Don’t get me wrong I do like the show. When you are a teenage girl and watching mainstream television, Buffy is simply a relief to watch. She does not need a lot of saving and is not a passive extension to the live of a male character, as what happens to a lot of female characters on popular tv shows. She is also not the “aggressive”, “sexually promiscuous” cautionary tale that we are clearly not suppose to identify with or even like.
However, just because Joss Whedon allows her to be a complete character by herself (the male love interests come and go), is not enough to make it feminist in my eyes. For starters the show never mentioned the word even though Whedon has said several times he meant for Buffy to be a feminist icon. The show also occasionally pokes fun at feminism such as when when a friend of Anya tells her: “You got that whole Take Back The Night thing going on.” Because Anya has a habit of avenging women who have been wronged by men. However the type of wrong doing the show meant is cheating, though that is not even remotely what Take Back The Night is about.
The vampires on the show are mostly hyper-masculine characters with most of their victims being women. So even though the shows allows one or two women to kick ass (Buffy and Willow) the rest are mostly helpless and can’t defend themselves. (No body bothered to learn some martial arts?)
Most characters on the show are white and whenever there does happen to be one or two character who are not white, they are merely used as plot-tools. In Season 7 slayers from all nationalities appeared, yet only one of them was black and another was an Asian woman who wasn’t even allowed some knowledge of some English. They kill off Kendra and replace her with Faith who is then allowed a much greater role in the show.
Most of the characters are straight and especially in the beginning we don’t see Willow and Tara having sex in the way it is portrayed when, for example, Buffy and Riley are having sex or in the way that Xander and Anya are having sex.
Also most of the characters have a fair amount of beauty privilege and none of them are fat. They even replaced the actress who originally played Willow in the original pilot. She was fat, but the show was never clear about why they replaced her. I suspect her body type was at least one of the reasons if not the only one.
I hate how the show forces a kind of bullshit sexual morality on it’s audience about women and what they think their sexuality is suppose to be. If we compare Buffy to Faith the contrast is pretty noticeable. Faith has casual sex and doesn’t care about emotional attachments and there are no direct consequences for her having sex. But later on the show makes it pretty clear that Faith is crazy and not exactly a character we should take for a role model.
Buffy on the other hand is kept almost virginal and is punished severely almost every time she has sex. First Angel loses his soul (something which I also find a fucked up metaphor, because apparently a person has to be soulless to do all the things he does, so we can distance ourselves from such behavior?), Parker treats her like dirt and her sexual encounters with Spike are very violent and abusive almost every time. With Riley she is not punished for having sex, but their relationship is none the less disturbing to me.
Riley tells her outright that he thinks women can’t handle themselves and need men to protect them and has a huge problem with the fact that Buffy is stronger. He makes it very clear he feels emasculated when he loses the super powers he had, due to the government issued drugs. Also there is a confrontation between him and Parker that shows Riley to be a bit of a misogynist.
Parker tells Riley that he thinks Buffy is needy and then compares all first year female college students to toilets. Riley then punches him. You’d say that Parker more than deserved getting his ass kicked over such a comment, but only a scene later we see that he didn’t punch Parker for comparing women to toilets, but because Parker said it about Buffy. Which shows that Riley doesn’t care if men insult women, just the women he wants to have sex with. His friends are no better in that regard and they are actually surprised that he punched Parker, because “they have heard worse”. Like that makes such comments acceptable.
Finally the relationship between Buffy and Spike is one of the elements of the show that fascinates and horrifies me the most. They compare Spike’s inability to kill people to an erectile dysfunction (this to me is like a synonym for men using their penises as weapons to dominate and control), but that’s isn’t even the worst of it. When Spike confesses to Buffy he has feelings for he, she talks about this with Willow and her mother. Her mother says something along the line: “Honey, did you sent him signals or did you lead him on in some way?” Both Willow and her mother then pressure her into confronting him to get him to change his behavior. Why the hell are they even holding her accountable for his behavior in the first place? This yet again perpetuates the message that men are incapable of controlling themselves and it is the duty of us women to make sure they don’t victimize us or do other reprehensible things. This message is extremely anti-feminist and is still perpetuated in courtrooms today where it is rape victims that are usually on trial and not the perpetrators.
In season 6 when Buffy is severely depressed and is having difficulties being around her friends, a curious friendship develops between her and Spike of brutal honesty (despite the fact that he often tried to kill her before and the people close to her). The next thing the show does is throw that friendship out the window and introducing the violence between them again, by making the chip ineffective toward her. (So that male audiences don’t have to feel emasculated by the fact that Buffy is obviously more powerful then Spike?)
