I stan this story!
Racism and misogyny had appeared in Whedons work as early as Buffy, when he unceremoniously killed off the only black woman to ever show up in the series to that point. In fact, until the final season any black women were killed on the show, with no character treatment, and the black male actors who showed up were all flunkies and villains. In the final season he reserved his racism for the single Asian girl in the show, she speaks not a word of English, and the other characters mock that! Angel had numerous issues with misogyny, and even an incident of the “big black brute” trope!

His misogyny showed up in the nasty sexist villain he created in the final season. The kind of character that says all the worst things a man wants to say about women, and that wouldn’t be remarkable, except that every film and series he created afterwards has such a character in it, from Firefly’s Mal referring to Inara as a whore, to the unconsenting rapey sexuality of Dollhouse, to Loki’s “muling quim” insult in Avengers, to Iron Man’s “prima nocte” comment in Ultron. His misogyny is seeded throughout all of his work, and o was never so in love with his work that I couldn’t see that.


PoC were trying to tell the fandom for years to watch Whedon closely, and check his work, and as usual we were ignored. So just like always we are thoroughly and completely unsurprised by these allegations.

And there’s also a pattern to the allegations as well. He is a simple bully. He didn’t pick on big name stars. He only ever picked on the Black men who worked for him, or the new actors without established careers. And since he was new and a PoC , Ray Fisher was definitely going to be singled out.

You can even see Whedon’s misogyny and racism in his responses to Godot’s and Fisher’s allegations this week in his interview in New York magazine, saying Godot’s English wasn’t good enough to understand him (she’s stupid, an insult often lobbed at women), and attacking Fisher’s skills as an actor, (questioning a black person’s qualifications) and implying that Fisher is a dangerous thug, or an angry brute.