"I Think I'm Adorable." - Supernatural, Sexism, Sex, and Dean Winchester

[vain_chan]

I have been craving a substantial discourse on Supernatural for months now. Unfortunately, my RL friends are indifferent to the show and various attempts to drag people into it have been met with lukewarm enthusiasm. But then biting_moopie came to my rescue! She mentioned a couple issues that she had with the show and they were all things that I had heard

Comments

[hartfully]

I've never watched Supernatural - all I know about it is from fandom_wank (which, hahaha, probably means I'm biased against it). But one of the things that I've heard that bothers me the most is that Dean's a sexist jerk and he's never called on it. It's treated as normal, as acceptable, and that seriously bothers me. And the fans that defend him (not you, of course; this was very well-written and articulate), calling his actions cute and/or normal...God, I just don't even know.

Of course, I could be off. Like I said, I've never watched the show and generally stay as far from the fandom as possible. XD

[vain_chan]

Dean is sexist, but only contextually. He's not misogynistic or even that offensive in it. People who call Dean a misogynist really need to look up the word because 'I do not think it means what they think it means.' His issues regarding women (and really, it's only certain women and these are actually issues that he has with EVERYONE) have more to do with his own fear of forming emotional bonds and his inherent self-loathing than his opinion of the female gender. If you watch the show (and you should! it's awesome!), Dean doesn't stereotype women as baby-machines or caretakers and, of all the characters in the series, Dean is actually the closest to the stereotyped female role. Which probably has a lot to do with his compensitory behavior. Dean is the caretaker and the peacemaker of the family, frequently taking a passive or mediator role in the conflicts between his father and his brother. And to say he's got Mama-Bear protectiveness towards his family is the understatement of the century. He also cooks (the few times the

[hartfully]

I. I don't know which one is Sam and which one is Dean. XD But I think both of them are dull looking (in the bland, "pretty boy" way) so the beautiful man thing doesn't really work for me. I'm not in this fandom but I can imagine what kinds of icons are being made. *G* I don't care that Dean sleeps around and/or uses his look to get free stuff and/or ogles every woman in the immediate vicinity (hey, I do my own objectifying dsjkafhdsjkfhsd damn John Connor, I don't care if you're 15, your actor is 21!) but I won't lie that words like "slut", "whore", and "skank" make me see red ("bitch", not so much). What does her sexual activity have to do with anything? Can't he come up with better, less gendered insults (and yeah, technically men can be called whores/sluts/skanks, but let's not kid ourselves here - those are insults made towards women, 99% of the time). Granted, he's probably yelling out the first insults that come to mind but, well. I've got issues with it

[vain_chan]

Dean is the one featured in all the icons I've used thus far. *g* The actor who plays him, Jensen Ackles, is easily attractive enough to rate as 'pretty' on most scales. :-)

I just don't understand why it's not okay to insult women with gendered insults and it's okay to insult men using gendered insults, though. It's a double-standard that bothers me a lot. I've called both men and women 'skank' and 'whore' in either good humor or a fit of pique

[aniphine]

I want to give you a million dollars for writing this. Yes, yes, and yes!