The sexual relationship is an unhealthy one with all the violence and the frequent sexual assault from both sides. I don’t even want to count the times I heard: “No!” “Don’t!” “Stop!” “Go away!”. All signs of the people clearly not consenting. Then the show portraits a rape scene to as mark the other stuff as not being rape. I thought this was very judgmental and was an attempt to teach the audience what rape is and what is isn’t according to the show’s creators. Also when Spike made the final attempt to rape, Buffy tells him this:
“Ask me again why I could never love you. Because I stopped you.”
There are plenty of rape victims who have been unable to stop their attackers and a lack of physical strength is in most cases not even the reason. So what do the creators mean to say with this sentence? That if a victim fails to stop her (I say her because most victims are women) attacker, she wants it? She is in love with her attacker and that makes it OK for the attacker to force her? She is asking for it? Again, this made me cringe when I saw it.
Please tell me the difference between these:
Because they all look pretty coercive.
The sexual violence really wasn’t necessary and I often hear people say that what Buffy did was unwise. However it didn’t need to be if they had left the general violence and sexual assault out of the picture. Then it would have been a casual sexual relationship. Which many women I know of sometimes engage in when their lives aren’t doing so well, when they are simply looking for a distraction or simply a sexual encounter. And they can do this without sexually assaulting anyone or abusing their sex partners.
When Spike asks Buffy why she won’t sleep with him anymore, she answers: “Because I don’t love you.” What has love got to do with it? Why are “good women” expected to be in love with their sex partners? Why should that be a requirement at all?
Finally Spike blames Drusilla, Harmony and Buffy on several occasions for his problems. And Finally Buffy accepts responsibility by apologizing to him and tell him she is “using him”. When I saw that I felt like crying because I know too many women beating themselves up over similar situations and it really is never a fair accusation. But too often women are told they’re responsible for it all and they feel bad over it.
There are other reasons and I learned a lot from analyses in papers from this website: http://slayageonline.com/pages/Slayage/site_map.htm
But my reasons for not finding the show feminist is that it has too many anti-feminist sentiments and simply too many problems that didn’t need to be there.
Additional problems other people pointed out to me:
Buffy always seems to look for male approve, while not caring that much about female approval.
The show normalizes pornography by having one of the main characters use it (Xander owns several issues of Playboy, as mentioned in “Gingerbread”)
The way Spike learns he “impotent” is very much set up like a rape scene (he’s violent, he turns up the music). When Spike notices that he can’t bite/rape Willow, she feels sorry for him and wonders if she is not attractive enough to be bitten/raped.
There are so many things about this essay that are wrong. In fact there wasn’t a singple point you made that I could entirely agree with. You begin by writing that Joss Whedon writing a complete female character isn’t feminist enough for you, then what does? You also claim that the word feminist not being mentioned in the show is a sign? Um no. If a show has a cast of well written, empowered and believable females then why is there a need to even mention the word feminism when it’s already very clear to the viewer. Just the protagonist alone being a female is very clear indication that the show contains feminist leanings. Then you say that the show “pokes fun” at feminism by having one character (who frankly is very ignorant to social issues) crack a joke about feminism. So that automatically negates all the feminist themes on the show? This is illogical. You’re confusing the depiction of the characters with what the message of the show is trying to convey.
You entirely missed the point of the vampires being hyper-masculine. Buffy regularly and effortlessly defeats those overly violent and evil vampires to make it an underlying theme of defeating overly aggressive and controlling males. Buffy has saved lots of human males on the show, it’s not just females who are getting attacked. Also, if the extras who Buffy saved suddenly started doing martial arts against the vampires it would make Buffy useless and deplete the whole purpose of the show. Buffy is there to fight vampires. If the victims suddenly defended themselves that she wouldn’t be needed and there would be no show.
Then you go off on a tangent by talking about how the show was supposedly racist and discriminative against fat people. This has nothing to do with the essay’s subject – whether or not Buffy’s feminist. That said, one show isn’t outright racist for its lack of solid minority characters. It’s simply apart of a cumulative effect contributing to all shows that don’t have many good minority characters. About the actress set to play Willow – did you actually watch the unaired pilot? She just wasn’t up to par acting wise. Alyson Hannigan owned the role.
