "slavery analogy," which makes things interesting: I'm sure if you think hard enough you could come up with a slavery joke that, if uttered, would be obviously inappropriate. Nothing you've said even gets off the ground until your counterexamples are analogous to the joke uttered.
HarryHirsch 8y ago
Indeed. There was the recent scandal about this Swiss astronomer who told a graduate student of hers that "she is like the hired help, she needs to perform". The level of abuse reached such heights that they actually closed her institute. I guess I'm saying that there are limits, and these limits hold even if the emotions do not run high.
- acdha 8y ago
  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/swiss-university-dissolves-astronomy-institute-after-misconduct-allegations http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/swiss-university-diss... makes it sound like there was a lot more going on than one comment: > The accusers’ identities have not been made public, but—according to the NZZ report—students charged that Carollo expected “superhuman commitment,” including being reachable on weekends, rarely taking vacations, and participating in evening meetings that would sometimes go until midnight. According to the report, Carollo would criticize students’ postures and tell them to spend less time on makeup and more on research. The article says that one-third of Carollo’s Ph.D. students failed to graduate, and many of her postdocs left the field after they failed to publish enough papers.
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lucidone 8y ago
If you've ever suffered trauma or lived with a loved one who has, you know why rape analogies (or anything else which maps to a significant trauma, ie someone who has had a loved one murdered, someone in a war, etc) are put on a pedestal. It's not something you ever forget, and being reminded of it can be particularly visceral. Further, I'd wager rape and sexual assault occur much more commonly than murder for those working in white collar, professional contexts, and that it disproportionately affects women, who already have a bad hand dealt in tech.
drewrv 8y ago
Estimates put the number of women who have survived sexual assault as high as 1 in 6, so it's likely there are survivors in your workplace. It sits in a grim area of being a serious crime and quite common.
- belorn 8y ago
  Is this the same estimate that was produced by a optional poll in a single US campus, then extrapolated to the rest of the population?
kadendogthing 8y ago
Murder and theft are treated as obviously bad, in any context, by U.S. society at large. Getting murdered? That's bad no matter who it was. Getting robbed? That's bad no matter who it was. Getting raped? * Well that sucks, but it was just a one off event. * Oh you're a guy that's been raped, what are you some kind of pussy? * Are you sure you're just not making rape claims for attention? * Let's just probe you a bit more for evidence that we'll lock away and probably won't even use to help prosecute the criminal who did this to you. Theft and murder also don't usually have undertones (or rather really overt tones) of homophobia and toxic masculinity. The manner and context in which these jokes/hyperbole are delivered can be the difference between being topically hyperbolic and just outright revealing how ignorant of a person you are. To use your murder joke analogy, there's a difference between "You're gonna get slaughtered this game" versues "I'm gonna lynch you this round", to a presumably black competitor. It's not the fact the action is being used in a joking, hyperbolic manner. It really is about the context and manner you deliver the joke. You can in that process play to darker aspects of our society's status quo. The author of the article gives explicit examples of this and pretty much spells it out.
- monetus 8y ago
  I think the way you rephrase the murder reference illustrates pretty well how the expectations people have control their vocabulary. Expectations are transient and certainly not universal. Brandon's expectations about the way people perceive his dialogue were not universally correct. The condemnatory part of the article, in my mind, is that he tried to change the employee's reaction rather than his definition of insensitivity. I don't think those norms within dialogue can be wholly avoided though, sadly. As far as I can tell, our id penalizes effemince in men. Ps: your bulletins seem more like venting frustration than anything else. Hope you're doing alright.
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  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    >your bulletins seem more like venting frustration than anything else. Not sure why it would read that way, those are common talking points/situations in American society.
annywhey 8y ago
The answer is pretty obvious to me: all of the above are potentially sensitive. They aren't professional. They suggest unsavory intent. They can harm people who have experienced those concepts within their personal lives. You wouldn't want to use them when reporting to shareholders. But the degree of consequence is more contextual. That one or the other is being called out now, specifically, is a matter of political fashion. Sexualized language, racist language, those get airtime because there's groundwork there to carry those stories widely. In the past, it was religious oaths and the like that were transgressive. On the other hand, language around mental illness and disability, for example, has less of a support system now. You will easily get away with saying that an idea is "fucking retarded". I know I've said similar things many a time and I have some regrets about it. And that's a thing that the culture negotiates one conversation at a time. It might not matter in any one instance, and if you look at it in more weaponized terms of "oh, I need to call out that guy for using a bad word" it gets embittered and negative really quickly, but any sensationalization ultimately hinders intended use of the term. When you go looking for strong language of this sort, you end up in a space where you're going to borrow the imagery and insert it in situations that are just flat out not the same, and make people think: "What? Is that normal? Should I play along?" On an individual basis what's most important is just communicating clearly to make language and conversation pleasant and not going for "colorful" just because you can.
