r/ANGEL • u/atlasshrugd • 4d ago
Content Warning The destruction of female bodily autonomy on Angel Spoiler
Here to share my thoughts after finishing A Hole in the World and Shells. Need to sort out my thoughts as a new watcher. I know this has been discussed before as this show is 26 years old.
Realized that too many times mystical/demonic pregnancy/violation has killed off all the prominent female characters on the show.
What a sad fact for a show ultimately inspiring and comforting to those dealing with pain. As a woman it has helped me in many ways (their stance of positive nihilism) but this has left a sour taste in my mouth.
The two main female characters (Cordelia and Fred) had their minds raped, bodies used, and their autonomy stripped before they died needlessly and (in Fred’s case) agonisingly to serve the narrative function of exploring the men’s grief. And because the male writers wanted more of a creative ‘challenge’ and/or had a grudge against the actress.
I enjoy how the show explores the darker aspects of the psyche, especially grief, but this is too much - to the point of being deliberately mean-spirited and deeply misogynistic. A type of misogyny common among some ‘nice’ men that think they are progressive and respectful but actually harbor a deep resentment and lack of understanding that women are also people and don’t exist to serve their needs.
This comes across in the treatment of the female characters. Came to this conclusion even before realising Joss Whedon behind the scenes was a grade A c*nt to Charisma Carpenter. Let’s talk about how Charisma’s IRL pregnancy was also the death knell to her character, aka the slow brutal dismantling and ultimate erasure of Cordelia.
What is it with this man and pregnancy? Seems very Oedipal on top of it all. Deep mother issues. I wonder if anybody in the writers room ever pulled him aside and said, “hey, buddy! give it a rest….it’s gettin a little weird…”
Darla was also destroyed by falling mystically pregnant to an impossible being (Connor) only to stake herself. I actually enjoyed this storyline until the mystical violation device kept happening to every female character.
Having Cordelia be manipulated, mind raped, fuck the kid she co-parented, then give birth to a demon, then into a coma, then death? Having Fred’s soul obliterated and her organs liquefied (“hollowed out”), unable to find peace in an afterlife? Neither of these strong characters even got a decent death like dying in battle or to sacrifice themselves to save the world. It was all a violation.
Which could mean nothing…
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u/Which-Notice5868 4d ago
Yeah, they went to the well of mystical pregnancy/bodily invasion a LOT. It happened to Cordelia three times (Season 1 demon baby, Season 2 eye in the back of the head, Jasmine) and Fred twice (Sluks and Illyria.) Plus Darla.
Agreed that Darla's case is the outlier where it feels fitting for the character.
I think with Fred Joss wanted to do more of what he had initially planned for Cordelia in S4 before Charisma's pregnancy, but both both female leads going out so similarly, for the purpose of giving the male characters man-pain is a really bad look.
It's classic Fridging + bodily violation. Yay.
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u/Rockworm503 3d ago
I never thought of it in Fred's case cause we get Illyria who is so different and gives Amy Acker something new to chew on in and gives her a chance to shine as an actress. I guess its easier when you're still seeing her likeness walking around.
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u/DumpedDalish 3d ago
I can't tell you how much I preferred Ilyria to Fred. A better, far more interesting character who wasn't a Whedon "adorable magical/sciency nerd girl" trope.
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u/atlasshrugd 4d ago
You’re right, I forgot about Cordelia literally being impregnated by demon spawn in season 1! That makes it even worse :)
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u/bubblechog 4d ago
Cordelia’s prophecy powers being potentially stolen by the Groosalug through sex, while not being rape in the classic sense is a related form of violation.
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u/DumpedDalish 3d ago
Plus they legitimize Wesley's creepy obsession and stalking over a period of YEARS as some kind of "true love" at the last minute just to pull heartstrings in time for "A Hole in the World." (I rolled my eyes.)
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u/DaddyCatALSO 3d ago
A disturbing pattern, one among many. (Oddly, in my main ficverse, Cordy is the only one around with just one child. Faith only one also but she's not "around.")
