Avengers director Joss Whedon was chased off Twitter this week after feminist trolls went loopy because… well, who knows. Something about the heteropatriarchal oppression of fictional characters, I guess. He later claimed that he had quit the social network for other reasons. But do we believe him?
Whedon has bent over backwards to appease feminists. (I’m speaking figuratively of course, but who knows? As a feminist he’s sure to be familiar with the cucking craze.) He’s pals with Anita Sarkeesian, a bonkers anti-video game radical who thinks video games and the “toxic masculinity” they promote are responsible for school shootings.
Most people think of Sarkeesian as the feminist answer to TV preacher and moral panic purveyor Jack Thompson. Whedon thinks of her as something between a hero and perpetual damsel in distress. Sort of like his interpretation of Black Widow, if the cranks on the internet are to be believed.
Most hysterically, Whedon recently compared #GamerGate, a movement opposing feminist-led censorship in videogames, to the Ku Klux Klan. Whedon’s comment has been widely cited as an example of “Airport’s Law”, a maxim coined by infamous meme composer and internet personality “Airport” (warning – explicit language).
On the internet, men like Whedon are known as “beta orbiters”. This is the manosphere word for men with no game (dating ability), who oleaginously suck up to their female friends, hanging on their every word, hoping that their boring, unthreatening, nice-guy attitude will eventually get them laid. Is Whedon a beta orbiter?
Either way, you’d think feminists would be thankful to have such a high-profile lapdog. Not so: while women may initially feel flattered by attention from beta orbiters, they are also turned off by the constant deference. And, once an orbiter has been friend-zoned, the only question is whether he is useful or not. Can he carry your luggage? Buy your drinks? Fight your Twitter wars for you?
If the orbiter proves useful, the next step is to train him. Lest he get into the bad habit of thinking for himself, he must constantly be kept at arm’s length. Periodically banishing him from your presence forces him to fight harder to win back your favor. This is exactly what feminists have done to Joss Whedon over the past few days by hurling abuse at him on social media over his portrayal of the super-heroine Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson, in the new Avengers movie.
Judging by this post [trigger warning: Gawker blog attempting to do politics], they object to the fact that Johansson’s character is revealed to be have been sterilised during an experiment, and is upset about it. According to the two bloggers, this “foist[s] a frustrated desire for motherhood and self-loathing onto the character”.
Because modern feminism, as we know by now, is about despising motherhood, and wanting female superheroines (and indeed women in the real world) to behave exactly like men.
As you would expect from the frothing Twitter mobs of social justice, these concerns were explained completely rationally and without any hatre— sorry, what am I saying. They told him to eat shit and die. Whedon abandoned Twitter soon after the deluge began, thanking “everyone who’ve been so kind and funny and inspiring up in here.”
Social justice warriors falling on each other like jackals is not new. Much like the sci-fi series Highlander, they believe “there can be only one” perfect SJW, and that they will somehow absorb the power of their vanquished former compatriots. The only problem is, every SJW thinks him or herself to be that perfect archetype.
GamerGate villain Arthur Chu experienced this first hand when he faced the wrath of Suey Park, who rose to SJW prominence in early 2014 with her movement to “Cancel Colbert”.
Chu made the mistake of disagreeing with Suey Park, and quickly felt the wrath of his fellow progressive Asian activist. Park called him a “tool of white supremacy,” among other chestnuts. This ended – of course – with a grovelling apology from Chu. Apologising is particularly humiliating for a social justice warrior, because their raison d’etre is to extract mournful expressions of regret, not dish them out.
Park herself, in turn, fell out of the herd’s good graces after a bizarre appearance on Huff Post Live which was widely lampooned on both the right and the left.
After Park’s Former Cancel Colbert allies turned on her, she found herself a progressive without power, largely withdrawing from the public and later claiming mental illness – a favoured tactic among left-wing campaigners who find themselves up shit creek without a retweet.
Leftist nerd darling and prominent anti-GamerGater Wil Wheaton also experienced ostracision after an innocuous reference to spirit animals. Followers quickly chided him and directed him to safer words that would not trigger his audience. Who knew there were so many Native American shaman on Twitter, perpetually aggrieved about the “appropriation” of their culture?
What Wheaton and the others have in common is short-sightedness. They never, ever see it coming.
Et tu, hipster?
Whedon, like any good battered wife, is now frantically lying about where he got his bruises. He told Buzzfeed (who else?) that claims he left Twitter due to feminist abuse were “horseshit”, adding that “I have been attacked by militant feminists ever since I got on Twitter. That’s something I’m used to.” See, everyone? It’s just normal behavior for feminists. The abuse is just their way of showing how much they love him.
In all honesty, I sympathise with Joss’s position. After all, I’m a bottom myself! So, because I’m a kind and gentle soul, I’ve been spitballing ideas for SJW-approved projects that Joss can use to win back favour with his abusers. Here are a few ideas.
With any luck, Joss can use one of these to return to a peaceful orbit around the abusive wife that is third-wave feminism. Until his next beating, that is.