A Wife-Beater’s View of the World: Our Mrs. Reynolds Part Two

*I’ve finally finished the damn thing. I won’t be allowing comments from anyone who is not a radical feminist (or pro-radical feminist) or a lesbian feminist/separatist. Yes, I am pro-censorship. Boohoo.*

Link to Part One

I mentioned in the first post that the most disturbing potential reading of this episode is as a justification and indeed glorification of male violence/terrorism in the home. I left off in the last post talking about the romance between Mal and Jayne. In the following scenes Saffron settles in to her role as a subservient and pleasing wife, with Mal being a happy consumer of her services.

MAL (cont’d)
Well, that is odd.
SAFFRON
What?
MAL
I just don’t - I’m not one talks about his past. And here you got me…
SAFFRON
Does your crew never show interest in your life?
MAL
No, they’re, they’re… They just know me well enough to… What about
you? What’s your history?
SAFFRON
Not much to say. Life like yours, I fear you’d find mine terrible dull.
MAL
Oh, I long for a little dullness. Truth to say, this whole trip is getting to be just a little too interesting.

Touching stuff here. Mal beginning to see Saffron’s resources as an emotionally supportive slave as an addition to her exquisite domestic skills. What makes me even more annoyed about this scene is the fact that Mal, as always, does all the talking, leaving Saffron’s potentially interesting history unexplored. This is typical of stories written by misogynists. They are not interested in women’s stories; women are only there to further understanding of the male characters.

After Saffron dismisses her own history as uninteresting (another tactic of misogynist writers, they create female characters that hate themselves and other women in order to disguise their own misogyny). One obvious example of this in Joss Whedon’s work is in the following scene where Zoe shows herself to be completely unsympathetic to Saffron’s slavery and blames Saffron for her own subjugation.

ZOE (V.O.)
She’s clearly out of her mind.
WASH
Well, she’s led a sheltered life.
ZOE
Did you see the way she grabbed that glass from you?
WASH
Every planet’s got its own weird customs. ‘Bout a year before we met, I spent six weeks on a moon where the principal form of recreation was juggling geese. My hand to God. Baby geese. Goslings. They were juggled.
ZOE
Of course the man rushes in to defend her…
WASH
(huh?) I’m talking about geese.
ZOE
Captain shouldn’t be baby-sitting a damn groupie. And he knows it.
WASH
Okay, when did this become not funny?
ZOE
When you didn’t turn around and put her ass back down on Triumph where it belongs.
WASH
Oh, hey, now it’s even my fault! Is there anything else on your mind I should know about? There’s all sorts of twists and cul-de-sacs, it’s wild.
ZOE
She’s trouble
WASH
I’m getting that.
ZOE
I’m going to bed.

It goes without saying that I find it highly problematic that women’s oppression is compared with the juggling of geese. What the fuck is with that even? Again, ha ha; women’s oppression = geese juggling. Tehehe.

Sigh. Men are such dicks.

And here we have Zoe blaming women for their own oppression and hating women, presumably for not being as liberated herself. Does that even make any kind of sense? And Wash borrows Mal’s unicorn outfit to ‘defend’ Saffron and her weirdness. See, that is what I just love about male supremacy. Men rape babies, they buy, sell and trade women (real, live, thinking, breathing human beings) as sex, they kill each other, they bash, rape, mutilate, torture us day in and day out, for not being subservient enough, for being too subservient, for being too ugly, for being too beautiful, for not conforming enough, for conforming too much, in short for being born female. And women are the ones who get called crazy and weird.

How the fuck are women supposed to survive what men throw at us and not go a bit crazy? And weird? Well, if hating my sisters, conforming to white male supremacy by being treated as a sex-object and possession by a white man, conforming to white male supremacy by jumping when the white man says jump and calling the white man ‘sir’ is your idea of ‘normal’ womanhood, Mr. Whedon, then I sure am glad that I am ‘weird’. But thankfully I know that your image of Black womanhood ain’t anything like the courageous, resourceful, angry, compassionate, strong, resilient, tireless, flesh and blood reality of my Black sisters.

The next part of the show is one of the most disgusting, heteropatriachal, rapist scenes that I’ve watched. So gross. Saffron shows up in Mal’s cabin completely naked. She surprises him when he comes into his room. She is in Mal’s bed, draped in his sheets, telling Mal that she has made the bed warm for him and made herself ready for him. EWWWWWWWW. I already think I need a bath. Fuck Joss has a filthy mind.

So Mal, still wearing his unicorn suit (though by this stage it is getting a bit tatty) tells her that she has her own room. Saffron is confused believing that, as they are married, they must become ‘one flesh’. EWWWWWW Joss’s words there. So Saffron quotes her planet’s bible at Mal. Remember these words were written by the great feminist Joss Whedon.