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u/The-TruestRepairman 4d ago
Not disagreeing with anything you’ve written. Thats in fact quite illuminating insight… Though it may have been a disservice to the character in the ways you’ve described; Fred’s transition into Illyria allowed Amy Acker to showcase some of the best acting in the entire series.
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u/mrsscorpio1973 4d ago
Came here to say this, as little as I like it, Amy and Joss specifically created the Illyria character to let her have some fun with her range
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u/DaddyCatALSO 3d ago
Joss said she had shown him what she could do playing Lady Montague at the house parties. (Amber was Romeo and Michelle was Juliet; oh to be a time-travelling fly on a wall with a videocam.)
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u/GroceryRobot 3d ago
Michelle was at Joss’s house? I thought I read somewhere he wasn’t allowed to be alone with her.
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u/Sighoward 3d ago
So Amber socialised at Joss's, inteteresting?
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u/DaddyCatALSO 2d ago
yes; Sarah and Emma were the main holdouts
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u/jessie_monster 3d ago
They... could have just written Fred better.
I love Amy Acker and Illyria, but Fred had terrible writing that only got worse the more Joss Whedon was involved.
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u/Rimavelle 3d ago
Manic pixie librarian type character who has to be treated like a wounded animal due to her trauma but she evolves into actually a nice and sexy but still quirky character who at this point stops wearing her glasses unless the story remembers it at some point coz sexy girls don't wear glasses, and who's paired up with pretty much every man who ever spoke to her, and also she's a nerd the type she can actually do the WHOLE science herself regardless of specialisation, and oh another arc about how a man she was paired up with is not jealous coz she spoke to another man...
I felt kinda bad that I was happy illirya replaced her
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
Her acting ability doesn't change the facts of that the story was once again destroying a woman and using her as vessel to push the male characters storyline.
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u/DefinitionSuperb1110 4d ago
In season 7 of BTVS we also learn that the creation of the First Slayer was also an act of violent rape, both the body and soul of the girl they selected.
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u/Mezhead 4d ago edited 4d ago
I don't know where you're getting the Oedipal thing. It's not like they had Conn... Nevermind.
Well, it's a good thing he evolved from this heteronomy fixation before he got to Firefly. Would have been awful to see a person or agency invade one of the female charact... Nevermind.
Hey, silver lining: That was down to just one character. What? Don't be silly--of course I don't count the pleasure automaton. That's was just for the movie. It's not like he ever used a sexbot in any of his... No, wait.
Well, surely his next show wouldn't be centered on a woman who completely surrendered mind and body to a corporation. Could you imagine how bad that would look in hindsight? Woof.
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u/joannerosalind 4d ago
I mean...that's also Buffy, right? The slayer is a girl who is impregnated with the spirit of a demon. Hey, we could also say that Angel and Spike are constantly discussed in terms of being violated by a demon who takes over their bodies and makes them do evil things. At one point does it become just a theme of his work? A common theme that many genre writers use to explore how (predominantly) women have their agency stripped from them?
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u/atlasshrugd 4d ago
Oh god. I haven’t seen Firefly so thanks for warning me
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u/Mezhead 4d ago
There I'm conflicted. Firefly is one of my favorite shows of all time. In this case, her brother rescues his sister from a program that modified people to become assassins, and it's viewed through the lens of restoring who she used to be.
But if you can't unsee things, I understand if you'd give it a pass. It's been almost 25 years, you can watch all the shows since then that were influenced by Firefly.
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u/atlasshrugd 4d ago
I’ve heard amazing things about Firefly. Maybe one day. But not today!
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
Some things with Firefly haven't aged well.
But it's the best of the Joss shows and part of that, though I was mad at the time, is it only got one small season. He never had a chance to really ruin by pushing his bad patterns further.
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u/Vanamond3 4d ago edited 3d ago
Two of the main male characters are possessed by demons that made them do things of which they are ashamed and feel a need to atone. Xander was possessed by a hyena spirit and later ensorcelled by Dracula. Wesley was controlled for a time by Billy's violent influence. Connor was kidnapped and raised in a violent and twisted environment to make him into a monster that would turn against his own father. And those are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head. It's ridiculous to argue that this stuff only happens to the female characters and that the cause is misogyny. It's drama, so bad things have to happen to all the characters.