You talk about how there are high sexual moral standards for women in television. While this is partially true, it’s not the case for Buffy. If Buffy were adhering to these sexual mortality codes then the writers wouldn’t have depict Buffy as having sex. She’d remain a virgin for several seasons maybe. The examples you mention are invalid. Her encounter with Angel was not to “punish” her – it was a metaphor for how some men turn on women after sex. Her sexual relationship with Riley was completely normal, so the show was clearly saying that women don’t have to be virginal in order to be considered good.
Then you compare Buffy to Faith. I understand the double standard women face when it comes to sex, but you’re still missing the point. Buffy isn’t considered the more moral person on the grounds that she doesn’t have emotionless one night stands with various partners. Generally speaking, protagonists both male and female are just more sympathetic and interesting when viewers see them attempt to form meaningful monogamous relationships. The show is about relationships, and more about Buffy trying to connect beyond sex.
About the rape scene. I have no idea how you came up with the conclusion that because Buffy said ‘I could never love you because I had to stop you’ that it somehow became a blame-the-victim card. What? You took the quote out of text. There was no message, whatsoever, which relayed that victims are at fault for not stopping the rapist. It was pointing out that Buffy can’t love Spike because she had to stop him from raping her. Thats all. I’m still baffled by the point you tried to make with this. It made no sense to me.
You claim that by Buffy apologizing that she was accepting all the blame. Yes, she should have apologized. Because she WAS using him. She took advantage of someone who loves her and used him for sex without returning the feelings, all just so she can “feel” something. She really had no regard for his feelings during the time that she was using him, and she eventually became physically abusive. That was wrong, and you can’t argue otherwise.
The points at the end – you say that Buffy sought male approval more then female. Could you provide examples because I don’t remember any moments of this. You say that the show “normalizes” pornography. Um, sorry to break it to you, but pornography is already normal! Many young males view pornography, it’s a fact of life. To depict a young male on a TV with absolutely no interest in pornography or sexuality seems rather abnormal to me. Again you’re confusing the depictions of characters with the shows messages.
Thank for your comment vakaye and thanks for taking the time to explain your point of view. Many people just come here, write something like “you suck” and consequently have their comments deleted. I would also like to thank you for referring to this post as an essay. I take that as a compliment, though I had never intended to write an essay. It is a rant I composed in the space of half an hour to explain to some people what my issues were with the show.
I kinda suspect that your comment here is a rant as well, because you are accusing me of things I never wrote. I also repeatedly state that this is my opinion and these are my issues with story lines in Buffy. I have also never called this show racist, though I do feel that a like of diversity is problematic and happens in most shows today.
As for me not finding a show feminist, I would like to say that only when a show deals with feminist issues, such as reproductive rights, gay rights or basically any human rights issue in modern society I would be willing to consider the label feminist, however the moment a show pulls out derogatory stereotypes of has it’s heroes expressing bigotry without anyone calling them on it, it loses it’s feminist cret as far as I am concerned.
Furthermore, I do not consider having my own opinion as “missing the point”. I really don’t give a damn what Joss Whedon had intended. I only care about the result. Good intentions don’t get anyone anywhere and without doing research and actually bothering to ask the people you target about their situation you have a good chance of doing more harm than good.
As for the attempted rape scene, I quoted from the show directly so I don’t see how that point could be causing so much confusion. You can argue about the interpretation of that line, but you can’t argue about the line itself. I do believe that the scripts are even online somewhere. Use google.
Finally, as for Buffy relying on male approval rather than female approval I would have to watch the show again for examples of this. It was what other people pointed out to me, but at the time I posted this on a forum I agreed with it and I am sure I still would if I looked, however I think I am going to focus my attention on some other shows. Critiquing shows sure generates traffic.
This is “essay” is so flawed I don’t know where to start. I guess I will just start from the beginning.
” However, just because Joss Whedon allows her to be a complete character by herself (the male love interests come and go), is not enough to make it feminist in my eyes. For starters the show never mentioned the word even though Whedon has said several times he meant for Buffy to be a feminist icon. The show also occasionally pokes fun at feminism such as when when a friend of Anya tells her: “You got that whole Take Back The Night thing going on.” Because Anya has a habit of avenging women who have been wronged by men. However the type of wrong doing the show meant is cheating, though that is not even remotely what Take Back The Night is about.”