SAFFRON
I do know my bible, sir. “On the night of their betrothal, the wife shall open to the man, as the furrow to the plough, and he shall work in her, in and again, ’till she bring him to his fall, and rest him then upon the sweat of her breast.”
MAL
Whoa. Good bible.
SAFFRON
I’m not skilled, sir, nor a pleasure to look upon, but -
MAL
Saffron. You’re pleasing. You’re… hell, you’re all kinds of pleasing and it’s been a while… a long damn while since anybody but me took a hold a’my plough so don’t think for a second that I ain’t interested. But you and me, we ain’t married. Just ’cause you got handed to me by some couldn’t pay his debts, don’t make you beholden to me. I keep trying to explain –

Interlude: Joss Whedon’s Guide for Beginners on how to make female submissiveness sexxxxay.
Take one naked, skinny, shortish prone woman. Add one clothed, built, tallish standing man. Insert suggestive, heteropatriarchal, religious reference. Stir.

You know, something similar to this happened to me once. A vulnerable, screwed up (it almost goes without saying that she had been repeatedly raped and otherwise abused by her boyfriend, who dumped her when she stop acquiescing to her own rape), Catholic girl threw herself at me, desperate for self-validation, desperate for someone to love her a cherish her. She was in my bedroom. She pushed me onto the bed and tried to kiss me. How did I respond? I stood up and left the room. Simple.

We were flatmates. I never stopped being there for her emotionally but taking advantage of her vulnerability was NEVER an option. It was not something I could even begin to consider for one very simple reason. I DO NOT FIND FEMALE SUBMISSION AND VULNERABILITY SEXY. It is not sexy, not funny, not feminist, absolutely not ok to ever show female submission and vulnerability as being sexy. It is really, truly awful to see, love and care for women who have had their selfhood all but destroyed and royally screwed with by men. It is really, truly awful to recognise yourself in the pieces of them.

But Joss, the feminist, has his male character hang about pretending that he wants Saffron to leave, clearly hoping that she won’t. The scene culminates with Saffron dropping the sheet, walking over to Mal and kissing him. A kiss that Mal not only allows but quite happily engages in, joking that he will be going to the special hell. Ha. ha.

But then huh? What? Mal falls down unconscious after Saffron kisses him!!!! OH NOES!!!! SAFFRON IS AN EEEEEEEVIL KILLER WOMAN!!!! ARGH!

Who would have thought? A feminist writes a show depicting a victimized, vulnerable woman, who is just pretending and turns out to be an evil killer woman! Ho hum, another woman-hater at work.

Interlude: Feminism: The Joss Whedon Way.
Rote learn the following:
- Women lie. About everything really, but mostly they lie about rape, child abuse, sexual assault and harassment, male violence in the home, male violence in the street etc. Women lie and lie and lie. They can’t help it. They don’t even have a reason for lying, they just do it. It’s biological… and pathological… but still very wrong.

So Saffron wanders off, gets dressed and heads to the bridge where she encounters Wash. She closes the door, and evilly turns Wash on with her wily, feminine pretending.

She turns to him, eyes nearly moist with pleading.

SAFFRON
My whole life, I saw nothing but roofs and steeples and the cellar door. Few days I’ll be back to that life and gone from yours. Make this night what it should be. Please…

Her face is inches from his.

SAFFRON (cont’d)
Show me the stars.

They’re practically touching and she moves to kiss him, but he pulls away at the last minute.

WASH
do I wish I was somebody else right now. Somebody not married, not madly in love with a beautiful woman who can kill me with her pinky.

Reason number 9623 of why I find the whole Wash/Zoe relationship unconvincing. Wash openly admits that he wishes he could sleep with Saffron a woman who he has just met. He simultaneously believes that he loves Zoe despite the fact that he openly admits to wanting to fuck Saffron. And the primary motivation for him refusing to fuck Saffron does not seem to be because he loves Zoe, it is more because of his life may be in danger if he does. Wow, I really do just love these nice, white husbands. Whatever would women do without all these nice, white men?

Anyway, Joss writes his first remotely feminist bit thus far and Saffron kicks Wash in the head after rolling her eyes at his stupidity. WOOHOO!!!! That’s more like it sister! Now this Saffron IS sexy. Not that sexy is a word I’d use but hey. This Saffron is a woman who kicks fuckwit men in the head and that makes her pretty darn attractive in my book.