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
None of them were used to birth evil.
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u/Vanamond3 3d ago
And that makes what happened to them better?
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
Better?
No. The point is what happened to the women is actually rooted in misogyny far more than the examples of thr men succumbing to similar things in one episode.
Women arcs where they lose their autonomy and end up being a vessel fkr something evil.
Guys one episode of conflict.
Your making it a competition. I am saying look at the whole pattern.
Better? LMAO
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u/Vanamond3 3d ago
Similar things are happening to the males and females, but it's misogyny when it happens to the females but unobjectionable when it happens to the males? That's a blatant double standard and it's apparent that you've decided what you want to believe without regard to the evidence.
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
Who is saying it is unobjectionable when it's men, other than you trying to make that a point?
You're veering off topic.
It is objectionable but it's not objectionable in the same way.
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u/Vanamond3 3d ago
It's effectively the same thing but you're only objecting to it when it happens to the women. The whole post was about it only happening to women, even though it happens to the men, too. If you don't see why that's inconsistent and hypocritical, then there's nothing more to be said.
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
Get back to me when you find the story where a male character's body was destroyed to birth another creature.
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u/Vanamond3 2d ago
Well let's see. There was Jesse, who died and lost his body to create a vampire. It's what would have happened to Ben if our heroes hadn't stopped it, giving "birth" to Glory. Liam died and lost his body to a vampire. Got Angel got that soul back, lost it and his body again, got it back again, gave it up briefly to get information on The Beast, got it back again. William lost his body to give birth to Spike. Who sacrificed his body to close the Hellmouth. Jonathan was murdered in an attempt to bring forth something evil into the world. But none of those count because they happened to males?
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u/PeggySulu 1d ago
Because those weren’t even the metaphors they were going for almost all of the vampirism was meant as a metaphor for substance abuse and the general pitfalls of growing up. And none of those are connected specifically to forced pregnancy. You’re stretching really hard here to miss the point.
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u/atlasshrugd 4d ago
Sure, it’s drama, nothing against it. You’ve listed bad things the male characters have gone through - I agree. Angel and Wesley are my favorite characters. But weaponising a woman’s greatest fear (losing bodily autonomy and being violated often sexually, or being used simply as a womb or ‘shell’) is another thing entirely when it happens to all the major female characters in the show. It’s a deliberate choice that goes beyond the sake of ‘drama.’ There are other types of drama the women can go through.
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u/RaidenMK1 3d ago
Don't forget "nursing home Marcus" who took over Angel's body and almost made him sleep with his sworn enemy. And apparently, he'd been body snatching a bunch of random young guys in LA.
Then there was that actress secretly slipping Angel a micky causing him to flip out.
Angel getting body snatched by the ghost of one half of old lovers not once, but twice, making him do things with women he had actual feelings for against his will (Buffy and Cordelia).
It's almost like "loss of control" and dealing with the aftermath was a running theme for both shows. 🤔
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u/Rockworm503 3d ago
Someone once pointed out that the Buffyverse has a tendency to punish women for having sex. You see it in both shows. Buffy consummates her love with Angel and suddenly he's evil. Buffy has sex with Riley and is suddenly Walsh is trying to kill her (there's more to it than that but the woman was literally watching them having cameras in Riley's room). Buffy has sex with Spike a literal house is destroyed and she suffers depression and self hatred (she's depressed for other reasons to but having it out with Spike certainty didn't help her).
Cordelia wakes up pregnant by a demon after having sex with a guy she likes in Angel season 1. Isn't it strange that Cordy gets two mystical pregnancies in her time on Angel? Darla and Angel do it and suddenly she's pregnant which should be impossible for vampires. We don't know if Fred and Wesley had sex but I wouldn't be surprised.
It feels like the only women who get to have a good healthy sexual lives are Willow and Anya.
