Joss Whedon deletes twitter account following mass of feminist criticism
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I'm sure that most upset are adults and adults can be expected to take responsibility for their own wild jumps to conclusions. "Why didn't you tell me sooner a wild horde of feminists didn't drive you off you inconsiderate bastard!" is just pretty laughable. If you jump to conclusions then blame yourselfRedd the Sock said:
Wow. I sort of feel bad for the guy now. He made a kick-ass movie with some good character backstory and growth, and that's what it got him.CD-R said:
Eh, it's not ok, and it shouldn't happen, the people that made some of those Tweets should feel ashamed of themselves, if they can even feel shame, I find a lot of Twitter personalities to be shameless attention hogs who will say whatever gets them the biggest response.Spaceman Spiff said:
That said, Mr. Whedon himself has gone through this kind of thing before, even before social media he's gotten his share of hate mail and likely death threats. Pretty much any big name creator does, Whedon has mentioned getting tons of hate mail in the past years before Twitter was a thing.
Fans can be an awesome positive thing, but they can also be incredibly hostile, whiny, and turn on you with the slightest provocation. You can create a piece of art beloved by millions, some fans will always find something worth complaining about, most will do so with varying degrees of intelligence and skill, many with perfectly valid gripes and criticisms, but there will always be some that can take a perfectly legitimate point and spin the hyperbole in a disgusting direction with threats or personal insults.
I'm confused. Was Black Widow supposed to be a transsexual? This is the first I have heard about that being the case if true. If not, then why would people be upset that she doesn't have balls? or wasn't to be written as having balls? It seems an odd choice of item to get upset about if it was never intended to be the case in the first place. None of the characters were ever intended to be like me, should I be offended by that fact? Perhaps I have been interneting wrong this whole time. I don't think I have the requisite constant defensiveness, entitlement, and frothing outrage to be doing it correctly I guess.
Who's "blaming" anyone?Silvanus said:
I'm simply wondering where FeministFrequency stands in regards to the horrible harassment directed at Joss Whedon, considering half of it - to wit, one Jonathan "Josh" "Full"McIntosh - seems to have done their fair share to reinforce and normalize such problematic behavior towards him on Twitter.
See my response above.EternallyBored said:
There was nothing there directly addressing or insulting Joss Whedon; only talking about the film itself, as critics do all the time. That's not "reinforcing problematic behaviour" by any reasonable definition.Ogoid said:
You were heavily insinuating that he should have given some message of support. If you actually believe that, stand by it, don't back out if it with poor sarcasm.
By my count, I remember reading at least two articles explaining why Whedon isn't all he's cracked up to be. For example: http://www.cracked.com/article/166_5-reasons-it-sucks-being-joss-whedon-fan/. That one also has a go at the fans too.Bat Vader said:
"Reasonable" is not an adjective I would associate with FullMcIntosh at the point where the curve of his thought processes steers closest to that of regular human beings right before once again plunging away from it into mathematical infinity, let alone in any of those tweets.Silvanus said:
Josh's tweets, though, most definitely echoed and gave credibility (what with him being a "trained", "senior" "feminist") to the toxic criticism Whedon was subjected to. Most problematic, if you ask me.
Why, yes, yes I was. Because, see, as far as I'm concerned, either people saying mean things to you on Twitter is a very bad thing (worth a whole lot of Patreon money, even), or it isn't; much as I'm sure he'd like it, he really doesn't get to have it both ways.
So, the dopey internet flavoured reaction to something on the internet was an overreaction? Who knew!
As for the tangential issue of how Black Widow was handled in AoU? I can see some critics points, and I'm a big Marvel fan and a huge Whedon fan. I don't think her portrayal in this film improves on The Winter Soldier at all, and in some ways, it's a step back (then again AoU felt like it had precisely 742 characters... TWS simply had more character room to manoeuvre, which is one reason I think it's a much better film than the second team-up event).
You "explain" how a clock works, you don't 'explain' how a person isn't all they're "cracked up to be". Subjective pisstake article is subjective.maninahat said:
As for the tangential issue of how Black Widow was handled in AoU? I can see some critics points, and I'm a big Marvel fan and a huge Whedon fan. I don't think her portrayal in this film improves on The Winter Soldier at all, and in some ways, it's a step back (then again AoU felt like it had precisely 742 characters... TWS simply had more character room to manoeuvre, which is one reason I think it's a much better film than the second team-up event).
Good thing that's not how I used the word, then.Ogoid said:
And you make no distinction between criticising an individual's work, and insulting the individual? No distinction between criticism and harassment? That's simplistic to the point of absurdity.Ogoid said:
So it is, and I didn't wish to imply otherwise.Silvanus said:
Oh, I make that distinction, all right. Josh, on the other hand, very frequently doesn't, seeing, for exemple, how he (or maybe that was actually the half of FeministFrequency that doesn't stand behind the curtain) has seen fit to accuse "angry youtubers" like AlphaOmegaSin or Thunderf00t of "slander and strawmanning" for criticism not any more insulting or personal than those he directed at Age of Ultron and Joss Whedon.
Some chorus that sings songs with themes that are connected to social justice in some way. I was told they have discussions as well as rehearsals, so if you're part of the group, you will end up talking about social justice at some point. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if she feels the same way about Black Widow at the end of the movie.SaneAmongInsane said:
There are several reasons which started before the Twitter Debacle:Fox12 said:
(Spoilers Below, since they involve things that happened in Avengers 2)
1: Black Widow is captured and used as a hostage in the movie. This is perhaps the most frequent source of liberal outrage for those who mention serious reasons. Basically she's the only woman on the team and she gets captured and put in a cage making her a "Damsel In Distress" however so briefly which is of course viewed as being sexist.