Saffron stuffs up the ship’s navigation before heading to one of the shuttles. She encounters Inara along the way. Can’t really be bothered to detail the scene. Suffice to say that Joss chucks in a bit of lesbian pornography for his wanker fans. Ho hum moment number 3948.

Saffron escapes. Inara reveals the hideous truth about Saffron to the others. She acts as though she has had training at the Academy for Companions. Shock, horror. A Companion that uses her ‘skills’ in servility for evil??? Oh noes. She must be stopped.

Jayne brings out Vera, his nice big phallic gun, which turns out to be far better, safer, and more useful than Saffron. Vera saves the day, preventing the crew from dying at the hands of the thieves working with Saffron to steal the Firefly from Mal.

Predictably, Mal hunts Saffron down. The pictures below are screen captured from the show.

MAL
Honey… I’m home…

A beat. She knocks his gun aside, it fires as she draws hers but he is in close, they tussle — he wrenches her gun from her hand as they collapse on bed, him on top.

MAL (cont’d)
Looks like you get your wedding night after all.

She pushes him, they go tumbling to the floor but he’s still on top and this time he’s got his gun to her chin. (In the show he holds the gun to her head rather than her chin).

MAL (cont’d)
It’s the first time, darlin’. I think you should be gentle with me.

She lets out a breath, smiles at him unfathomably.

SAFFRON
You gonna kill me?
MAL
Can you conjure up a terribly compelling reason for me not to?
SAFFRON
I didn’t kill you…
…
MAL
Why the act? All the seduction games, the dancing about folk — there has to be an easier way to steal.
SAFFRON
You’re assuming the payoff is the point.
MAL
I’m not assuming anything at this juncture.

He sits, gun still well on her. She gets up on her elbows, below but facing him.

SAFFRON
(smiling sexily) You’re quite a man, Malcolm Reynolds. I’ve waited a long while for someone good enough to take me down.
MAL
(also smiles) Saffron… you even think about playing me again I will riddle you
with holes.

Her smile goes. This is the closest we’re gonna get to seeing what’s inside her, and there ain’t much to warm your hands by.
…
MAL
I got one question for you. Just one thing I’d like to know straight up.
SAFFRON
Ask me.
MAL
What’s your real name?

She looks at him… looks away, considering the question… — and he slams the butt of his gun into her chin, knocking her out cold. He stands, regards her genuinely vulnerable form. Says with a kind of sadness:

MAL (cont’d)
You’d only’ve lied anyhow.

What a way to make violence against women sexy. The scripted description of Saffron in this scene make it abundantly clear that this scene is supposed to titillate. Saffron sits on the bed, pulling on her boots. She is nothing like the girl we’ve seen, much more modern and cool (though she still wears a skirt). Joss making even more porn for his wanker fans.

But perhaps most disturbingly this scene can be read as a justification for male violence in the home. Joss frequently references marriage in the scene, to bring on the funnies of course, having Mal acting like a spurned husband and Saffron the wayward wife. If we read the entire episode using this framework of reference we can see that Joss has constructed a vicious argument in favour of male violence in the domestic sphere.

First up we have the innocent virgin wife. Mal romances the innocent virgin wife, teaching her to be strong and independent, but still ultimately subservient to him, and obedient to his authority. They come to the marital bed and it turns out that she isn’t quite so innocent after all. She transforms from an innocent country girl into a manipulative, callous woman, who is strong, capable and independent. She works for herself and bows to no one, not even Mal, her husband. In fact, she willfully betrays him and uses his faults and weaknesses to get her own way. It is clear that such a woman must be brought down. By any means necessary.

Saffron leaves Mal and Mal tracks her down, invading her home by force as a husband, pushing her to the bed, using his body to pin her down while he lectures her for not conforming to proper feminine womanhood, before slamming his gun in her face. Really very disturbing stuff, all from the mind of a feminist.

The final scene we have an affirmation of proper feminine womanhood, as Mal goes back to the woman he ‘loves’.

INARA
… does the vixen live?
MAL
If you can call it that. All’s well, I suppose.
INARA
Yes.

This is the typical discourse of misogynists, women fit neatly into the wife/whore dichotomy. Inara is a good woman. Her sexuality is neatly controlled by patriarchal institutions, the Academy, the Guild, her respect for Mal as Captain of the ship. She is comfortably subservient, she services men both sexually and emotionally without complaint and conforms to all the patriarchal rules of her role as both a Companion and a woman. Inara is the good whore: the wife.

Saffron on the other hand uses her ‘skills’ as a woman and as a Companion, for her own gain. She refuses to conform to patriarchal femininity by submitting gracefully to being used as a sexual and domestic slave. She turns men’s weaknesses to her own advantage. And ultimately she mast pay the price for refusing to bow to men. Saffron is the bad wife: the whore.