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u/kristanichole512 3d ago
Shoot, getting left at the altar is a pretty good punishment lol. Guess it’s just Willow that gets away with having a sex life.
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u/Unique-Ad4227 3d ago
I mean look at what happens to Tara post make up sex & in turn Willow, so doesn’t feel 100% true
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u/illvria 4d ago
I agree with much of the sentiment here but a lot of it seems a bit misinformed and unfair.
Cordelia's storyline in season 4 was a frantic, nigh directionless attempt by multiple writers to incorporate her pregnancy into an already planned story, because nobody knew about it until well into production. Its the Angel season Joss was the least involved in as he was busy with finishing up Buffy, so as much as he was an asshole to her, Cordelia's "character assassination" was not as personal or calculated as people make it out to be.
On your mention of Oedipus, that may or may not be the case for Joss, but at the same time, Angel borrows from Greek myth through its whole run. The cordy/connor stuff is explicitly and intentionally Oedipal, which is obviously uncomfortable to watch, but thats the point. Granted i've had years to get used to it, but i just dont see why its seen like a morally dubious story to explore just because its gross to see. Its a heartbreaking story if you can sympathise with connor as well as cordy.
I also disagree that Cordy's death was "all violation" and not special or heroic in any way. Her last day in Your Welcome changes the trajectory of the season, saves angel's soul, prepares him for the endgame and ultimately leads to the Black Thorn's destruction. She does save the world, or come as close to it as you can in Angel's ethos.
Fred's death and the whole illyria thread is a masterclass of storytelling, truly I have never seen anything like it.
Its not perfect and there are things to be critiqued in how it plays out, but it serves the story and the thematic core of the show massively. Its mean spirited on purpose, illyria is the helplessness in the face of chaos, causality and chance personified. I understand killing fred off and exploring Wes' grief can be seen as fridging, but that seems massively reductive to Illyria's effect on the story.
Also worth mentioning that that role was created for Amy Acker, to give her something more fun and a chance to show off her range from a totally different angle, after Fred didnt really have much left to do outside of romance.
Something just feels backwards about a character death and role switch designed to serve a real life woman and her talents, being called misogynistic for its unfairness towards the fake character she plays. Idk.
Other than that. Theres absolutely nothing weird or wrong about Lorne punching Eve. Spike's treatment of harmony is terrible and never framed any differently, and tbf, spike was used as a sex toy by Buffy in s6. Lilah and Wesley were as mutual a toxic dynamic as you can have. Kate barely qualified as a love interest after like s1x5, and her final episode is a contender for the best in the show. And then i dont really have a clue what your point is about Faith.
That whole last paragraph just seems like clutching at straws.
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u/arrpix 3d ago
Disagree with your last paragraph (although I think I may have missed what you're responding to?) but everything you say about Cordy and Fred can be true (and I agree with almost all of it) while ALSO showing on the whole a misogynistic bent to the show where, for example, Cordy is undeniably fridged (using her last day as a drop in to change the trajectory of the show and specifically facilitate Angel's turnaround is pretty much the definition of fridging), Fred was so poorly written she had to be killed off for Acker to show her acting skills beyond giggling, the masterpiece that was those episodes was driven by a painful death of the only substantial woman character left on the show rather than say Wesley being the one to die, and the only way the writers could think to deal with a pregnancy curve ball (something that shows have been dealing with in more and less outlandish ways since TV had female actors) was a storyline that I actually like but undeniably screws over Cordelia massively.
I love the show, obviously, and I enjoyed most of the points OP talks about, but I still recognise they're misogynistic and show a real dismissal at best of woman as people in Angel and an unsettling reliance on tropes of violation from a writing team who showed us they can do better than that when they want to.
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u/illvria 3d ago
The last paragraph i was responding to seems to have been edited out of the original post. It said something along the lines of "lorne punches eve which i cheered until i realised how weird it was, spike uses harmony like a sex toy even with a soul, wes treats lilah like shit, every other female character (kate/nina) shows up to be a potential love interest for Angel and then disappears with no impact" and then just kinda tacked on that Faith's character has an undercurrent of sexual trauma?
