Donald Trump vs. Joss Whedon

The Donald...and his hair

Joss Whedon, entertainer and feminist extraordinaire

So, it's been a busy two or three weeks on the world stage.  The royals put on a show that will rival all shows to come for a while.  Whilst I admit to having 'accidentally' watched the vows section of the ceremony, I am very glad that's done with.  And after all that, we still don't really know what it is the royal family actually does.

In other news, The (extremely loud, unbelievably obnoxious) Donald has been Shut Up! For now anyway.  Donald Trump, of Trump Towers and The Apprentice, has decided to officially 'flirt' with a 2012 Republican run for President of the United States.  This has involved many a rerun of episodes in the media circus that is The Donald's life, including a new episode centering on current US president Barack Obama's American citizenship.  For weeks now, The Donald has guffawed, hollered, whispered loudly, insinuated that Obama has perpetrated the ultimate fraudulent act against the American people (and bla bla bla) and concealed that he was born in Mombasa, Kenya and not Honolulu, Hawaii (which he would need to be in order to be eligible for the presidency job).  Finally, Obama had enough, and on Wednesday, he released a longer version of a document he already released three years ago proving that he is, in fact, an Amrikan.  So, The Donald has official proof and can now, hopefully, knock it off.  

This whole Trump kerfuffle, along with a few episodes of one of Joss Whedon's genius creations, Dollhouse, has led me to the conclusion that there are two kinds of privilege in the world: Donald Trump privilege and Joss Whedon privilege.  Joss is the creator of, amongst many, many other works of feminist genius, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  For years of my life, I tuned in to week after week of Buffy, watching her and her misfit gang (the Scoobies) defeating evils that ranged from insane gods intent on bleeding teenage girls to the death of a parent and depression.  Joss - and his all of his colleagues and all of the heroines they created - helped hold me together, and assured me that being a girl meant awesomeness and power, and was something to be celebrated.  Buffy and Joss also taught me that no matter how bad things were, things were never so bad that I felt the need to retreat into an alternate universe in which I was in a mental asylum, and all my friends were figments of my schizophrenic imagination.  The appeal of Buffy was that it was (as Whedon himself puts it)
"the story of a young woman's journey that involve[d] a great deal of horror, and some heroics".  And really isn't that every woman's story?

Joss and The Donald are both American white men who wield substantial power in their respective fields.  And in their own way, the represent the best and the worst parts of American white male privilege.  Where Joss privilege is marked by a keen awareness of the experiences of those whose world views are not central, Donald privilege barely knows you exist for anything other than serving its own ends.  Donald Trump took all of his privilege and his wealth and decided to lead a charge against the current US president.  Not a charge around the president's take on a social, or economic issue, not a charge of any national, global or other consequence, but a charge about how he may have been born in Africa.  I realise that that point has constitutional consequence, but seriously, think about it: had John McCain, a white man, born in Panama been elected, there would be no fuss over his legitimacy as leader of the free world.  Joss Whedon, on the other hand, chooses to create stories about women whose stories reflect the lives of real-life women.  In a world where popular culture is infused with super-skinny, vapid, (hopefully) unrealistic womanhood that usually defers to a male love interest, Joss rode in and created girls and women who run their own lives and the world, without fanfare, or male leadership.  Where The Donald's privilege exists to create a world of black and white, with little consideration of nuance, Joss's privilege (I believe) is painfully aware of its divisive power, and its ability to wreak havoc.  Knowing this, it chooses instead to provide platforms where 'others' who are not as privileged or powerful can speak.

If I have to live with privilege (especially that of the white male Western variety), and I think I might have to for a while to come, I choose Joss over The Donald anyday.