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Title: Emasculate *This*!: Power Independent of the Magic Cock in the
Jossverse
Author: Glossolalia
Topic: Jossverse characters as Jungian Archetypes OR male castration is a prerequisite for female empowerment - discuss. [from estepheia]
Notes: For the Essayathon, hosted by itsabigrock. Enormous thanks to katemonkey and kindkit for suggestions and acting as devil's advocates and generally calming me down.
Is emasculation a prerequisite for female empowerment?
Short answer: No. Especially not in the Jossverse.
My longer answer takes two fronts. One concerns the questionable logic of the
statement itself, while the second examines evidence from canon. The statement's
logic presumes a fairly crude economy of both gender and power, while canon
offers little to no support for this economy. I want to note, moreover, that
my (fairly slippery) identity as UC-shipper and slasher - one, that is, who
is invested in exploring and elaborating queer expressions - is not only affronted
by this economy, which can be found throughout fandom, but repulsed.
1. A brutal economy
First, let's look at the statement itself. There are only two terms at work,
which we can call emasculation or masculinity and female empowerment, or femininity.
In other words, male and female are the sum total of the population. Furthermore,
the logic is unidirectional: emasculation *precedes* empowerment. To exist,
empowerment *requires* an emasculation. The statement establishes a two-term
system with a single logical direction.
This statement supposes a closed and balanced gender system. Closed, because
there is no room for terms *other* than female and male. Balanced, for two reasons.
First, because male and female are traditionally considered opposing but complementary
qualities. Second, and more specifically, because a positive growth (empowerment)
results *from* a diminishment (emasculation). The diminishment is literally
physical - loss of penis - yet by extension it changes the man's gender identity.
There is, however, no matching *growth* of gender identity (or physical being)
on the other side. The female term is thus logically subordinate to the male
one.
The statement's internal logic depends not just on a closed system, however,
but what we can call a phallocentric one. That is, the phallus is the point
of origin for everything else in the system. According to this logic, power
originally resides in, and is associated with, the penis, while the penis (somehow,
it's never quite clear) stands metonymically for all of masculinity. While women
can gain power, this is only accomplished through violence. Such violence can
be directly physical or metaphorical.
What this logic says about power itself is as troubling as what it says about
gender. Power is a static entity within the closed and balanced gender system.
It is mobile, but it belongs only to one term at a time, whether this is the
male term at the beginning of the logical movement or the female as a result
of the emasculation. Inside the system, power cannot be shared. It seems to
be a commodity, and is certainly not relational - that is, it does not exist
either external to the terms of the system, nor as an aspect of their interrelation.
To posit power as a violently-acquired *thing*, then, produces a crude - not
to say *brutal* - gender economy. The female is a dependent term on the original
and whole male; it is defined negatively by what it is not - male - and what
it lacks - power. Although this power may be held by the female term, the acquisition
is a violent one that deforms the male's gender identity.
2. "I'm not really much for the timber": Empowerment in canon
My dismay at the logic of a supposed emasculation/empowerment link should be
clear. Such a system, however powerful it may be as one possible structure for
gender relations (I don't find it particularly *useful*, but that may just be
me), is distressing for many reasons. I am confident, however, that this link
does not exist in canon. In this section, I review a great many instances of
female empowerment in the Buffyverse.[1] Whether we look at Slayers or little
sisters, prom queens or single moms, empowerment is everywhere.
What's missing, however, is emasculation. Indeed, it might even be argued that
the problem with men in the Buffyverse is not emasculation but an *excess* of
stereotypical masculinity.[2] In seven + five years of this world, there was
only one emasculation, that of Caleb in the penultimate episode of BtVS, and
that was...lame.
2.1 Metaphysically-endowed girl power: Slayers
The Buffyverse begins with Buffy already empowered; it is not until the last
episode of the second season that we are shown, in flashback, the moment of
her calling at Hemery. It's safe to say that this world is actually predicated
on the fact of empowerment - first Buffy's, and, by the time of "Chosen", of
every/any girl.
There is no preceding emasculation out of which Buffy, as the universe's sun/center/focus/hero,
becomes empowered. It is the *fact* of her empowerment that produces this particular
universe. Although the slayer is "chosen", the act of choice and the chooser(s)
remain obscure; what matters is that the girl is empowered. In "Chosen", the
montage of the activation spell suggests that such power is potentially latent
within any girl. There is no particular situation or circumstance out of which
a girl is empowered; the slayers we have seen over the years bear this out.
