My heart bleeded, girl

Okay, we all know I'm old.  I don't like to get into specifics for a lot of reasons, one of them being the blatant ageism that exists in both society and fandom.

But let me say this.  I was born in the 1950s.  When I was growing up, I thought I had five choices of what I could do with my life.  I could become a nurse, a teacher, a stewardess flight attendant, a secretary administrative assistant, or a housewife and mother.  Coffee, Tea or Me was a best-selling book about being a stewardess, and there was no way I could pull off the level of glamor or um, promiscuity implied.  I had no desire to teach and I had always wanted to be a nurse, so the decision was easy.

(My mother started out as a secretary, and she parlayed that into a rather important position at General Electric.  She worked most of her life, partly out of economic necessity, and it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be something when I grew up.)

I briefly toyed with the idea of being a vet, but there was no money for that.  I also got married when I was 19 and my husband at the time was all No wife of mine is going to work and I said bullshit, I've wanted to be a nurse my whole life.  He spent most of our marriage making me feel stupid in all other areas of our lives because I went to school after high school and he didn't, even though my parents made him pay my tuition once we were married.  Subconsciously, of course.  He was a hell of a nice guy, just a product of the times and his own family.

I also wanted to join the Navy after I graduated from nursing school, and go to Viet Nam, but even though Lyle's draft lottery number was low, he failed his physical and wasn't drafted, so there was no way I was going, either.  The war was almost over by the time I was finished with school, anyway.

I started working as a nurse when most nurses were women and most doctors were men.  We were expected to fetch and carry, give up our seats at the nursing station if a doctor wanted to sit, in short, I was taught by nurses who still lived that whole doctor's handmaiden thing.   During the 70s and 80s, that very much changed, but still, doctor-nurse interactions and relationships were very much informed by gender.

Men who became nurses - or flight attendants, for that matter - were automatically assumed to be gay.  (People still refer to men who are nurses as "male nurses" as if they are something different, and somewhat suspect, as well.)  Women who became doctors were ball-busters and trying for something above their station.  Women doctors often treated nurses worse than the male doctors did, especially if they had been nurses before they decided to go to medical school.  A case of now that I have the power, I'm going to make sure I keep it, it seemed to me.

My point?  I know from misogyny, from sexism.  Supernatural is not misogynistic.  The writing can be lazy, informed by societal attitudes towards women, immature, thoughtless, very typical of network television writing, and oftentimes eye-rollingly stupid.  But the writers of Supernatural don't hate women.  Please.

I understand if you're offended by some of the stuff they do.  It reflects a society, and a world, where women are viewed as less than men, sexual temptresses, where violence towards women is sometimes treated as lovingly as porn, or seen as perfectly okay, they deserve it.  Society can be pretty damned offensive.

Let's look at what I see as two separate issues.  The show in general, and Dean in particular.

Show:  It's network televison.  There are tropes and cliches, formulas and stereotypes.  I think SPN actually does an okay job of steering away from some of these.  It's a show with two recurring characters, basically.  They come across a lot of other folks, and a lot of evil and violent deaths.  Women die, men die.  Women are good and evil, men are good and evil.  Television is a visual medium.  The women who die dressed in white, I'm guessing that's intentional.

I think for the most part, the show balances this stuff out pretty well.  There may be some conscious or unconscious dicey casting decisions, but that's a discussion for another day.

But there's some complaining I don't get.  In Red Sky at Morning, we get upset because a woman is running in a sports bra, but then we drool over images of Sam and Dean wet in the rain. 'Splain that to me, please.

Okay, Malleus Mallificarum was kind of a steaming pile of crap, I will admit.  I'm not such a fan of Ben's writing at all.

Between the fans and the network, Kripke walks a fine line.  Jared and Jensen are overworked, let's add some characters.  Fine, and then the actors either grow beyond the CW and television, or they're wanted elsewhere and new decisions have to be made.  Also, I understand that killing a character is not the only way to deal with this sort of thing.   I get it.  Not the issue I'm talking about here.

So, Season 3 brings a mandate from the network.  Two female characters.  Ellen is too old, although Bobby isn't. 

(Sidebar:  I find myself offended by the ageism here, and also by Gert in Red Sky at Morning.  The idea that an older woman finding Sam attractive is gross and hilarious offended me.  But that's a reflection of society and the entertainment business and the writers and network are nothing if not products of both.  I can be annoyed by things and still handwave them away.  Mostly, I think, because I want to.)

So, bring in two hot girls.  Can't make 'em love interests, the fans won't like it.  Can't make 'em allies, that's too Scooby Doo and the fans won't like it.  Neither will Kripke, because that's not the story he wants to tell.  So, make 'em antagonists.

