Editorial Position

I just read a couple of online articles arguing about whether Joss Whedon really gets to count as being all that feminist. I'm not going to quote extensively from them or link to them because they reference things in episodes that various members of my family haven't read, but I had a problem with both of them, the anti-Whedon especially but also somewhat the pro-Whedon. I felt like, to a very great degree, the anti-Whedon article used the following argument style: "X happens in episodes of Buffy, X shows bad things happening to women or women having trouble dealing with adversity, therefore Joss Whedon isn't really a feminist." Meanwhile, to a fairly large degree although possibly less exclusively, the pro-Whedon article made the following sort of retort: "Yes, but, Y also happens in episodes of Buffy, and Y shows women being empowered and fully human, therefore Joss Whedon is really a feminist." But to me there's a problem with this kind of argument: it entirely ignores the concept of editorial opinions.

Look, maybe lots of stuff does happen in Buffy showing women being taken advantage of, etc. But it's still very possible that the opinion the show is presenting to you is that those things are bad. For instance, the anti article educes the fact that the first man Buffy sleeps with loses his soul as an immediate consequence as a sexist trope. But a) it wasn't Buffy's fault that Angel lost his soul, it was that stupidly-designed Gypsy curse, and neither she nor Angel had any way to know that, and b) I don't think we're supposed to think that it was particularly nice or just or decent of the Gypsies to curse Angel into never being able to experience true happiness without becoming an evil psycho killer again. We're supposed to think that it sucks. And that it sucks for Buffy, too, and that it's really, really unfair to her. (As a side note, "depicting bad things happening to women" is not an antifeminist thing to do. Bad things happen. The antifeminist thing would be to suggest overall that women couldn't cope with the fact that bad things happen, and "couldn't cope" not as in crying your eyes out after your boyfriend has become a soulless, evil killer and you can't help feeling [incorrectly!] that it's your fault, but as in actually being unable to deal in the long run with the various misfortunes that befall you. And I don't think that that message is what Buffy presents.)

In other words, yeah, maybe the "trope" of having a man lose his soul and become evil after sleeping with a woman is kind of antifeminist, taken at face value. But why should one take it at face value? Look at it in context, and specifically in the context of the world they live in. A feminist creating a fictional world does not have to create a world that is itself a feminist paradise. Indeed, it's probably difficult to convey a strongly feminist message in a world that is already a feminist paradise. All they need to do is create female characters who overall do a good job of dealing with adversity and overcoming obstacles. And I think it is eminently apparent that, at least in the context of Buffy, Joss Whedon does that.