They are a motley bunch - Buffy, Nikki, the Chinese girl, Kendra, and Faith
- with very little in common beyond the bald fact of their sex.
"How come you're always girls?" Connor asks Faith in "Salvage" (A.4.13). Better
at it, I guess, she replies. I don't think there's going to be a much better
answer than that. As the gender politics of Mutant Enemy rigidified over the
years, particularly from season six onward, we were allowed glimpses into the
metaphysics of Slayerhood, but these were both partial and dogmatic. Giles tells
the First Slayer in "Restless" (B.4.22) that she is the way she is "because
you never had a Watcher", while in "Get It Done" (B.7.15), Buffy witnesses
the empowerment of the First Slayer. Tied down and imbued with a demon spirit,
the girl is, effectively, raped. Having seen the (apparent) source of her power,[3]
Buffy refuses more.
Slayers are powerful; girls are powerful. Whatever the source of that power,
whoever does the choosing, the important fact is that girls' power is among
the founding assumptions of this particular world. Rather than being a derivative,
violently-*taken* power, it is in fact original and particular to girls.
2.2 Bad-ass Wiccas
Secondary, but parallel, to Buffy's story as powerful girl is that of Willow.
Hers is another case of female empowerment that occurs without emasculation.
Indeed, while Willow's power as a witch grew in synch with her relationship
with Oz, it would be difficult to argue that he was in any way *emasculated*
in the relationship. Further, Willow's power *really* flowered when Oz left;
the first phase of her relationship with Tara, over the course of season four,
can be read as a fairly clumsy equation of lesbianism (in the guise of women
loving women) with power and magic.
Willow's power is her own, but it flourishes in her relationship with Tara.
It turns dark, moreover, when the relationship founders - first at the beginning
of season six, and then, strikingly, at the end of that season when Tara is
murdered. While Willow extracts vengeance on Warren for that murder - and while
flaying could certainly be considered a sort of emasculation write large - her
power in no way derives from or depends on him, let alone on his emasculation.
Her power is much more longstanding than the violence done to Warren; indeed,
her first great powerful act - ensouling Angelus in "Becoming" (B.2.21-22) -
is the opposite of a diminishment.
Tara herself suggests that magical power is a female quality. She practiced
her first magic with her mother, and in her family, girls' sexual maturity is
brutally equated with monstrosity. Their coming into power, that is, is cast
as the emergence of a demon. This equation is roundly rejected by the Sunnydale
group in "Family" (B.5.6), yet it uncomfortably prefigures the story we are
given later about the origin of slayer-power. What's more, the sense of a female
lineage of magic and power, passed maternally and lovingly, that Tara suggests
has its echoes later in the old woman who gives Buffy the scythe with which
she splits Caleb. The maternal passing-down of power and knowledge is also at
work with Catherine and Amy Madison, though more darkly-inflected.
In the case of witches, as with Slayers, female power is preexisting and independent
of men, not to mention of emasculation.
2.3 The normals
Power is not reserved only for the metaphysical heroes. Indeed, female power
as a fact of life and *normal* thing can be seen throughout canon. Even when
metaphysically-induced to make someone into a villain, as with Joyce in "Gingerbread"
(B.3.11) and Cordelia in season four of AtS, this power has nothing to do with
emasculation.
Jenny Calendar comes out of a powerful tradition of Roma, worked both by men
and women. Lilah Morgan is a smart, savvy woman whose power is earned - while
she faces the glass ceiling (apparently a transdimensional phenomenon), she
wields an enormous amount of social power that has little to do with emasculating
anyone. Fred is also powerful, whether she is opening portals from Pylea, setting
booby traps for Wesley in "Billy" (A.3.6), or taking on Jasmine and Angel in
"Magic Bullet" (A.4.19). Like Lilah, Fred's power is intellectual; while as
heroine,[4] rather than villain, her physicality is expressed as prepubescent
where Lilah's is corporate-dominatrix, she's also quite capable with a gun.
Virginia Bryce is also socially powerful, but, again, does not emasculate anyone;
nor do Bethany in "Untouched" (A.2.4) and Gwen during season four of "Angel".
Rather than emanating *from* emasculation, all too often the expression of female
power is in reaction *to* excessive masculinity - Bethany's telekinesis emerged
in response to her father's molestation, Cordelia and Fred act powerfully to
defeat the effects of Billy's toxic misogyny, and Buffy's actual emasculation
of Caleb, like Willow's flaying of Warren, is a destruction, whether justified
or not, of a certain strain of masculinized power.