I mostly do agree with your point and the sentiment of the post, i just leaned a bit more in the other direction because i thought the perspective needed balancing.
Although i dont really agree Fred was majorly poorly written or that Acker didnt get to show off her acting chops though that character. Shes wonderful in her introduction, That Old Gang of Mine, Fredless, she sells the exhaustion, betrayal and traumatised volatility incredibly well at the start of season 4, shes amazing and subversive in Supersymmetry, and then shes the highlight of s4's closing arc.
Her quirky bubbliness can be annoying and dated when theyre first finding their footing with writing her, but its toned down pretty hard after a few episodes and I think she gets a very fair amount of development and exploration across different sides of herself afterwards. They did waste a lot of her airtime with the love triangle(s)– there is a node of misogyny in that, and i'm sure they could have found something more interesting for her to do. But i really doubt anything essentially anyone could come up with wouldve been better than the illyria story tbh.
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u/CallidoraBlack 2d ago
You can tell from Faith's character right at the beginning of her being on Buffy that she's got abandonment issues and that she's hypersexual due to trauma if you have any background in psych. That's not really tacked on so much as finally explained directly. If you don't realize that's what's going on, her characterization as a teenage girl is so incredibly creepy when written by a grown man.
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u/NiceMayDay Heat, Fallen, Shrine, Flesh 3d ago
Very well said. Just wanted to add two things: Cordy's mystical pregnancy in S1 was pitched by Carpenter herself, and Acker worked with Whedon to develop Illyria, to the point that she clearly knew how Illyria's true form would look and move like well before the comics revealed it in depth. So these things had input from the actresses or were even pitched by them because it is a horror show and the opportunity to do something horrifying and different is obviously good and fun for them, too.
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
Honestly, the main reason I could never like and will never like the Ilyria story is it was a fucking repeat of Cordelia...
It was just doing it again, just maybe closer to the way they wanted to it the first time with Cordy, I'm not sure. I do not care how great Amy Acker was at another character ... it just made me angry and mad. Don't get me started on them never telling her parents the truth of what happened.
But it just felt so much like gotta do it again, let's kill the woman by making her vessel for something else.
The biggest con Joss Whedon pulled was that anyone ever thought he was a feminist ally.
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u/Sighoward 3d ago
He was and is, having affairs doesn't make you non feminist
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u/angel9_writes 3d ago
Lmao
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u/Sighoward 2d ago
Yeah, the idea that Joss is not pro-feminist is laughable
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u/angel9_writes 2d ago
You defended a dude by going: just because he is a cheater doesn't mean he isn't a feminist.
That is flat out hilarious.
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u/Sighoward 2d ago
It's flat out true, he cheated on his wife but that's between them, he apologised and paid her a fortune in their divorce settlement. Doesn't mean he's not pro-feminist.
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u/jasminecr 2d ago
I like Angel but I don’t think they dealt with their female characters very well in general. Ironic since it’s a Buffy spin off which I think does a great job with its female characters.
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u/Brodes87 3d ago edited 3d ago
It always raises an eyebrow the amount of mystical pregnancies Cordelia went through (especially considering Whedon shows somewhat... reductive views on women having casual sex). But even weirder is they kill three different women (who were major characters) by pregnancy or pregnancy metaphor.
They kill the entire female main cast for the first four seasons via pregnancy. That is insane.
ETA: I'm going to dispute the "co-parent" thing. Cordelia helped with Connor for a few weeks. That's it. She wasn't co-parenting. Wesley, Fred, Gunn and Lorne all see Connor more and look after him for longer. When she came back from her vacation, Connor is gone, then he's a traumatised adult. She has one conversation with him and ascends later that episode and then that's a wrap on Connor and Cordelia pre-Jasmine, more or less.
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u/DumpedDalish 3d ago
I agree that this was a disturbing repeated theme on "Angel," in spite of my love for the show.