Inara, as a good wife must, joins with Mal in her condemnation of Saffron, and in doing so, pledges her allegiance to men and male supremacy. Inara is a model for good womanhood, she must view what happened to Saffron as a lesson in the fate afforded to women who attempt to step outside of male controlled strictures of femininity. Inara must turn away from her sisters and towards men, seeking company only with those women, like Kaylee, who also conform to male-approved, male-supremacist notions of femininity.

Blah. I’ll take sisterhood any day. But honestly, if Joss Whedon is a feminist then violence against women is sexy and empowering. Me? I’m taking a stand against Joss Whedon and his wanker fans in pursuit of true liberation for womenkind.

Brisbane International Feminist Conference 2008

Yay another International Feminist Conference. This time in Brisbane where my mother and siblings live. I am so excited. The last one was so good and this one looks just as promising. I am going to try and force my mum and my sister Dragort to come along with me. They’ll love it.

I am also thinking of submitting a paper on Joss Whedon. Or more specifically, the pornstitution’s influence on ‘feminist’ representations of women in popular culture. If I don’t submit a paper on Joss Whedon’s Firefly then I will see if I can contribute my poetry as an artist. That would be very exciting. I might even sing. I haven’t done that in far too long.

The Brisbane International Feminist Conference 2008 aims to further feminist dialogues about the status of women and the continued violence against women and children as human rights violations. Conference organisers believe that the status of women in Australia and indeed globally, has been on the decline in the last decade.

The 2008 International Feminist Conference’s overall goal is to provide a forum to bring feminist thinkers, researchers, academics, service providers and community women together, to share information about pressing violations against women and children. 

Australian Indigenous Women

As the conference will be held in Brisbane, Australian Indigenous women will have a day and a session committed to their issues specifically. The 2nd of September will be an Indigenous women only forum, free to all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander women. We hope to bring a contingent of women elders and activists from around Australia, including from areas most affected by the Federal Government’s recent interventions into their communities. There will also be a session within the conference program where Indigenous women can yarn up with their feminist sisters.

The Conference Program

At the moment we have defined key areas. Topics and sessions will be more refined as we gather responses to the call for abstracts between April and May, 2008.

• Feminism
• Women’s Health
• Legal Issues
• Violence Against Women and children
• Women in Poverty/ Women in Work
• Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Women’s Issues
• Global Perspectives
• Women in Prison/ Criminalized Women’s Issues
• Sexuality

Venue

The Brisbane International Feminist Conference 2008 will be held at:

The Greek Convention Centre
29 Edmondstone Street,
South Brisbane.
Queensland. Australia. 4101.

The dates have been confirmed for the Tuesday the 2nd of September for the Indigenous women only day and Wednesday the 3rd of September, Thursday the 4th of September and Friday the 5th of September for the rest of the conference program.

Damn, it looks good doesn’t it? I especially love the fact that they are planning an indigenous women’s only day. That is just fantastic.

The 13th Carnival of the Radical Feminists

The Thirteenth Carnival of the Radical Feminists is up and Anji has done a fantastic job.

I personally have to register my concern that an article advocating stem cell research was included in this month’s carnival, as I know that many (most?) radical feminists are opposed to the harvesting of eggs from women’s bodies which is necessary for stem cell research. Women have died from the egg extraction proceedure and there are real concerns that in the future women will be paid to sell their bodies out as egg factories in order to satiate man’s desire to control life, death and reproduction. For more information about this issue go to the Hands Off Our Ovaries website and sign the manifesto. Because women’s lives are not playthings for masculinist scientists.

Although I have problems with this one blog post, I take no issue with this edition of carnival or with Anji. I think she has done a wonderful job and I am amazed that she has been able to produce it on time despite having a young child and various other things going on in her life. Kudos to you sister.

Anti Porn Petition

The wonderful Demonista has started an anti-porn petition to stop Rogers from selling women as sex. Rogers are a Canadian corporation, who started in radio in the 30s. They became big in the 70s, after they branched into TV. They have since expanded, buying other corporations, entering the US market and buying US stations, buying the Toronto Skydome and renaming it Rogers Centre (a major sports, music concerts, etc arena) adding internet, cell phones, movies On Demand and Pay Per View, movie stores, home phone service, etc. They’re Canada’s largest provider of cable, one of the largest for their other services. For more info about Rogers go here.

But most importantly go sign the petition. Because while women are bought sold and traded as sex we will never be seen as human.

