what bugs me the most was the asshole-ish letter he wrote her after they broke up.

I think this is it for me, too. It reminds me of the letter published in Patricia Neal's memoir, where Roald Dahl admitted his affair with her nurse and also blamed her for breaking up their marriage because she couldn't live with him being with the nurse for awhile.

The whole blaming the patriarchy, and mansplaininess, of that letter was so hugely chokingly hypocritical, I can't even.

So much more eloquently put.

blamed her for breaking up their marriage because she couldn't live with him being with the nurse for awhile.

Wow. It's as if they can't hear the sound of the words rattling around in their heads.

t's as if they can't hear the sound of the words rattling around in their heads.

Oh they can hear them and to them they make sense. That's the problem.

Well, shit.

Why do people have to be terrible?

(To be clear, not you people, just people in general and Joss specifically.)

I'm disappointed and sad that he was such a mansplaining manipulative jerk wad to her. But I'm not really surprised about any of it.

What he did to her is basically, as I understand it, what my ex-not!husband did to me. I completely believe she has an anxiety disorder now.

I still like his work, no more or less than before, but I don't like him anymore. Alas.

Yeah, the bloom had been fading off that rose for me with every interview for years now. But Buffy is still my all-time favorite TV show, and I'll always be grateful that it put me in contact with at least half of the friends I currently have.

Yeah, it's not going to take away everything Buffy has meant to me (THING NUMBER ONE: YOU PEOPLE), but I've been doing a lot of hard thinking not only about Joss being a jerk (which has been evident for a while now), but about how much of a pass he's gotten on Buffy's coattails for work that's often not really at all feminist. And honestly about BtVS itself -- which was feminist for its time in some ways, but not really in others, and got too much credit for being, like, the first and only feminist show in the history of ever!!!1! and nope.

I'm just sad. This is so wrong. Not Bill Cosby wrong (thanks for ruining a good portion of my childhood you asshole), but still - wrong like a wrong-thing that's wrong in wrongville.

I haven't been surprised much by any of this. There's always been undertones of this sort of thing in Joss's work. Always. I never took his Feminist reputation very seriously, and I've tended to see him as the kind of guy who signs up for Women's Studies classes primarily as a way to meet women.