Her post describes a sadly hostile environment for her most recent live sessions, including some especially unpleasant table talk.  Among the examples she shared was an unfortunately common instance of the verb “rape” being used figuratively by a player to describe the consequences had a particular card fell among the community cards.

“If the seven of diamond comes,” her male opponent said to her after she had won a hand, “I totally rape you.”

The poster described herself responding “calmly” to the declaration, asking “Isn't there a better way to express that sentiment?”  Her question wasn’t received well, prompting more angry talk and more direct criticism of her for being “uptight.”

After pointing out “a poker room is not a strip club or a locker room,” the poster then asks others “Where is the line (if any)... for sexist behavior in the poker room?”  Before reading the rest of the thread, I thought a bit more about the incident being described as well as my own answer to the question being posed.

My first response was to remember when I first began reading poker forums many years ago.  I recall being surprised at how common it was to see the word “rape” used in an offhand way to describe particular hands or sessions.  Usually the word was evoked to refer to dominating a player during a given hand, or a table full of opponents during a session or tournament.  Ideas of being aggressive and/or intimidating were often intended as well.

Now I haven’t lived a particularly sheltered life.  It’s not as though I’d never heard misogynistic metaphors in other contexts before.  Still, I couldn’t remember having encountered such frequent and casual usage of the word “rape” -- not in locker rooms, not anywhere.

It wasn’t just in forums, either.  I remember hearing players use the word on certain poker podcasts quite frequently, too, and by people I otherwise enjoyed listening to and wouldn’t have suspected to harbor any special intention to offend.  (I refer to once popular shows that are no longer active.)  It was clearly a term that had somehow found a place within poker culture, with a meaning as specific and recognizable as “running over the table.”

Not only did the usage seem wildly inappropriate -- despite the many repetitions of it -- it made me uncomfortable.  Sure, it could be explained away as yet another vestige of poker’s long legacy as a game played mostly by men and within an especially “masculine” culture.  Such obviously immature and/or unaware talk may not have been encouraged, but it was clear most either accepted it or chose not to object.  But I didn’t care for it.  Not at all.

I don’t know if my “He Said/She Said” colleague Jen remembers it or not, but a few years ago she and I had a conversation about players indifferently referring to “raping their table” in which I told her how I disliked it.  The memory of that conversation was among my first thoughts, too, when reading and considering the Two Plus Two post -- to remember how this kind of language and that particular usage has been around in poker for quite some time, and how it has bothered me for a long time, too.

My second response was to think about how when it came to penalties or governing player behavior, I’ve always felt that particular words weren’t nearly as significant as is ensuring civility as well as players’ comfort and/or safety at the table.

Thus when I read the WSOP’s rule prohibiting “the use of obscene or foul language in any public area of the casino at any time” and that “any player who uses such language or makes a foul, profane, obscene or vulgar statement, or speaks abusively or in an intimidating manner to another player, a dealer or a Tournament staff member, will be penalized,” I tend to place a lot more importance on the latter part of that rule than the former.

My sense at the WSOP is that is how tourney officials tend to view things as well -- often letting non-harmful profanity go (even if the rule says otherwise) while generally stepping up to halt abusive or intimidating words or actions.  And I can’t think of a single example of using the word “rape” to describe anything that happens at a poker table as not being abusive or intimidating, regardless of the speaker’s intention.

So yeah, to go back to the original question, that’s one place I’d draw the line.

I then read through the responses and found Two Plus Two moderator SGT RJ’s post especially enlightening and to the point.  “If men would speak up when other men say retarded ass **** like this, it would become far less prevalent,” she points out.  “If guys would just say, ‘Wow, really?  Not funny/cool, IMO’ when they heard other guys joke about how losing is like rape or how folding is gay, it would become less acceptable.”

SGT RJ is right.  Which is why I’m using the “He Said” half of this column to say just that.  And to encourage other men to follow the same advice and not tolerate such intimidating language or behavior at the tables, or anywhere else for that matter.