fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3893 ]

[ SECRET POST #3893 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3893 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Valkyrie]

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03.

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04.

[Joss Whedon and ex-wife Kai Cole]

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05.

[Alyson Hannigan, "Fool Us"]

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06.

[Wolfenstein: The New Order]

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07.

[Anne, the new Anne of Green Gables reboot miniseries]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #557.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I'll just go ahead and be that lady who says I don't really think cheating on a partner has anything to do with whether or not you are a feminist. It's shitty behavior, sure, but I hardly think it negates or even relates to feminism.

This. Unless you start acting like women are horrible people and deserve heaps of scorn for their cheating while sleeping your way through an entire state during your own marriage.

I think it's at least to a limited extent part of feminist praxis

monogamy is an outdated and oppressive social model that contributes massively to gender roles

it's still shitty to cheat but monogamy as the standard is shitty as well

+1

Not that this mitigates Joss's cheating. But I agree all the same.

Respecting people you're in committed relationships with and not violating their trust is a part of feminist practice, if that's a more palatable phrasing for you

I love how "feminist practice" keeps changing to fit whatever can be used to rail against someone. Because last I checked, feminism was still just the belief that men and women are equals.

This is also how you get feminists who are raging, unhinged assholes right along with feminists who are made of awesome and rainbows.

God, the truth of this comment is so intense, and also so depressing.

Except for the part where he was targeting people who actually worked for him.

You're right. Cheating in and of itself is not inherently anti-feminist. It makes you a shitty person and shows a lack of respect for your partner, but not anti-feminist.

It's the fact that the women he was having these affairs with were mostly women who relied on him for a job that makes it really fucking anti-feminist.

I'd also argue that gas lighting your wife by claiming that she shouldn't worry about your closeness to the young women who work on your shows because you're such a big feminist that they are just comfortable with you and you are comfortable with them most likely steps over the line into at least not-really-a-feminist.

Have theses people he targeted actually come out and said that? Because I'm sorry if I'm not going to automatically assume the words of a jilted spouse are true. Like, I can believe he cheats. But this "he's basically a sexual predator preying on his employees" idea is a step too far to just assume its correct because a third-party says "I've got this letter!"

He specifically said that his affairs (emotional and physical) where with actresses who worked for him, and the way he talks about that very much as a predatory vibe.

So, yeaaah. This is me taking Joss Whedon at his word.

At the end of the day, he admits that he had affairs with employees. Whether it's whole-heartedly mutual or not (and I'm willing to bet that at least one of those employees felt they couldn't say no), it's still an abuse of his position and his power over them.

And let's not forget how he mistreated Charisma Carpenter. She was punished for getting pregnant, and then found out she wasn't going to be going back for the final season by reading about it in the press.

If this was Joss Whedon, the cool hipster feminist guy who's the manager of the coffee shop, and those actresses were baristas instead, would you be defending him on this?

If my only proof that he said those things was in the form of a letter an ex said he wrote? I'd be defending him exactly this much.

Adult employers having sex with their adult employees may be against company policy, but it's stupid as fuck to strip the adult employees of any agency and call them abused victims who were taken advantage of by "someone in a position of power above them." Unless there was any element of "fuck me or I'll fire you", then these adults had consensual relationships.

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In addition to what everyone else has said, I don't believe it's possible for "denying your wife the chance to make informed choices about her sexual contact with other people" to be compatible with one of the most basic tenets of feminism, viz., women being allowed to have control over their own bodies. Even assuming that he always used a condom (which... possible, but not guaranteed) there are still other sexually transmitted infections which condoms don't completely prevent because of the areas that are in contact. He could have been exposing her to herpes or crabs, without giving her any chance to decide whether that was a risk she was willing to take. And if he didn't always use a condom, then he could have been putting her in danger of contracting a whole bunch of different infections.

This is so important. I feel like people are forgetting this. Even if all of his affairs were perfectly consensual to everyone involved, they were NOT consensual for his wife and her body and health!

Whaaaat? It seems like a major stretch to equate him having sex with his wife after having sex with other people the same as her being forced to have sex with other people. That's crazy.

I can agree that potential diseases are a serious issue. But it's no more a feminist issue than if she were the one cheating on him and possibly bringing home diseases. Would you claim that Joss would be equally a victim if she was the one cheating?

I would. Yes.

The issue here is the risk of contracting an STI and/or an STD. The partner who is being cheated on cannot make an informed choice about "risking it" if they don't know they're at risk to begin with.

There are plenty of real-life examples of guys living on the DL infecting their wives with HIV.

Hell, my own mother back in the '60s was mysteriously infected with STIs several times before her first husband admitted that he was screwing around on her and had decided to leave her because she wasn't willing to go into the swinger lifestyle.

