(no subject)

[beccaelizabeth]

I followed a link to an essay but I'm only a couple paragraphs in and already I wish to argue with it.

Giles’ comment that “testosterone is a great equalizer: it turns all men into morons”, is a rephrasing of a common community response to date and acquaintance rape: “boys will be boys”.

It says that, then goes on to say how words try and ignore/trivialise rape. Like Giles' thing he said is part of that.

But:

1) He says that before Xander does anything particularly bad, after Buffy basically tells him he's dressing different, hanging out with other people and being mean (NOT assaulting anyone)
2) it doesn't just repeat uncritically, it rephrases it to make it a *Bad Thing*. I mean Giles is brains guy, calling somebody a moron is big disapproval. Even if he is aiming it at an entire gender.
3) Giles is immediately undermined and proven to be not taking it seriously enough. And I do mean immediately. A couple of lines later and it turns out Giles is wrong to be making it about testosterone, and that already the pig has been killed.

those factors together make it a *very* different thing than the text supporting a 'boys will be boys' dismissal of sexual assault. Huge difference.

But I don't know if they notice that further down the essay.


http://www.gendergeek.org/?p=136

goes on to say

Perhaps. Even if we don’t indict Buffy for not being sufficiently hip to feminist discourse around representations of rape, we can challenge it for keeping its female characters so unaware of the sexually violence world in which they operate. While we see Willow half-crazy with grief and anger in 1.12 “Prophecy Girl” becuase the Master’s gang have violated the sanctity of Sunnydale High, we see no reaction whatsoever to any of the threats to their own physical autonomy. Indeed, while the women of Buffy acculumate knowledge about monstors and demons, the incidents of sexualised violence perpetrated against them evoke no similar understanding of gendered violence.

okay, again with the numbers
1) What would they rather they do? Have them go around all 'OMG there could be rape!'
and
2) They're really not grasping this 'metaphor' business, are they? What do they think the vampires et al are *about*?

Comments

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Sure, the Jossverse has its faults, but that's a very biased article. Where's the details of all the episodes that say male abuse of power is a very bad thing, and in which the perpetrators get what's coming to them?

After all, there are plenty of worse media example out there for them to bitch about analyse.