Bush Lemons

Last weekend I had the best time. I’ve joined a lesbian bushwalking group up here in the Blue mountains called the Bush Lemons. It is a group of older dykes, which is nice for Dissenter and I because we don’t have to deal with the young queer lesbians. I really like the women who are part of the group. I feel there is such an awesome gynocentric atmosphere created by lesbians communing with each other and Mother Earth. And older dykes are real womyn. They are earth womyn, they are spirit womyn, they are sister womyn.

Unbelievably, these photos were taken less than 10 kilometres away from where Dissenter and I live. We had no idea this walk existed. I really want to get a bike. The walk we went on descended steeply into a valley, continued along by a creek, then went along a ledge on the side of a mountain until it reached a cave with a pool and a small waterfall.

Of course the water was an immediate invitation for me to strip and jump in. No one else would join me, however, citing such frivolous nonsense as the freezing cold temperature of the water, as some sort of paltry excuse. Oh well, their loss.

The Bush Lemons are going on my favourite walk this weekend, down to the bottom of Wentworth Falls. I hope it isn’t too cold to go swimming.

Ah, this planet is so beautiful. It makes my heart just ache, to see how we are killing her.

A Rapist’s View of the World: Our Mrs. Reynolds: Part One

*Sorry everyone. This post became so long and unwieldy I decided to split it into two. Comments will be harshly moderated. Because I am cruel and heartless. I think EVIL Saffron might be manifesting herself in me. :p*

Because I have had such an enthusiastic response to the first part of my A Rapist’s View of the World post on Joss Whedon and Firefly, I decided to continue on with part two. It was such a pleasure to write the first part (wanting to throw up for two weeks after having watched the trash notwithstanding) that I just really thought I should get on with the second part. Apart from the helpful response from no less than five happy commenters who gave me the very sage advice that I should kill myself at the earliest possible convenience, commenters varied in their response to my argument (rad fem commenters aside). Before I proceed any further I must share with you the things that I have learnt from my dear commenters.

Firstly, I am an idiot, I am also lazy and apparently I have not actually watched the show (news to me I can tell you, must have imagined those torturous hours). Moreover, I am dead-set, completely and obviously deliberately WRONG. Also, I am absolutely bonkers/off my rocker/insane. Finally, I am… wait for it… PATRIARCHAL… in my approach to deleting comments. Oh, oh and a male feminist (no, no they really do exist, like unicorns and fairies, don’t be so patriarchal) disagrees with me about all sex being rape. (I’m not sure where it is that I said that but if you find it, dear readers, let it be known that a unicorn ahem sorry, I mean a male feminist, disagrees with me.) So, dear readers, it has been put to me that the world really would be a better place if I offed myself. Unicorns would be free to roam, Whedons and Whedonites would be free to rape and daisies would sprout magically from the side-walk.

Too bad.

I can’t off myself, dear readers, because… 1) I am too stupid and I don’t know how; 2) I am too bonkers and I don’t know how; 3) I am too lazy and I can’t be fucked to find a knife; 4) I am patriarchal and we all know how much pleasure it gives men to kill us women, what right do I have to rob a man of the pleasure of killing me by offing myself?; 5) I am dazzled by all of these bright, beautiful unicorns. So sorry, my friends, you are all stuck with me until the day that a unicorn ahem sorry, male feminist, decides, out of the mercy and goodness of his heart, that my time in this world has come.

I am sorry to all of the unicorns out there, who are so oppressed by my words. But the show must go on. Let the aforementioned idiocy, lunacy, laziness, patriarchalness etc, etc be a warning to those whose reading ventures here. You enter a mad woman’s domain and you may not survive the encounter.

Umm… ok so now that is done with. Let’s get to the good part. Our Mrs. Reynolds is the sixth episode of the television series Firefly. This episode was written by the Great White Feminist himself, Joss Whedon. In this episode, Mal the captain of the ship finds out that he has married a woman when he finds a stowaway on his ship. The stowaway, whose name is Saffron, was traded to Mal as a gift because he helped the inhabitants of a planet to get rid of some bad guys.

The most disturbing reading of this particular episode is as an endorsement of male terrorism in the home. I’ll talk more about the potential for this reading in the second half of my analysis.

The first scene of the episode is set on a river. A loaded carriage is coming down the river, with what is apparently a man and a woman occupying the front seats, the man driving. A bad guy stops the carriage.

BANDIT 1
(pissed) …I think maybe you’re gonna give me a little one-on-one time with the Mrs. The Farmer lifts his head - it’s JAYNE, smiling.
JAYNE
You might wanna reconsider that last part. I married me a powerful ugly creature.

MAL looks up from under his bonnet, shocked.

MAL
How can you say that? How can you shame me in front of new people?
JAYNE
If I could make you prettier, I would.
MAL
You’re not the man I met a year ago.