Wow, you completely missed the point from the first paragraph. What makes you think that Anya is meant to represent feminism is the first place. If anything she is an Anti-Feminist. The fact that is avengence demon who only punishes men for wrong doing clearly illustrates an misandrist attiude. Misandrist like misogyny was condemn on the show especially when Anya was about to pay the ultimate price by the hands of Buffy. In additction, Anya punished men for more serious crimes than cheating. When Tara was murdered by Warren ( who was a misogynist) Anya says specifically that she would have helped Willow, but was unable to do so. Also, Anya also punished man who stalking and physically abused his ex-girlfriend.
“The vampires on the show are mostly hyper-masculine characters with most of their victims being women. So even though the shows allows one or two women to kick ass (Buffy and Willow) the rest are mostly helpless and can’t defend themselves. (No body bothered to learn some martial arts?)”
Hyper-masculine? The vampires of the Buffyverse were animalistic since you believe masculinity is equivalent to being an animals says more about you than the show. For the record having superpowers was not the only way women could fight vampires. Dawn was prime example of this as Buffy help mentor her sister of defending her self.
“Most characters on the show are white and whenever there does happen to be one or two character who are not white, they are merely used as plot-tools. In Season 7 slayers from all nationalities appeared, yet only one of them was black and another was an Asian woman who wasn’t even allowed some knowledge of some English. They kill off Kendra and replace her with Faith who is then allowed a much greater role in the show.”
Kendra was also illustrated as being a superior slayer than Buffy unlike Faith who was much too reckless.
‘Most of the characters are straight and especially in the beginning we don’t see Willow and Tara having sex in the way it is portrayed when, for example, Buffy and Riley are having sex or in the way that Xander and Anya are having sex.”
This is very dumb criticism since Willow and Tara have both kissed and have both been seen to engage in sex. It was not when Willow dated Kennedy when the sex became more graphic.
‘Also most of the characters have a fair amount of beauty privilege and none of them are fat. They even replaced the actress who originally played Willow in the original pilot. She was fat, but the show was never clear about why they replaced her. I suspect her body type was at least one of the reasons if not the only one.”
This your arguement the cast memebers were too good looking. Could it be that they judged Alyson by her acting ablities and not her looks.
“I hate how the show forces a kind of bullshit sexual morality on it’s audience about women and what they think their sexuality is suppose to be. If we compare Buffy to Faith the contrast is pretty noticeable. Faith has casual sex and doesn’t care about emotional attachments and there are no direct consequences for her having sex. But later on the show makes it pretty clear that Faith is crazy and not exactly a character we should take for a role model.”
Being promisous is not a good thing for a man or woman. The fact that Faith treated men with very little regard and generalize them of only caring about one thing should not be idealized.
“Buffy on the other hand is kept almost virginal and is punished severely almost every time she has sex. First Angel loses his soul (something which I also find a fucked up metaphor, because apparently a person has to be soulless to do all the things he does, so we can distance ourselves from such behavior?), Parker treats her like dirt and her sexual encounters with Spike are very violent and abusive almost every time. With Riley she is not punished for having sex, but their relationship is none the less disturbing to me.’
Hmmm, you do realize that Angel’s soul is a metaphor for a conscience and without a conscience or empathy for others you are pratcially a psycopath. So yeah you would have to be psycho to do the things his done. As for Buffy other boyfriends Parker was like Angel except more literal in his theme. Spike was guilty pleasure so I wouldn’t say she was punished. She enjoyed having sex with Spike she just felt guilty about it. Riley was the guy that Buffy could actually have a furture with so why it disturbs you is beyond me.
“Riley tells her outright that he thinks women can’t handle themselves and need men to protect them and has a huge problem with the fact that Buffy is stronger. He makes it very clear he feels emasculated when he loses the super powers he had, due to the government issued drugs. Also there is a confrontation between him and Parker that shows Riley to be a bit of a misogynist”
You do realize that Riley’s opinions changed when he saw Buffy in action. Furthermore, the idea that you think Riley should be portrayed as a bad person for having old fashioned outlook on gender roles suggest that you have black and white perspective. This is something that BTVS avoided at all cost.
‘Parker tells Riley that he thinks Buffy is needy and then compares all first year female college students to toilets. Riley then punches him. You’d say that Parker more than deserved getting his ass kicked over such a comment, but only a scene later we see that he didn’t punch Parker for comparing women to toilets, but because Parker said it about Buffy. Which shows that Riley doesn’t care if men insult women, just the women he wants to have sex with. His friends are no better in that regard and they are actually surprised that he punched Parker, because “they have heard worse”. Like that makes such comments acceptable.’