Such expressions, however, do not always concern men at all, let alone masculinity
or lack thereof. Joyce's campaign in "Gingerbread", for example, is inherently
powerful, in that she persuades the entire town to act up against the occult.
While she does knock Giles unconscious, this is hardly an emasculation; in the
early seasons, Giles was always getting concussed. Moreover, it is important
not to fall into the trap of thinking that *only* acts of violence can be expressions
of power. Her power was most palpable in her speech at the candlelight vigil,
just as Cordelia's power in season four of "Angel", while sexualized with both
The Beast and Connor, was not emasculating.
Identifying - or confusing - violence with power is something about which canon
sends frustratingly incoherent and contradictory signals. Willow's power was
certainly in evidence well before she took to violence; Joyce, Lilah, and Fred
are all powerful without acting violently. The identification may come because
the Slayer's power is directed violently against vampires and other monsters.
This is, I think, more a function of narrative exigency - if the show were to
dramatize Lilah's power, we would not be watching ...the Vampire Slayer
but a better version of Ally McBeal, just as Fred's show would be a strange
hybrid of Gilmore Girls, Undeclared, and That 70s Show.
Buffy *is* the slayer; her particular power is frequently violent, but not all
power is necessarily violent.
2.4 Villains, monsters, and Old Ones
The mythos of the Buffyverse has it that before human beings appeared, the world
- or this dimension, it gets confusing - was ruled by demons. Or maybe by Old
Ones who weren't necessarily demonic per se. As I said, it's confusing.
We have seen four examples of these older, higher-order beings, and the three
that got lines have been played by female actors. I remain unconvinced, however,
that such beings have genders in the human sense. I include them here, however,
because they *look* female and are often described, in both canon and fandom,
using feminine pronouns.
Acathla, the demon that Angelus attempts to raise in season two of "Buffy",
is such an old one. It never speaks, nor moves much more than to open its mouth.
Glory, the villain of season five, might be an old one; it/she is certainly
a god of *some* dimension and is, unquestionably, feminized. It occupies, however,
a male body (Ben's) occasionally in addition to the rather glorious curves of
Clare Kramer. Glory's excessive, almost parodic (certainly hyperconscious) femininity
is more that of a drag queen than a woman's.
On "Angel", the last two seasons featured parallel stories of the return of
old ones. In season four, Jasmine birthed her-/itself from Cordelia, while in
season five, Illyria infected Fred's body. Like their varying methods of appearance,
the tenor of these stories is different; Jasmine trades on a warm, maternal
glow, which is in keeping with Cordelia's pregnancy. Illyria is less typically
feminine, and her/its presence is written less as the arrival of an earth mother
and more as the discomfiting return of a fairly confused and obsolete king who
speaks in feudal and antiquated terms.
Yet in both cases, the old one's power is never expressed through emasculation.
Jasmine's power is a sort of mass hypnosis and abrogation of free will, while
Illyria's centers on manipulation of time and space. Both choose Angel as lieutenant
or respected colleague - Jasmine chooses him and Connor as enforcer, while Illyria
gives him strange advice about how to be a king. In both cases, then, they incorporate,
respect, and use Angel's typically masculine identity.
Illyria defines power in a fairly unique way. In "Time Bomb" (A.5.19). she/it
says, among other things, "You want to take my power... to let me live. But
I am my power" and "I was the immaculate embodiment of rule." Power is, according
to Illyria, the capacity for perfect rule. It is neither general violence nor
specific emasculation, but *will*. This definition becomes the working, productive
one of the final episodes of AtS, as I examine below.
There are other female villains, of course, but their femininity, while it may
be integral to the characters' identities, is not directed *against* masculinity.
Darla and Drusilla are very different women - Darla's gender expression is active,
hungry, and commanding, while Drusilla's is the superficially charming play
of a little girl - and their similarity resides in vampirism, not gender (let
alone chromosomes). I should note that although Darla is an active, commanding
woman, her relationship with Angelus is a darkly, sexually-inflected maternalist
one, not emasculating. Though she calls him "boy" and seems to call the shots
frequently, she also exults in his masculinity as many times as she simply leaves
him. Examining the Angelus/Darla relationship, in fact, can go a long way toward
puncturing the brutally simplistic gender economy of emasculation/empowerment;
they are obsessed with each other, and their mutual gender expressions are complementary.