So the ‘woman’ sitting by the driver of the carriage is actually Mal in drag. Shock, surprise, this is real funny shit huh, women? A man in drag, teeheehee. SO radical. And feminist, huh? What do you think, does Joss get a cookie?

Sigh. There has been loads of work done on the anti-feminism of drag and I can’t be bothered to rehash. Suffice to say Jayne gets away with spouting a whole bunch of sexist, looksist crap and it is ‘funny’ because he directs it at a man in drag. Not to mention, joking about rape. Drag is often used by men as a way of expressing woman-hatred and they dress it up as humour. Just a joke girls, now get over yourselves, right?

Right.

A bit later Mal talks about how he likes to wear dresses with Inara. “Like woman,
I am a mystery,” he says of his enjoyment of wearing dresses. Sorry, Joss, score zero for that one. Women aren’t a mystery, WE ARE FULLY CONSCIOUS HUMAN BEINGS. And Mal is a wanker and wankers aren’t a bit mysterious. At least they aren’t to me. Maybe wankers are mysterious to unicorns. Who knows. I think I’m starting to hate unicorns.

So, Mal saves some colonists from the bad guys by killing them all while wearing a dress. Mal and the crew get back on the ship. As they take off, Mal surprises a stowaway, who tells him that she is his wife. Mal gets all panicky and calls Zoe.

Now, it is pretty obvious by this point that Saffron has been traded to Mal in exchange for his killing the bad guys. She is a wife in the sense of being a sexual and domestic slave. When Zoe is told that Saffron has been traded to Mal as a wife/slave she begins to laugh. She then calls the rest of the crew and invites them to join her in laughing at Mal’s newly acquired possession. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never met a Black woman who laughs about slavery. I can’t believe that any woman, Black or white would laugh at an incidence of men trading women. Where the hell does Joss Whedon do his research on women????? What women does Joss know that he can portray them like this????

MAL
Zoe, why do I have a wife?
JAYNE
You got a wife?
ZOE
What’s she doing here?
JAYNE
All I got was that dumb-ass stick that sounds like it’s raining. How come you got a wife?
MAL
I didn’t. (to Saffron) We’re not married.
SAFFRON
I’m sorry if I shame you…
MAL
You don’t shame me! Zoe, get Wash down here.
ZOE
(hits comm) This is Zoe. We need all personnel in the cargo bay.
MAL
All — I said Wash!
ZOE
Captain. everyone should have a chance to congratulate you on your day of bliss.
MAL
There’s no bliss! I don’t know this girl.
JAYNE
Then can I know her?
ZOE
(tough) Jayne… (sensitive) Don’t sully this.

So, Saffron runs off crying because of how she is being treated. Mal goes after her. Now in the following scenes we see Mal being magically possessed by a unicorn. His transformation is astounding. In one second we see a man who screams at the female members of his crew and violently defends his position as alpha male, the next *pouf* a beautiful, gallant steed, shining white against the grey backdrop of the ship, spouting fine speeches while tossing his mane, nobly defending the Rights of the Fairer Sex. Watch.

SAFFRON
Are you going to kill me?
MAL
What? What kind of crappy planet is that? Kill you?
SAFFRON
In the maiden’s home, I heard talk of men who weren’t pleased with their brides, who…
MAL
Well I ain’t them. And don’t you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone tries to kill you, you try to kill ‘em right back. Wife or no, you’re no one’s property to be tossed aside. You got the ight same as anyone to live and to try to kill people. I mean, you know. People that are… That’s a dumb planet.

Ah Mal, Mal, Mal. So gallant, so kind, so noble. But just one question, Joss. Do you know what happens to women who defend themselves from violent men? Have you heard of Patreese Johnson, Renata Hill, Terraine Dandridge, Venice Brown, Dixie Shanahan, Yana Ladgari, Mary Winkler, Sherry Mariana, Marva Wallace? (This list is by no means exhaustive.) Women who defend themselves from men who are trying to kill them have their children taken away from them and are locked up. That is the stark reality of what equality means for women who live under male supremacy.

And just a tip Joss, from one writer to another. If you believe that women should kill men who try to kill them then, quite frankly, I agree with you. If you want to show your encouragement and support for women who defend themselves from men, then write a female character that kills a man who is trying to kill her AND GETS AWAY WITH IT.

Now, let’s see, do you actually show women getting away with being disloyal to men? We had Patience, a character in the first episode. How did she fare when she tried to cheat Mal? Hmm… let’s think. Oh, that’s right. You left her trapped under the carcass of a horse. Mmm. I just love that feminist empowerment, Joss.

