Having one affair may not. But having multiple affairs while married over the course of many years? Why not admit it's not working and end it? That's being dishonest and putting your spouse in a shitty situation.
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Kai Cole, Joss Whedon's Ex-Wife, calls him out as a 'Hypocrite Preaching Feminism'
- Thread starter Goodstyle
- Start date
Having one affair may not. But having multiple affairs while married over the course of many years? Why not admit it's not working and end it? That's being dishonest and putting your spouse in a shitty situation.
Shows he has no respect for his wife
Inferno313
Banned
Cheating doesn't make you a bad feminist, imo. Repeatedly cheating with multiple women, as if treating them like they're disposable, while causing extensive emotional abuse to your wife to the point that she develops PTSD does show that you have a pretty fucking poor respect for women though... which does make you a bad feminist.
If some CEO of a company loudly proclaimed himself a feminist but had spent 20 years having "consensual" affairs with staff that report to him directly, would "just-cheating" defenders not see a huge disconnect there?
I mean, come on. This is pretty gross and at worst makes him sound predatory. Affairs happen, that's pretty normal for human beings and generally doesn't result in automatic confiscation of someone's feminist card. But, if this is true, he was having sexual relationships with women whose decisions were influenced by the power he had over their careers. And he probably preferred it that way. That kind of leverage makes him as exploitative as a garden-variety workplace sexual harasser. And no one mistakes them for feminists.
I mean, come on. This is pretty gross and at worst makes him sound predatory. Affairs happen, that's pretty normal for human beings and generally doesn't result in automatic confiscation of someone's feminist card. But, if this is true, he was having sexual relationships with women whose decisions were influenced by the power he had over their careers. And he probably preferred it that way. That kind of leverage makes him as exploitative as a garden-variety workplace sexual harasser. And no one mistakes them for feminists.
Jeez he sounds like trash. I have had the pleasure of knowing a few faux-feminists like this in real life, I know we joke about right-wingers who using "virtue signalling" as an insult but some of these dudes actually are just virtue signalling to get laid. Its like a whole new level of pick up artistry. Whedon and the people like him are totally predators.
Was Buffy not supposed to have a love interest?
Buffy was a teenage drama on The WB. Every character was searching for a love interest.
I took this more to point out how horrible some people can be, not that it was okay to call them a whore.
I mean, I would have considered the "strong female" moment to be the Loki interrogation scene.
(And are we really going to use the character of Black Widow, a spy, being undercover and wearing a dress while doing so as an example of Joss being a bad feminist? That example seems like a stretch.)
Did any of the other women comment on this?
LordKasual
Banned
that's the direct opposite of respecting your wife
UnemployedVillain
Member
You're projecting or making massive assumptions
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
I'm still not really sure why this thread is all about feminism. I've even seen some posts saying "just because he didn't live up to feminist ideals doesn't mean the ideals are wrong", which I don't think anyone here has contested?
Really, I'd think that the main issue here is that Joss Whedon promoted himself as having a particular image, and it's seeming less and less like he matches up to the image.
Really, I'd think that the main issue here is that Joss Whedon promoted himself as having a particular image, and it's seeming less and less like he matches up to the image.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Failing to see how that's inherently non-feminist unless she defines herself by her love interest and/or pines constantly for him at the expense of everything else or something.... feminists have boyfriends, husbands, one night stands etc. too you know.
[quote}
Remember how in Firefly Companions were supposedly some kind of respected profession, but people would just casually call them whores to their faces? [/QUOTE]
The only characters who do that, are shown to be assholes/wrong about doing that. This is a ridiculous argument, jfc...
Whedon can write good feminist portrayals in fiction while being a bad/hypocritical feminist IRL, people.... just as shitty people can be good writers/write good, decent people as characters.
I mean, it's a Venn Diagram. Wives are Women, and women can be wives, so obviously disrespecting your wife is disprespecting a woman. The unknowable thing is whether, in his mind, he respects women generally, but does not respect his wife. Because, whilst wives are women, his wife may not be worthy of his respect, regardless of her being a woman.
Edit: Also, the argument "Are women in Buffy punished for sex? If so it's Whedon being bad." is moronic. 1) Whedon has written more than just Buffy, and 2) Everyone is bloody punished in Buffy! Xander loses an arm for heaven's sake! Man alive.
RumbleHumble
Banned
I think because (to make the implication an explicit point) he may not like his wife as a person, and that negates any respect he may have for her.
It wasn't just that she was always looking for love, it's that she was specifically always seeking out the short term lover of the season when beset by tragedy. Buffy dealt with murder-demons by twisting them into a pretzel with her powerful forearms, average everyday drama with the help of her friends, and serious emotional tragedy with help from some dude who she'd known a far shorter time than her friends, and that's weird as fuck.