Just because Riley did not resort violence other time Parker insulted women does not mean he doesn’t care. This is nothing more then taking things out of context and jumping to conclusions.
‘Finally the relationship between Buffy and Spike is one of the elements of the show that fascinates and horrifies me the most. They compare Spike’s inability to kill people to an erectile dysfunction (this to me is like a synonym for men using their penises as weapons to dominate and control), but that’s isn’t even the worst of it. When Spike confesses to Buffy he has feelings for he, she talks about this with Willow and her mother. Her mother says something along the line: “Honey, did you sent him signals or did you lead him on in some way?” Both Willow and her mother then pressure her into confronting him to get him to change his behavior. Why the hell are they even holding her accountable for his behavior in the first place? This yet again perpetuates the message that men are incapable of controlling themselves and it is the duty of us women to make sure they don’t victimize us or do other reprehensible things. This message is extremely anti-feminist and is still perpetuated in courtrooms today where it is rape victims that are usually on trial and not the perpetrators.’
This frustrates me the most why you believe Spike is meant to represent “most men” is beyond. We are talking about most men we are talking about Spike. Spike was sadistic murder does that mean that the Buffyverse was saying that most men are potenial murders. Seriously, think about what you are saying. Also, when Spike sneaks into Willow dorm it was meant to be a metaphor for rape. This explains the erecticle dynfunction metaphor/joke. In addiction Joyce and Willow simply tell Buffy that she has to make it clear that nothing will happen between them. As they said in the episode Spike is twisted and can take thing the wrong way. Which is why Buffy has to make it clear to him that it would never happen.
‘In season 6 when Buffy is severely depressed and is having difficulties being around her friends, a curious friendship develops between her and Spike of brutal honesty (despite the fact that he often tried to kill her before and the people close to her). The next thing the show does is throw that friendship out the window and introducing the violence between them again, by making the chip ineffective toward her. (So that male audiences don’t have to feel emasculated by the fact that Buffy is obviously more powerful then Spike?)’
You do remember that Buffy was brutal honest with Spike because she had no one else to turn too. Buffy and Spike never have been buddy buddy. They had always had a love/hate relationship. Their sexual violence just illustrates their love/hate relationship. Once again talking as if Spike represents most male audiences and that assumption says more about you than the show.
‘The sexual relationship is an unhealthy one with all the violence and the frequent sexual assault from both sides. I don’t even want to count the times I heard: “No!” “Don’t!” “Stop!” “Go away!”. All signs of the people clearly not consenting. Then the show portraits a rape scene to as mark the other stuff as not being rape. I thought this was very judgmental and was an attempt to teach the audience what rape is and what is isn’t according to the show’s creators. Also when Spike made the final attempt to rape, Buffy tells him this:
“Ask me again why I could never love you. Because I stopped you.”
There are plenty of rape victims who have been unable to stop their attackers and a lack of physical strength is in most cases not even the reason. So what do the creators mean to say with this sentence? That if a victim fails to stop her (I say her because most victims are women) attacker, she wants it? She is in love with her attacker and that makes it OK for the attacker to force her? She is asking for it? Again, this made me cringe when I saw it.’
How was it rape when Buffy is one that kissed Spike and continued to engage in sexual intercourse. The fact that you believe that those besides in one in Seeing Red was rape suggest that you don’t know what rape really. Rape is not two people consenting to sex or person having or regrets about their sexual incounter. Buffy kisses and Spike kisses her back. Spike kiss Buffy and Buffy kisses back this is not rape. Obviously, Buffy could fought Spike off if she no longer wanted to engage in sex. The only reasoned Spike almost overpowers her is because of her injury.
‘The sexual violence really wasn’t necessary and I often hear people say that what Buffy did was unwise. However it didn’t need to be if they had left the general violence and sexual assault out of the picture. Then it would have been a casual sexual relationship. Which many women I know of sometimes engage in when their lives aren’t doing so well, when they are simply looking for a distraction or simply a sexual encounter. And they can do this without sexually assaulting anyone or abusing their sex partners.’
The fact that you believed it was unnecessary suggest that you missed the point. The sexual violence was meant to illustrate the inner violence that Buffy was going through. Also, the reason that Buffy abused Spike is because of their violent history. Remember this is the same guy who has tried to kill her and her friends numerous times. Buffy was ashamed of being with Spike because of this.
