Mmm, Meta...
Swapping Spit and Satin Panties: Sexual Objectification of the Male Characters in Supernatural
Summary: Despite plausible allegations of sexism, women still like Supernatural. Also, Dean gets kissed by demons a lot. Maybe these things are related? And no, I’m not saying we just watch for the h/c and the pretty.
Word count: 2,000 yes I know there’s something wrong with me.
Rated: pg-13 (Language and sexual situations)
Warnings: Meta. I tried to avoid anything!fail, but you never know; contains reference to sexual assault and harassment. General spoilers for season 5 and a smattering of earlier episodes.
So, I’m well aware that I may be leaping into a snake pit by trying to discuss sexual assault in relation to a show notorious for sensitivity!fail. Let me be clear to start that I don’t want to dismiss that Show has some serious issues with how it treats women- but that isn’t the topic of discussion here. Plenty of exceptionally smart people have posted encompassing discussions about misogyny in SPN, and I’m not going to restate their points.
The thing is, despite a certain amount of misogyny in Show, women are the preponderance of the SPN audience. Do women just not care if their entertainment is sexist? Considering the very intelligent and very annoyed responses to various !fail on Show, that’s patently untrue. The fact that women are still watching indicates that women are still finding something of value despite the surface sexism. For that reason, I feel at least a little justified in musing on the ways in which gender issues might be interpreted as more sensitively handled than the rough surface of Show would suggest.
Specifically, I want to discuss the sexual violence directed at the men of SPN. What started me thinking about all this was rewatching the season 5 premiere, in which the return of Meg is heralded by the forcible insertion of her tongue into Deans mouth. It’s perfectly in character; Meg has always used sexualized violence against both Sam and Dean. But it also reminded me of all the other times Dean’s been kissed in non-or-dub-con situations: crossroads demon twice, the vampire in “Dead Man’s Blood,” and the nympho patient just this season. Not to mention, I seem to remember some iffy contact with Meg in “Shadow” and possibly the bartending demon in “Sin City.” Then there’s the whole subtext with Alistair in Hell, but lets let that lie for now.
It’s not just sexual violence from demons, either. There’s also a good deal of sexual teasing, a benign reflection of the more invasive sexual objectification. We’ve got Dean uncomfortably “full frontal” in the meta book series within Show, the “don’t objectify me” comment towards Bella, the satin panties Dean recalls being forced to wear in “The End,” and Pamela’s constant teasing about Sam’s nice butt. Sam is also treated as a sex object by Becky, and the thing with the dominatrix last episode is at best dub-con.
So what gives? If three is a trend, we have plenty of evidence for women sexually harassing and/or objectifying the male leads. It’s significant that sexual violence is directed at our heroes this often, considering that Show is in many ways a meditation on masculinity and being sexually violated is typically (though wrongly) associated with failing to be powerful/masculine and being made weak/feminine. Of course, in some ways having women be sexually aggressive is right in keeping with Show’s general stilted characterization of women, and it is also an easy way to make the female villains creepy and dangerous.
But still, the repeated sexual victimization of the boys seems to me more than simply an illustration of women’s scary-bad sexual power. The show isn’t sex-negative, Sam’s poison peen nonwithstanding. Dean’s sexual partners (Cassie, Anna, Jamie, Lisa) are shown in a positive light, and Sarah in season one was a step in the right direction for a mourning Sam. Pamela’s open sexuality was never frowned on, even when she made the boys uncomfortable, while Bella’s jerking Dean’s chain was also played for laughs. And, after all, Dean “kinda liked” the panty thing. Not all sexual women in SPN are evil, although many of the evil women are sexual, which leads me to think that something more is going on than a simple case of condemning female desire.
As further proof, women are not the only ones sexually preying on men; see Crowley’s kiss with the banker, a violation calculated to make him as uncomfortable as possible, and the magicians sending Dean to “Chief.” And, like I promised, we’ve found our way back to Alistair. I think that the subtext of a sexual history between him and Dean in hell is about as text as you can make it on network TV. The “pokes and prods” line is phrased too peculiarly and Dean’s reaction draws too much attention to it; the viewer is meant to read something than pure torture into the scene. As well as that implied rape, Show sexualizes the threat of being possessed by (male) angels, with all the talk of “riding,” “consent,” and the use of the term “angel condom”. So the sexual victimization isn’t (only) an expression of fears regarding women’s sexuality, but a more general use of “feminizing” violence on the masculine leads.
I would suggest that some of the female audience interest in SPN is due to the exploration of traditionally “female” issues regarding control over the body. Although in real life, obviously, both genders are sexually victimized, in most narratives sexual violation is the purview of female characters. Show makes a conscious choice to not sanitize violence of any sexual flavor: sexual assault is about power, not desire, and it can be used against men just as easily as women. Rather than ignoring “feminizing” violence, SPN lets the boys get beat around in every way, including sexually. But what happens when that trope is turned on its head, and men are the ones struggling against objectification?
