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zelda_queenHello, gentle Viewers. This might be a bit of a confusing message to see here, particularly for anyone who previously read this post when there was a sporking of an angry essay here. I shall explain.
For those who stumbled here for the first time, way back when I first started sporking, in 2010, I sporked a series of essays by a blogger by the name of Alecto. Those essays focused her ire on Joss Whedon and the series Firefly and largely accused it of being filled with all sorts of racism and misogyny and of Whedon himself being an abusive rapist. At the time, it all seemed very ridiculous.
Right. Hm.
Here's the thing. I've actually been giving thought to removing these sporkings for awhile now. Honestly, I ran into them when I was young and dumb and said stuff in sporkings that, in retrospect, makes me cringe. I was also still pretty naïve about a lot of issues, which means that a lot of the initial rebuttals I made in the sporking where, in hindsight, incredibly ignorant and not nearly as well-analyzed as I try to do with current sporkings.
I'd waffle off and on to myself about whether to remove the posts entirely, redo the sporking itself, or leave the sporking as it was and add a disclaimer at the top about taking what I said with the knowledge that I was young and stupid at the time and try to do better now.
As of today, 02/10/2021, however, I cannot in good faith leave these posts as they are. I still have a great deal of fondness for Firefly, though I do see now that it has its share of problems. I love a great many works Whedon worked on. But with the accounts coming out of Whedon's behavior, I decided the sporkings had to come down. I'm sorry to anyone who did enjoy it, but I couldn't leave up posts defending Whedon and his works against something that I know now is (A) quite true and (B) caused so much trauma to the actors and actresses he's worked with.
Some of you might be wondering why in the world I'm leaving the post intact at all and not just straight-up deleting it. That was something I considered, but there were a few reasons I decided against it. Part of it is that I'm the sort of person who just has a massive issue with deleting or getting rid of anything in its entirety. I'm a bit of a pack rat in the real world and that mentality can overlap with digital content. Part of it is also me hating the feeling when some work -- fanfiction, art, webcomic, etc. -- I love to revisit is suddenly gone without a trace. By not deleting the post outright, anyone who might return to reread this can have some idea of what happened, at least.
Finally, part of it is me not wanting to pretend past mistakes I made didn't happen. Like I said, the sporkings themselves were cringe-worthy and, should I have stumbled across them for the first time at this point in my sporking career, I probably would have left them alone entirely. The sporkings were a stupid thing I did and I won't pretend I didn't do them. To anyone in Viewerland who I may have inadvertently made uncomfortable with my arguments but, for whatever reason, chose not to speak out, I wholeheartedly apologize.
For anyone who wanted to revisit the sporkings for their arguments against Alecto, I will sum up my general thoughts in hindsight. Some of her points (particularly about bringing awareness to abusive treatment of women of color, especially aboriginal women of Australia, and about sex through pressure from social, financial, or emotional factors being forms of rape) I do think are valid to certain extents. I am not going to go back and re-read her essays because 2021 has plenty to keep me occupied, but I do think it's valid and admirable to fight against domestic abuse and racism, as well as address the intersectionality between them.
THAT BEING SAID, I also think that a lot of the conclusions she draws are still bass-ackwards. Her argument that Walsh and Zoe's relationship being a given as abusive simply because it's interracial and she never has seen an interracial relationship that wasn't abusive is, to say the least, flawed. The same goes for her assuming Whedon's relationship with his partner, Kai Cole, was abusive. Kai has come out as saying he was abusive, but that doesn't mean make Alecto's argument that Kai must be a gold digger who deserves then-unverified abuse. I also disagree with her adhering to second wave feminism and essentially equating any sort of sex work or sexual content as evil. It really doesn't help spread the message of Sisterhood that she dismissively refers to Inara as a "fuckbuddy".
Thank you for sticking with me through this. I'm still working on sporkings, so please feel free to check out my other content! I hope to continue to improve and provide you with something enjoyable, to take away at least a bit of the ongoing craziness that we're all dealing with.
Return to the Sporking Chamber
For those who stumbled here for the first time, way back when I first started sporking, in 2010, I sporked a series of essays by a blogger by the name of Alecto. Those essays focused her ire on Joss Whedon and the series Firefly and largely accused it of being filled with all sorts of racism and misogyny and of Whedon himself being an abusive rapist. At the time, it all seemed very ridiculous.
