Helpful Prologue: In case you missed the "dickwolves" scandal, here's a quick recap: Penny Arcade is a web comic. They made this. Anti-rape folk freaked out. The Internet exploded. Jesus wept.

Now that you're caught up, take a look at this thing. It's a 10-page screed penned by Boston Phoenix writer Maddy Myers on why the whole situation offends her, and has led her (a once scary-dedicated Penny Arcade fan who admits to attempting the production of a PA fan film during college) to stop reading the strip.

Now, in case you didn't know, The Boston Phoenix is basically a chowdah-flavored version of The Mercury. And, in effect, that makes Ms. Myers the Rebecca Howe to my incredibly rich French dude whose name I can't remember. Cheers-nostalgia aside, I think that makes me the perfect person to counter her incredibly long argument with my usual brand of well thought out flippancy and childish swears.

Before you hit the jump feel free to take bets on how many people I'm about to offend. I've got $5 on "all of them."

First, I would like to take a moment to say that as a white male with laser eyes and a rad jetpack, I will never know the sort of suffering experienced by rape survivors. True, men can be raped, but there are basic genetic and psychological differences to both the situation and the people involved that result in a wholly unique, horrific experience for female rape victims.

Those who have lived through such a terrible event have nothing but my sympathy.

Also, I fully support Ms. Myer's assertion that the vast majority of gaming sites are so grossly slanted toward the male demographic that the homoeroticism is as palpable as a throbbing cock in your palm. Most gaming communities are boy's clubs where anyone with lady bits is treated as a trophy, a commodity or some other noun that would make Gloria Steinem spin in her vaginocoffin.

That said, IT'S A GODDAMN WEB COMIC!

I've only once been accused of being too sensitive to the plight of women (and that might have been sarcasm, now that I think of it ...), but do we really share oxygen with people so thin-skinned that a one-word allusion towards an admittedly abominable act in a gaming-centric web comic deserves this much vitriol and, more bafflingly, this many idiot bastards offering their opinion on the whole thing?

(Yes, the irony is delicious. Thanks for asking!)

Or maybe there's something I'm missing here. Is it the "dickwolves" bit? Does that sort of phallolupocentric imagery hold deep, unsettling connotations that my external genitals won't let me grasp? Is that like the dude analogue of the *shiver* vagina dentata? If that's the case, just say so and I'll totes picket Jerry and Mike for being the worst duo since Hitler and the Eggplant Wizard.

In case you didn't get it yet, I'm not exactly taking this whole thing all that seriously. Mostly because I'm kind of a bastard, but also because the Internet is a vast wasteland of stupid; those who argue on it, doubly so. So listen, if you want to publicly bitch about two nerds in Seattle using the wrong four-letter-word in their World of Warcraft cartoon, go right ahead, but don't be stunned when half the planet thinks you're a total assbadger.

(Can I still say "ass?" Are we gonna get letters from the National Association for the Advancement of the Assless?)