I'm thinking a Maxim reader might not be as offended by the notion of paying for sex than, well, this forum. Better can be a short term thing.

I don't think there's anything wrong with Topher hiring Sierra to hang around with.

He didn't *hire* her, he imprinted a personality on her with the consent of Boyd, not Sierra.

Given the amount of men who use brothels throughout history and buy Maxim, no?

Brothels also prey on women who have few choices, but at least they have more choice on a client by client basis than the Dolls. (sometimes not a *lot* of choice, but...) Every time a Doll has a sexual assignment, that Doll is raped.

Prostitutes get raped too sometimes- it's really not as benign a situation for the women that you are painting.

I'm thinking a Maxim reader might not be as offended by the notion of paying for sex

So you're in the camp of paying for sex with an Active is equivalent to hiring a hooker?

I'm not a Maxim buyer, but it is a magazine I pick up at the newstands to read through, and I see a difference.

[link]

So, at this point, people were like, "um, is noted feminist auteur Joss Whedon aware that he is making a show about forced prostitution and rape?" Whedon's politics have repeatedly been called into question, and usually for damn good reason. (Here is the thing about doing stuff that appeals to politically engaged audiences: you cannot fuck up politically and have people fail to notice or just go, "oh well, par for the course, ha ha ha!" You get yelled at. Sorry. Deal.) Dollhouse, in particular, had the potential to be hugely offensive. Here is the thing: Whedon, unlike most folks and many feminist or progressive-identified dudes, seems to actually listen when he is called out and to improve his work accordingly. In the case of Dollhouse, I think he is doing smarter work than he ever was. Getting smarter about oppression, I would submit to you, requires making the visible manifestations of it or metaphors for it much, much uglier.

The answer to whether Joss Whedon and his showrunners know how rape-culturey the entire Dollhouse concept is would seem to be, at this point, a big huge Yes.

The answer to whether Joss Whedon and his showrunners know how rape-culturey the entire Dollhouse concept is would seem to be, at this point, a big huge Yes.

Uh huh, and then what?

What was that post's last line:

Which, as I found out while writing this piece, has pretty much been cancelled.

in reference to?

Brenda:

The enemy surrounds you and controls you and is much, much bigger than any one person. The enemy is in your head: it controls what you're allowed to think, what you're allowed to know, who you're allowed to be. Resistance, this time, isn't about throwing punches. It's about getting your mind back. It's about reclaiming your right to define who you are - your right to be a person.

It does go on from there.

I was just really being snippy about what exactly their being aware of it is supposed to prove, if they're not taking the concept and doing something with it. Which, maybe they're headed somewhere but I think there's a lot still on faith here.

I was just really being snippy about what exactly their being aware of it is supposed to prove

Well, up until "Man On The Street" apparently we didn't know they were aware of it. I can't imagine an entire production not having realised there were consent issues inherent in their premise, but there you go.

They're less than half a season in. I think they have done things with it, and hopefully they're not finished yet.

It's about getting your mind back. It's about reclaiming your right to define who you are - your right to be a person.

Which is one of the things I've appreciated about the show. What's occurred to me, over the last couple of episodes, is this is a show that really needs to have a proper ending, to redeem what's happened to the characters. Echo, Victor, Sierra, November and the rest need to be able to get their minds back, and ultimately, that needs to be enacted through Echo. (It is, after all, her show.)

But for the rest of the main characters, it's a fundamentally different journey: It's about, when it all comes down, whether or not they make a stand against the evil they've perpetrated, or whether they remain consumed by it. (Perhaps it's all this pandemic talk these days. I've got Stephen King's "The Stand" on my mind.)

And then there's poor Ballard, who's been set up as the masculine action hero, and who will probably die before the story's resolution. Assuming the show