stone-monkey 8y ago
I'd argue the difference is that rape is on a higher pedestal, simply because it's always unacceptable. Regarding the slaughter analogy: it's not explicitly about murder, but killing. Slaughter doesn't apply only to humans, of course. Slaughter is typically associated with the killing of animals for food, after all. The difference between rape, killing, and stealing, en mi opinion, is society still grapples with killing and thievery, for certain edge cases. There's no such gray area for rape. Stealing if you're starving isn't condoned, but people do have more sympathy if you have extenuating circumstances. Murder is wrong, of course, but killing people in self defense is understandable. Killing animals for sustenance is okay. We need to eat or we'll die. Killing animals for pleasure is also okay. I could cut out steaks/Popeyes/breakfast sausages from my diet, but I've calculated the cost of a dead cow/chicken/pig is worth a nice meal. There's no equivalent case in society where people find it defensible to rape.
- simmanian 8y ago
  >Slaughter doesn't apply only to humans Rape doesn't apply only to humans. >Killing people in self defense is understandable Nobody's thinking of self-defense when they say "we absolutely massacred them." I think arguing rape analogy is somehow worse than murder analogy because rape is always unacceptable is self-deprecating. NOTHING should be black and white in this world if you subscribe to the belief that murder is acceptable in some situations.
  - stone-monkey 8y ago
    >Rape doesn't apply only to humans. Yes, and society generally doesn't find it acceptable to rape animals, either, which was my point. As a counterpoint, try to think of the most contrived example where rape can somehow be justified. My argument is it doesn't exist in western society, whereas this isn't the case for killing and stealing. >>Nobody's thinking of self-defense when they say "we absolutely massacred them." My point is that there are other cases where the of killing people is justifiable in some way. Self defense may not apply, but that phrase could be used when both parties are complicit in the killing. Generally, you'd use the above phrase in competitive events - that is, two parties fighting each other and one side winning in a landslide. Same difference in warfare - what separate it from murder is the complicity of both sides. Murder keeps getting thrown out there, but again, the analogies are more in line with general killing than murder.
a_wild_dandan 8y ago
Jokes which largely target/affect a specific group of people are considered more crass. So yes, murder/theft/violence are perceived as indiscriminate are thus less severe compared to rape/racist/religious jokes.
- retox 8y ago
  Rape isn't a gendered assault.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    The "reasonable fear of rape" is without doubt hugely asymmetric. Men might be reasonably afraid of getting raped in jail. Women have every right to have a reasonable fear of getting raped in a night club or an Uber or walking home from the grocery store. Because that happens all too regularly. (I'm not saying "men don't get raped", but I am saying that "in general, most men never have any real fear that someone might be about to rape them".)
    - zumu 8y ago
      This may be true of violent rape, but that is not the only type of rape. As someone who has been coerced into sex against my will, I think this narrow idea of what constitutes rape is harmful.
      - bigiain 8y ago
        Of course, and I 100% do not ever want to deny or belittle your (or anyone else's) awful experiences. I am though - still reasonably sure that the gender balance of people being coerced into sex is hugely asymmetric as well. Rape jokes are 100% contemptible when made in front of men who are victims of or genuinely fearful of rape or sexual assault. They are 100% contemptible when made in front of women. (It's contemptible when anyone does it in private with their frat bros or gaming friends/opponents, but I won't judge what they do in private so long as it stays private... But I will recommend they take a long hard look at what sort of person they are if that's what they think is an appropriate way to communicate with _anyone_...)
jcranmer 8y ago
Those kinds of comments I personally don't have a problem with, although I can see why others might. The problem wasn't using rape in a verb like that sentence, definitely not as a one-off. It was the fact that everything was being reduced to rape analogies. And it was culminated by a comment that very much crossed the line, and was very much meant to cross that line. There is a comment I saw quite a long time ago which was to the effect that the use of swearing to convey emotional intensity is a sign of immaturity, not maturity.
jancsika 8y ago
> What throws me is all of those are Big Bad Things, especially murder, but I don't feel like there would be anywhere nearly the same kind of pushback to anything except making a rape analogy. You can't imagine seeing massive pushback to a Silicon Valley type deciding to make a tone deaf, poorly timed "slaughter" analogy in the U.S. in 2018?
batteryhorse 8y ago
So if I said one of the following: a) "Brandon, imagine that I f* your wife..." b) "Brandon, imagine if I cut off your arms and legs one at a time..." c) "Brandon, imagine if you shot yourself in the back of the head... with a shotgun... twice... and declared it suicide..." d) "Brandon, imagine if I fed you to the pigs, and they never found your body..." e) "Brandon, imagine if I tortured you to death..." f) "Brandon, imagine if the Germans cut your d* off..." I just don't really get their "sense of humor". Why is (a) funny? It's like when somebody says "that's what she said", it's just not very funny, but I can imagine they say that there. I've actually never heard of Riot Games before this article, but I don't think I would ever want to work there. Seems like a waste of time.

