(no subject)
Okay so apparently there's a movement on tumblr lately discussing how women get punished for sex in Buffy, and that therefore Joss is no feminist. Yes it's a very old argument at this point lol, but I wanted to respond because I don't really agree with that. Obviously people have linked Buffy's sexual experiences together and seen messages that the show is apparently putting across, but when watching the show I never got the sense that we were supposed to see Buffy as being deserving of punishment for having sex
The experiences with Angel and Parker were experiences that a lot of young girls go through on the journey into adulthood, and that seemed to be all that the writers were going for there. There was never any message or lecturing on how Buffy should have waited longer before sleeping with Parker, Buffy feels like a fool for falling for Parker's lines and beats herself up over it sure, but her friends all comfort her and say that Parker is the jerk. It's made very clear that Parker was the only one in the wrong for how he played Buffy, Willow laughs in his face in Bear Bad over what an obvious player he is, Riley punches him in the face for making degrading remarks about using Buffy, and caveslayer Buffy bops him on the head with a wooden stick
There were also never any lecturing or finger-wagging in Innocence along the lines of "what were you thinking to sleep with someone at your age", it was all about the heartbreak of first love and the guy changing after you've slept with him. None of Buffy's friends ever say that she was in the wrong for sex with Angel (Xander later questions Buffy letting her heart get in the way with Angelus, but never for the actual sex), in fact Willow was encouraging Buffy to seize the day. Joyce (who doesn't have all the facts when she meets "stalker Angelus") does give Buffy a motherly lecture on how she doesn't understand Buffy's bad judgement in sleeping with someone so clearly unstable, but the more knowledge Giles tells Buffy that he knows that she wants to hear that she did a bad thing, but all she will get from him is his respect and admiration. Is that not the exact opposite of shaming Buffy for her sexual choices?
And there are complaints that Buffy was never allowed to be in a positive sexual relationship, but isn't that exactly what she does enjoy with Riley in season 4 before viewers complained about how bored they were by that? Their first sexual encounter is portrayed very positively in The I In Team with them both turned on after patrolling, and in Where The Wild Things Are the whole point of that episode was that the spirits being released were caused by an evil woman who repressed and shamed children for perfectly healthy and normal sexual desires, not that Buffy and Riley were the ones at fault for having too much sex! Buffy and Riley were not punished or blamed for it, it was played as a joke that they got so wrapped up in the sex they were having that they ignored everything else, not anything that the gang seriously criticised them for.
If anything Buffy did a whole lot better than Angel who was literally cursed, he wasn't able to control himself from turning into a soulless monster after a single sexual encounter with Buffy (and later Cordelia on Ats sort of in Awakening), yet everyone connects the sex is bad message from their encounter with Buffy's character? Buffy was the one who could move on to sex with Riley and talk about how happy she was with him, while Angel complained that he wasn't "allowed". Ats was the show that joked about sex being bad, for precisely that reason that Angel is terrified to let go and be intimate with anyone, yet I've mostly only seen viewers make connections with Buffy's character when they complain about the message that sex is a bad thing?
And I think it's important to remember that Buffy's sexual relationships with Angel and Spike were disastrous mostly because she was having sex with vampires (sex with ice cream is a memorable part of Buffy and human Angel's perfect day in I Will Remember You, but never connected with Angel's decision to reverse time), something that was equally seen as a terrible decision when Riley sneaks off in his downward spiral to get sucked on by them. In the Buffyverse vampires are supposed to be soulless monsters more or less, so it's hardly going to be portrayed as a positive for anyone (male or female) to start sleeping with one whilst in the midst of a serious depression. To me that's not the show giving the message that ANY sexual encounter that a woman has is bad
Also Anya was never shamed for having sex, she initiates the relationship in The Harsh Light Of Day by approaching Xander to say that she can't stop thinking about him, let's have sex to get it out of our system. And when they do get into a relationship she's usually portrayed as having a bigger sexual appetite than Xander, she complains in Where The Wild Things Are about why didn't they have sex last night, in The I In Team she makes an off-hand comment about how she and Xander have enjoyed spanking, in Into The Woods she tells Buffy about how much fun she and Xander had with the training equipment room and the vaulting horse. Yeah the other characters got embarrassed with Anya talking about her sex life so openly, as they always did with any of Anya's lack of social graces, but she was never slut-slamed for it that I recall. She has several one-night stands with Xander in season 7 after their relationship ends, before they eventually agree to leave it as that, hardly what you would expect from a show that disapproved of casual sex
Willow's first sexual experience with Oz was also portrayed very positively with them having another session in Oz's van right before the graduation ceremony. They do eventually break-up over Oz's werewolf side in Wild At Heart, but it's never remotely implied as being a punishment for sex, Willow even talks to Xander in that episode about being concerned at Oz losing interest in having sex with her and what that means for their relationship.
And okay granted the show pushed the good girl/bad girl rather heavily in season 3 with Faith, but it's not like reformed Faith suddenly swears off sex! She's very flirty with Spike in Touched and talks about her various past kinky sexual encounters, and then in End Of Days Principal Wood has to convince Faith not to just dismiss their sex as nothing more than a one-night stand, but he never slut shames her for it. If anything the show plays it jokingly when Faith gets insulted at Wood saying that she's not sexually experienced in comparison to him, she starts to unbutton her pants and say that we're having sex again right now if that last experience wasn't memorable enough for you
Without all of the off-screen discussion of the sex is bad messages that viewers have picked up on, I wonder how many young girls watching Buffy would really get the feeling that the show is telling them that any kind of sex is bad? At worst maybe the messages of Surprise/Innocence might be to wait until you are really sure that you're ready and know everything about the guy well enough (how awful), but who was ever going to take away the message that Buffy shouldn't have been enjoying a sexual relationship with her college boyfriend, that she shouldn't have had sex with Angel in IWRY, that Willow and Oz shouldn't have had sex in Graduation Day, that Xander should have never slept with Anya?