I'd be willing to give this one a pass if it weren't for all the other stuff. But there is all the other stuff. And not just all the other skeevy stuff. Also all the other Firefly stuff, where half the writing on the show is at war with the other half. Vague hints that there was a major Asian cultural influence at some point, but there are no Asians. "Morally conflicted" protagonists but the moral conflict is typically just them wanting to do a violence on violent people for self defense. A respected female profession but the female profession just has to be prostitute and there's not all that much respect either.
It just reminds me so much of the creator of Wonder Woman who always insisted on having her get tied up. And also if we're meant to believe she's some kind of skilled spy, why do we meet her having just been caught by incompetent buffoons? Could it be because some quasi-feminist weirdo wanted to see her tied to a chair in a skimpy outfit?
(Yes.)
You always spill the worst shit that happens to you right as it happens? Even if its humiliating?
And this happened over the course of their relationship, not just one event. Buffy ended 14 years ago, so...
IISANDERII
Member
Disliked almost everything he's worked on, now I know why
This does not sound like the show I watched, sorry. She had three main "relationships" over seven years. Buffy was not "always seeking out the short term lover of the season."
How in the world is that weird? That's where most emotional tragedy in relation to other people comes from: relationships with people who you know for a shorter amount of time than your close friends.
That's a strange thing to take issue with.
... Because she was trying to get information out of them. She could have escaped whenever she wanted (and she did).
That was literally the point of that scene.
Ah, yes, that must be it. Never mind then.
Chmpocalypse
Blizzard
Yep. It's really not a hard point to get.
I kind-of agree, but also not. The Asian thing is pretty disgraceful, and I'd like to think that if they had run for, say, the same amount of time as Babylon 5, they'd have delved into how/why Cantonese is so prevalent. But that may or may not be true. The "morally conflicted" argument? Less of an issue, I think, because of network problems (Fox wanting more action), the limited run of episodes (13), and the era it was produced (2002). Look at it with these issues in mind, and it's forgivable that a lot centres around violence, and there isn't the nuance of, say, Hannibal or Mad Men. Finally, yes, Inara was a prostitute... except not. Courtesan is actually a lot different to prostitute, and Mal calling (or implying) she was a whore was him being a dick - espoecially when most of the rest of the crew are fine with it, and it's implied to be an "Upper Class" profession.
As I've said before, the writing isn't great, but it's also a fine series with some great acting, I think. People do the actors a disservice by dismissing it as entirely problematic with bad writing.
Camper Van Beethoven
Banned
Do you enjoy anything by people who have done anything morally questionable?
Most of Buffy's major emotional tragedies came from dramatic betrayals and Angel becoming a demon and general Slayer-related misery rather than typical boyfriend trouble, though. And it's fine for a character to seek emotional support from a lover if that's who she's closest to, but nothing in the show ever really gave me the impression that Buffy was closer to her boyfriends than her friends, who as previously mentioned she'd also known for longer.
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this point because I thought the entire premise of a spy getting information from people by deliberately letting them tie her to a chair was dumb. And why was she even wearing some deep cover outfit that makes it more difficult to fight and break out of chair/rope combinations if the whole point was to get caught? (I think I've made my own theory on this very clear.)
... She was clearly in a scenario that required her to be wearing a dress prior to getting caught or "caught."' We just didn't see it. We didn't need to see it. It was meant as a humorous scene to show us that she was in completely control of the situation.
You're really stretching here.
LordKasual
Banned
You mustn't mention Joss Whedon's humor. The whispers of "never forget Age of Ultron" ringing ever louder in my ears as the undying hatred for Joss Whedon's comedy that sustains me grows more powerful. Oh Cap, what did the bad man do to you? The superhero who grew up in the insensitive 1940s and is so accustomed to murder that he has a military rank in his superhero name, going "jeepers crumpets team, watch that language". It doesn't bear thinking about. And Thor! His character arc in that film was him seeing visions of an Avengers 3 teaser trailer and traveling to the Norse Youtube caverns to rewatch it! Though bizarrely that part wasn't being played for comedy.
I'm sorry, this is now only tangentially related to the thread topic. It's just that Age of Ultron was so awful and I couldn't remain silent any longer.
Human Resources
Member
not a controversial stance, but yeah
themaskedndi
Member
I would agree that Whedon punishes his characters for everything, including sex. I still have a lot of issues with the way he handles sex and relationships in his work, especially in the Buffyverse. Firefly definitely has its issue, but it is leaps and bounds aheads of Buffy in the romance department.
The problem is less that Buffy has love interests and more that her romantic relationships disempower the character. Angel is centuries older than the teenage Buffy; he falls in love with her when she is 15. The power imbalance in the relationship is never properly addressed.