There is no power/dependence imbalance - until Darla is sick, but even then,
though she depends on Angel's success in the Trials for her humanity, she is
not *dependent* on him in any conventional, stereotypical sense. Her reliance
on Angel then, and again when she returns pregnant in season three, is nothing
like, for example, Drusilla's dependence on Spike when they appear in season
two. And at that point, Dru is deathly ill.
There is a cluster of cases in which female power can be found in relation to
some kind of violence against men. This violence is not necessarily emasculating,
however, in the sense of challenging/destroying male gender identity, although
it is directed at men qua men. Most interestingly, these cases all relate
to Xander, and may, in the end, have much more to say about his gender expression
and narrative function than they do about female empowerment.
Ms. French, Ampata the Inca Mummy Girl, and Anya(nka) are all at various times
over the run of "Buffy", linked romantically with Xander. Ms. French, as a monstrous
praying mantis, mates with male virgins before eating them; the Inca Mummy Girl
derives sustenance from a kiss; and Anya wreaks vengeful violence against men
on behalf of women. Aside from Anya, these are, however, marginal cases; they
are more significant as the villain/monster of the week than as particular contributions
to the world's gender system. Even Anya is better read as an unfolding argument
about vengeance versus justice in this world.[5] Xander is an overdetermined
character: He has to carry the narrative weight of being the typical, representative
teenaged boy, more concerned about Playboys in his locker than the witch-hunt
in "Gingerbread", constantly thinking about sex, academically-challenged and
goofy. His links with these female villains are, I would argue, the product
of his being the only boy in the group, rather than specifically gender-focused.
In any case, violence against men occurs in the Buffyverse, just as it does
against women and the Summers' plate-glass window. Sometimes, yes, this violence
concerns men's gender expressions - whether it is the odious misogynies of Billy,
Warren, and Caleb or the simple fact of needing some kind of sustenance from
a man, as with Xander's early experiences - but it is not emasculating. Even
Faith's torture of Wesley in "Five by Five/Sanctuary" (A.1.18-19), while exceedingly
violent and directed against a man, did not concern his masculinity, but her
own pain and anger *at* him.
2.6 Obligatory remarks on Spike
For better or worse, no discussion of power and gender identity would be complete
without looking at Spike. Power and emasculation and desire all coexist in multiple
variants for him.
Spike attributes masculinist power to *love*, such that it feminizes him. He
seems to get off on emasculation, on being "love's bitch" (B.3.8, "Lovers' Walk")
and the series' own "fool for love" (B.5.7). From the start, however, he *also*
portrays the chip as an emasculation: "had a little trip to the vet and now
he doesn't chase the other puppies anymore. I can't bite anything. I can't even
hit people" (B.4.8, "Pangs"). The inability to feed, Spike suggests in this
collapsed, tangled metaphor, is akin to loss of testicles, to loss of masculine
identity.
All that, however, concerns Spike's self-image, and we do not necessarily have
to share his fairly confusing, highly (yet simplistically) gendered take on
things.
Whatever you think of his relationship with Buffy in season six - *even if*
you believe that she emasculated him (although to argue that, you need to rely
on the closed and balanced gender economy I limned in section one and make several
logical somersaults and I don't envy your lower back) - her empowerment precedes
that relationship. It has nothing to do with the particular dynamics of the
relationship, except that, you know, Spike *likes* fighting with her and has
since his first scary dreams about lusting for her in season five. Buffy has
held her power for at least six years by the time she takes up with Spike, and
Spike has - again, in his own opinion - been emasculated for either two years
(since "Pangs") or a century (since meeting Dru. Hell, since sniffing around
Cecily).
Buffy's empowerment does not come from Spike's emasculation. Period, and that's
really all I want to say. No, that's far more than I want to say, but any discussion
of power and emasculation seems to be a code to talk about Spike.
3. Conclusion: Dawn as the key. Again.
While the Buffyverse's foundational assumption of female power, independent
of both men and, further, emasculation, is most clearly seen in the slayers
and witches, there is another case to examine: Dawn.
Dawn is Buffy, except she's not. She's not a slayer, though she was made from
Buffy's blood, nor, according to "Potential" (B.7.12}, is she a potential slayer.
She is mortal - else season five and the threat of Glory would have been nonsensical
- but she is also a glowing green ball of energy. She's older, then, than even
the old ones Acathla, Glory, Jasmine, and Illyria, and like the last three,
played by a female actor.
Dawn has power, however. It is not slayerhood, and despite her origins as the
key, it is not metaphysical. It is, Xander suggests in "Potential", akin to
his own. It is "Seeing. Knowing" and, I would add, loving. Like Xander and Willow
in the first two seasons of the series, Dawn is relatively normal and a useful
point of audience-identification. Her power derives from her humanity and her
relationships with others.
