Feminism and Firefly

I ran into this article the other day about supposed misogynist themes in the television program Firefly. For those of you who don’t know, its creator, Joss Whedon, had previously worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and is a self-identified feminist known for his portrayals of strong female characters. _allecto_, the author of the above article, begs to disagree.

While her article is worth a chuckle overall, there are a couple of specific passages (and comment-replies) I’d like to draw your attention to: the first involves the character Inara, a future-world prostitute/courtesan and self-employed entrepreneur:

Our first introduction to Inara the ‘Companion’, Joss Whedon’s euphemism for prostituted women, is when she is being raped/fucked/used by a prostitutor… Joss Whedon refers to rapist/fuckers who buy women as sex, as ‘eager, inexperienced but pleasingly shaped’ who ‘make love’ to women in prostitution. Obviously, ‘love’ to men like Joss Whedon, requires female powerlessness, force and coercion... If you are pro-prostitution then you are not a feminist and pro-prostitution/women-hating opionions [sic] are not welcome on my journal. All prostitution is rape.

According to her prostitution is a form of violence. I have to reply: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

There are a lot of negative things you can say about prostitution; personally, I’m inclined to believe that it’s unhealthy for both parties. But to say that it’s always violent shows a complete misunderstanding for what violence is.

If we follow her premise that prostitution is violence, then it is on par with assault, theft, vandalization, murder, and physical threats. We need to ban it. And the only way to ban it is to hire some jack-booted thugs to kick down Inara’s door, put a gun to her head, and then lock her in a cage…

But wait, aren’t the jack-booted thugs (sometimes known as cops) supposed to use violence against the ones who initiated violence, not the victims? If somebody steals your TV, they don’t lock you in a cage (though they might kick down your door for a laugh), they go and arrest the criminal. So I guess the cops should only be arresting the John (aka the violent rapist) since he’s the one who initiated the vio-

But wait again, he’s not the one that initiated the violence; that would be Inara. She’s a self-employed business woman, who advertises and invites the Johns over to purchase her services. So she initiated the violence. Against herself. Ergo, we should hire some jack-booted thugs to beat the shit out of her.

What a beautiful little death spiral! Listen _allecto_, it’s like this; law and justice are based around the principle that each individual is an inviolate island; nobody has the right to assault them, steal from them, or initiate violence in any other way, so long as they respect the rights of others. And – here’s the important part – violence must always be fought with society’s own form of violence. By no sane definition is consensual prostitution violence – trying to label it as such is the ethical equivalent of dividing by zero.

I wish I could accuse you of exaggeration… but you really believe this, don’t you? You are utterly convinced that prostitution=rape, that it should be punished in the same manner, while (presumably) being against the arrest of prostitutes. You have no ability to see the distinction, and have never considered how the mechanics of your Big Sister society would work.

Point 2:

Zoe, of course, is meant to be our empowered, ass-kicking sidechick. Like all sidechicks she is objectified from the get go. Her husband, Wash, talking about how he likes to watch her bathe. Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour. I have known a black woman whose white husband would strangle and bash her while her young children watched. My white grandfather liked black women because they were ‘exotic’, and he did not, could not treat women, especially women of colour, like human beings. I grew up watching my great aunts, my aunty and my mother all treated like shit by their white husbands, the men they loved. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession.

_allecto_, you’re a racist. You pretend to be a progressive thinker with your esoteric feminist politics – but at you’re heart you’re full of the worst sort of bigoted and chauvinistic beliefs that the original feminists were fighting against.

You are convinced that women are so fundamentally flawed and weak that for two lesbians to penetrate each other with their fingers, it is equivalent to rape. Women can never be equal in your mind, and that’s why you hate men. Not because you’re a misandrist – but because at your heart your bitter and ugly self-hating misogynist.

Keep writing the blog posts, though, it’s cute when dykes throw a hissy fit. :)