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View original postI had to go look up something that actually deals with Whedon himself, since the linked article doesn't.

View original postThe things he allegedly says (in writing) about his behavior and the attitudes that informed said behavior suggest a disconnect between his alleged feminist values, and how he operates.

View original post The terms in which he describes his actions and motivations suggest someone whose view of female sexuality is not at all in line with his preaching. It's one thing to note that someone's actions are not in accord with his professed beliefs, as in the case of Gibson, or if all we had on Whedon was some infidelity. It's his self-described attitudes that are incongruous with the ideals he professes.

View original post- written by the ex, for whatever it's worth.

View original postHe describes these women in terms of objects or forces, rather then people with whom he interacts. He is blaming other people for his own choices, and confessing to an objectifying attitude, particularly in the second quote, where he talks about using a person to get his uncontrollable urges out his system.

View original postPeople have told me that the obnoxiously smarmy beta male characters on his shows are authorial insertion characters, and my only reason for doubting this, was not wanting to believe this of a creator whose work I enjoyed. Because Xander and Doyle were fairly contemptible and even Wash was a bit. At the very least, he was a considerable ways down the scale of heroism compared to, like, every one of his shipmates. I didn't even particularly like the way he treated his wife, although the show was canceled before he could turn into Xander. Both Xander & Doyle destroyed their marriages with their own pettiness, selfishness and insecurities, and Wash was on that path. I didn't want to think that way about the guy who wrote such funny or engaging shows, but there's a lot of congruity there, especially given things he's said about the characters in commentary tracks and so forth.

View original postIt's not me, it's society! The hell it is, Joss. But this reminds me of something he said on the commentary track for the critically-acclaimed dream episode of BtVS that ended the fourth season, where Joyce comes on to Xander, and he says something like I'm supposed to be a conquistador, but I'm more of a 'comfortador'," which Whedon explained as saying that men are conditioned or taught to be sexually aggressive conquerors, but deep down inside, we really want to be comforted. A) Speak for yourself, Joss. I had, like, the least possible enlightened upbringing, with REALLY old school traditional values, and I was NEVER encouraged to think of women like that, nor has it ever seemed like a natural impulse. It's a perverse and dehumanizing attitude, but Joss wrote a scene where the fulfillment or consummation of that attitude is portrayed as sexy and desirable. And the woman so treated on the show is the mother of the main character, the most maternal figure on the show and its personification of motherhood. Hell, since it is mostly about juveniles, she's the show's nearly sole example of actual adult womanhood. The only other adult women, besides Joyce, who in those first four seasons was often a clueless foil, whose sexuality was problematic at best (divorced, dated an abusive robot, hooked up under the influence of magical candy and died right after her only good date) to appear in more than one episode were Jenny Calendar (horribly murdered to torment her boyfriend), and the Maggie Walsh (the evil anti-mother). You know how often I thought any of those things about those characters, before reading that quote? Never. It cascades out from the notions Whedon himself expresses.

View original postThat's, I think, why some feminists don't want anything to do with him.

View original post As a counter example, Mel Gibson was really big with the traditional Catholic types around and after the making & release of "The Passion of the Christ" for his apparent alignment with their beliefs and activities, as well as his willingness to put his money where his mouth was, and having the guts to make tPotC, and all the crap he got for it afterwards, as well as the sheer nonsense in the nature of the criticism about it. It kind of made them protective and defensive. And the subsequent exposure of his personal life, and similar failings to Whedon's would illustrate that he is probably not a good Catholic.

View original postHOWEVER, Gibson never said anything to justify or excuse his behavior. Everything I ever heard or read him saying on the subject was a flat-out admission of guilt and wrongdoing. That's not hypocrisy, nor is it contradictory to Catholic belief and teaching, with its assumption of sin and fallen nature. His sinfulness was known, or at least assumed, by his fans, and the specifics might have been saddening or appalling, but only indicated a failure to act on what he knew to be right. He certainly did not have a history of diatribes against other adulterers or womanizers, nor did he make movies and TV shows specifically for expressing his views.

View original postHell, his most famous movie series, Lethal Weapon, had all sorts of liberal messages, such as the Murtagh kids wearing pro-choice or environmentalist tee-shirts, gun control posters in a police station, and his character, in the final movie of the series, barked back at his best friend, a backhanded rebuke for Murtagh's "family values". His academy award winning film was about an adulterous main character, and a villain who had the active support of the pope, historically, speaking. Gibson separated his beliefs from his work, he didn't preach at people, until he made tPotC, which was a film specifically about his religion & views, and was a personal, independently-made work. It was not a sermon masquerading as an action movie or anything like that. If you didn't like it or were uninterested in the topic, you didn't have to watch, but critics went out of their way to attack it.

View original postNow, take Whedon, who, once he got to make things on his own, all but announced BtVS was a feminist work. He explicitly said so, claimed it was motivated by his feminist impulses, and so on. People who wanted to look at a cute girl and see a show about killing vampires had to tolerate girlpower nonsense, and what was even more grating to some of us, was how badly crafted his feminist narratives were. Whedon also came out and made political things. He identified himself as a feminist far more than Mel Gibson did so as a Catholic.

View original postAnd it turns out that he has had a long history of, according to his own accounts, objectifying and exploiting the actual women in his life.

View original postThere is error, there is failure to live up to ideals, and there is lip service to an ideology, when you act in a completely different way than you not only claim to, but promote as the right or superior way to be. No one just happens to believe in feminism, and that's okay if it's not your thing. Feminism is a jealous goddess. It is aggressive and moralistic and is constantly put out there in absolute terms. Feminists don't talk about other people's actions in terms of their own views or perspectives, they flat out denounce them as sinful or sacrilegious. Yes, yes, I know, #notallfeminists, but absolutely anyone as publicly a feminist as Whedon. Feminist messages and works of entertainment, by their nature, are a commentary about things that the artist perceives to be wrong, or how things should be. You don't get points for writing nonsense like "men name things, but women are open to learning what things' names are" and then basically boast of your inability to fend off these rapacious temptresses, and that you were trying to do right by your wife by cheating on her and then getting the attractive woman out of your life. That's naming her, instead of bothering to find out what her name is