You may have heard that Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner
made some offensive jokes at the expense of the Black Widow character and those with prosthetic limbs during their
Avengers: Age of Ultron press tour. You may have also heard that
both have since issued apologies (Evans' being infinitely more sincere than Renner's sorry-you-got-mad statement). If you've been paying attention, you may also have noticed that there are droves of people who have come out in their defense as they were clearly joking in the interview. Here's the thing: As anyone who follows the
She-Geeks Facebook page should know by now, I adore Chris Evans. I'm also a big, ole fan of Jeremy Renner, and I honestly do not believe either of these men are sexist, ableist, or bad people in general. Rather, I imagine they're both pretty delightful humans who were likely extremely tired and attempting to have some fun answering a ridiculous question during the 800th interview they had given in an very short window of time. Such is the life when promoting a movie, and I do not at all envy them that task.
None of that, however, means that we should ignore the problems with the things they said. Jokes or no, fictional characters or no, there
are issues with the things they said and this conversation (that so many people are extremely resistant to) needs to happen. Why? Well, there are a whole lot of reasons, but comments like these (taken from a friend's Facebook post about Evans' and Renner's apologies) are a good place to start:
