“I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‘I’m a Christian,’” Maya Angelou said. ““I think, ‘Already? You already got it?'”
She regarded the term as more of an aspiration than as an identity. The Apostle Paul sometimes wrote of faith in this same way — “Not that I have already obtained all this.” This is a prudent and necessary humility — an acknowledgement that our worthiest ideals are there to inspire us to strive toward them, not to complacently regard ourselves as embodying their perfection.
Sometimes, of course, we do use words like “Christian” to refer to categories of identity. If I am asked to check a box related to my religious demographic, I will check the box that says “Christian” without needing to qualify that doing so does not suggest that I regard myself as an avatar of all that ideal Christianity ought to be.
And at other times I might be asked if I am “a Christian” as a way of asking if I affirm what it is that Christians affirm. In those situations, I can answer with an unqualified, enthusiastic “Yes,” because the question is not about what I claim to have obtained as an identity, but about what it is that I aspire to be. The question there is more like “What is it that you want to be? What is it you wish you were? What is it that, on your best days, you’re trying to be?” My answer to that question doesn’t involve any presumptuous suggestion that “I’ve already got it.” It just tells you what it is I’m shooting for, regardless of how close or how far I’ve come from having obtained all this.
Which brings us to another disputed and dreaded realm wherein it’s vitally important to distinguish between aspiration and identity. I’m talking here about “male feminists.”
And particularly about vocal male feminists — the guys who proclaim their identity as feminists and the identity of feminism as them. I don’t mean men who might be described by other people as, generally, feminist, but men who loudly describe themselves that way with all of the “Already got this” audacity that Angelou laughed at.
Self-proclaimed male feminists should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. They don’t all prove to be manipulative creeps and sex pests and predators, but the pattern prevails.
The most famous male feminist in recent years — and now, alas and inevitably — the most infamous male feminist, is probably Joss Whedon.*
Whedon was and is a gifted storyteller. He is the creator of dozens of beloved, admirable characters. And he has a knack for witty, entertaining, and sometimes surprisingly moving dialogue. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I still do.
But over time my affection and admiration for Buffy has gotten more complicated. Not just by the allegations and accusations and revelations about Joss Whedon’s infidelities and predatory behavior and abusive bullying, but by the way those revelations highlighted some of the wrinkles and stumbles we noted, in passing, when we first encountered those stories and characters, and caused us to revisit them with more attention and seriousness.
Especially with regard to Xander Harris.
I’m thinking about this today because Nicolas Brendon, the actor who played Xander on the show, died on Friday at the age of 54.
As Xander, Brendon served as the frequently invoked heart of the show’s ensemble: A regular guy fighting off vampires and demons despite having no abilities of his own to speak of, other than a dab hand with a self-effacing quip. (Brendon himself would note in interviews that he thought he often got the show’s best lines because his character was clearly modeled on creator Joss Whedon’s own high-school self.)
Xander’s obvious role as “high-school Whedon” offered an excuse for the character’s sometimes cringe-inducing behavior. It made us think we were supposed to be cringing when we saw him acting like a Nice Guy (™) — treating his friendship and loyalty as transactional, then sulking in self-pity when it could not be exchanged for the sexual relationship with Buffy he seemed to sometimes think he was entitled to.
The sense that Xander’s Nice Guy (™) dark side was meant to be viewed as a flaw, as a deliberate portrayal of immaturity, was reinforced in later seasons of the show thanks to Warren Mears. On a show that featured vampires and literal demons, Warren was the most monstrous villain. He was misogynist entitlement personified, a warped man who desired women as bodies and despised them as people.
This was not subtle. The stark villainy of Warren Mears seemed, at the time, to be a shouted affirmation of the theory that Xander’s creepy side was intended as a warning — as an aspect of that character that we were supposed to disagree with, to reject and recoil from. It seemed to be Joss Whedon telling us that Xander was high-school Joss, but that high-school Joss had a lot to learn and a lot to unlearn, and that if he hadn’t learned and grown and changed, it would have led him to some very dark and evil places.
But that interpretation of Warren Mears as commentary on Xander Harris was strained by the later revelation that grown-up Joss Whedon had not, apparently, learned or grown or changed from the troubling ways that his high-school version had thought of and treated women. If Xander mistreated Cordelia and Anya, Joss treated them even worse. In light of all that, Warren Mears began to look more like a kind of confession, a peek behind the mask of the male-feminist and a glimpse of his own sense of aggrieved entitlement toward “strong women characters.”
Nicolas Brendon was 25 years old when he landed the part of Xander Harris on Buffy. That’s a lot older than the high-school sophomore he was portraying, but he was still a young man — a young man who spent the next seven formative years of his life working with and for and under the tutelage of a famous “male feminist.” It would overstate and over-simplify things to say that Whedon was responsible for Brendon’s many troubles in his personal and professional life post-Buffy, but the reading the sad summary of his later years does make one wonder about how his experience on the show influenced him:
Brendon began to draw more attention for his personal struggles than for his acting work: He made headlines with a rehab stint in 2004, a pattern that would continue throughout his life. In 2010, he began accruing a series of criminal charges to go with these public missteps, including for public intoxication, resisting arrest, and trashing hotel rooms. In 2015, he was charged with felony third-degree robbery, criminal mischief, and obstruction of breathing after reportedly strangling his girlfriend—although those charges were later pled down to criminal mischief. In 2017, he was charged with felony corporal injury to a spouse (in an incident with a different girlfriend) before making a plea deal that saw him receive probation and an order to attend a mandatory domestic violence course. In the 2020s, Brendon began suffering serious health issues, including undergoing a number of back surgeries; he was also diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, and suffered a heart attack in 2022.
It’s undeniable, for anyone who watched the series, that Nicholas Brendon was not just present for, but integral to, one of the most beloved TV shows of all time. Buffy doesn’t work without Xander, for all that the character sometimes fumbled for meaning in its later seasons, and Xander wouldn’t have worked without Brendon, and his ability to find charm and sweetness in a character sometimes written as wallowing in self-pity. It’s equally undeniable that the actor’s life after the series has been one of (if, admittedly, not the only one of) its sadder legacies, as whole generations of Buffy fans have been forced to wrestle with the distance between a beloved character, and a performer clearly suffering a long series of very public troubles.
I am saddened by Nicolas Brendon’s death as I was saddened by his struggles and failures. I may, as Robert Farley suggests, make the time to rewatch “The Zeppo” and some other old Buffy episodes. So many times, when I’ve rewatched those old episodes, I’ve seen Xander and thought, “Oh no, kid, don’t be like that.” A feeling I’ve had so many times over the ensuing years when hearing about Brendon’s sins and troubles since then.
I may also re-watch Coherence, the weird little, no-budget, largely improvised sci-fi mind-bender that might be his best post-Buffy work.
Anyway, take a cue from Maya Angelou, and be “amazed” if some man walks up to you and says he’s a “feminist.” Just laugh at their audacity and think “Already? You already got it?”
And let me suggest, again, that if you’re looking for examples of “male feminists,” it’s best to avoid any man who uses that language to describe himself or who is eager to put himself in the spotlight and at the microphone as such. You’re better off looking to guys who are content to be known only as “and the Blackhearts.” As in Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
Those guys could probably tell you something about what it means to be a “male feminist.” But they probably also wouldn’t. So.
* See, for example:
- “Buffy Creator Joss Whedon & the Vocal Male Feminist Effect“
- “Joss Whedon Was Never a Feminist“
- “Joss Whedon was once hailed as a feminist. Then came the stories about his behavior“
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