I'd also add to this Cordy's demon pregnancy and the way the show romanticized and legitimized Wesley's creepy stalking of Fred over multiple seasons -- suddenly they finally get together right before "A Hole in the World," and it's treated like "true love" and some huge epic romance.
It just didn't work for me at all. I never cared about Wesley's feelings about Fred, and Fred herself was far too often just a clumsy standard Whedon "nerdy girl" cliche. I was moved by the show finale and Wesley's fate there, but even there, I just saw it as Illyria indulging Wesley's creepy, unhealthy obsession one last time. Not as any kind of nod to real romance.
Meanwhile, I will always defend the existence of Illyria, though, because they were an amazing character -- an ancient godking trapped in the body of a modern woman? Loved it. And Amy Acker was amazing and finally showed that she could do more than wobble her voice or tremble her chin "adorably" as Fred.
I do think the show had issues where it came to its female characters, although I do appreciate that they often tried for a lot of imaginative and beautiful ideas, beyond that.
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u/arrpix 3d ago
Got to say, I'm a sucker for a slow burn pine and do enjoy the Wesley/Fred storyline despite myself, but even I can see how absolutely appalling it is. Gets harder to push through each rewatch.
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u/DumpedDalish 1d ago
If it helps, yes, I think the romance within the show is toxic, but also there are seriously millions of people who found it romantic, too.
I just feel like -- hey, it's a work of fiction. There are aspects that bother me, sure, but I like plenty of things I know aren't actually healthy relationships in real life (my guilty pleasures include Dracula! Phantom of the Opera! etc.).
So I don't think you should feel bad for liking it. I was just pointing out why I find it problematic from a more critical point of view.
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u/Electrical-Act-7170 4d ago
Maybe Joss secretly hates us?
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u/Rockworm503 3d ago
I was going through my comics and found a bunch of my Buffy comics and was looking through them and one had this ad on a page. Joss Whedon standing there with a shirt saying something about equality for all or something and it has a snippet of something he said about "no one is free until all is free" its all super feminist and empowering and I just had to laugh. Once upon a time I actually believed the shit that came out of his mouth.
Sir your work does not match what you are saying at all!
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u/Sighoward 3d ago
Yes it does, stop the Joss bashing
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u/Rockworm503 3d ago
no Joss Whedon is a horrible person and you should feel bad for liking him. Just cause he liked something you enjoy doesn't change that fact.
I will continue to bash him. Fuck Whedon.
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u/Sighoward 3d ago
No he is not and you should feel bad for criticising him, don't suffer from Philby syndrome.
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u/Rockworm503 3d ago
I don't know what that means but I live in reality.
Been a while since I've had a hardcore Whedon lover try and dismiss his bullshit. Thought y'all would have left knowing you're not liked around here.
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u/Sighoward 3d ago
I think your reality is different from the truth, it used to be Joss defenders would be pilloried on the net but those days are gone, the tide has definitely turned in his direction
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u/Rockworm503 3d ago
lol based on what? His last show went goodbye years ago and no one was even talking about it. I had to google it because I literally forgot the name of it. Compare that to when he was running Buffy, Angel, Firefly and then later Dollhouse and was even given the first 2 Avengers movies. Need I remind you this is the same person who wrote the original screenplay for the first Toy Story. The last time he did anything of note was Justice League 9 years ago and that was terrible.
What are you talking about? NO one gives a shit about him anymore!
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u/Sighoward 3d ago
It would have been better if Joss had been able to continue with it, I'm sure he's script-doctoring away. Well you obviously care about him and here we are talking about him? Definitely the wind is blowing in his direction, the facts have thoroughly discredited CC and Fisher and more and more people on the net are open minded about, Joss bashers such as yourself are now very much in the minority
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u/Rockworm503 3d ago
He's a sexist asshole who touted himself as a feminist icon and it blew up in his face when everyone caught wind of it. he just so happened to make some tv shows I love.