Well, not much. Despite the repeated use of unwanted kissing, verbal objectification, and the hints of greater sexual violence, the traumatic consequences of sexual assault never quite materialize the way one would think. Dean’s response after being kissed by Meg in the season premier is to crack a joke (“is that peanut butter?”) even though the actual kiss is played to look like what it is-- a violation. Is this just because real men aren’t bothered by silly things like being physically forced into a sexual act with a person they hate?
I’m going to be generous to Show here and posit that it’s not anything so wrongheaded. Rather, Dean’s ability to take Meg’s sexual assault as well as he’d take a punch (with a joke and no fallout) demystifies sexual violence and presents the argument that a person of any gender is not weakened by temporary victimization. Show doesn’t privilege sexual violence as having a greater effect on the boys than any other sort. The lack of trauma due to sexual violence, the way the boys never succumb to this abuse more than any other type, is in a way progressive. (Unrealistic, too, but this is also a show in which bullet wounds are fixed with dental floss, so I don’t think it’s absurd to suggest the writers downplay the consequences of sexual assault not because the assault was sexual in nature, but because consequences for everything are minimized.)
I think part of the reason women enjoy SPN is the that it deals with “women’s” problems, but it doesn’t perpetuate the myth that only women have to fear sexual violence, objectification, or having control of one’s body forcibly taken away. These issues are frequently something that we think of as gendered, because men are assumed to always have control, to never be violated. It’s so ingrained in our culture that sexual assault is seen as feminizing. But in Supernatural, objectification is a human problem, and a surmountable one at that. Its interesting, to me, that SPN undermines our assumptions about who suffers from this type of victimization and how.
Lets go back to angels and consent. I started this rumination thinking I was talking about a quirky side issue, but in a way I think I’ve worked myself over into the mytharc. This season is all about supernatural beings attempting to possess the bodies of the Winchesters, and the sexual metaphors are too rife to ignore. Perhaps the ability of our boys to not be overwhelmed by sexualized violence intended to objectify them and rob them of agency is more central that I started off thinking, as they need to be assertive about their rights to their bodies, their right to not be objectified, their right to not say “yes.” Consent, and the withholding thereof, is the male leads’ main weapon. In this light, the mytharc is all about sexual assault, and to me that’s an interesting development.
Thoughts?
Summary: Despite plausible allegations of sexism, women still like Supernatural. Also, Dean gets kissed by demons a lot. Maybe these things are related? And no, I’m not saying we just watch for the h/c and the pretty.
Word count: 2,000 yes I know there’s something wrong with me.
Rated: pg-13 (Language and sexual situations)
Warnings: Meta. I tried to avoid anything!fail, but you never know; contains reference to sexual assault and harassment. General spoilers for season 5 and a smattering of earlier episodes.
So, I’m well aware that I may be leaping into a snake pit by trying to discuss sexual assault in relation to a show notorious for sensitivity!fail. Let me be clear to start that I don’t want to dismiss that Show has some serious issues with how it treats women- but that isn’t the topic of discussion here. Plenty of exceptionally smart people have posted encompassing discussions about misogyny in SPN, and I’m not going to restate their points.
The thing is, despite a certain amount of misogyny in Show, women are the preponderance of the SPN audience. Do women just not care if their entertainment is sexist? Considering the very intelligent and very annoyed responses to various !fail on Show, that’s patently untrue. The fact that women are still watching indicates that women are still finding something of value despite the surface sexism. For that reason, I feel at least a little justified in musing on the ways in which gender issues might be interpreted as more sensitively handled than the rough surface of Show would suggest.
Specifically, I want to discuss the sexual violence directed at the men of SPN. What started me thinking about all this was rewatching the season 5 premiere, in which the return of Meg is heralded by the forcible insertion of her tongue into Deans mouth. It’s perfectly in character; Meg has always used sexualized violence against both Sam and Dean. But it also reminded me of all the other times Dean’s been kissed in non-or-dub-con situations: crossroads demon twice, the vampire in “Dead Man’s Blood,” and the nympho patient just this season. Not to mention, I seem to remember some iffy contact with Meg in “Shadow” and possibly the bartending demon in “Sin City.” Then there’s the whole subtext with Alistair in Hell, but lets let that lie for now.
It’s not just sexual violence from demons, either. There’s also a good deal of sexual teasing, a benign reflection of the more invasive sexual objectification. We’ve got Dean uncomfortably “full frontal” in the meta book series within Show, the “don’t objectify me” comment towards Bella, the satin panties Dean recalls being forced to wear in “The End,” and Pamela’s constant teasing about Sam’s nice butt. Sam is also treated as a sex object by Becky, and the thing with the dominatrix last episode is at best dub-con.
