This Year&#39;s Model of Humanity

I hope SPN shapes up. It's never easy letting go of a show one loves. :/

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Yeah. It really isn't. I fell so hard for this show and I loved those boys so much. And, in return, I got to hear the words 'bitch' and 'whore' and 'slut' thrown around like party tricks. Just... no. That's not acceptable.

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It was never my thing (with a few expectations, I tend to need a female lead to be interested in a show, it's just my preference), but I've heard about the things they've gotten right with the brothers and their damage so I do think it's a shame that the show is going this direction.

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They do such a good job with the relationship between the brothers. Such a good job. But right now that's coming with too high a price tag for me.

I think that DW coming back on the air in the middle may have put a spotlight on my issues with SPN because here was a show with a strong main female character and a strong male character who isn't threatened by female power in the slightest. It really started making SPN look bad.

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Doctor Who has some of the strongest women on TV right now in my opinion, so it's stopped me from wanting shows like House and Heroes and others that I do/did really love but the way the women were written just tried my patience so much. (It's not just Doctor Who, most of my active fandoms have very strong female characters.)

I just really wish TPTB could see women as people first, and sex objects second EDIT: I meant to say not at all. I'm tired as hell. daslkfs(or apparently like they're doing with SV now, and making everyone sex objects!)

What's interesting to me is reading up on some season one and two meta, were people talking about how the show did female characters right. I really just wish they would have continued with that line and gotten better instead of worse. I hate the idea that a brotherly show has to be at the expense of strong characters.

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Yeah. All of that. It's just so exhausting to live in a world that's so steeped in hatred for me because I was born with two X-chromosomes.

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solielle.livejournal.com

Some of the Supernatural criticism is interesting to me, because contrary to

marinarusalka I never found the first series of Supernatural to be particularly a good portrayal of women. The overriding theme of the women was, whatever their occupation, under 25 (or appearing to be so), a size zero, and a predilection for midriff baring tops. Job variety doesn't really trump sexual objectivity for me. So Supernatural kind of sucked for me as a feminist during its first Season.

It did get better during Season 2, which made me breath a sigh of relief. But I'm really not surprised to hear that it's returned to it's same old roots (I stopped watching a lot of TV after the writers strike, and Supernatural was one show that fell by the wayside). I feel like Supernatural has always chased the male audience, and be damned what the girls watching think. If it has badly offed two morally ambiguous females, I'm disappointed, but not at all surprised.

(Shorter version: Supernatural can suck my left tit for three seasons of sexism, no matter how much I once enjoyed regular ghost stories on my TV.)

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For me, there were things that I was willing to overlook because of other stuff, but it's just not worth it. It's seriously not worth it.

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blacksquirrel.livejournal.com

Thanks for the links.

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You're welcome.

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ink-gypsy.livejournal.com

I used to watch ATWT years ago, with my Mom, but lost track of it around the time Luke was a toddler, so I had no idea there was a gay storyline, with kissing yet. I really need to start taping it.

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They're really, really adorable.

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fodian.livejournal.com

Thank you so much for those boykissing links.

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I have determined that watching cute gay boys kissing (in the process of adorable coming-out stories especially) makes many things better. Scientifically.

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I can personally understand him calling Ruby a bitch. I mean in his eyes she IS a demon and he's never had a very good view of them (with good reason). And well...she actually is a bitch, but I quite like her.

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It's his choice of insults that help determine whether or not I read him as a sexist character.

As

trollprincess sums up:
Season one -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative three times in twenty-two episodes.
Season two -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative three times in twenty-two episodes.
Season three -- Dean or Sam refer to a woman by a pejorative eighteen times in sixteen episodes.

And that's what has me so upset -- Dean has become a profoundly more sexist character this season.

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I don't know if calling a woman a bitch or anything else equals a man being sexist anymore than a woman calling a man an asshole, SOB, etc equals her being sexist. But I've never really been much of a feminist so maybe thats why. I do think women should be treated equally but if they're being a bitch or whatever, then a man has every right to call them on it in my opinion. But everyone has their opinions on the issue. Also in the past couple of seasons there really haven't been any females on the show for him to be calling anything. this is really the first season in which we've had two females characters featured prominently.

