Whedon followers vs. Whedon followers, or What does “sexist” really mean?

Last week, Joss Whedon tweeted his last tweet:

“Thank you to all the people who've been so kind and funny and inspiring up in here.

- Joss Whedon (@josswhedon) May 4, 2015”

Since Whedon’s deactivation of his Twitter account came in the immediate wake of a fairly venomous, relentless, but also routine (for Twitter) shaming about the alleged sexism of his latest movie, news sites were quick to speculate that militant feminists had chased him off of social media.

Whedon has been adamant that his departure from Twitter was not motivated by feminist backlash.  I won’t contradict him.  I also am not interested in parsing how feminist he “really” is. I’m more interested in what the response to this tweet may or may not say about Culture, Politics, and Juxtaposition, as the blog tagline reads.

The charges of sexism concern the portrayal of Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson) in Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Specifically [SPOILERS AHEAD], the revelation that she was sterilized as part of her training.

Criticisms had the potential to raise complex questions about how movies portray reproductive issues, and how that relates to cultural perceptions of women’s independence.  Instead, Twitter users began expending the words “sexist” and “misogynist” like it was Invectives Pay Day.  (It goes without saying that there were also the standard variations on “fuck you”.)

Curious, then, that just a month previous, the following missive is what Joss Whedon was getting attention for on Twitter:

“...and I’m too busy wishing this clip wasn’t 70’s era sexist. She’s a stiff, he’s a life-force - really? Still? https://t.co/qqts4jpSva

- Joss Whedon (@josswhedon) April 10, 2015”

This tweet, written in response to a clip from the forthcoming Jurassic World, was reported on approvingly by sites such as The Avclub and Hypable.  Nevertheless, within days, Whedon apologized for the tweet, explaining it was “bad form” and “not what a gentleman would do” to say negative things about others’ work.

There’s a way to view these two Joss Whedon tweets taken together as the first and second acts of a miniature tragicomedy of honor and hubris.  Doomed Nice Guy Joss Whedon foolishly tries to uphold a standard of courtesy that his fellow tweeters never respected or upheld in the first place.

Many of Whedon’s Twitter critics seemed to prefer the narrative where a patriarchal
hypocrite is unmasked and subdued by public justice:

come on @josswhedon, talk some more about how Jurassic World is sexist and how women who cant have kids are monsters. :)
— sheida skywalker (@snowstarks) May 2, 2015

Joss Whedon deleted his Twitter after being called out for being hypocrite. After calling other movies sexist, his turns out to be sexist.
— Piper (@fyzzgiggidy) May 4, 2015

I have my own criticisms of Whedon’s Jurassic World tweet, but at least the tweet was focused, honing in on a specific iteration of the word “sexist,” and also took into account subtleties of tone within the clip it was responding to.

It also, far from being hypocritical, was consistent with how Whedon had challenged gender stereotypes in the past.  The vitality of characters like Buffy Summers, River Tam, and yes, Black Widow poses a rebuttal to a very specific gender trope - the very trope Whedon was pointing out in the clip from Jurassic World, one where women play the stern scold to men’s charisma and dynamism.

But Whedon has never been concerned with upending all gender tropes.  In fact, his female characters consistently draw their political charge from the tension between unexpected and expected gender traits.  Buffy, a pretty blonde, is a slayer of the undead and a cheerleader. Firefly and Dollhouse feature characters whose active participation in their stories complicates their status as objects of fantasy or exploitation by men.  In my view, Black Widow – as battler, as banterer, as bombshell, and as would-be birth mom - fits in quite neatly among these heroines.  Even the potentially offensive line of dialogue, “You’re not the only monster on the team,” spoken by Black Widow in apparent reference to her own sterility, makes some sense in the context of previous Whedon heroines’ often fraught self-image.

Now, I have certainly taken issue with Whedon’s approach to integrating political or social concerns with art.  Frankly, I’m a little surprised to find myself defending Whedon after years of facetiously calling him “Josh Whedon” and poking fun at his dialogue.  But at least he seems to have a worldview, one that it is difficult to reduce down to words such as “feminist” or “sexist.” And a worldview – as evidence of something complex and human - is infinitely superior to a pre-approved set of positions, affirmations and niceties to be regurgitated on cue.  “Women are strong!”  “Women are independent!”  “Women don’t need traditional gender roles!”  Etc.

The critics on Twitter may not have been asking for statements as trite as those. But they also seemed totally uninterested in weighing Whedon’s various statements and writing efforts for their comprehensive, interwoven meanings, or in separating authorial views from those presented by a fictional subject.  What I see when I look at the responses on Twitter last week is a group of people so preoccupied with consistency that they perhaps end up disregarding complexity.

So why did this happen now?  Feminist critics of Joss Whedon have been around for a long time. But why, for a moment, did it seem like the extremists or “militants” had taken over?

Lately, various commentators have noted the increasing tension between liberals and more doctrinaire leftists.  Patton Oswalt, a pretty liberal dude, gestured to this in his own tweet: “Yep. There is a Tea Party equivalent of progressivism/liberalism. And they just chased Joss Whedon off Twitter. Good job, guys. Ugh.” (May 4, 2015)  A few months ago, Jonathan Chait published an article which argued that the left-wing perpetuation and enforcement of PC culture is a threat to traditional liberalism.

I’m tempted to view the Joss Whedon situation through the same lens.  But I think that risks letting liberals off the hook a little bit by casting them as the victims of some separate, run-amok movement.  I suspect that far too many liberals’ willingness to take rhetorical advantage of terms like “sexism” has created the conditions for those terms to be deployed more and more indulgently and un-self-reflectively.  After all, Whedon’s use of the word “sexist” did open himself up to the same criticism later.

So maybe this whole kerfuffle has to do with how flat and broad the term “sexism” has become in its attempt to address multifarious aspects of male and female life – like using just a shovel to build a house, when what we’ve needed are individualized tools.  Many responders were happy to agree that the Jurassic World clip was sexist.  Many also viewed Age of Ultron as sexist.  But that means using the same term to apply to two different cultural portrayals.  Even if they both relate to women, the questions and critiques we bring to a depiction of male and female stereotypes vs. a depiction of reproductive issues ought to be more nuanced and differentiated.

While it may have once seemed radical and important to point out how various, seemingly unconnected aspects of culture collude in a vast system of disempowerment, that kind of reading now risks being simplistic.  Even worse, it risks turning the reins of discourse over to the most fanatical of us.