2: In addition to the point above there are those who do not understand the point of "Black Widow" and that she's not REALLY a super hero either in the comics or in the movies, and that's part of the point of the character. It seems a lot of people seem to think she's supposed to be an Avenger so little girls have a super hero to cheer for like "Thor" or "Iron Man", and really that's not who she is or has ever been. The Black Widow is a morally ambigious black ops machine who has worn the hat of both hero and villain and changed sides several times. She provides a sort of grounding for The Avengers and represents a tie to grey areas inherent in shield. As she's built it she's a character who as she herself will point out is a monster, she's going to kill people and such where other heroes won't. Pointing out who she is in Avengers 2 is probably a prelude to the typical "Black Widow switches sides" plot in later episodes, and whether it's real or she's a double agent would be up in the air because she does both.
Basically I think a lot of the problem derives from movie fans who are not familiar with the character and thus do not "get it" and have somehow come about unusual expectations. Just the name "Black Widow" should make it clear that even though she's usually a bad guy nowadays, she is NOT a nice person the same way other heroes are.
3: While I understand the entire thing with them both "being monsters inside" I do have to admit the romance plot with The Hulk was pushing it. From the comics perspective in particular it should be noted that Black Widow classically hooks up with Captain America or Iron Man on average, and indeed one character running around right now due to temporal manipulation is the son of Captain America and Black Widow (in the comics of course). What's more The Hulk has a well known love interest in Betty Ross, who MUCH later winds up becoming the Red She Hulk (not to be confused with regular, green, she-hulk).
I suspect one of the reasons why so many people jumped on Joss especially with transgender anger is because there were rumors that Black Widow was going to be a lesbian, and even a few points were made showing her and Yelena (the other Black Widow) as both being at least Bi-sexual in mature audience systems if I recall. Given that she didn't hook up with anyone was something certain interests seemed to be getting giddy about, and I think her being paired up with someone in a normal heterosexual relationship (or trying to build one) disappointed certain people.
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To put things into perspective as well Hawkeye makes a little more sense in the comics, a side of the character that is frequently overlooked is that the guy is a pretty good gadgeteer himself. In the comics at least he makes all those arrows himself and has tons of them, even making things in the past that have allowed him to punch well above his weight class. He frequently surprises people (and likes it that way) because he's the guy who doesn't get the credit of a Tony Stark or Reed Richards and yet has made arrows and such capable of shutting down powered armor suits like the one Iron Man has. It's kind of amusing that he never gets an invite to all the genius meetings, yet he always has this habit of planning way ahead for known villains and having just the right weapons on hand miniaturized down to the size of an arrowhead. In the movies he is actually portrayed as being just an archer who seems to be getting his tech from shield, and mostly seems to used explosive arrows like a Rambo movie, in the comics he's a lot more effective, especially on a team. A lot of times it seems the point is again, that people forget about him. Think about how long he's been around and how many times he's credibly saved the day at a crucial moment through gadgeteering. He's probably got a bigger arsenal in his quiver than Iron Man has in his suit.
Hawkeye isn't really an issue though, I'm rambling because some people in this thread wondered why he's even there, which at least in the movie is a valid point.
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Finally I'll say that this is the kind of reason I tend to be so anti-liberal, I knew things were going to wind up snowballing into this. I tend to use "liberal" negatively as a way of differentiating from general Democrats, some of whom I actually agree with. Liberals being those who push a social agenda to the exclusion of reality and common sense, using any means necessary.
Joss Whedon should logically be one of the big heroes of doing diversity right in the media. He was doing strong, diverse, characters before almost anyone else and build phenomenally popular IPs without offending anyone. This is a guy who not only turned a female super hero into a pop culture phenomena, but also had an on-TV multi-season lesbian relationship between two actresses who were not pure cheesecake, one of them was even a Jew turned Wiccan. There aren't many who had a positive influence on these issues within pop culture as Joss Whedon, and yet he's being called some kind of woman-hating gay basher? People complain about he's anti-feminist because they didn't like some of the things that happened with Black Widow, granted I'm not a huge fan of some of the things he did in "Age Of Ultron" myself, but trying to turn this into some kind of political/social attack on him is really pushing it. This is the guy who did "Firefly", "Angel", "Buffy", and "Dollhouse" and whom involvement with gave people like Eliza Dushku and Summer Glau the ommph to get their shot at their own series. Summer Glau was the person they cast as a literal female terminator for example. Felicia Day is another one of his alumni. One thing about Joss Whedon is that he has an incredible eye for talent, especially female talent, almost everyone involved in his shows (there are exceptions) went on to other things and other projects, some did of course fail, but they got the chances, and even the failures weren't terrible. Eliza Dushku for example had two series plus other appearances, Summer only held one show for 2 seasons (Terminator) but has shown up in bit parts otherwise but seems to have been working pretty consistently. Felicia day who was just a bit of his productions managed to negotiate things into a cult celebrity on the internet, and has then showed up fairly regularly as a supporting character in other shows (Eureka, Supernatural, etc..). Think about how many of the actresses known for playing strong female characters got there, it's because of him. That makes an attack on Joss Whedon of all people for these reasons absolutely ridiculous. Sure he's no saint, nobody is, and some of the negative stories told about him over the years might be true, but this is one thing no sane person should be criticizing him of all people for.
I find it hilarious that for all his criticism of the "Violent Patriarch" his words feel pretty damn violent to me. If Anita has something to say on the subject I'd be glad to hear it, I wonder what she thinks of the movie in that context all things considered.Ogoid said:That's nice of her.Silvanus said:
I wonder if her co-writer and producer also extended his best wishes.
Oh. Guess that's probably a "no", then.