jrhurst 8y ago

I think that individuals might have more likely personally survived the trauma of rape. So it more likely going to be an asshole thing to say. It'd be like, "We're gonna smash the competition so hard they have PTSD." to room where 30% are Iraqi war vets likely insulting to some of them.

jonny_eh 8y ago

For the same reason you shouldn't casually joke about the Holocaust, it's a HIGHLY emotional/sensitive topic. It's easy for guys to joke about it, but for women it's an all too real threat they have to constantly worry about.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I think there are two things going on here. First, the general assumption is that rape is a gendered thing and that treating jokes about it as socially acceptable behavior helps to oppress women in specific. I'm a woman and I've done a fair bit of research on the topic. I don't think it helps to use this framing. When I talk about my opinions, I am often accused of being a rape apologist. Women often perceive me as the enemy. Many of them seem to want to preserve some special victim card just for women rather than acknowledge that lots of men are also sexually assaulted, though it typically is not legally defined as rape because in many jurisdictions the legal definition of rape does specify that it is something only done to a woman. Nonetheless, men who are sodomized against their will in prison will say they were raped. The word encapsulates something that no other word quite captures. Second, joking about being slaughtered in the meeting probably in no way increases the risk of actual physical violence per se, much less murder, in an otherwise civilized environment. But letting ugly and actively hostile sexual remarks become the social norm can start a slippery slope that can help make things less safe when it comes to sexual boundaries per se. Most sexual abuse doesn't begin with rape. In a worst case scenario, it culminates in rape. It begins with myriad forms of disrespecting your boundaries and that disrespect absolutely can begin as verbal disrespect and then move on to unwanted touching, etc. Rapists whittle away at your expectations of respect and act like you are being ridiculous to react negatively to their behavior. This is done very intentionally and persistently. People who stand idly by and do nothing as they watch things go down this slippery slope are complicit, whether they realize it or not. It can't happen if other people stand up and say "No, this is not okay as a social norm." I used to be a lot more affectionate and expressive than I am. But I did a lot of research and, these days, I try hard to err on the side of treating other people with respect first and foremost. I don't always get it right, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm too aware of how this stuff works to not feel that it needs to be taken seriously.

