My Hero
There are many reasons to love Joss Whedon, creator of the second best tv show ever (the first being The Mary Tyler Moore Show). But his recent rant over at Whedonesque on the eerie connection between the much video'd ambush and stoning of Dua Khalil and the trailer for the movie Captivity is as good a reason as any to annoint him The Official Number One Dude Feminist in the Country. Whedon's passionate commitment to women's equality and dignity literally bleeds through his fiction. In his most recent contribution to the Whedonesque blog, he makes no less than a call to action to eradicate the following hideous state of affairs.And I quote:
"What is wrong with women? I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected. How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable."
We do not stone women to death in this country. We do not prevent them from driving. We in the West have much to be proud of in our evolution toward greater equality between the sexes. However, at a deep fundamental level I believe we are still engaged in a pernicious cultural debate about exactly what constitutes the proper exercise of approved femininity. This is why we argue about abortion. This is why we have "Mommy Wars." Women are the means through which society defines itself.And it's not okay.I am not a symbol. I am am not a means whereby you may establish your own self worth. I am not a vessel for your theological spewings or a moral nitwit who requires your guidance. I am a flesh and blood human being who happens to be female. All I want (and this is a demand not a request) is the freedom to succeed and fail according to my gifts and limitations. And I'd like to thank Joss Whedon and all of our heroes who fight for the dignity and equality that is our birthright.