Did they do a good job with this?  Yes and no, and it depends on who you ask.  I realize these are not the same fans complaining right now, but it feels like sexism and misogyny in fandom when two strong, kickass women are hated because they're attractive and mean to Sam and Dean.  ETA:  Okay, in reading this over, I think I changed my mind.  Maybe misogyny is too strong a word, or maybe it's too easy to say that fans who don't like female characters don't like women.  I don't think that.

Is it misogyny on the writers' part when Sam and Dean react negatively to two characters who are supposed to be antagonists?  Is the way they wrote Bela and Ruby misogynist?

I don't think so.  With Bela I think they just didn't know what to do with her.  Show a strong, independent woman who has her reasons for what she does and the fans complain that she makes Sam and Dean look stupid.  I think they blew it when they included sexual abuse in her backstory, but only because that was the obvious route and shows a sad lack of imagination on the writers' part.  In retrospect, I like her story line and love that she had her own deal.  I just didn't like that we were supposed to be amused by her actions and appreciate the banter it seemed to bring forth, but again, I think the writers just didn't know what to do with her and tried to do too many things at once.  It's one of the things we can blame the strike for. 

Ruby, I loved.  I hope we see her again.

And now let's get down to Dean.

I wish I could remember where I read it, but I read a recent interview with Kripke - or at least I read it recently - where he said that Dean is a racist when it comes to demons.  He seemed very proud of himself, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said his show is the only major (*sigh* how I wish) network show where the main protagonist was shown to be flawed in that way.  He likes the idea that he's making a statement about racism using the fact that Dean was raised to hate demons and other supernatural creatures and that he's a reflection of his upbringing.  He seems to think he's making an Important Statement about racism here.  "You all look alike to me."

Now, there are no highly offensive, non-PC terms about demons like there are about other minorities, are there?  What word is Dean going to throw at them when he's confronted by one and they're threatening him?  Yes, we got to hear a lot of "yellow-eyed son of a bitch" the first two seasons, but that's not specific to demons.  There is no derogatory word for them.

So he's reduced to misogynistic terms because that's all that's available to him when the demons are in female bodies.  That's all he knows to say.

Let's face it, society is pretty crude these days.  People toss around words like shit and fuck and bitch all the time.  But network standards are weird.  You can say ass but not asshole.  You can say damn but not goddamn.  (A million years ago on LA Law, on of the characters said goddamn and it was such a big deal.)   I remember when you couldn't say hell or damn or pissed off or bitch.  Certainly not dick.

And now you can say bitch and skank and dick on TV and people say them all the time in real life.  Not just boys.  I know the whole boys will be boys argument, both pro and con, and I'm telling you, it's not just boys. 

So the writers are having a swell time pushing the Standards and Practices envelope.  What can they get away with, and how much, and it's just so much fun.  We know from Ghostfacers that the boys are total pottymouths.  So the writers have them say the words they can get away with them saying out loud on TV.

So you've got dick, son of a bitch, and bastard vs. slut, skank, whore, and bitch.  Yes, the female words are sexually derogative in a way the male words aren't.  The writers aren't the ones who made the words what they are. 

Society is like that.  Things are so much better than they used to be, but there's much work to be done and so much more progress to be made that I don't think we'll ever see the end of that particular road.  So if calling the writers out on this stuff is something you want to do, do it.

But don't impugn my character if I see things differently.  If I'm not offended.

Also, let's talk about the word bitch.  It gets thrown at both men and women.  It has, to me, anyway, about ten different definitions.  Yes, I know, they're all insulting to women, even when the word isn't directed at a woman.  Although I may need to really be convinced on that one, now that I think about it.  I think there are times it can be gender neutral. 

Is Dean a misogynist?  I don't think so.  But the boy has issues out the ass.  I see him treating women according to how he sees each individual one he comes into contact with.

And for heaven's sake, people.  To pick 3.16 as the episode that tips you over the edge?  He was terrified, for both himself and Sam.  He was about to go to Hell, he's going to sweat a few unfortunate word choices when dealing with the demons he's fighting for their very lives and souls with?  Seriously?

Okay.  Be offended, don't be offended.  I see both sides.  Write letters, stop watching, ignore it, make buttons that say Dean's bitch on them.  (I have a button that maybe implies I'm Timberlake's bitch for going to see him a million times last year.)  Write fanfiction where Dean apologizes abjectly to any woman he ever insulted or viewed as an easy lay, or where the next demon he calls a bitch makes his dick fall off. 

But I love this show, flaws and all, and as someone who's lived for a lot of years, and through a lot of shit, this just doesn't push my buttons.

And there you have my rambling two cents on the whole thing.