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I do think women should be treated equally
Then you are a feminist. O_o

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Not true. I'm not like people that get all out of sorts when a woman is called something derogatory. Men that think women should be treated equally aren't called feminists, so a woman that thinks the same isn't necessarily a feminist either when they think that. I just don't see how a man calling a woman a bitch or any other derogatory term is any different than a woman calling a man an asshole, SOB, etc. I don't particularly think that Sam/Dean are sexist just because they've come across some women that are bitches and tell them so.

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No. Seriously. You are. If you believe that women are equal to men and should be treated as such you are a feminist. If you disagree with someone on specific issues like with Dean and Sam and SPN that's just it. Doesn't, in itself, make you not a feminist.

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Sorry I don't consider myself a feminist just because I think women should be treated equally to men. I think anyone with half a brain knows that women should be and if they think otherwise then they're just moronic and archaic in their beliefs. The issue doesn't concern just Dean and Sam and SPN. If any man out in the real world called me a bitch when I was being one, I wouldn't say "Oh my god you're so sexist!" It just doesn't even enter my head. That's fine that other people do think that, but I just don't.

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Dude. You're missing my point. You don't think it's downgrading to call a woman acting out a bitch. Fine. Rather or not I agree does not matter.

The fact is, you think that women are equal to men. That is what being a feminist is.

think anyone with half a brain knows that women should be and if they think otherwise then they're just moronic and archaic in their beliefs.
There are billions of people out there who disagree who aren't moronic - but whose culture and other things have influenced how they see the world. Who have. And who will continue to do so. And fixing that is what feminism is about.

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The definition of a feminist is someone who believes that women should have equal rights to men.

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Not according to the definition I read but I'm not all hung up on that. I don't consider myself a feminist and if I am one I'm not a very good one because I could care less that Dean's called Ruby and/or Bela a bitch, slut, whore, whatever. Regardless of sex, I figure if someone is being something you should go ahead and call them out on it. Although I did sort of shake my head in the finale when Dean still insisted on being a rude jerk to Ruby after all she's done to help them out. But I just chalked that up to Dean's hatred (and rightfully so) of demons.

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Ruby has never flirted with Dean (or Sam) and wears some of the least revealing clothing on the show. Even if you do believe that a woman can deserve to be called a 'slut', how would Ruby fit the definition?

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I'm mostly talking about the word "bitch". I only recall Dean calling Ruby a slut once and it seems like his major word of choice is bitch. Which I think both Ruby and Bela deserve to be called at times. I don't particularly see the show itself as being sexist, because if it were then there would be no strong female characters on there at all and I personally think that Bela, Ruby, Jo and Ellen are some pretty strong ones. And I don't consider Dean sexist because he's thrown just as many insults at men as he does women. I think Dean is just a jerk in general (and for very good reasons), not necessarily a sexist one. He was raised by a father who frankly didn't do very much raising since he was too busy out there hunting demons than he was worrying about the well being of his very children, so it's not like Dean had a very good role model growing up. Dean in my opinion has no manners, because he wasn't taught any. Doesn't make any of it right..but it makes sense that it would take place.

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I don't think that this is a subject that we can come to terms on. Agree to disagree?

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scrollgirl.livejournal.com

Thanks so much for the links to the pretty gay men on soap operas! I don't watch soaps as a general rule, but apparently I've been missing boy-kissing as a result! Very nice :)

Also, yeah, I know what you mean about SPN. I haven't watched S3 at all, mostly due to scheduling conflicts, but I don't feel I've missed much. Which is awful, because I adored Seasons 1 and 2, and I still adore Sam and Dean. But now that I'm watching Without A Trace (3 men/3 women, 3 Caucasians/2 Latinos/1 African-American) it's pretty obvious that SPN does a terrible job portraying women and characters of colour.

Heck, even Magnificent 7, a show from 1998 that I just started watching, is better than SPN. It has 7 male leads (6 white guys, 1 black guy) but also a couple of strong recurring female characters and plenty of interesting one-shot female characters.

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