When Spike asks Buffy why she won’t sleep with him anymore, she answers: “Because I don’t love you.” What has love got to do with it? Why are “good women” expected to be in love with their sex partners? Why should that be a requirement at all?’
Seriously, what love got to do with it? Buffy was using a man ( very twisted man) who was in love her. You don’t use someone who love for sexual gratification no matter if you are a man or woman. If Spike just wanted a casual sexual encounter no strings attached and was not inlove with Buffy that would be one thing, but that is not what happened. Spike was clearly inlove with Buffy and clearly wanted more from the relationship.
‘Finally Spike blames Drusilla, Harmony and Buffy on several occasions for his problems. And Finally Buffy accepts responsibility by apologizing to him and tell him she is “using him”. When I saw that I felt like crying because I know too many women beating themselves up over similar situations and it really is never a fair accusation. But too often women are told they’re responsible for it all and they feel bad over it’
Spike also asks for Buffy forgiveness when he returns with a soul. He realize he is just as much responisble for their unhealthy relationship as Buffy and that there was no excuse for his attempted rape. Furthermore, when Buffy apologize to Spike in As You Were she had ever reason to apologize. You don’t use someone who loves you no matter if you are a man or woman. The fact that you think feminism is about saying ‘screw you I have nothing to apologize is quite disturbing.
‘But my reasons for not finding the show feminist is that it has too many anti-feminist sentiments and simply too many problems that didn’t need to be there.’
After reading this essay I think you need to redefine your definition of feminism.
Thanks for your lengthy comment thundercat and also paying me the compliment of referring to my post as an essay.
I would like to suggest that you read my post with more care. You too are putting an awful lot of words in my mouth and are accusing me of writing things I can’t find in the original post.
I’m a guy and since when was 207 pounds considered fat.There are really people out there that say your fat.Another thing with Buffy is the fact that a Slayer needed a Watcher and they have to train them and report back to them.I don’t want to offend anyone but isn’t that like a Pimp and his Hookers.
207 pounds is considered “overweight” by the BMI standards, though one could argue that it is a crappy standard for measuring how fat one is. I think about a decade or two they brought the maximum BMI for “normal” weight back from 30 to 25 and seeing as I am over 25 I am officially “overweight”.
I always thought the whole watcher deal kinda funny. Buffy never really needed Giles. She was quite capable of kicking ass on her own and quite a number of times Giles proved a liability, but officially he had authority over her. Though I would not go so far as to compare it to watchers to pimps, as pimps have this nasty habit of owning the prostitutes they pimp and sometimes also raping them. I never saw Giles as an abusive character. I can’t remember a single instance in which he was. I saw him more as a sort mentor, though it would have been cool if Buffy’s watcher had been a woman.
I didn’t see Giles as a pimp thing either. I just thought the whole concept of the watchers and the counsel or whatever was patriarchal (even though there were female watchers) and showed that women couldn’t think or act without male approval. (When Faith lost her watcher, she went bad. Willow needed Giles to make her not evil. Anya was the only powerful female character without a watcher [iirc], and she was evil.)
Why was my last comment deleted? It had a rebuttal to your post feministatsea.
You are correct. I have deleted your comment. What you wrote was not so much a rebuttal as a rewrite of your first comment. I asked you to read the original post more carefully and it was clear from you second comment that you failed to do so. I have no interest in chewing over the same thing over and over. That is not what this blog is for. If you want to write like that I invite you to create your own blog.
The same applies to thundercat.
Yes, I deleted it. I get many of such comments all over my blog and I am quite frankly a little sick of it. I have created a comment policy to clarify.
I am glad that enjoy my blog enough to spend more time reading other posts as well. I am, however, not under any obligation to approve just any comment made here.
This is actually standard policy for most feminist blogs and if you’ve been around the feminist blogosphere for a while you understand why. For my insistence on claiming my own little space on the internet to practice free speech I get a lot of threads and and hateful comments. Patience runs out quickly and I am far less tolerant than I was when I started this blog.
* Consider this your final warning. Quit commenting on my blog or I will remove all posts you made here. Up until now I have read every comment you tried to make and the past three have been in complete violation of my comment policy. Quit whining, this is my blog. Do you go to someone else’s house and tell them how to arrange their furniture? I think not. You are no longer welcome here.
Hi, I’m currently writting a dissertation about strong female characters in science fiction. While looking for ‘Buffy is a feminist series’ I found a lot of information, however looking for the anti-feminist Buffy stuff is where I struggled. Just wanted to say thanks for publishing your views its given me a lot to think about, and do you by any chance know of any published works or any other blogs that might be useful to me?
