Strong Female Protagonist (webcomic)

[Frozen_Feet]

Restraining someone without harming them is the same whether you grab the arm or neck.

No it's not. It's not the same legally and it's not the same mechanically. There's a reason why several martial arts and self-defense schools, Judo for example, favor arm and wrist locks instead of chokes. It's because they're safer. An armbar, carried to its logical conclusion, will result in a broken arm. A choke, carried to its logical conclusion, leads to unconsciousness and possibly death.

The amount of force used is not irrelevant either. Every one of those foot-pounds counts, yo. The same amount of force that'd bruise up your wrist will cause you to gag and lose consciousness in seconds if applied your neck or throat. As noted, Allison had to use superhuman force to lift Miles like that; what she did was not appreciably better than someone else just punching him in the throat. The comic likely won't go out of its way to display the bruises on Miles's neck or the sore throat he'll have for the next day, but we can reasonably infer they're going to be there.

I imagine that the response of people on the roof playing into the authors portrayal of "Rape Culture" and that we are supposed to disagree with them. Which is why I think that the author probably didn't mean to portray something as dangerous and risky as they did.

Certainly the author is trying to portray a "rape culture". That is not mutually exclusive with portraying Allison as having temper problems, because that problem of hers has been touched on before, and is directly reference by Miles bringing up the hospital scene.

It's not either or. Everyone there is at fault for something. Especially after the latest page, I'm very interested to see whether the comic will revisit Allison's rationalization, and how.