The importance of walking the talk
On Facebook, I've lost a couple of people on my list over a recent post that wasn't specifically about Whedon but was about the not-at-all-feminist behavior of powerful men sleeping with women whose careers they have control over. And of course people had things to say about Whedon that had nothing to do with the point of my post, which is: you cannot hold yourself up as a feminist if you're secretly and consistently indulging in the typical male privileges offered in a sexist environment.
I am not surprised that a human being turned out to be flawed. I'm not surprised that a man who monetized a certain social position turned out to be doing it purely for his own publicity and not because he was willing to do the difficult work of behaving in an ethical fashion that fit with what he was claiming to believe in. No surprises there.
I am a little surprised that so many people who call themselves feminists focused entirely on the cheating aspect of things and declared that it is not a problem, all while ignoring the larger issue: if you’re a man who's risen to power in a male-dominated field, you can't take advantage of your position to sleep with female subordinates and then claim you’re behaving in a way that supports feminism. Even if you're not lying about it, and even if you haven't pressured anyone into sleeping with you, it's just not ethical.
(And yes, the cheating also matters: lying to and manipulating your wife for years and years to ensure that she'll keep serving your needs while preventing her from making informed decisions about her own relationship situation and health isn't cricket from a feminist standpoint. I shouldn't have to explain why.)
I was also surprised by the strength of my reaction to this. Whedon was never a hero of mine. I never really bought into his being a Super Cool Feminist Dude because although I have enjoyed his shows and movies, I saw in them things that didn't fit with his feminist narrative about himself.
So why do I care?
I care because I've had to deal with a ton of workplace sexism over the years. I've been in environments where women were treated well or poorly based on how sexually interesting the boss found them to be. It's a shitty environment. The women who are "favorites" seem to get a sweet deal at first glance, but that is always an illusion: they aren't ever being valued as real human beings but as disposable objects. And the rest, who aren't sexually interesting because they're not pretty or they’re too old or whatever? Invisible. They can forget about getting anywhere. Only the guys get any kind of workable career path in a bro-centric work environment, because only they are seen as complete people.
Whedon is just another brick in a very large wall. And that damn wall needs to get torn down, y'all.