When Buffy is overwhelmed by her mother's illness, Riley starts hanging out at vampire brothels. When Buffy finds out and Riley threatens to leave, she doesn't tell him to fuck off. Instead, she is admonished for not treating him well enough. She runs to him, but fails to get there in time. In the next episode, other characters talk about how Buffy's relationship problems are her fault.
Spike commissions a Buffy sex robot. Later, when Buffy is at her weakest, the two begin a mutually abusive sexual relationship. This includes a scene where Spike forces her to watch her friends while the two of them have sex. He attempts to rape Buffy after she ends their relationship. This inspires him to get his soul back so that he can give Buffy "what she deserves." Buffy takes care of him after he returns; in the final episode of the show, she tells him that she loves him.
Buffy isn't unusual for portraying toxic relationships as romantic. A lot of teen media, from Pretty Little Liars to Twilight, is guity of doing the same thing. It's still a big black mark on the show.
IISANDERII
Member
Well I enjoyed watching Mike Vick for example but egg ball has nothing to do with doggie fights.
Wheadon attempted to write about the very themes he would violate, leaving his work inauthentic and shallow.
LordKasual
Banned
So a man who plays football but partakes in near literal torture and murder of animals as a sport is less offensive to you than a man who writes TV shows but cheats on his wife???
I'm not assuming, i am genuinely asking you
IISANDERII
Member
My post has absolutely nothing to do with how offensive anybody is/was.
I've always felt that Wheadon never knew what he was writing about. And now it's confirmed.
Eh, it was disappointing. Not awful. "Awful" belongs to movies like Fantastic Four or Elektra. Thor's day spa was definitely terrible though.
(Cap getting crap for the language remark was funny as hell though.)
Fancyarcher
Member
Honestly I think this whole incident makes Whedon not a feminist, just someone with poor character & judgment, at least at one point. It certainly doesn't ruin his work for me anyway.
LordKasual
Banned
fair enough.
However, I feel like criticism like this of Joss Whedon's work is primarily due to the reputation he's gotten that leads people to say that he's a good writer of female characters.
Which is an observation from the writing community and fans, not a self-paraded quality of his own.
And when "feminism" became a hot topic, he voiced support. Which seems like a relatively easy and well-meaning stance to take. Like, why wouldn't you.
But unless he has deliberately paraded himself as some really good female character writer (no, saying you're a feminist does not qualify), it seems to me that people viewing him through that particular lens is a bit unfair.
But now that people have finally gotten the ammo to, SURPRISE, unveil him as "not really a feminist", and instead an ENEMY of feminism (!!!!!plot twist!!!!!), they're attacking him from an angle that doesn't....really make sense to me.
It's all a bit backwards. It's like the majority of the pleasure of attacking him isn't you guys punishing him for cheating on his wife.....it's for the chance to label him as "not feminist". Or even better, an example of "anti-feminist"
which, in all honesty, seems like an exceedingly counterproductive thing to do, considering how he got his reputation for what he does in the first place.
....unless you are of the position that he always wrote women in a terrible light. But the people making arguments for that (at least, within this very thread) seem a bit challenged for heavy evidence. IMO. Lots of stretching and personal peeves with situations, not necessarily obvious examples of bad writing. Something that's apparently usually very easy to do with female characters in situations like these....which just brings my confusion full circle.
Some people (in real life) do go for "easy lays" as a way to be emotionally close to someone, or to support themselves emotionally. Not everyone has sex with the people they're closest to, either because that would be weird, or the mutual attraction isn't there. We actually see an aspect of this in the Faith/Xander "relationship", which she uses to feel an emotional connection and allow herself to be vulnerable, because so much of what she does (slaying) doesn't allow her this.
Thinking on it, the Xander/Cordelia relationship also fits this, in a way - Cordelia acts dispassionately to him in front of her friends, but allows herself to feel an emotional connection to him when they're alone. She's not "close" to him.
Interesting thing to note with these conversations is that, when watching the series, the longer-term affect of Angel turning is Buffy feeling guilty. But in the short-term, the real hurt comes from Angel saying "you were a pro", implying both that the sex was cheap and meaningless, and that Buffy wasn't very good (the delivery really makes it). That's what really hits her in the immediate aftermath, not that the turning was a punishment.
While I don't disagree with what you're saying in regard to these two paragraphs, it should be noted that all of that was under Marti Noxon. She wrote and directed the Riley episode you're speaking of in season 5 and then she became the showrunner in seasons 6 and 7 when Joss stepped back to focus on other things.
The idea for the rape scene also came from a female writer as well, not Joss.
Wiki for the episode said:
Clearly, Joss was still overseeing the show. But when looking for specific instances to point at and say, "This is an example of how Joss is actually a bad feminist and it's reflected in his work," I don't think those examples -- especially the stuff in seasons 6 and 7 -- are fair.
I think there are valid points in his writing to critique in that regard, don't get me wrong. Just not those.