Anyways, Saffron bonds nicely with the gallant unicorn version of Mal and skips off to make Mal some dinner like a good little wife. We then have a brief scene between Mal and Book.

MAL
She’s a nice girl.
BOOK
Seems very anxious to please you.
MAL
That’s their way, I guess.
BOOK
(bright, casual) I suppose so. If you take sexual advantage of her, you’re going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the
theater. (My emphasis.)

Now, that comment right there indicates to me that our dear Mr. Whedon is a porn user. And that it is highly likely that his pornography of choice is Hustler, given that he seems to think it funny to trivialise the sexual abuse of children. How many times has Joss wanked to our degradation in Hustler while chuckling away at Chester the Molester cartoons? I actually really want to know the answer to this question. Joss continues his race hatred by putting this ‘joke’ in the mouth of a Black man.

So, Saffron cooks Mal dinner and Mal eats while she stands by waiting on him, fetching refills etc. Does Mal use Saffron as a domestic slave because he enjoys being a slave owner? No, no. He uses Saffron in order to stop her from crying. Really, truly, it’s for her own good.

From this point on I almost want to just copy and paste the whole script. It is full of so much contempt I don’t feel like it even needs analysis.

ZOE
Having yourself a little supper, Captain?
MAL
Well, Saffron insisted on… I didn’t want to make her feel… it’s damn tasty.

He can’t figure out who to be careful around - so he just starts shoveling it in.

WASH
Any more where that came from?
SAFFRON
(downcast) I didn’t think to make enough for your friends. (to Zoe) But I’ve everything laid out if you’d like to cook for your husband…

Wash looks at Zoe for a microsecond of hope - her eyes narrow - and he laughs overcompensationally.

WASH
Ta-ha-ha– Isn’t she quaint? I’m just not hungry.

He sits, Zoe sitting as well. Her hilarious mood has abated. Saffron retires to the pantry.

White male husband wishing his black female wife was more submissive and cooked his dinner. Anyone else see a problem with this?

ZOE
So, are you enjoying your own nubile little slave girl?
MAL
(mouth full) I’m not… nubile… (swallows) Look, she wanted to make me dinner. At least she’s not crying…
WASH
I might. Did she really make fresh bao? (off Zoe’s glare) Quaint!
ZOE
Remember that sex we were planning to have ever again?

Black female wife being jealous of a woman she terms a ‘slave girl’. Anyone else see a problem with this?

After a brief scene with Inara, we come to a touching scene between Jayne and Mal, where Jayne offers to trade his favourite gun to Mal in exchange for ownership of Saffron. Mal once again transforms into a unicorn, delivering more impassioned speeches on The Rights of the Fairer Sex.

JAYNE
Six men came to kill me one time, and the best of them carried this. It’s a Callahan fullbore autolock, customized trigger and double cartridge thourough-gage. He holds it out to Mal.
JAYNE (cont’d)
It’s my very favorite gun.
MAL
The explosive diarrhea of an elephant, are you offering me a trade?
JAYNE
A trade? Hell, it’s theft! This is the best gun made by man, and its got extreme sentimental value! It’s miles more worthy’n what you got.
MAL
“What I got” - she has a name.
JAYNE
So does this! I call it Vera.
…
MAL
She’s not to be bought. Nor bartered, nor borrowed or lent. She’s a human woman, doesn’t know a damn thing about the world and needs our protection.

Here the audience is supposed to notice that there are two sorts of men in the world; good men: Mal, and bad men: Jayne. Me? I see two rapists. Only difference is that one is in a two-dollar-shop disguise as a unicorn.

Given that Mal nobly believes in protecting the female members on board his ship from the ravages of ‘the world’ (read: men), I find it hard to credit that he allows Jayne to stay on board his ship. In this scene Jayne talks of women as sexual and domestic property, obviously unaware that women are human beings. Men who think like this about women ARE DANGEROUS. If Mal did care about the protection of women, he would have spaced Jayne immediately, or at least locked the fucker up.

On another level, the trading of women and the naming of Phallic weapons, the sharing of homoerotic tales of male violence (Jayne’s story of how he acquired his gun), this is part of the larger romance of the show, the homoerotic, masculine connection between Mal and Jayne.

Here concludes the first half of my analysis of Our Mrs. Reynolds. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. Join me for the second installment where Saffron transforms from an innocent country girl into an evil, manipulative killer woman and Mal decides to burn his two-dollar-shop unicorn outfit.