Right. Hm.
Here's the thing. I've actually been giving thought to removing these sporkings for awhile now. Honestly, I ran into them when I was young and dumb and said stuff in sporkings that, in retrospect, makes me cringe. I was also still pretty naïve about a lot of issues, which means that a lot of the initial rebuttals I made in the sporking where, in hindsight, incredibly ignorant and not nearly as well-analyzed as I try to do with current sporkings.
I'd waffle off and on to myself about whether to remove the posts entirely, redo the sporking itself, or leave the sporking as it was and add a disclaimer at the top about taking what I said with the knowledge that I was young and stupid at the time and try to do better now.
As of today, 02/10/2021, however, I cannot in good faith leave these posts as they are. I still have a great deal of fondness for Firefly, though I do see now that it has its share of problems. I love a great many works Whedon worked on. But with the accounts coming out of Whedon's behavior, I decided the sporkings had to come down. I'm sorry to anyone who did enjoy it, but I couldn't leave up posts defending Whedon and his works against something that I know now is (A) quite true and (B) caused so much trauma to the actors and actresses he's worked with.
Some of you might be wondering why in the world I'm leaving the post intact at all and not just straight-up deleting it. That was something I considered, but there were a few reasons I decided against it. Part of it is that I'm the sort of person who just has a massive issue with deleting or getting rid of anything in its entirety. I'm a bit of a pack rat in the real world and that mentality can overlap with digital content. Part of it is also me hating the feeling when some work -- fanfiction, art, webcomic, etc. -- I love to revisit is suddenly gone without a trace. By not deleting the post outright, anyone who might return to reread this can have some idea of what happened, at least.
Finally, part of it is me not wanting to pretend past mistakes I made didn't happen. Like I said, the sporkings themselves were cringe-worthy and, should I have stumbled across them for the first time at this point in my sporking career, I probably would have left them alone entirely. The sporkings were a stupid thing I did and I won't pretend I didn't do them. To anyone in Viewerland who I may have inadvertently made uncomfortable with my arguments but, for whatever reason, chose not to speak out, I wholeheartedly apologize.
For anyone who wanted to revisit the sporkings for their arguments against Alecto, I will sum up my general thoughts in hindsight. Some of her points (particularly about bringing awareness to abusive treatment of women of color, especially aboriginal women of Australia, and about sex through pressure from social, financial, or emotional factors being forms of rape) I do think are valid to certain extents. I am not going to go back and re-read her essays because 2021 has plenty to keep me occupied, but I do think it's valid and admirable to fight against domestic abuse and racism, as well as address the intersectionality between them.
THAT BEING SAID, I also think that a lot of the conclusions she draws are still bass-ackwards. Her argument that Walsh and Zoe's relationship being a given as abusive simply because it's interracial and she never has seen an interracial relationship that wasn't abusive is, to say the least, flawed. The same goes for her assuming Whedon's relationship with his partner, Kai Cole, was abusive. Kai has come out as saying he was abusive, but that doesn't mean make Alecto's argument that Kai must be a gold digger who deserves then-unverified abuse. I also disagree with her adhering to second wave feminism and essentially equating any sort of sex work or sexual content as evil. It really doesn't help spread the message of Sisterhood that she dismissively refers to Inara as a "fuckbuddy".
Thank you for sticking with me through this. I'm still working on sporkings, so please feel free to check out my other content! I hope to continue to improve and provide you with something enjoyable, to take away at least a bit of the ongoing craziness that we're all dealing with.
Return to the Sporking Chamber
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-09 11:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-10 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 05:09 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency#p/u/8/nvDg8VeGWJs
Still, the way she goes on about it just sounds like she was upset that Dollhouse was renewed instead of Sarah Connor and decided that it was anti-feminist out of spite. All she managed to do was get me interested in Dollhouse. One person commented on a youtube video she made about the Bechdel Test that she sometimes appears sexist towards men, she said that you can't be sexist against men, because sexism is about gender prejudice and systemic power combined. I tried to explain to her that sexism is about gender prejudice period (I softened it by explaining that it's what my sociology textbook says) and she just said that I was getting the wrong information. Also, is the woman who wrote this essay the same woman who wrote this list?
http://www.cracked.com/article_16587_hollywoods-5-saddest-attempts-at-feminism.html
I sort of agree with her about Padme, but I think she's being way too hard on Eowyn.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 03:02 pm (UTC)No, she didn't write that article. She was quoted though (this essay was used to argue that River Tam was unfeminist. River is the girl who, as I said before, saved the crew with her VERY impressive kung-fu skills).
