I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV show, and I'm not going to apologise for that. Just as I don't think anyone who hated it should need to. I was the right demographic to find Buffy's adventures slaying demons (that were essentially metaphors for Teenage Issues) engrossing. I was never a massive fan of the eponymous heroine - more of a Faith girl myself even if her moral compass was a bit shakier. But it was all about the writing and the characters and, let's be honest, the pretty. I had a similar love affair years later with the cruelly-mistreated Firefly.
Why would I be apologising for my appreciation of these TV shows? Well, because earlier this week I made the dispiriting discovery that their creator and lead writer Joss Whedon is...a bit of an asshat.
Why would I be apologising for my appreciation of these TV shows? Well, because earlier this week I made the dispiriting discovery that their creator and lead writer Joss Whedon is...a bit of an asshat.
If you're unfamiliar with his work, or with certain parts of the internet, I should tell you - Whedon is hailed as a feminist hero in a lot of places. He's written some decent parts for women. And when asked about that he played it all coy and said he was just writing women as he saw them. And that earned him cult status.
Now, I'm not sure if it's true that he wrote the Best Ever Female Characters - I enjoy a lot of his work, but they do tend to fall into certain tropes, whether that's unexpectedly ass-kicking femme or good natured but misguided weakling who needs rescuing (even if that rescue comes from another woman). But I enjoy watching them and I enjoyed having a high-profile writer and public male figure who went out of his way to identify as feminist.
But recently, Whedon decided to talk about how much he dislikes the word feminist, in a video that came to my attention when theJezebel website decided to cover it in depth and with lots of praise.
Now, I'm not sure if it's true that he wrote the Best Ever Female Characters - I enjoy a lot of his work, but they do tend to fall into certain tropes, whether that's unexpectedly ass-kicking femme or good natured but misguided weakling who needs rescuing (even if that rescue comes from another woman). But I enjoy watching them and I enjoyed having a high-profile writer and public male figure who went out of his way to identify as feminist.
But recently, Whedon decided to talk about how much he dislikes the word feminist, in a video that came to my attention when theJezebel website decided to cover it in depth and with lots of praise.
| Listening to it was like listening to a teacher you loved show up at a party drunk and start monologuing loudly about how great they are, and then turn offensive - that creeping embarrassment swiftly followed by '...what the hell?!' | This from a man who started out by saying he lives and works in language. So interrogate it a little more, come on. |
Because Whedon has cracked why some people don't like the term feminist. It's not because that it's a word traditionally used by white women who exclude and marginalise women of colour, people with disabilities and trans people in order to pursue equality with powerful white men at the expense of those who are further marginalised. Nope. There are no systematic understandings of how and why people don't use this word. It's because it sounds bad. The 'ist' at the end is too harsh, too offputting. It's because we don't have a word that means 'someone who is not a feminist' - misogynist is too difficult and offputting. Of course.
Whedon tried to make, and bungles, a comparison with the word 'racist' - apparently this word is powerful because everyone agrees that racism is bad - that's why we have a word that draws that line, that says if you are racist, you are on "the wrong side of history". Right. Because there is no such thing as systemic racism, as white people doing racist things because they have bought into a culture that is racist in ways stretching back decades, hundreds of years. No, we've decided racism is bad and those bad old racists just don't get that.
This from a man who started out by saying he lives and works in language. So interrogate it a little more, come on.
Jezebel, as I mentioned, loved this speech. I stopped reading Jezebel altogether when they decided that it was a good idea to post screenshots of a woman being raped, without her consent. That's not a feminist act, and lauding a white cis man who has decided that feminist isn't the best word isn't either.
However, I clicked this Jezebel link and my eyes almost jumped out of my head when I found a commenter saying excitedly that jezebel is a radical feminist website, and there is nothing wrong with being a feminist. I agree with the second half of that statement, but the first?
These people may be new to feminism. They might be privileged in ways they haven't begun to realise yet and be excited about the idea of feminism without having taken the time to untangle how other oppressions exist, interact and their part in them -because they have never had to. But radical feminism - a man being lauded for rejecting the label when women with far more pressing concerns are shrugged off?
We might need to start somewhere, but this isn't it.
Squeamish Louise
Whedon tried to make, and bungles, a comparison with the word 'racist' - apparently this word is powerful because everyone agrees that racism is bad - that's why we have a word that draws that line, that says if you are racist, you are on "the wrong side of history". Right. Because there is no such thing as systemic racism, as white people doing racist things because they have bought into a culture that is racist in ways stretching back decades, hundreds of years. No, we've decided racism is bad and those bad old racists just don't get that.
This from a man who started out by saying he lives and works in language. So interrogate it a little more, come on.
Jezebel, as I mentioned, loved this speech. I stopped reading Jezebel altogether when they decided that it was a good idea to post screenshots of a woman being raped, without her consent. That's not a feminist act, and lauding a white cis man who has decided that feminist isn't the best word isn't either.
However, I clicked this Jezebel link and my eyes almost jumped out of my head when I found a commenter saying excitedly that jezebel is a radical feminist website, and there is nothing wrong with being a feminist. I agree with the second half of that statement, but the first?
These people may be new to feminism. They might be privileged in ways they haven't begun to realise yet and be excited about the idea of feminism without having taken the time to untangle how other oppressions exist, interact and their part in them -because they have never had to. But radical feminism - a man being lauded for rejecting the label when women with far more pressing concerns are shrugged off?
We might need to start somewhere, but this isn't it.
Squeamish Louise
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