Penny Arcade Open Thread II

[Trigger warning for sexual violence and rape apology.]

Last night's thread was getting unwieldy after 1,000+ comments, so here's a fresh thread.

One observation about yesterday's thread: I opened it to give the people piling into my email an opportunity to speak their minds in this space. The people who were sending the really nasty stuff mostly didn't show up in the public thread where I consented to allow them to have at me. Can anyone think of any other action to which is central a lack of consent...?

The other people who show up in my email and not in the thread are the men (self-identified as men in their emails; I'm not assuming) who contact me to talk about how they are on my side, to thank me for speaking up, and/or to tell me that they've really learned something about themselves, the rape culture, whatever during this whole thing. There are a lot of them, which is good! That's why I do this, why I put up with all the bullshit. But they mostly don't want to say it publicly, and certainly not under their real names, the way I blog every day, because they see what happens to people who speak up.

This, then, is the rape culture at work: Men who want to harass me by violating my boundaries, and men who see that retribution taken on me and don't want to experience the same, intimidated into public silence by the jack-booted enforcers of this fucked-up culture.

This, too, is why I do this.

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Same rules apply: Whatever you've got to say, say it here. Whether you want to explain the comic to me, argue against the existence of the rape culture, confess that you've learned something you didn't expect to learn about rape culture, talk about my impenetrable tone, ask questions, give me a fist-bump of solidarity, accuse me of censorship, pontificate about the First Amendment, express your own contempt for trivializing rape for entertainment, demand to be educated, share what your wife/girlfriend/mom has to say, note how fat and ugly I am, breathe a sigh of relief at having found Shakesville, or anything else that's on your mind, this is the place to do it.

Threats of violence against anyone will not be tolerated in this space.

If you are a first-time commenter, please note that the Commenting Policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.

Please be aware this thread will be left unmoderated, so tread with caution.

[Previously: Rape Is Hilarious, Survivors Are So Sensitive, Quote of the Day, Troll Math and Teaspoons, T-Shirts and Teaspoons and Mythical Creatures, Taking a Brave Stance Against Survivors of Rape, Offended Is the Worst Thing to Be, and An Observation, My Point, Here It Is, Penny Arcade Open Thread I.]