From this vantage point, we can reexamine *other* expressions of power. Buffy's
power, while originating metaphysically in her slayerhood, is more dependent
on her friends and relationships than it is on demonization; Willow's power
strengthens in tandem with her emotional ties to first Oz and then Tara. Faith's
power misfires and murders *because* she lacks the social network that Buffy
has built, while season-four Cordelia's power can be exercised under the cloak
of social trust.
Buffyverse power, then, is not a commodity. It does not derive from the phallus,
and it is not gained, let alone exercised, through violence. It is relational,
springing up in the course of friendship, love, trust, and loyaltym as when,
according to Xander, "You [Dawn] gave her your power". Dawn demonstrates the
relationality of power in the last season of "Buffy", just as Buffy herself
did in the first season.
As usual, the fifth season of AtS shoots this all to hell, however. There, without
any women after Fred's death and Eve's firing,[6] power *does* get treated as
a possession, a commodity attached to the big magic dick. Angel extracts himself
from the team and acts alone, treating power as his sole territory, identifying
it with a specific space. Anticipating Illyria's words about kingship, he tells
Hamilton, "This is my house. The only ideas that matter are mine" (A.5.17, "Underneath").
Even more explicitly, when finally, belatedly confronted by his former colleagues
in "Power Play", he says that "There is one thing in this business, in this
apocalypse that we call a world that matters: Power. Power tips the scale, power
sets the course, and until I have real power, global power, I have nothing."
(A.5.21; emphasis mine).
Using this logic, however, proves risky. This is a logic which aligns itself
with the first term of the emasculation/empowerment link - that of male originary
power - and using it, Angel takes on the Senior Partners. While BtVS ended with
a strange, solemn smile and real global empowerment, AtS ended with dimensions
ripping apart and a tiny band of men and one old one in an alley. There is no
emasculation in this exercise of power, but nor is there any female empowerment.
Whereas the Buffyverse existed for a good seven + four seasons as one that employed
a complex and open-ended sense of power and multiple gender expressions, the
final season of AtS depicts a logic of reified power and single-term (masculine)
gender.
The logic of AtS's ending is, then, even more distressingly simplistic than
the proposition that emasculation and female empowerment have anything to do
with each other.
Notes
[1] While the topic requested discussion of the "Jossverse", my knowledge
of Firefly is sorely lacking. This essay concentrates on what I'm calling
the Buffyverse, by which I mean the (occasionally uncomfortably) coexisting
worlds of BtVS and AtS. When citing episodes, I have done so parenthetically,
using B to denote BtVS and A for AtS, followed by the season number,
then the episode number. Thus, B.4.19 would be BtVS season four, episode
19.
[2] Who are the villains? The Master, Angelus, Spike, wolf!Oz, even the
magic dealer Rack - all of them exhibit, among other loathsome qualities, an
abundance of what's usually understood as male lust. Lasciviousness and uncontrollable
desire help to *make* them villains. In this pantheon, the Mayor is notably
absent; his relationship with Faith reverses (or does it?) typical gender roles,
in that he is the domestic-minded one, she the bearer of violence; at the same
time, however, he plays the father to Faith and refuses any sexual innuendo
about their relationship. We might note that Faith is troublesome, narratively
*marked* for trouble, because she employs a "masculinist" persona - lustful,
violent, energetic.
[3] There are volumes to be written about what Buffy sees in the cave.
The three men appear to be the first of the watchers, yet Giles claims the First
Slayer never had one. The parallels between the cave ritual and the attempted
rape in "Seeing Red" (B.6.19) are both intriguing and disturbing, and could
suggest that Buffy may not be witnessing history, but memory.
[4] The desexualization of female heroes in the Buffyverse, the hypersexualization
of nearly all villains, particularly vampires, whether male or female, and the
increasingly incoherent messages about (heterosexual) sex are way too broad
for me to tackle here.
[5] The vengeance/justice dialectic begins with Uncle Enyos in "Surprise/Innocence"
(B.2.13-14}, continues with Anya, and concludes with Willow's taking vengeance
against Warren, and then the world, in season six. It is not a gendered dialectic;
as we see in "Selfless" (B.7.5), while Anya always focused on vengeance *for*
women, Halfrek worked other kinds.
[6] Any women who are respected and/or listened to, that is; there is
Harmony, and it is through the exclusion of her that Angel is betrayed.