Don't bite the hand that feeds you - why extremist feminism bothers me.
There are feminists who nitpick the word "history" and insist on calling it "herstory", and then there are feminists who simply say "well-behaved women rarely make history" and leave it at that. I find that I greatly prefer the latter. I myself am a woman (not a "womyn" or some such nonsense) and I believe that there are a number of barriers remaining to be overcome before we've achieved complete equality of the sexes in our society. But taking up arms over pronouns and trying to make conspiracies out of next to nothing is really not the way to go about it; as a tactic, it generally just aggravates folks and turns them off to the concept of feminism in general, ultimately rendering the struggle more difficult for the rest of us.

Ordinarily, when I encounter instances of this brand of bull-headed "feminism", I ignore it and let it slide on by. But this morning I happened across an article in which "feminist scholar" Dee Amy-Chinn attempts to deconstruct the women of Joss Whedon's Firefly, declaring that they fall into stereotypical female models and fail to adhere to the sort of feminist message that Whedon is notorious for conveying in his work. She primarily takes issue with Inara, but she also takes a stab at Kaylee and even Zoe, and reading through what she had to say vexed me - mostly because I found I could counter every single point she made with evidence from the show and my knowledge of the characters. It seemed to me that Chinn went into viewing the show with the expectation of finding a feminist message similar to those present in Buffy, and when she did not find it to be as blatant as she would have liked, ignored the subtle details and went out of her way to blow certain aspects way out of proportion.


Now, the author of the article does note that she understands Whedon's intentions are to "revisit and rewrite the traditional media representation of the whore", but insists that he goes about it incorrectly and that Inara's status ad power over men is not emphasized enough, and is in fact undermined entirely in certain scenes. Here are a few in particular that Chinn complains about:

Perhaps the most voyeuristic scene in the episode ‘Serenity’ is that in which the camera lingers on the naked back of Inara as she ritually cleanses herself with a sponge bath. But this is the classic, rather than the heterosex-positive postfeminist, male gaze proposed by Projansky - as the text offers no evidence that Inara is aware of the camera’s gaze, or is deliberately playing to it in the way that (for example) the gaze is invited by Eva Herzigova in the now iconic Wonderbra ads from the mid-1990s. Hence the power in this scene with Inara lies unequivocally with the viewer, and Inara is cast as the traditional pre-feminist sex object - ensuring that both form and content deny the female viewer a progressive location for engagement with the text.

First off all, the bathing scene is not without function in the progression of the episode, as immediately afterward Shepherd Book enters Inara's shuttle and she resolutely remains nude for few moments longer - purposely, to make him uncomfortable, in response to his earlier reaction when Mal tells Book her profession. And even if seeing Inara nude were without purpose and merely a gratuitous insertion to up the show's appeal to the viewer (which is doubtful, considering that it's Joss we're talking about here), Inara is certainly not the only character in Firefly sexually objectified. What about the shirtless Simon in Objects in Space? Did that serve any function? Or when Mal's nude in the middle of the desert in Trash? Males are objectified just as much as females throughout the show, if not moreso.

This is also true of a highly voyeuristic scene that occurs in a later episode (‘War Stories’) in which Inara is shown with a female client. Shots of Inara massaging the other woman are followed by a close-up of the two women kissing. That no such parallel scenes are shown when Inara services her male clients indicates that the point of these shots is not to advance the narrative but to offer up pseudo-lesbian pleasure for the male viewer.

Again, way to ignore other details of the show. Inara is shown kissing other clients, such as Fess Higgins in the episode Jaynestown, and is shown engaged outright in the act of sex with a male client in the pilot episode. Also, Joss plainly makes fun of the sort of male who would view that scene and derive pleasure from it through the character of Jayne ("Ill be in my bunk"). Jayne is portrayed throughout the show as quite a bit less than brilliant, and thus having him obviously turned on by the concept of Inara with a female client serves as an insult to the intelligence of men who feel likewise. Also, when the Councilor is leaving Serenity and Jayne casts a feral grin in Inara's direction, she rolls her eyes at him spectacularly, solidifying the point that she thinks he's an idiot, as should the viewer.

The most sexually active woman on the crew of Serenity (even if one includes Inara, who is woefully short of clients) is Zoe. On the one hand this makes sense as she is married to another of the crew members. At another level, however, it reinforces the stereotype of the sexually voracious black woman.

Okay, so, the indication that Zoe is having sex with one man whom she's in madly in love with makes her voracious... how? And go back to the part where she and Wash are married? It's like Chinn's saying
"yeah, marital sex is downright blasphemous, how dare Joss ever indicate such a thing to be occurring! Only one-night stands, with white women, should ever be portrayed on television". What in the hell? Honestly, the impression I get from Zoe as a character is that she's ordinarily a very sexually closed person ("I don't see how it's any of your business, we're very private people"), and probably was even moreso before Wash came along. He's the exception, and the bond they share adds a very important dimensionality to her character.

Moreover her sexual relationship with Wash enhances his status within the show (where he is coded as less traditionally masculine than the other two core male crew members Mal and Jayne, both of whom are soldiers) by virtue of his prowess in being able to ‘satisfy’ a black lover - a point made by Edwards (2002:95) in respect of the relationship in Buffy between Giles and Olivia.

The absurdity of this statement blows my mind even moreso. Wash holds his own within the show and amongst the crew by virtue of his supreb piloting skills, not because of his relationship with Zoe. This is made plain by the flashback in Out of Gas where Mal notes how impressed he is with the pilot and says that Wash had a "string of recommendations as long as [his] leg", even though Zoe says that "he bothers [her]" and that she doesn't like him. There are also numerous situations in which Wash saves them all with his abilities, including the Crazy Ivan he pulls to escape the Reavers in the first episode and the fancy terrain flying he tackles in The Message to evade the Feds. Wash as a character clearly expresses his distaste for violence several times ("Can we vote on the whole murdering people thing?", "Can I make a suggestion that doesn't involve violence, or is this the wrong crowd?"), but is also shown to have the ability to handle a firearm well enough in both War Stories and Heart of Gold if the situation requires it. Just because he doesn't sling his gun around as often as Mal or Jayne doesn't mean he's any less a man, and he certainly doesn't try prove anything with his relationship with Zoe. He loves her, for her, and the way in which he differs to her and respects her indicates this plainly. They're equals - they satisfy each other equally, care for each other equally, they've fought together when necessary (and even fought each other, verbally), and they each have their separate but equally important roles on the ship. They're adorable. Why is it that Chinn decides to ride right past how amazing it is that Joss chooses to place a happily married, interracial couple in his show and focus on making it into some huge under-riding thing against black women? Seriously. That downright angered me.


That's all for now. I will poke at more of it at a later date. Right now I need to get off and head back to my dorm to get ready for class, feh.