trgv 8y ago
edit - I'm removing this comment because I offended someone.
- dogecoinbase 8y ago
  Is rape more common among gamers? This is an intellectually dishonest strawman. The GP comment asserts rather that these statements create a context in which sexualization and boundary violation become more acceptable. And yes, the last few years have demonstrated clearly that sexual harassment is a huge problem for the gaming community. Would I ever work in place where rape jokes are acceptable? Good lord no, but I'm okay with that place existing. Congratulations.
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  - lliamander 8y ago
    >> Is rape more common among gamers? > This is an intellectually dishonest strawman. The GP comment asserts rather that these statements create a context in which sexualization and boundary violation become more acceptable. I don't have trgv's original comment (because it was deleted) but I don't think your characterization of their statement as a strawman is accurate. More directly, I think trgv's question (at least the part you quoted) is relevant to the discussion. We may reject the objectionable statements/offensive jokes on their own grounds for simply being offensive and unconstructive (I do). However, when you say "these statements create a context in which sexualization and boundary violation become more acceptable" that sounds like you are making argument that permitting such speech also encourages more serious (even criminal) behavior. In that context, trgv's comment sounds like an invitation to test that hypothesis.
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keeler 8y ago

You're whitewashing it. Your example of a "rape analogy," which itself might be in poor taste (let's agree to be agnostic on that for the moment), isn't analogous to the rape joke that was said: "No doesn't necessarily mean no." The OP blog post implies that people were either dead silent out of shock at the rape joke, or they laughed at the rape joke -- meaning everyone understood it to be a rape joke. You mentioned a "slavery analogy," which makes things interesting: I'm sure if you think hard enough you could come up with a slavery joke that, if uttered, would be obviously inappropriate. Nothing you've said even gets off the ground until your counterexamples are analogous to the joke uttered.

HarryHirsch 8y ago

Indeed. There was the recent scandal about this Swiss astronomer who told a graduate student of hers that "she is like the hired help, she needs to perform". The level of abuse reached such heights that they actually closed her institute. I guess I'm saying that there are limits, and these limits hold even if the emotions do not run high.

acdha 8y ago
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/swiss-university-dissolves-astronomy-institute-after-misconduct-allegations http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/swiss-university-diss... makes it sound like there was a lot more going on than one comment: > The accusers’ identities have not been made public, but—according to the NZZ report—students charged that Carollo expected “superhuman commitment,” including being reachable on weekends, rarely taking vacations, and participating in evening meetings that would sometimes go until midnight. According to the report, Carollo would criticize students’ postures and tell them to spend less time on makeup and more on research. The article says that one-third of Carollo’s Ph.D. students failed to graduate, and many of her postdocs left the field after they failed to publish enough papers.

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lucidone 8y ago

If you've ever suffered trauma or lived with a loved one who has, you know why rape analogies (or anything else which maps to a significant trauma, ie someone who has had a loved one murdered, someone in a war, etc) are put on a pedestal. It's not something you ever forget, and being reminded of it can be particularly visceral. Further, I'd wager rape and sexual assault occur much more commonly than murder for those working in white collar, professional contexts, and that it disproportionately affects women, who already have a bad hand dealt in tech.

drewrv 8y ago

Estimates put the number of women who have survived sexual assault as high as 1 in 6, so it's likely there are survivors in your workplace. It sits in a grim area of being a serious crime and quite common.

belorn 8y ago
Is this the same estimate that was produced by a optional poll in a single US campus, then extrapolated to the rest of the population?