Despite the fact that my mother married this guy right out of high school, and that she was 20 at the time, she showed his ass the door. And part of that reason is because she wound up with a frequent flyer pass at the gyno's office and dealing with invasive questions.

So, yes. This is an issue. Regardless of who is the cheating party and who is the cheated on party.

^ This. Cheating is about honesty and your communication - if you attend orgies and speak about protection options and how to deal with other people, it is grand. Same as is having poly relations with your partner being mono on their side - if you discussed it and communicate about it.

This director though? Spoken as if he had been an authority on women's relationships thus his ex wife saying something else and still pretty much managing to duplicate his sentiments (yeah, he did always sound same to me as in quotes she provided). If you shove your way into any idealogical minority group you are not welcome in and fail - expect repercussions.

Then there is an issue of people generally being very uninformed about STIs and STDs - you can easily acquire some by sharing toilets (even if you take precautions). Oh yes, I got one as a teenager (who never was with anyone) and it had been due to my mother's partners BUT - she was advised by her doctor when she found out and said doctor asked me to get tested and then also provided medication.

Even if I somehow cheated on my husband and even if I was certain that other people were fine - they might not be or know, nor I really would have known about myself either. Relationships are just that - no matter how many people in it - something might bugger and you need to be prepared for that.

I can agree that potential diseases are a serious issue. But it's no more a feminist issue than if she were the one cheating on him and possibly bringing home diseases.

This. It's bad. It's just not a >feminist issue.

I just keep thinking, if a feminist lesbian cheats on her partner, is that a misogynist act? Does that interfere with her feminism? No. It' doesn't. And I'd be surprised if many feminists think it does. Yet somehow when it's a man people see it differently, and I just can't agree with that.

SA

I should clarify, I don't mean "this is equivalent to forcing her to have sex with other people", I mean... I don't know, it feels similar to me to the issues of e.g. women being ignored in doctor's offices while the doctor talks to her husband about her symptoms - the woman's right to very important decisions about her (in this case sexual) health being ignored, while her husband/father/other male relative is given control. I think that it's impossible to say "Yes, I believe in feminism" while denying your wife something so fundamental, and it exists within a specific frame of man-woman interaction. So while I would consider a lesbian cheating on her wife, or a straight woman cheating on her husband, to be doing the same thing in terms of endangering her partner's health, I wouldn't consider it to be the same thing in terms of the historical context.

And so while I don't think cheating in itself is necessarily relevant to whether someone is a feminist or not, I think that the specific situation where you're cheating on your wife while continuing to have sex with her is denying her agency regarding her own body and what sexual risks she's exposed to - and given that Kai Cole doesn't say that he wasn't sleeping with her during this time, we can assume that's what happened, since that's something that would definitely have been brought up in the article if it had happened.

I think it's fair to consider that something that calls a man's feminist identification into question, when combined with everything else that's in the article. I certainly don't think it's neutral in this case, given how he was going about it otherwise.

I agree. I think cheating is wrong, but I don't think it has anything to do with feminism The way he talks about the women on the set, though? And the fact that he had an affair with someone he had a power position over? That makes me question his feminism. Damn it. I still love his stuff, though.

I think it does have to do with feminism in the sense that feminism targets things that hurt women, and those very frequently hurt men too.

It's like saying fighting for wage equality isn't feminist if it's a working mom and a stay at home dad because a man is benefiting from it. Or saying fighting for stronger rape laws isn't feminist because men get raped too.

Lying to people about your STI status in order to get them to have sex with you is a serious consent issues. And until the red-pill MRAs jump on the issue, it's something that is a feminist issue.

Feminism doesn't "target" anything.

High five to you for being the first one to say this in a comm that has a high percentage of Joss haters. I completely agree. I am really disappointed in Joss, but the fact that he fucked up pretty badly doesn't mean he can't be a feminist, or that he doesn't genuinely believes in his feminist ideals.

Repeatedly cheating on your spouse makes you a selfish jerk.

It does not make you a misogynist.

Cheating by itself, sure. But in this case, it's relevant when:

* you are the writer/director, slavering over "beautiful, needy, aggressive women" who can be (and were, in the case of Charisma Carpenter) fired by you on your decision

* you present yourself and claim lots of backpats as a feminist, based partly on the female characters you wrote for a show where you were slavering over said "beautiful, needy, aggressive women", etc. etc.

* you do not have the cojones to be honest with your wife, whom you supposedly love about your desire for "duality", i.e. being married and still banging younger chicks on the side, thereby denying the ability to make her own informed choices about her marriage and love life.

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