Joss Whedon‘s ex-wife Kai Cole has penned an op-ed slammed her former husband as a “hypocrite preaching feminist ideals”, and accusing him of multiple affairs during their 16-year marriage.
Writing for The Wrap, Cole explains that despite being “a very private person”, she’s going public to clear up the misinformation since news of their split went public. (They separated in May 2012, but news of the split only went public in May 2017.)
She says that Whedon confessed to multiple affairs throughout their entire marriage, starting on the set of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘ and continuing for the full 16 years they were together, including with actresses, co-workers, fans and friends.
She writes:
There were times in our relationship that I was uncomfortable with the attention Joss paid other women. He always had a lot of female friends, but he told me it was because his mother raised him as a feminist, so he just liked women better. He said he admired and respected females, he didn’t lust after them. I believed him and trusted him. On the set of ‘Buffy’, Joss decided to have his first secret affair.
She says he kept these affairs secret until deciding he was finally done with their marriage, confessing to her via letter.
Fifteen years later, when he was done with our marriage and finally ready to tell the truth, he wrote me, ‘When I was running ‘Buffy,’ I was surrounded by beautiful, needy, aggressive young women. It felt like I had a disease, like something from a Greek myth. Suddenly I am a powerful producer and the world is laid out at my feet and I can’t touch it.” But he did touch it. He said he understood, “I would have to lie — or conceal some part of the truth — for the rest of my life,” but he did it anyway, hoping that first affair, “would be ENOUGH, that THEN we could move on and outlast it.
Joss admitted that for the next decade and a half, he hid multiple affairs and a number of inappropriate emotional ones that he had with his actresses, co-workers, fans and friends, while he stayed married to me. He wrote me a letter when our marriage was falling apart, but I still didn’t know the whole truth, and said, “I’ve never loved anyone or wanted to be with anyone in any real or long-term way except for you ever. And I love our life. I love how you are, how we are, who you are and what we’ve done both separately and together, how much fun we have…” He wanted it all; he didn’t want to choose, so he accepted the duality as a part of his life.
According to Cole, Whedon said he didn’t want to choose between his wife and his affairs, and so he simply “lived two lives”, using feminist righteousness as a mask for his guilt.
Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinise his writing as anything other than feminist.
Whedon’s creation of complex female characters (most notably Buffy Summers) and his frequent passion for speaking publicly on feminism have earned him the title of ‘feminist director’, but his so-called feminist credentials have been called into question by multiple publications over the years. (At a glance: The Atlantic, The Independent and The Mary Sue, all of which scratch the surface of Whedon’s feminism and find it lacking, and which aims to benefit one person above all: Joss Whedon.)
Cole, who was diagnosed with Complex PTSD following Whedon’s revelations, says she’s going public to shatter the illusion he used their marriage to build.
Until recently, Joss was still letting the illusion of our marriage stay intact. Now that it is finally public, I want to let women know that he is not who he pretends to be. I want the people who worship him to know he is human, and the organisations giving him awards for his feminist work, to think twice in the future about honouring a man who does not practice what he preaches.
Whedon hasn’t commented publicly on Cole’s accusations, but said via a spokesperson that her account includes “inaccuracies and misrepresentations”. The spokesperson also said that he wouldn’t be commenting, “out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife.”
You can read Cole’s full piece here.