kadendogthing 8y ago

Murder and theft are treated as obviously bad, in any context, by U.S. society at large. Getting murdered? That's bad no matter who it was. Getting robbed? That's bad no matter who it was. Getting raped? * Well that sucks, but it was just a one off event. * Oh you're a guy that's been raped, what are you some kind of pussy? * Are you sure you're just not making rape claims for attention? * Let's just probe you a bit more for evidence that we'll lock away and probably won't even use to help prosecute the criminal who did this to you. Theft and murder also don't usually have undertones (or rather really overt tones) of homophobia and toxic masculinity. The manner and context in which these jokes/hyperbole are delivered can be the difference between being topically hyperbolic and just outright revealing how ignorant of a person you are. To use your murder joke analogy, there's a difference between "You're gonna get slaughtered this game" versues "I'm gonna lynch you this round", to a presumably black competitor. It's not the fact the action is being used in a joking, hyperbolic manner. It really is about the context and manner you deliver the joke. You can in that process play to darker aspects of our society's status quo. The author of the article gives explicit examples of this and pretty much spells it out.

monetus 8y ago
I think the way you rephrase the murder reference illustrates pretty well how the expectations people have control their vocabulary. Expectations are transient and certainly not universal. Brandon's expectations about the way people perceive his dialogue were not universally correct. The condemnatory part of the article, in my mind, is that he tried to change the employee's reaction rather than his definition of insensitivity. I don't think those norms within dialogue can be wholly avoided though, sadly. As far as I can tell, our id penalizes effemince in men. Ps: your bulletins seem more like venting frustration than anything else. Hope you're doing alright.
- deleted 8y ago
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- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >your bulletins seem more like venting frustration than anything else. Not sure why it would read that way, those are common talking points/situations in American society.

annywhey 8y ago

The answer is pretty obvious to me: all of the above are potentially sensitive. They aren't professional. They suggest unsavory intent. They can harm people who have experienced those concepts within their personal lives. You wouldn't want to use them when reporting to shareholders. But the degree of consequence is more contextual. That one or the other is being called out now, specifically, is a matter of political fashion. Sexualized language, racist language, those get airtime because there's groundwork there to carry those stories widely. In the past, it was religious oaths and the like that were transgressive. On the other hand, language around mental illness and disability, for example, has less of a support system now. You will easily get away with saying that an idea is "fucking retarded". I know I've said similar things many a time and I have some regrets about it. And that's a thing that the culture negotiates one conversation at a time. It might not matter in any one instance, and if you look at it in more weaponized terms of "oh, I need to call out that guy for using a bad word" it gets embittered and negative really quickly, but any sensationalization ultimately hinders intended use of the term. When you go looking for strong language of this sort, you end up in a space where you're going to borrow the imagery and insert it in situations that are just flat out not the same, and make people think: "What? Is that normal? Should I play along?" On an individual basis what's most important is just communicating clearly to make language and conversation pleasant and not going for "colorful" just because you can.

stone-monkey 8y ago

I'd argue the difference is that rape is on a higher pedestal, simply because it's always unacceptable. Regarding the slaughter analogy: it's not explicitly about murder, but killing. Slaughter doesn't apply only to humans, of course. Slaughter is typically associated with the killing of animals for food, after all. The difference between rape, killing, and stealing, en mi opinion, is society still grapples with killing and thievery, for certain edge cases. There's no such gray area for rape. Stealing if you're starving isn't condoned, but people do have more sympathy if you have extenuating circumstances. Murder is wrong, of course, but killing people in self defense is understandable. Killing animals for sustenance is okay. We need to eat or we'll die. Killing animals for pleasure is also okay. I could cut out steaks/Popeyes/breakfast sausages from my diet, but I've calculated the cost of a dead cow/chicken/pig is worth a nice meal. There's no equivalent case in society where people find it defensible to rape.

