Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Censoring an old strip?
Is it cold in here?:
I'd been thinking about the analogy with murder jokes, of which QC has had many. The emotional impact is different because murder isn't being trivialized or endorsed by large sections of society. You can report a murder without having your entire town turn against you. Murders routinely get prosecuted. Guess how much good my relatives got out of the legal system.
There are jokes that trivialize sexual violence, they poison the well of society, and I don't think this strip was one of them.
Near Lurker:
It's estimated one in fifteen American men 18-24 has committed rape, so at any given time, there's far, far more likely to be a rapist in your audience than a murderer.
This is important because of what each tells themself: in one case, "it wasn't really rape," in the other, "s/he needed killing." Being corruptions of the two most common legitimate (affirmative) defenses - consent and justification, respectively - these are essentially the same defense. Both of them are reinforced by trivializing the matter in the form of jokes - nonconsenting victims who aren't really violated because they're only figures of fun, and unjustified homicides that aren't murder because of a patently absurd justification. In both cases, most of the audience recognize the absurdity of seeking to so minimize a real crime, but the way the human mind works, those who are already so inclined might seek to minimize the guilt of their inclination (or even the actual fact), and there the symmetry breaks down. Because while the uncaught murderer who might be reading your strip is too rare to be worth worrying about, and knows he has no friends, the sizable minority that is the rapists in your audience might see a hand reaching out, to assuage their fears, to steel them to offend again, or worse, for the first time.
Valdís:
--- Quote from: mewmew34 on 26 Apr 2013, 14:29 ---I personally don't understand why it was changed
--- End quote ---
Because Jeph presumably didn't want to have his writing include that. What with being a great guy and all.
--- Quote from: mewmew34 on 26 Apr 2013, 14:29 ---or why people let jokes like that get to them.
--- End quote ---
Right. Because it's their fault it'd be a sensitive issue. After all, it works just like depression: "Have you tried not letting things be triggering?".
--- Quote from: mewmew34 on 26 Apr 2013, 14:29 ---Rape is a horrible thing, no doubt. But so is murder and people make jokes about murder and death all the time. They may be tasteless, but they're still just jokes and do not condone the action they make fun of.
--- End quote ---
How is it making fun of the action at all? There's not a word in there saying that. It literally just trivialized the trauma of shy, submissive people. That was the "joke".
--- Quote from: mewmew34 on 26 Apr 2013, 14:29 ---If somebody decides to go out and rape somebody because a girl in an internet comic strip made a casual mention of it, there is something seriously wrong with the person, not the creator of the comic strip, for thinking a joke makes the action OK.
--- End quote ---
No one was saying anything about a direct causation like that, so why are you? (Edit: Well, at the time of your post. Near kind of just did in response to it.)
Not that it isn't troubling as an attitude anyway. Especially given how dismissive people can be to the victims already. Even more so if the perpetrator was female and the victim male.
Welu:
In sort of the same tone as Near Lurker's post, you're much more likely to encounter a rape or sexual assault victim than a person who has been murdered.
I'm not sure I entirely gel with that statement (click to show/hide) (in that it sort of implies it's okay to make the joke as long as no one can complain about it) but it is true.
Is it cold in here?:
If Sara had been a sexual predator planning to hurt Marten, The Pugnacious Peach would have taken her apart to the quark level, stabbed the quarks, and pooped in their wounds.
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