To be honest, what I mostly hold against Joss is the comment he made in the letter about being surrounded by needy young women and not being able to touch them because married.

Yeah, that was gross.

Which is kinda what makes it predatory.

Maybe parsing it too fine to be persuasive, but that's not my threshold of predation.

That's not Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey, or a pool party at Bryan Singer's house. It wasn't rape. It doesn't sound coercive. (Though I'm not sure.)

I don't know this to be fact but my impression is that he didn't trade sex for opportunities.

But it does look like he gave MORE opportunities for people he had sex with.

Like...that's why Darla was resurrected multiple times. Which is not a reflection of Julie Benz's talent - she rightly had the career she earned. But there was some kind of exchange there.

And, I do remember that collectively there was some surprise when Halfrek became a recurring character because she seemed like a one-off.

Charisma got spun from a supporting character to a lead character.

The reality of Hollywood is that for every decent role, or breakthrough opportunity there are a hundred (probably more) people who could do it. And people have traded sex for those opportunities.

I know David Bowie's history well enough to know that he fucked both men and women as a way to create bonds of loyalty and connection. It was fairly casual with him and, as one person described it, sort of like shaking hands at the end of a party. Sex was a casual and pleasant form of intimacy for him. He fucked most of his staff, and they were happy to do it.

That doesn't mean that Hollywood's system isn't inherently gross - obviously it's not just a meritocracy. There is imbalance and exploitation baked in.

I"m not trying to absolve Joss for taking advantage of that imbalance.

But I don't think that's sexual predation. That's...capitalism. (Again, not excusing it, but I do think exploitation is designed into the system.)

What I imagine happened with somebody like Julie Benz is she got cast into the pilot, she knows she's about to age out of ingenue roles, she's still looking for her break and she thinks, "Well, if I fuck this pudgy ginger nerd I might get him to put me in some flashbacks or something."

That seems plausible to me because that's always been the exchange rate in Hollywood.

And, I can't emphasize this enough, I don't feel judgmental about that choice from the actor's perspective. I don't think it's a big deal.

But I am willing to concede that's just head-canon on my part.

I can't see Joss making a quid pro quo deal saying, "Have sex with me and I'll cast you in a role."

I can see him writing a new or extended role for somebody he had sex with.

That's Sleazy for a married man. But that's not the same thing as predation.

But maybe that's (a) my rationalizing construct or (b) more nuance than necessary when "That guy's sleazy" is enough.

I just don't see Joss on the same plane as a Harvey Weinstein (who not only sexually assaulted women but ruined women's careers who refused him or spoke out).

Still, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it - both in general and in regards to Joss specifically. I'm still sorting through it and checking myself down.

(Part of a bigger personal inquiry into how to gauge my artistic favorites against the behavior of creators.)

Final note: I don't care one way or another about Joss' credentials as a feminist. However, I do think he has created a number of female characters who were interesting and distinct and complex and had a lot of agency: Buffy, Willow, Faith, Cordy, Fred/Illyria, Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, Saffron, Adele, Whiskey.

I still value that because there are a lot of tv creators who don't or can't.

Weinstein belongs in prison. Without accusations from the women he slept with, I'd say Joss is deeply disappointing and I'd like to put my attention toward other creators and writers now.

and I'd like to put my attention toward other creators and writers now.

What if his power and patronage is what allows a woman of a color to become a showrunner?

Unsurprisingly, Plei's take on things mirrors my own.

The bloom has been off the rose for me since long before the info from Kai came to light (pretty much every interview Joss has done in the last decade has ratcheted my personal opinion down another notch—smug egotism does not play well with me even if it's allegedly in jest). But at the same time, he's responsible for the movie I most enjoyed in that decade. And if I rule out the work of everyone in Hollywood I find problematic, I'll be left with Keanu Reeves' acting, Pierce Brosnan's singing, and whatever Betty White is still healthy enough to do.

What if his power and patronage is what allows a woman of a color to become a showrunner?

They already have with his SiL, as dull as I found the show when I was still watching AoS.

I think there are other people in Hollywood doing interesting things more to my current tastes and in part doing them by having a more diverse writing staff and those are the people who are going to be paving the way. Buffy was hugely important to me, as was Angel. They're a fixed part of my past. Whedon's work didn't really evolve as much as it could have, the unexamined affection for various and sundry problematic things that showed in Firefly just got more obvious as they continued to go unexamined and the world and social consciousness largely moved along.

See also: that god-awful Wonder Woman script that he still thinks was the goddamn bomb.

It's a shame: he's obviously talented, though his range isn't broad. But, intellectually, he's still as complacent as your typical man in his position, and that's left his work with a stale, trapped in the past quality.

(Also, specific to the Buffy reboot, Monica Owusu-Breen is already an established showrunner in her own right.)

I'm finding the retroactive Joss was never a good writer and none of his characters are very feminist that I keep seeing all over Twitter very annoying.

I think h was/is an asshole, but he also gave opportunities to a lot of female writers when no-one else was, with nothing expected in return. For that alone, I am not creating him off my list.

I just don't see Joss on the same plane as a Harvey Weinstein (who not only sexually assaulted women but ruined women's careers who refused him or spoke out).

I completely agree.

I'm finding the retroactive Joss was never a good writer and none of his characters are very feminist that I keep seeing all over Twitter very annoying.

Yeah, Tumblr does that too. I think there was stuff that was glossed over at the time because fandom deified him, and I think there's shit leveled at him now that's unfair.

That's a fair assessment, Dana.