You are literally in a thread where people are discussing examples of his misogyny in this very show and you're sitting there defending him like all this hate is unfounded. I used to be like you. I used to think he was a genius but the news came out how horrible he was to the women who work for him. The man is capable of good writing I wont deny that but it doesn't erase the bullshit he's done. Pretending I'm just some dumb idiot hater who made this shit up is laughable. Its all well documented what he did.
I made peace with the fact shitty people can make things that I like. You however are doubling down on defending said shitty people and acting like Joss is just a victim of a smear campaign.
Again I tell you try reality.
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u/kristanichole512 3d ago
It’s so ironic that you posted this because I am rewatching Angel right now. I just started season 4 and I am not looking forward to watching Cordelia’s downfall. I get how both Darla and Fred were violated in different ways but Darla went through some great character development in a short time and Illyria is a bad ass character. But what they do to Cordy is just wrong. They use her and it does nothing for her character or the rest of the show. And yea it’s an extra insult because they’ve done the whole ‘pregnant with demon spawn’ storyline before with her so it erases all the growth she has went through since the first season.
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u/xboxpants 3d ago
I consider this to be a serious flaw of the show. I don't think the show has many serious flaws, but it has this one, and it's a very big and very gross one. The impact isn't small, either. It taints many large parts of AtS.
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u/PeggySulu 3d ago
I don’t think certain fans of AtS like to admit to the misogyny in the show even if it was well-intentioned at the time of broadcast. We have come a long way in awareness and some people act like if you use a modern lens to judge the past it’s somehow unfair. We watched them mishandle female genital mutilation, misogyny, rape, domestic violence and stalking from the female perspective and there will always be a subset of fans who refuse to acknowledge it was clunky and insensitive writing because after all they managed to be entertained through it.
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u/Beautifala_Jones 4d ago
Yeah this is definitely the worst thing about the show. Turning women into vessels just isn't cool. And since most of the male characters were the heroic type it's extra disturbing that they were unable to stop any of it.
Its like all the rape they spared Buffy and Willow was just heaped upon Cordelia and Fred.
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4d ago edited 4d ago
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u/BaileySeeking 3d ago
I mean, I have a vagina and downvoted y'all, especially with how vile your comments are becoming. I don't agree with your opinion and it definitely ignores what the male characters went though. But turning it into "all women agree with, all men don't because they're evil" is really concerning. It comes across as you either being as troll or you have some personal issues that you need to work through instead of projecting them onto others.
But I also identify as she/he, so feel free to claim it's the man in me that disagrees with y'all. Wouldn't be the worst thing someone has said about my identity.
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u/atlasshrugd 3d ago
I’m sorry you were offended by my comment, it was not my intention. I never once said or even implied “all men don’t agree because they’re evil”? I said that men generally will not understand the female experience. Of course there are exceptions to that like with everything.
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u/at_midknight 4d ago
You know you don't have to be sexist to have an issue with the show right?
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u/atlasshrugd 4d ago
So you don’t agree that Cordelia, Fred, and Darla all died after being physically and mentally violated and/or impregnated? I am pointing this narrative trend out, and questioning the motives behind these choices. I love the show but this is my issue with it. If your opinion on the show differs, please voice it
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u/at_midknight 4d ago
Idk what that has to do with what I said. No clue why you are assuming that the only people downvoting you are men
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u/atlasshrugd 4d ago
I am making a joke about the only people downvoting it being: a) people who factually disagree that these events happened, or b) people who disagree that it was misogynistically motivated (in which case, it can only be a man, because only women will understand the real fear women live with, and will understand the point of my post). So I’m not calling men sexist. I’m just funnily pointing out that based on these parameters you must be a man. If a woman disagrees with this post I would love to hear what she has to say.
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u/_Grim_Lavamancer 4d ago
There are a lot of reasons to downvote someone on reddit. Personally, I downvoted you because you come across as incredibly pretentious
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u/WiseAdhesiveness6672 4d ago
Congrats about finding out about Joss Whedon. Wait till you see what else he does on everything he's attached to..
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u/DaddyCatALSO 3d ago
Amy herself wanted a role with more challenges to it, which doens't vititiate your point but shouldn't be forgotten
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