The experiences with Angel and Parker were experiences that a lot of young girls go through on the journey into adulthood, and that seemed to be all that the writers were going for there. There was never any message or lecturing on how Buffy should have waited longer before sleeping with Parker, Buffy feels like a fool for falling for Parker's lines and beats herself up over it sure, but her friends all comfort her and say that Parker is the jerk. It's made very clear that Parker was the only one in the wrong for how he played Buffy, Willow laughs in his face in Bear Bad over what an obvious player he is, Riley punches him in the face for making degrading remarks about using Buffy, and caveslayer Buffy bops him on the head with a wooden stick
There were also never any lecturing or finger-wagging in Innocence along the lines of "what were you thinking to sleep with someone at your age", it was all about the heartbreak of first love and the guy changing after you've slept with him. None of Buffy's friends ever say that she was in the wrong for sex with Angel (Xander later questions Buffy letting her heart get in the way with Angelus, but never for the actual sex), in fact Willow was encouraging Buffy to seize the day. Joyce (who doesn't have all the facts when she meets "stalker Angelus") does give Buffy a motherly lecture on how she doesn't understand Buffy's bad judgement in sleeping with someone so clearly unstable, but the more knowledge Giles tells Buffy that he knows that she wants to hear that she did a bad thing, but all she will get from him is his respect and admiration. Is that not the exact opposite of shaming Buffy for her sexual choices?
And there are complaints that Buffy was never allowed to be in a positive sexual relationship, but isn't that exactly what she does enjoy with Riley in season 4 before viewers complained about how bored they were by that? Their first sexual encounter is portrayed very positively in The I In Team with them both turned on after patrolling, and in Where The Wild Things Are the whole point of that episode was that the spirits being released were caused by an evil woman who repressed and shamed children for perfectly healthy and normal sexual desires, not that Buffy and Riley were the ones at fault for having too much sex! Buffy and Riley were not punished or blamed for it, it was played as a joke that they got so wrapped up in the sex they were having that they ignored everything else, not anything that the gang seriously criticised them for.
If anything Buffy did a whole lot better than Angel who was literally cursed, he wasn't able to control himself from turning into a soulless monster after a single sexual encounter with Buffy (and later Cordelia on Ats sort of in Awakening), yet everyone connects the sex is bad message from their encounter with Buffy's character? Buffy was the one who could move on to sex with Riley and talk about how happy she was with him, while Angel complained that he wasn't "allowed". Ats was the show that joked about sex being bad, for precisely that reason that Angel is terrified to let go and be intimate with anyone, yet I've mostly only seen viewers make connections with Buffy's character when they complain about the message that sex is a bad thing?
And I think it's important to remember that Buffy's sexual relationships with Angel and Spike were disastrous mostly because she was having sex with vampires (sex with ice cream is a memorable part of Buffy and human Angel's perfect day in I Will Remember You, but never connected with Angel's decision to reverse time), something that was equally seen as a terrible decision when Riley sneaks off in his downward spiral to get sucked on by them. In the Buffyverse vampires are supposed to be soulless monsters more or less, so it's hardly going to be portrayed as a positive for anyone (male or female) to start sleeping with one whilst in the midst of a serious depression. To me that's not the show giving the message that ANY sexual encounter that a woman has is bad
Also Anya was never shamed for having sex, she initiates the relationship in The Harsh Light Of Day by approaching Xander to say that she can't stop thinking about him, let's have sex to get it out of our system. And when they do get into a relationship she's usually portrayed as having a bigger sexual appetite than Xander, she complains in Where The Wild Things Are about why didn't they have sex last night, in The I In Team she makes an off-hand comment about how she and Xander have enjoyed spanking, in Into The Woods she tells Buffy about how much fun she and Xander had with the training equipment room and the vaulting horse. Yeah the other characters got embarrassed with Anya talking about her sex life so openly, as they always did with any of Anya's lack of social graces, but she was never slut-slamed for it that I recall. She has several one-night stands with Xander in season 7 after their relationship ends, before they eventually agree to leave it as that, hardly what you would expect from a show that disapproved of casual sex
Willow's first sexual experience with Oz was also portrayed very positively with them having another session in Oz's van right before the graduation ceremony. They do eventually break-up over Oz's werewolf side in Wild At Heart, but it's never remotely implied as being a punishment for sex, Willow even talks to Xander in that episode about being concerned at Oz losing interest in having sex with her and what that means for their relationship.
And okay granted the show pushed the good girl/bad girl rather heavily in season 3 with Faith, but it's not like reformed Faith suddenly swears off sex! She's very flirty with Spike in Touched and talks about her various past kinky sexual encounters, and then in End Of Days Principal Wood has to convince Faith not to just dismiss their sex as nothing more than a one-night stand, but he never slut shames her for it. If anything the show plays it jokingly when Faith gets insulted at Wood saying that she's not sexually experienced in comparison to him, she starts to unbutton her pants and say that we're having sex again right now if that last experience wasn't memorable enough for you
Without all of the off-screen discussion of the sex is bad messages that viewers have picked up on, I wonder how many young girls watching Buffy would really get the feeling that the show is telling them that any kind of sex is bad? At worst maybe the messages of Surprise/Innocence might be to wait until you are really sure that you're ready and know everything about the guy well enough (how awful), but who was ever going to take away the message that Buffy shouldn't have been enjoying a sexual relationship with her college boyfriend, that she shouldn't have had sex with Angel in IWRY, that Willow and Oz shouldn't have had sex in Graduation Day, that Xander should have never slept with Anya?