Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Wow, Coop... that's... a reach.

Anyway, he's friends with James Gunn and the Russo Brothers, both of whom have released statements about it which make it clear he's confided in them (or I guess confided is the wrong word, seeing as they made statements... but you get what I mean). I'm sorry, there's just... no ambiguity here.

 

I don't know what you're saying. Again, I'm not 100% up to date on this, and just speculating on his mindset.

 

I'm just saying that's not the case; based on what his colleagues have said, it's more than obvious he's been talking about why he left, and it was due to an overwhelming tweet-assault calling him pretty much every shame-label under the sun, including death threats.

 

I thought I pretty much admitted as much? The thing that bugs me about what you're saying is the broader focus on tone over substance, not the specific case. Yes, it's horrible that Joss Whedon, a genuinely well-meaning person, got death threats over problematic gender issues in his works. It's awful when anyone gets death threats, period. But that's not a basis for arguing that people shouldn't criticize problematic gender issues in his works at all.

 

A. Joss Whedon getting run off Twitter sucks.
B. Sadly, it's not uncommon. I hope nobody has told him to grow a thicker skin.
C. There's problematic stuff in Ultron/Marvel and he's not the bastion of feminism some people think he is.
D. He's not as terrible as other people claim, either.
E. He's left Twitter before and come back.

 

I'm really not in a position to debate it, but I'd be very surprised if he'd never gotten a death threat or two before this week. My gut feeling, and nothing else, is that this may have just been the straw that broke the camel's back rather than a sudden angry mob out of nowhere. All I can say for sure is that I haven't seen a single person on Twitter who's actually upset over the movie, so if nothing else I'm following the right people.

 

To be fair, isn't this the flipside of the selective sight/willful ignorance that we all agree is a bad thing, though?

Someone already posted what James Gunn wrote, but linked from there was a fraction of all the hate tweets...

Look, you can think I'm trying to discredit feminism in general, and that's fine by me. I know I'm not---I know I want it to be solvent enough that it makes a difference in my daughter's life instead of burning everyone out the way it seems to be headed now. But I don't care, think whatever about me. However, also, forget about me; this stuff is real. This is a thing, guys. At the very least, this is a thing, and I think ignoring the general phenomenon kind of makes one's social insights irrelevant. This outrage culture is becoming a MASSIVE social phenomenon, and at the very least, it's relevant to this thread...

 

Man, you just won't take "I won't argue with you" for an answer, will you?

 

No, I'm just covering my bases; some people are arguing with me. Sorry, shoving it all into one post and addressing the issue as a whole. I mean, I'd be an idiot to assume there were no preconceived notions here...

 

And I'm not arguing that. People can---even if I choose to dismiss it as petty---and I fully believe in holding someone up to their own standard, in agreement with AF here ^. Maybe it's not my standard, but I'm glad to hold anyone up to their own standard. I think he's an ass, for the most part, so I'm certainly not defending him here... just commenting on the whole vicious cycle.

 

I think calling him the "creator" of Skye is generous--and even if it's technically the case, he's certainly long since divorced himself from whatever SHIELD has done with her since her inception.

 

As I sort of meant to imply by saying he has good intentions, I don't think he's consciously show-off-ish. I just think that he's trying too hard. Like, for instance, he's setting out consciously to write "strong female characters" instead of just writing characters, some of whom happen to be strong women - but he's doing it out of mostly genuine good intentions, not just to win points. I think there's similar reasons behind a lot of the more problematic stuff as well.

 

Quite a few of the people attacking Whedon are just the usual trolls, and many of them are Gamergaters and assorted trolls who are pretending to be feminists or SJW's "for the lulz".

This is pretty much SOP for these sorts whenever a progressive receives criticism; hop on to Twitter and start attacking all sides, including taking the side of the party being critiqued and start insulting feminists, women, SJW's, and progressives in order to really get the mob's blood up. Which isn't to say there aren't plenty of morons doing a five minute hate who honestly think of themselves as progressives, but the extreme voices get heard and the other side is very good at pushing progressive's buttons.

 

That seems rather convenient to assume; reading the Twitter feeds and looking at the profiles, the greater majority of it seems sincere (as odd as it is to use that word in this context). That's not to say it represents a well-thought-out position on all of their parts, but to think trolls make a dent in it seems unfounded. Most of those people are so outraged by radical feminists, I don't see how they'd contain themselves so elaborately.

It's so strange to me that there's this impulse around here to minimize the prominence of this element of our modern culture. It's being acknowledged by almost everyone nowadays, and more often than not, I mosey in here to discuss that element of things because it's what fascinates me most... not, as some folks might find difficult to believe, to take a position, because everywhere else in my life (both socially and in the media I pay attention to), that outrage culture is so overwhelmingly decried. Maybe it's because I toured doing standup and still have ties to that community; there's a different appreciation of free speech in art because we connect so much with satire, which requires the preservation of that free speech... not in the dumb, fallacious way, but on the principle that offensive things are one of the better tools for revealing the hypocrisy of more offensive things, and if someone shies away from it, they're dealing with the world by dishonestly ignoring it... not by working through it, ugly as it may be.

 

Praenomen Cognomen do you read Existential Comics? If you don't you should check it out. Your posts read like some of those comic strips.

 

The lesson here is an old one - the Internet is full of idiots. Also, direct interaction with fans (or non-fans) without moderation is a bad idea.

But I'm sure the Bad Doggies are guffawing about the whole situation, or something. (I wouldn't put it past them to pull an agent provocateur over the whole situation, either).

 

I'm not really that familiar with his work in general but I find it odd that the guy that creates/writes TV series with female lead characters like Buffy, or Dollhouse or even Agents of Shield or Firefly in examples of more of an ensemble cast(do fans not like Melinda May?) becomes a target for this stuff. Even if one can pick out objectionable things here and there, seems like this guy shouldn't be that high on the critique list.

Gotham, Daredevil, Arrow, Flash, even Guardians of the Galaxy - female characters in those works are quite a ways down the cast depth chart - not that where these female characters are in cast importance is the only important thing, but it does seem to me like the more important/leading female characters we get the more chance there is for some of them to be good.

 

It isn't an uncommon thing, and just reading some of the stuff that says the same thing as other people's tweets, and knowing this has been done before, having seen the screen shots of Channers who planned stuff like this (such as last year's "Feminists call for abolishing Father'd Day" hoax I wouldn't write off just how many trolls there are out there and how they can whip up the mob.

OTOH, I very clearly said they were part of it, not the sole group. Whether it's #cancelcolbert of any number of other issues you'll find plenty of people, usually young people who've discovered tumblr and are starting "My First Social Justice War" at the 100-level, often jump into this stuff with the vigor of an ex-smoker faced with an unrepentant smoker.

However, moderate progressives are pretty quick to distance themselves and call those who co-opt messages out, which is a lot more than the other side does.

And I actually respect the other side for that; the right-wing/Tea Party/Republican/Libertarian blocks do an absolutely astounding job of staying on message, and many ops that are run on targets from the chans and elsewhere are cooked up with the idea of using the language and ideas of progressives against them.

Which is why the Honey Badgers being ousted from that comic convention was spun and tweeted and retweeted by a solid bloc of twitter as being censorship and silencing and throwing out poor women creators without any warning instead of them being asked about their intentions and deciding to leave so they could rush to social media to tell everyone how progressive hate women a couple of the Honey Badgers and connected guests were women.

 

Didn't Brian Wood have a reputation as pretty good when it came to female lead characters - right before the big scandal broke?

 

I apologise for linking to Buzzfeed (urgh), but here's what Whedon, himself, has to say on the matter.

Language warning.

 

Welp.