Random Awesome

Look at where the floor is.  Her legs, in order to reach it, must be Liefeldian in length!  And then the obvious solution presented itself.

She’s standing on a dog!

Unless…

now he can’t even close the door

ok

And while that is one way of writing a strong female character, it’s not the only way, or even the best way. Inherently it’s a man’s idealization of what female strength is — it’s essentially male strength mapped onto a female form — and thus Whedon’s much-lauded “strong female characters” all end up looking and sounding and acting very much like men as a result. There’s a reason so many men love Joss Whedon’s work; his women are essentially men with boobs, and I’ll even go so far as to say that Whedon’s work reinforces the patriarchal ideal.

As revolutionary as Buffy was when it first came on, times have changed, but Whedon’s writing hasn’t. He still thinks “heroine” is synonymous with second-class character, or with someone that needs saving. But you can be a strong woman, a strong heroine, without needing to be a woman playing by a man’s rules.

But I also think that Joss Whedon has given us characters that aren’t superpowered or masculine but are still very strong, i.e. Fred Burkle from Angel and Inara Serra from Firefly. Inara is extremely feminine, and very in tune with her emotions. She is well-respected, and doesn’t let anyone just get away with treating her poorly. I think she shows a great strength in spirit, and while she knows how to wield a weapon, she doesn’t see it as something she has to do to prove her worth. She loves her dresses and fancy fabrics and pretty hair, but it doesn’t make her weak. 

Then again, there are different ways to fight the problematic associations of “heroine” as lesser than “hero”. Some writers, women included, prefer to use gender-neutral language as a way to screw the binary. To them, women and men are both heroes, and there is no need for a term that distinguishes the gender. And by applying the term “hero” to female characters, they’re chipping away and the more masculine connotations of the word. And some want to reclaim “heroine” as something explicitly female, and just as valuable at that. I think it was you, Flutie, who sad that you make a point of telling coworkers to not call you “dude,” and I think it was also you who posted an article about reclaiming the term “gal”. I’ve fought with myself internally about this issue a lot. When pledging for my co-ed fraternity, I had a semester-long mental debate over whether upon crossing I would take the title of Brother or Sister. Our pledge class, composed of ten women and one man, split pretty evenly in that regard. Several of the women chose to be Sisters, and several chose to be Brothers. The Sisters wanted to embrace and represent their femininity in a co-ed fraternity. I struggled with the decision for a long time, but finally decided to go by Brother as a way to chip at the gender binary, because that was what I was more comfortable with.

It’s interesting you bring up Inara, because if I had to choose, I’d say either she or Cordelia are as close as Whedon’s ever gotten to believable strong female characters. Both are “strong”, in that they are physically and mentally competent, emotionally resilient, and brave in the face of their fears; and both exhibit what our society considers typically “feminine” traits, such as intuitive genius or a tendency toward creative pursuits. (Note that I’m not saying these ARE feminine traits, in that they have a biological basis; only that this is just what the current paradigm associates as “feminine”.)