Thanks again!
I got a lot of insides from this site: http://slayageonline.com/
As for blogs you might try this one: http://thehathorlegacy.com/
Good luck with your dissertation.
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Hi, I don’t necessarily agree with everything here but thank you so much for providing such a well thought out counter viewpoint to the idea that Buffy is a feminist hero, I’ve had some issues with the show for awhile yet anyone I mention them too gets really angry really quickly at me critiquing their favourite show. The episode that really got to me was ‘Into the Woods’ I think, where Riley leaves. It bothered me that both Riley and Xander broke her down, got her to accept responsibility for his emasculation and his issues and made her run to him with the intention of begging for him to take her back. Even though Riley has stated previously that she was leading him on we have seen no evidence of this whereas his own insecurity is pretty clear.
I was just wondering what you thought of this episode? I understand that Buffy would have been fragile/emotional/not thinking clearly after the break-up so the fact that she runs after him might be believable but the fact that the narrative condones it along with Xander really bothered me.
I was really unhappy with that episode too. Riley blamed every bad choice he made and his commit issues on Buffy. He was totally projecting his own mess onto her. Their relationship was lukewarm at best, but the way he expressed his feelings of insecurity was annoying and totally not sexy. Xander behaved like a poor friend by telling Buffy she should accept ultimatums from a lover. None of his friends would ever expect him to do the same. I was really happy that Riley was written out of the show and almost wished Spike would take his place, because what’s a TV heroine without her serial, heterosexual monagamy.
That’s a great analysis!
I really like the show overall, and I rewatch it once in a while with enjoyment, but here’s something that the die-hard Whedon fans will not admit: Joss is a wannabe feminist, but he often gets stuff wrong. Sure, wanting to be a feminist counts for something in my book, but it doesn’t make him or the other people involved in the making of Buffy infallible or even very good at tackling feminist issues.
I have had misgivings with each of the scenes you mentioned, and you articulated really well what was wrong with them. There’s only one point where I disagree with your analysis, because I don’t think Buffy says “Because I stopped you!” without any interjection from Spike in the attempted rape scene. He was trying to say “I didn’t -” (as in, “I didn’t rape you”) when she interrupted him with her exclamation. So I took her meaning to be that the only reason he didn’t rape her was that she stopped him, and that this did not excuse his attempting it. Which is why she could never love him.
That’s how I understood the dialogue in the attempted rape scene, but other than that, I have nothing to add to your excellent points. I loathed the character of Xander almost every time he opened his mouth and not infrequently when he didn’t.
The ‘your Take Back the Night thing is cute’ comment was indeed supposed to be funny and did indeed fail to be anything but ignorant and offensive. The creators of the show did nothing to distance themselves from Halfrek’s condescending attitude towards Anya’s feeling of sisterhood with wronged women. Anya was ridiculed for that continually, and never got any vindication. Plus, as you pointed out, Halfrek AND the writers didn’t bother to distinguish between avenging infidelity and the work of an anti-rape movement. That’s pretty steep.
And hell yes, yuck to the idea that not letting some arsehole get away with comparing women to toilets must mean that you are in love with the woman in question. I know, rigth? Because there’s no other possible explanation for losing one’s temper with a guy like that. In essence, boys and girls, it is natural for a man to think that all other women than the one he has a crush on are a little like toilets. He does not get offended on their behalf when someone makes the comparison, because it’s not like women are people or something.
In its defence, the show did also get a lot of things right in areas where other shows fail miserably. You said as much, so I don’t understand why the members of Whedonesque got their knickers in such a twist.
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Really interesting essay and really interesting debate. I think that it’s hard to reduce seven years and eighty-something episodes down to “feminist or no;” I’d say the show failed enormously as a feminist statement sometimes and succeeded at other times. Her relationship with her mother and with Dawn got a lot of screen time and became a strong motivation (win) but she spent the first season-and-a-half seeking to make Giles her substitute parent (fail). She had sex with Spike on her own terms, and the rushed, almost violent nature of the sex was consensual (win), but then she cowered on the bathroom floor when Spike tried to rape her (fail). Etc etc. In any case, a fascinating debate and I hope you keep it rolling and don’t feed the trolls.
I love Buffy to death. I find her empowering and credit her (and the whole show) for my positive self-esteem as a young gay woman. But this article is very important. Really good conversation and thinking points. A critical tool for analyzing blind spots and making other show-creators and viewers think about what they’re creating/seeing.
