radicaljane

Hi Joss! This morning instead of working on my dissertation I sat around and thought about what I could possibly say to you. Mostly, I just want to say thank you. Your work has made a huge impact on my life, especially your female characters. I know people always make a big deal about the women that you write and your feminism and I hope it's not redundant to hear it one more time, but once upon a time there was a shy, abused, closeted little kid who got hooked on Buffy, felt like she could kick ass too, and has loved your work ever since.

Thank you so much for your work, and for being a voice for so many wonderful things--feminism, atheism, lgbt issues, geekery and just damn amazing storytelling. I have no doubt your work has helped many people out there find the hope and courage to be themselves, just like me.

I would love to know anything about your personal motivations for being such a strong feminist, as well as your other positions on atheism, etc. Has being vocal about these positions ever been professionally difficult for you or caused you to lose work?

Also, I dearly love the whole rise of geek/nerd-centered media we see with people like you and Felicia Day, etc, it's so cool to feel like the geek/nerd community is producing great content outside of the mainstream media. I love the online and webseries-type projects, what do you see happening with the future of entertainment given these technologies? With all your latest big movie work, do you see yourself still being involved in these kinds of projects in the future?

As a professor myself, my experience has been that this varies hugely depending on different situations. For instance, I'm a young-looking, very petite female, and letting my students call me by my first name just encourages things that I already have a problem with--them not being respectful in class, or being entitled and demanding that I let them turn in papers late, etc. Keeping that barrier up is pretty essential for me. I'm sure once I'm older looking, it won't be such a big deal.