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Okay so apparently there's a movement on tumblr lately discussing how women get punished for sex in Buffy, and that therefore Joss is no feminist. Yes it's a very old argument at this point lol, but I wanted to respond because I don't really agree with that. Obviously people have linked Buffy's sexual experiences together and seen messages that the show is apparently putting across, but when watching the show I never got the sense that we were supposed to see Buffy as being deserving of punishment for having sex
The experiences with Angel and Parker were experiences that a lot of young girls go through on the journey into adulthood, and that seemed to be all that the writers were going for there. There was never any message or lecturing on how Buffy should have waited longer before sleeping with Parker, Buffy feels like a fool for falling for Parker's lines and beats herself up over it sure, but her friends all comfort her and say that Parker is the jerk. It's made very clear that Parker was the only one in the wrong for how he played Buffy, Willow laughs in his face in Bear Bad over what an obvious player he is, Riley punches him in the face for making degrading remarks about using Buffy, and caveslayer Buffy bops him on the head with a wooden stick
There were also never any lecturing or finger-wagging in Innocence along the lines of "what were you thinking to sleep with someone at your age", it was all about the heartbreak of first love and the guy changing after you've slept with him. None of Buffy's friends ever say that she was in the wrong for sex with Angel (Xander later questions Buffy letting her heart get in the way with Angelus, but never for the actual sex), in fact Willow was encouraging Buffy to seize the day. Joyce (who doesn't have all the facts when she meets "stalker Angelus") does give Buffy a motherly lecture on how she doesn't understand Buffy's bad judgement in sleeping with someone so clearly unstable, but the more knowledge Giles tells Buffy that he knows that she wants to hear that she did a bad thing, but all she will get from him is his respect and admiration. Is that not the exact opposite of shaming Buffy for her sexual choices?
And there are complaints that Buffy was never allowed to be in a positive sexual relationship, but isn't that exactly what she does enjoy with Riley in season 4 before viewers complained about how bored they were by that? Their first sexual encounter is portrayed very positively in The I In Team with them both turned on after patrolling, and in Where The Wild Things Are the whole point of that episode was that the spirits being released were caused by an evil woman who repressed and shamed children for perfectly healthy and normal sexual desires, not that Buffy and Riley were the ones at fault for having too much sex! Buffy and Riley were not punished or blamed for it, it was played as a joke that they got so wrapped up in the sex they were having that they ignored everything else, not anything that the gang seriously criticised them for.
( This gets kind of long... )
The experiences with Angel and Parker were experiences that a lot of young girls go through on the journey into adulthood, and that seemed to be all that the writers were going for there. There was never any message or lecturing on how Buffy should have waited longer before sleeping with Parker, Buffy feels like a fool for falling for Parker's lines and beats herself up over it sure, but her friends all comfort her and say that Parker is the jerk. It's made very clear that Parker was the only one in the wrong for how he played Buffy, Willow laughs in his face in Bear Bad over what an obvious player he is, Riley punches him in the face for making degrading remarks about using Buffy, and caveslayer Buffy bops him on the head with a wooden stick
There were also never any lecturing or finger-wagging in Innocence along the lines of "what were you thinking to sleep with someone at your age", it was all about the heartbreak of first love and the guy changing after you've slept with him. None of Buffy's friends ever say that she was in the wrong for sex with Angel (Xander later questions Buffy letting her heart get in the way with Angelus, but never for the actual sex), in fact Willow was encouraging Buffy to seize the day. Joyce (who doesn't have all the facts when she meets "stalker Angelus") does give Buffy a motherly lecture on how she doesn't understand Buffy's bad judgement in sleeping with someone so clearly unstable, but the more knowledge Giles tells Buffy that he knows that she wants to hear that she did a bad thing, but all she will get from him is his respect and admiration. Is that not the exact opposite of shaming Buffy for her sexual choices?
And there are complaints that Buffy was never allowed to be in a positive sexual relationship, but isn't that exactly what she does enjoy with Riley in season 4 before viewers complained about how bored they were by that? Their first sexual encounter is portrayed very positively in The I In Team with them both turned on after patrolling, and in Where The Wild Things Are the whole point of that episode was that the spirits being released were caused by an evil woman who repressed and shamed children for perfectly healthy and normal sexual desires, not that Buffy and Riley were the ones at fault for having too much sex! Buffy and Riley were not punished or blamed for it, it was played as a joke that they got so wrapped up in the sex they were having that they ignored everything else, not anything that the gang seriously criticised them for.
( This gets kind of long... )
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