As a note to any other Buffy fans who feel ‘insulted’ or some other butt-hurt thing about these conversations, you can still love something and have constructive conversations about it. In fact, I’d hope it IS those of us who love her that are making these points and not just casual ‘armchair’ critiques who want to prove that feminism isn’t working/is wrong.
Thank you so much for writing this.
buffy is not a perfect person or feminist icon, she is character with quirks and flaws. yes she seeks seeks male approval because she has a father who has abandoned her. teenagers tend not to just get that she seeks a surrogate father because her own sucks.
On the subject of Buffys family life she lived with a single mother who had a good job and did a good job raising her and her sister. then when Buffy dies willow and Tera act as surrogate parents for Dawn. And when Buffy returns she is a strong single mother.
yes Buffy’s views on sex are socio-normative well she is stuck in a society. Faith on the other hand has meaningless sex and in that way she is very similar to Parker. Faith doesn’t care about her partners and hurts Xander in the same way Parker doesn’t care about Buffy more than as a conquest and hurts her.
Riley is a bit of a misogynist clearly albeit well intentioned. and that is addressed within the show it is the reason why their relationship doesn’t work.
Yes the willow spike rape thing is weird and played for laughs it felt a little crude.
While the show is not straight ‘feminism’ it seemed to be more good than bad along with the fact I don’t believe there to be a straight single strand of feminism. Finally television preaching any sort of moral even good ones tends to make for boring television.
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Thank you for sharing your well-thought-through opinion. Your essay is interesting and although I agree with some of your criticisms as having been weak points in the show, I strongly disagree they make the show “un-feminist” or even misogynist in any way. You are indirectly suggesting this.
I have to say I am slightly disappointed in your responses to most critical comments; “read it better” – answer it better. I agreed with some (but not all) criticisms posted and felt they did not come from bad reading skills or putting words in your mouth. If you want to make a strong point, regard the critics’ way f reading it with the same strength. I read what they read and do not see why you could not discuss the points they made.
In my opinion, lack of constant feminism does not mean the show’s feminist messages are not sufficient or are cancelled out by it. Reality is Whedon grabbed the real world, added a large dose of fantasy and a decent portion of feminism to it. More than enough of it to not let it get wrecked by his adding opposites for contrast as well. He did not set out to create the feminist bible in fiction. He respected feminism enough to not make it a tirant of the show. He allowed diversity and both wrong and right. That is not an insult, it is an instrument.
Faith was emotionally detached, careless and inconsiderate. Just because she also had casual sex does not mean Joss means to say you need to be an asshole to have worry free sex – what he is saying is Faith was such an asshole that that was her only means to imitate intimacy. Faith does not represent all women who have casual sex, casual sex simply fit her character – that’s like saying characters portrayed wearing black cannot be depressed because that says all wearers of black are depressed.
I <3 this so much! (And I'm not just saying that because I hate the show.)
I mostly agree with you (especially about the sex) but I think you missed out one of the biggest problems with the show from a feminist perspective.
One of the saving graces of Buffy for me was that throughout the earlier seasons was how typically feminine traits were seen to give her extra strength. Buffy refuses to play by the councils (mens) rules when it comes to relationships and as a direct result of this she is a “special” slayer, better than those who took orders and rejected their feminine side. She works with her friends and the people she cares about always come first. There are numerous examples, from her refusing to upset her Mother any more than necessary (School Hard) to putting saving Willow before taking down the Mayor (Choices) and of course to point blank refusing to even consider killing her sister to save the world (The Gift). These kinds of decisions are seen as “weak” usually, women not being able to make tough choices etc, Buffy on the other hand demonstrates repeatedly that the opposite is true.
Sometimes the show told us this overtly (“My emotions are total assets” to Kendra, and the whole initiative story line) but it wasn’t just window dressing the theme is consistent throughout the first 5 seasons.
So what happens in the end? Season 7 sees Buffy reject all of that, “Oops I was wrong turns out the boys have it right”. She shuts down her feminine side, detaches herself from all her relationships except her love interest and refuses to recognise her “army” as individuals. She even rejects her past behaviour as weak saying she was wrong to refuse considering killing her sister. Seriously? This was what it was leading to? She spent 6 years defeating vampires, demons, Gods and averting apocolypes by working with her friends and staying true to her femininity to ultimately reject it?
I truly wish they ended the show after season 5.
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