Link to Part Two

Not For Sale: Rebecca Speaks Out Against Prostitution

I read Not For Sale by Rebecca Whisnant and Christine Stark recently and truly it is a powerful book. For me it highlighted the necessity of looking at prostitution with a race-based lense as well as a gendered lense. I always believed that to support prostitution you are supporting women-hatred and violence against women, but I hadn’t really thought about it as racialised woman-hatred until I read Not For Sale.

But anyways, it is a powerful book and it gave me heaps to think about, but of course it does not live with me in the same way as it does for Rebecca. Almost every time I visit Rebecca’s blog I am blown away by the strength and clarity of her writing, the rawness of her emotion. Even still, her most recent post has hit me harder than many of her other pieces. I have never met Rebecca, but she holds a very sacred, special place in my heart. Her courage, survival and integrity are truly incredible to behold and I am very, very privileged to call her my sister.

“not all women are prostituted, and that is a good thing. Not all women, that is, turn tricks for money, five times a day, thirty-five times a week, with two thousand men a year, while suffering at least the usual incidence of incest, rapes, beatings, and sexual harassment that other other women do. The prostitution is on top of that. Many women have to endure only pieces of prostitution, Many women are subjected to unwanted sex from men who objectify us, but not typically from two thousand men a year. Many women suffer serial battery from husbands or lovers, but not typically also at the hands of hundreds of relative strangers. Many women recieve money from a harassing boss in the form of a paycheck, but not typically in a context where the harassment is the job. Each of these transactions shares something in common with prostitution, but none of them is prostitution…. Rape is one thing, domestic battery another thing, sexual harassment another, prostitution another. All of these, nevertheless, involve some expression or manifestation of sexual ownership.”

Margaret A. Baldwin, “Strategies of Connection: Prostitution and Feminist Politics”.

This means a lot to me, for it makes sense of why the language of prostitution makes sense of my teenage years and early adulthood.

I call it incest, and it did not fit my life.

I call it rape, and it still would not fit.

I call it battery, and it still refuse to fit.

Then out of exhaustion, I named it prostitution, and my life made a horrible sense.

I knew I live through all the rapes, child sexual abuse and battery. They are deeply connected to being prostituted, but there are differences, and those differences need expression.

Rebecca Mott, Not For Sale

Please read and support her writing. Her voice is so incredibly important.

The Carnival of Radical Feminists

The 11th Carnival of the Radical Feminists

The 12th Carnival of the Radical Feminists

The Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution

The brilliant Debs from The Burning Times invests an amazing amount of time every month in pulling together the Carnival Against Pornogaphy and Prostitution. Each month is an eye-opening experience into the stark reality of what the sex industry means for women who are trapped inside it or whose safety is compromised by men’s willingness to buy, sell and trade us as sex.

The First Carnival Aganist Pornography and Prostitution

The Second Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution

The Third Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution

Read, cry, rage, DO SOMETHING.

FemSpeak

I have just been invited to take over the administration of an internet forum called Women’s Lives Matter and Women’s Life Matters. It is part of a larger website called FemSpeak which you can find out more about here.

FemSpeak arose out of many sessions of ‘girl-talk’ in suburban kitchens and laundries, neighbourhood barbies, PTA meetings, kaffee-klatsches, gyms, tennis and netball courts, as well as the odd play-group, dyke bar and office staff-room.

When the dreaded F-Word - Feminism - came up, it’s often met with claims of boring, ‘too serious’ too cliquey, and basically not much fun, with little relevance to many women’s lives. On the subject of women’s magazines, websites etc, similar claims were made ranging from too frivolous, to too boring. Despite the large numbers of women’s websites, e-zines etc, for the young & hot to the post-menopausal invisibles, we thought there was still room for another, one that put the F-Words - Fun & Friendship - into Feminism.

Another common theme of our ‘girl-talk’ sessions was that feminism had become too distant from women’s daily lives, full of academic theory and vague “issues” fragmented into cliques of ‘in-crowds’ constantly thrashing each other, reminding some of us of our school days. You know - like where the girls all separate into lots of closed little social circles, and nearly all of us felt excluded from the “popular girls” set?

Sound good to you? Sounds bloody brilliant to me.

The website stopped being updated in 2004 and as far as I can tell the forum never got off the ground. The woman who set up the forum does not have the time to moderate or build the community. Which explains why I have been given the honour of taking on the project.

After Heart’s forums were hacked I have been feeling like we really need to reclaim some private space on the internet. Our blogs are important. They give us a voice, but unfortunately our blogs are public and I know I often have reservations in blogging my true feelings as my words are manipulated, misrepresented or misunderstood as happened in the recent Joss Whedon debacle.

So, I’m inviting all of the wonderful women who read here, to come on over and register on the forum. Because women’s lives matter, because women’s life matters.