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
Speaking of Noxon, I know it was early in the thread, but that anecdote that she has a show where a character suspiciously similar to Whedon has an affair with a character suspiciously similar to Gellar is still blowing my mind.
I'm sorry, but this is silly.
Let's unpack this statement, that Whedon cheating makes him "not a feminist."
So you're saying that if someone cheats on their partner, then that is an affront not just to their partner specifically, but their entire gender?
That cheating is less of a statement on the breaking of commitment, of marriage vows, and of trust...but more of an opinion on the entire gender to which the partner who is being cheated on belongs?
Really? Because when you say that infidelity breaks your feminism, that's exactly what is being argued.
How is infidelity specifically an affront to women? And does this work in the reverse?
Silent Chief
Member
It's in the blog.
"He always had a lot of female friends, but he told me it was because his mother raised him as a feminist, so he just liked women better."
Cmon, you don't understand the argument being made if that's how you characterize it.
Joss isn't being accused on cheating once, he's being accused of a pattern of cheating with people in the industry, and repeatedly lying about it to his wife. He's being accused of both abusing his position of power in cheating with the people he's cheated with, and of gaslighting his wife for many years.
Those are acts incompatible with feminism. Feminism isn't just about whether he's polite to women on the street or willing to vote for women for president or that wages should be equal. It's also about power in relationships (both systemic and personal) and how it is wielded.
(And yes, if a woman talks big on feminism and consent and the such and is a serial cheater despite being in a committed monogamous relationship, they are also betraying feminism, though of course the context here is that Joss's public image as "one of the good guys who really gets it" is part of what let him cheat.)
I think the blog definitely calls into question his sincerity, when he applies the feminist label to himself, because it shows he has a history of abusing the label for his benefit. He used his label as a feminist to quiet his wife's (correct) concerns about his relationships with other women. So, it raises the question: Is he similarly using the label in his professional life, to avoid legitimate criticisms of his writing?
Subpar Spatula
Banned
So what you're saying is if you do something bad to someone you automatically disrespect the group they belong to? That's incredibly shallow.
It's the context that makes it disrespectful to everyone. To ignore that context is incredibly shallow.
I understand the argument pretty clearly as a grown-ass adult who has both cheated and been cheated on. Or do my experiences not count as a gay male?
Actually, let's explore that. If I as a male cheat on my male partner, is that indicative of my feminism? If so, explain. If not, then maybe we need to explore the possibility that infidelity is a bigger thing, and not tied directly to feminism.
I mean, sure, a man cheating on his wife with multiple partners can in cases be a symptom of a lack of equal respect for women. It could also be an indicator of poor self-control. It can be an indicator of detachment from a loveless marriage and/or constant desire for physical validation. Maybe he just no longer likes her, but didn't want to get a divorce for the public shame of it or because he's lazy and has grown comfortable with a bad marriage (I know PLENTY of people guilty of this one). It can be an indicator of a host of things, some of them having not a damn thing to do with the person being cheated on or their gender.
So no, cheating (even multiple times) in and of itself is not a straight shot to #BadFeminist.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
What context is that? He worked in hollywood and slept with fans and people he worked with?
Yeah the way this is morphing into abuse is really weird to me. It feels like it's the next step after saying cheating is anti feminist. It's taking the word feminist to mean that women need to be protected. Well, that's sort of it but not really what the point of feminism is. Taking that further now is saying that the women he cheated on his wife with do not have their own agency in this, and also haven't been protected as women should be.
I mean, yeah I guess it's possible that the people he cheated on his wife with were young and niave and that he used his high status to force them into relationships.. but no one accused him if that so why are we going there?
The dude is a dick, and I hope his ex wife manages to cope, no one deserves to go through that shit. But I'm seeing a lot of fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of feminism.
At least that's my take on it?
Never said cheating in and of itself was, though it's a clear violation of informed consent, which is a concept people largely encounter via the efforts of feminists to get it to be part of general sex education although it applies in all relationships regardless of genders involved.
But gaslighting your partner for years while abusing your position of power in the entertainment industry, while also benefitting from a "good guy" public image is deeply hypocritical.
The infidelity is bad enough; the reason the public should care more than usual is Joss's public image that helped him get away with it. Points to him being habitually abusive.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Wait, cheating now violates informed consent?
Did he abuse his power? Plenty of relationships or hook-ups have power dynamics, saying it was wrong most likely denies them of their agency. There's no reports he actually gave a leg up to people he was sleeping with either, so this is just extrapolation from general industry knowledge.
Again, this is reductionist.
Just putting it out there, I'm taking the account of a jilted ex with a grain of salt, especially on an account where no real accusation is laid, especially not of the level being discussed in this thread: that Whedon "abused" his position of power. We don't know this.
Automatically defaulting to "abuse of power" removes the agency of people to find others with power attractive, pursue them, and WANT sexual relationships with those people.
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