simmanian 8y ago
>Slaughter doesn't apply only to humans Rape doesn't apply only to humans. >Killing people in self defense is understandable Nobody's thinking of self-defense when they say "we absolutely massacred them." I think arguing rape analogy is somehow worse than murder analogy because rape is always unacceptable is self-deprecating. NOTHING should be black and white in this world if you subscribe to the belief that murder is acceptable in some situations.
- stone-monkey 8y ago
  >Rape doesn't apply only to humans. Yes, and society generally doesn't find it acceptable to rape animals, either, which was my point. As a counterpoint, try to think of the most contrived example where rape can somehow be justified. My argument is it doesn't exist in western society, whereas this isn't the case for killing and stealing. >>Nobody's thinking of self-defense when they say "we absolutely massacred them." My point is that there are other cases where the of killing people is justifiable in some way. Self defense may not apply, but that phrase could be used when both parties are complicit in the killing. Generally, you'd use the above phrase in competitive events - that is, two parties fighting each other and one side winning in a landslide. Same difference in warfare - what separate it from murder is the complicity of both sides. Murder keeps getting thrown out there, but again, the analogies are more in line with general killing than murder.

a_wild_dandan 8y ago

Jokes which largely target/affect a specific group of people are considered more crass. So yes, murder/theft/violence are perceived as indiscriminate are thus less severe compared to rape/racist/religious jokes.

retox 8y ago
Rape isn't a gendered assault.
- bigiain 8y ago
  The "reasonable fear of rape" is without doubt hugely asymmetric. Men might be reasonably afraid of getting raped in jail. Women have every right to have a reasonable fear of getting raped in a night club or an Uber or walking home from the grocery store. Because that happens all too regularly. (I'm not saying "men don't get raped", but I am saying that "in general, most men never have any real fear that someone might be about to rape them".)
  - zumu 8y ago
    This may be true of violent rape, but that is not the only type of rape. As someone who has been coerced into sex against my will, I think this narrow idea of what constitutes rape is harmful.
    - bigiain 8y ago
      Of course, and I 100% do not ever want to deny or belittle your (or anyone else's) awful experiences. I am though - still reasonably sure that the gender balance of people being coerced into sex is hugely asymmetric as well. Rape jokes are 100% contemptible when made in front of men who are victims of or genuinely fearful of rape or sexual assault. They are 100% contemptible when made in front of women. (It's contemptible when anyone does it in private with their frat bros or gaming friends/opponents, but I won't judge what they do in private so long as it stays private... But I will recommend they take a long hard look at what sort of person they are if that's what they think is an appropriate way to communicate with _anyone_...)

jcranmer 8y ago

Those kinds of comments I personally don't have a problem with, although I can see why others might. The problem wasn't using rape in a verb like that sentence, definitely not as a one-off. It was the fact that everything was being reduced to rape analogies. And it was culminated by a comment that very much crossed the line, and was very much meant to cross that line. There is a comment I saw quite a long time ago which was to the effect that the use of swearing to convey emotional intensity is a sign of immaturity, not maturity.

jancsika 8y ago

> What throws me is all of those are Big Bad Things, especially murder, but I don't feel like there would be anywhere nearly the same kind of pushback to anything except making a rape analogy. You can't imagine seeing massive pushback to a Silicon Valley type deciding to make a tone deaf, poorly timed "slaughter" analogy in the U.S. in 2018?

batteryhorse 8y ago

So if I said one of the following: a) "Brandon, imagine that I f* your wife..." b) "Brandon, imagine if I cut off your arms and legs one at a time..." c) "Brandon, imagine if you shot yourself in the back of the head... with a shotgun... twice... and declared it suicide..." d) "Brandon, imagine if I fed you to the pigs, and they never found your body..." e) "Brandon, imagine if I tortured you to death..." f) "Brandon, imagine if the Germans cut your d* off..." I just don't really get their "sense of humor". Why is (a) funny? It's like when somebody says "that's what she said", it's just not very funny, but I can imagine they say that there. I've actually never heard of Riot Games before this article, but I don't think I would ever want to work there. Seems like a waste of time.