Joss Whedon a rapist and Firefly irredeemably sexist?

[matgb]

Um, favour, having read this screed, can one of the lesbian feminist sisters reading this, or indeed anyone with an interest^[1], especially those of you that said you liked Firefly please confirm my suspicion that A Rapist's View of the World: Joss Whedon and Firefly is in fact an ill-informed biased rant of the sort that can give decent feminists a bad name?

Because, y'know, while I'm happy to accept that it contains some inadvertent sexisms, that the idea of the Companions Guild is going to split opinion and that nobody is perfect, I was sorta of the opinion that, for an SF TV series, Firefly was actually pretty good about gender and race issues, and I most certainly don't think that Zoe was objectified from the get go. But, as in all things, I welcome sane alternate positions and am always open to persuasion. Just that, well, that rant has put me off giving the positions put forward any credence.

ETA: Well, she's deleting comments all over the place, not just made by you guys but also from those made by people coming in from all over the place. Bloglines gives her over 100 incoming links, Blogger Blogsearch gives her 144 (Technorati proves its uselessness yet again by giving 17). Best I've seen is this, courtesy of ladyegreen in the comments here. Biggest point I've seen raised that I didn't really highlight in my initial post is that by declaring Joss (and Wash) to be rapists for the reason she states is to belittle those who have actually experienced rape and devalue their experiences dealing with it. Given a few people I care about a great deal are included in that number, it really annoys me when that sort of extremist argument is used. Ah well, lunatic of the day and all that—she's censoring most of the comments that are put in, and letting some in from some people but not all of them, her journal, but I really don't see the point myself.

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[1] Because, y'know, I tend to try to take the opinon of everyone seriously until and unless they prove their opinions to have no merit, and don't really like judging based on gender or sexuality, I find groupthink to be a bad idea regardless. Don't know about you.

Via James (again), who doesn't share my opinion on the merits of the show.

Comments

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

I wrote this:

I see that you're passionate about this, but I think you couldn't be more wrong.

Zoe runs around calling Mal ‘sir’ and taking orders off him
It becomes very clear in the show that Zoe frequently says "No" to Mal, that they will risk their lives for each other, and that he was her commanding officer in the war. She's SUCH a strong character that you have no problem believing she could well have been his instead if it had worked out that way, and that she absolutely CHOOSES to follow him. But still takes no crap from him.

As for her relationship with Wash, it is repeatedly clear that he is mystified and constantly aware of her devotion to him, and knows just how lucky he is. Zoe *is* the most 2D character in terms of only being a soldier, but that's because she is written as being on alert at all times. When she breaks that (such as relaxing in the scenes in bed with Wash) you can see that she absolutely loves him, and still runs the show in that relationship. At all times she is doing what she wants.

Does Inara stop him from calling her a whore? Nope. She just goes on smiling and being gracious. So he calls her a whore again. Lovely man this Mal is, dontcha think?
He calls her it again because it clearly the only thing that hurts her, and he loves her and hates what she does. She defends it on every academic level as a respectable profession in that universe, but knows that in the end he is right and has no answer for that. Whedon does not glamourise it - he shows that you can dress it up in silks and respectability, but it still hurts the people involved. The fact that she is by far the most respectable person on the ship and the reason they can get into richer areas at all, is meant as irony.

Most of all, this edge of the universe is SUPPOSED to be backward, rough and male-dominated. It's clear that the men are often stupid or shortsighted, and there is almost no point at which the women are not empowered if not actually in charge. Whenever any of them defer responsibility to the Captain or others, it is a conscious choice and balanced by plenty of times when they don't.

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

It was only that polite because I figured being rude at this point would be counter-productive, but she's absolutely full of crap. She clearly spends her life looking for ways to cry "male domination and patriarchy OMG!". It's like the facebook group a friend of mine just joined: "Pornography is inherently abusive to women". Bullshit, that's just 'bad American pornography' that makes a virtue of being abusive to women. Just because 80% of the industry is too unimaginative to stop pandering to neanderthals doesn't mean that images of sex aimed at men or women are inherently abusive to either.

Firefly makes a lot of arguments for Companions giving prostitution some respectability, and for the act itself not to be inherently damaging. And at the same time it shows the training schools, and the rough outback whorehouses. It never shies away from the fact that these people are being trained to make others happy (including fine arts, geisha teamaking etc) as a commercial service and from a worryingly young age.

But to see the *relationships* as sexist in that particular series takes a degree of blindness that is quite stunning.

[matgb]

Was it submitted as screened, or has she just deleted it? Given the number of incoming links, I'm guessing she must've deleted a whole lot of "you're nuts" comments as well.

But yeah, I agree—hadn't really thought through the implications of Inara's status that much though, danke.

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

Screened, and since it disagrees with her it probably won't get through...