So what gives? If three is a trend, we have plenty of evidence for women sexually harassing and/or objectifying the male leads. It’s significant that sexual violence is directed at our heroes this often, considering that Show is in many ways a meditation on masculinity and being sexually violated is typically (though wrongly) associated with failing to be powerful/masculine and being made weak/feminine. Of course, in some ways having women be sexually aggressive is right in keeping with Show’s general stilted characterization of women, and it is also an easy way to make the female villains creepy and dangerous.
But still, the repeated sexual victimization of the boys seems to me more than simply an illustration of women’s scary-bad sexual power. The show isn’t sex-negative, Sam’s poison peen nonwithstanding. Dean’s sexual partners (Cassie, Anna, Jamie, Lisa) are shown in a positive light, and Sarah in season one was a step in the right direction for a mourning Sam. Pamela’s open sexuality was never frowned on, even when she made the boys uncomfortable, while Bella’s jerking Dean’s chain was also played for laughs. And, after all, Dean “kinda liked” the panty thing. Not all sexual women in SPN are evil, although many of the evil women are sexual, which leads me to think that something more is going on than a simple case of condemning female desire.
As further proof, women are not the only ones sexually preying on men; see Crowley’s kiss with the banker, a violation calculated to make him as uncomfortable as possible, and the magicians sending Dean to “Chief.” And, like I promised, we’ve found our way back to Alistair. I think that the subtext of a sexual history between him and Dean in hell is about as text as you can make it on network TV. The “pokes and prods” line is phrased too peculiarly and Dean’s reaction draws too much attention to it; the viewer is meant to read something than pure torture into the scene. As well as that implied rape, Show sexualizes the threat of being possessed by (male) angels, with all the talk of “riding,” “consent,” and the use of the term “angel condom”. So the sexual victimization isn’t (only) an expression of fears regarding women’s sexuality, but a more general use of “feminizing” violence on the masculine leads.
I would suggest that some of the female audience interest in SPN is due to the exploration of traditionally “female” issues regarding control over the body. Although in real life, obviously, both genders are sexually victimized, in most narratives sexual violation is the purview of female characters. Show makes a conscious choice to not sanitize violence of any sexual flavor: sexual assault is about power, not desire, and it can be used against men just as easily as women. Rather than ignoring “feminizing” violence, SPN lets the boys get beat around in every way, including sexually. But what happens when that trope is turned on its head, and men are the ones struggling against objectification?
Well, not much. Despite the repeated use of unwanted kissing, verbal objectification, and the hints of greater sexual violence, the traumatic consequences of sexual assault never quite materialize the way one would think. Dean’s response after being kissed by Meg in the season premier is to crack a joke (“is that peanut butter?”) even though the actual kiss is played to look like what it is-- a violation. Is this just because real men aren’t bothered by silly things like being physically forced into a sexual act with a person they hate?
I’m going to be generous to Show here and posit that it’s not anything so wrongheaded. Rather, Dean’s ability to take Meg’s sexual assault as well as he’d take a punch (with a joke and no fallout) demystifies sexual violence and presents the argument that a person of any gender is not weakened by temporary victimization. Show doesn’t privilege sexual violence as having a greater effect on the boys than any other sort. The lack of trauma due to sexual violence, the way the boys never succumb to this abuse more than any other type, is in a way progressive. (Unrealistic, too, but this is also a show in which bullet wounds are fixed with dental floss, so I don’t think it’s absurd to suggest the writers downplay the consequences of sexual assault not because the assault was sexual in nature, but because consequences for everything are minimized.)
I think part of the reason women enjoy SPN is the that it deals with “women’s” problems, but it doesn’t perpetuate the myth that only women have to fear sexual violence, objectification, or having control of one’s body forcibly taken away. These issues are frequently something that we think of as gendered, because men are assumed to always have control, to never be violated. It’s so ingrained in our culture that sexual assault is seen as feminizing. But in Supernatural, objectification is a human problem, and a surmountable one at that. Its interesting, to me, that SPN undermines our assumptions about who suffers from this type of victimization and how.
Lets go back to angels and consent. I started this rumination thinking I was talking about a quirky side issue, but in a way I think I’ve worked myself over into the mytharc. This season is all about supernatural beings attempting to possess the bodies of the Winchesters, and the sexual metaphors are too rife to ignore. Perhaps the ability of our boys to not be overwhelmed by sexualized violence intended to objectify them and rob them of agency is more central that I started off thinking, as they need to be assertive about their rights to their bodies, their right to not be objectified, their right to not say “yes.” Consent, and the withholding thereof, is the male leads’ main weapon. In this light, the mytharc is all about sexual assault, and to me that’s an interesting development.
Thoughts?