And I agree, that article really misinterpreted Eowyn. She didn't go to war to impress Aragorn, she did it to save her people! Oy... (As a little FYI, this essayist did get word that she was quoted in the article. She squeed about how she was getting famous).
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-13 03:41 am (UTC)Zoe really is just about the only one who calls Mal "sir." Wash only does it once, sarcastically, in "Out of Gas," and Jayne, Book, River and Inara never do it at all. Kaylee does it once I can think of ("Yes sir, Cap'n Tightpants!") and Simon once or twice. But over all, Zoe's the only one who calls Mal "sir."
Which is all right; Zoe was in the military with him for years. No one else on the ship was.
But it is inaccurate to say that everybody calls Mal "sir."
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-13 01:52 pm (UTC)But right, he was Zoe's military superior. And the rest of the crew does respect him as captain. So Allecto's implication that he treats the women worse than the men still holds no water.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-31 11:24 am (UTC)"It is clear from the outset that a large part of Inara’s service involves addressing issues of male inadequacy and fulfilling many other emotional needs of her clients. The ability to do this IS a resource and it is therefore a service that Inara must perform."
Waitwaitwait... So BEING NICE is a finite resource? That's like saying that every time I smile at someone I'm tapping into a limited stockpile of smiles! It costs nothing but time to listen to somebody, and most of us have more of that than we think.
The bit about "wasted emotional resources" is just sad, if you think about it too long. Allecto appears to believe that every given person has only so much compassion, and that it can be exhausted if overused. Maybe that's why she's so bitter.
(Thinking about it, an alternative view is that she thinks kindness can be wasted on the "wrong" people, which in many ways is an even worse perspective.)
For some reason, in a sea of "ALL SEX IS RAPE" and "MEN ARE EVIL", it's this that jumped out at me.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-31 02:19 pm (UTC)Of course, from what I can understand, Allecto's point is that there's no way a woman can consensually engage in sex for her own pleasure, so there is a general theme of "emotions are all just things being exploited and not something engaged in because of free will". Or, probably more accurately, "female emotions are being controlled by men, because they only *think* it's within their power to use them as they want". Given that Allecto words it like Mal is forcing Inara to be nice to the rest of the crew...yeah.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-20 12:08 am (UTC)She doesn't.
Well, except for Kaylee, whom we see getting her hair braided and getting advice on Simon from Inara. But that's okay, because she's more "reciprocal" (read: has a vagina) than the men.
But we never see Inara provide anything that could even remotely be construed as "service" to anyone else on Mal's crew. Book, I should point out, isn't technically part of the crew. Simon never goes to her for advice, nor does Wash, and Jayne sure as hell doesn't. Even with Allecto's annoyingly broad definition of "service", she's not servicing anybody.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 03:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 04:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-16 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 03:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-20 12:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-26 07:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-27 03:09 am (UTC)Anyway, glad you liked! ^^
(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-01 04:47 pm (UTC)Out of curiosity, I went and found the original, and the comments on also made me want to vomit. Hooray for crazy people! Awesome spork though :P
(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-05 04:24 am (UTC)Thanks! ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 12:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-10 02:45 am (UTC)Also she must want the species to extinguish, because she thinks man should be castrated and penetration is rape, even if there's consent, which there isn't because she doesn't want to be penetrated, she only *thinks* she wants to because society brainwashed her into thinking she wants to. Good Goddess, this Radical Feminist are crazy.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-14 12:23 am (UTC)The "Sir" bit
Date: 2012-10-24 08:20 pm (UTC)Re: The "Sir" bit
Date: 2013-08-13 12:10 am (UTC)That said, I do recall that in "The Message" Tracey generally addressed Mal as "Sarge". It could just be Zoe's personal quirk; she does seem to hold a large amount of personal respect for him, and that could easily manifest in something like usually calling him "sir".
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 03:40 pm (UTC)Her issue with sex doesn't seem to be that sex as a whole is wrong, rather it's more like "Inara is having sex with a man, therefore she can't really enjoy it." I'm curious as to whether she thinks gay guys who like to bottom are being raped. Then again, she probably thinks they deserve it for daring to be men.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 04:04 pm (UTC)1.) Women who desire sex from men are brainwashed into having this desire.
2.) As "proof", she claims she learned to be a lesbian, and all women can do so. Thus, only brainwashed women want sex from men instead of other women.
3.) Thus, all sex with men is not consensual and thus automatically rape.
Her views on gay people, from what I've seen, are limited to "Gay men are disgusting and horrible and I hate them". Someone explained to me that apparently this comes from one of the more extreme schools of feminism, mainly that gay men are seen as replacing women or some such thing.
(I would like to stress that I'm not fully sure if that's the case or if I'm remembering the explanation correctly, seeing as it's been a very long while since I learned that. All I remember is that Allecto REALLY doesn't like male homosexuality or homoerotic subtext, but hypocritically DID used to write slash. No, I don't even.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-16 12:36 am (UTC)Maybe she wrote rapefics, like the majority of Yaoi is. Because men deserve to be raped. /sarcasm
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-16 01:51 am (UTC)And I honestly don't know what her slashfics were like. All I know is that in the midst of ranting about the HBP movie, she paused to squee over how there was "so much slash", and cited a moment where Ron crawled into bed with Harry. I presume she meant a scene where the two were in their own beds, talking about their love interests.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-16 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-04 11:54 am (UTC)I'm convinced that no one can honestly be this dense. Please tell me she's just a really creative troll. :/
I had bad experiences with my last boyfriend, but that hasn't turned me into a "feminist" who thinks all men are rapists. And if there's no such thing as consensual sex...well, I can't really come up with a witty retort for that one. I guess all children are products of rape? *shrug*
Also, I've never watched Firefly, but it sounds like Allecto here is just seeing what she wants to see. And why does she repeatedly mention that "Book" is a black man? I don't care, and neither should anyone else. All I look for in a character is whether they're interesting...you know, with personality. It's pretty neat that the show has an interracial couple, though. Back in the '50s or so, that wouldn't have even been allowed. So yay, progress. :)
Anyway, the idiocy of this rant has taken its toll on me. I think I'll go read some shōnen-ai manga. *wanders off*
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-14 01:14 am (UTC)Besides hating men, Allecto also has issues with the treatment of black people at the hands of white people. It's a valid thing to inspect in media, to be sure, but she's just as thoughtful about it as she is the portrayal of happy couples. In another rant, she considers Brook to be a "magic negro" (he isn't) and considers Wash to be abusing Zoe PURELY because he's a white guy married to a black woman. She adds to this that she apparently has NEVER seen an interracial couple that wasn't abusive, so...uh, apparently she's had a poor sampling.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-14 06:28 am (UTC)Is Allecto saying that all white people are abusive toward black people? Or is it just the white men? Her rants are actually really confusing, and I've probably lost some brain cells just from being morbidly curious. @_@
Rants by crazy people are strangely entertaining. But Allecto really scares me. It's like she only sees what she wants to see, because she's actively looking for it to prove her point. And the fact that she calls herself Allecto is actually rather appropriate, but that only makes it more frightening. D:
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-14 09:29 am (UTC)I really don't know. I've only ever seen her ranting about white men abusing black women, applying it to her family situations.
Yeah, it is creepy. It doesn't help that it spills into real life. Seriously, she assumes that Whedon himself is abusing his wife for no reason at all. Just read her entry under "Female Misogynist" on TV Tropes.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-18 11:01 pm (UTC)Zoe says, “This ship's been derelict for months. Why would they –”
Mal replies, (in Chinese) “Shut up.”
It's become clear to me that Allecto was not watching the show itself when writing this. She was reading the original shooting script. Zoe's lines in the actual show are different.
More importantly, in the actual recording, she and Jayne are talking over each other. Mal tells them both to shut up, and with good reason. He needs to give orders to Wash, and can't do that with Zoe and Jayne talking.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-19 12:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-19 12:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-14 02:04 am (UTC)That's actually a very miscontstrued oversimplification of the original quote.
The original quote was about the heternormative socialization that women (and men) have to go through in a heternormative society, so they aren't given freedom to choose as much as they are pressured to behave one way or another.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-19 11:36 pm (UTC)