Niccolo Makes Me a Misogynist: A Look at Dean Winchester's Violent Tendencies

[chasingtides]

I am going to open this meta with the statement that I am, probably, likely to be considered a violent person. I hit things. And people. Usually with my cane, Niccolo Machiavelli. I also throw things. And like shooting my compound bow. And hitting things.

I like Dean a lot. Probably, partially, because he also hits things.

Now, I've seen around the internet that it seems that a lot of people don't like Dean hitting things. They say that he likes to pick on women. That's he's mean to women. That he's written as a misogynist.

Well, thinks I, I am not so sure about that. I hit women, but I don't think of myself as a misogynist for a variety of reasons, but partially because I also hit men.

So, I decided to analyze exactly who Dean hits in Lazarus Rising.

If we set aside the opening montage of season three as irrelevant to this meta and focus upon Dean's acts of personal violence against others, we can look at four separate incidents of such personal violence in Lazarus Rising. The first is Dean's fist/knife fight with Bobby; the second, his fist/knife fight with Sam; the third, his slapping of the possessed waitress; and the fourth, his attack upon the angel Castiel.

Bobby, as Dean expresses in this self-same episode, is the closest thing Dean has to a father. Presumably, this works the other way (and I am taking a cue from Bobby's new drinking habit as well) and Bobby feels that Sam and Dean are the closest things he has to sons. As he said so eloquently in the finale of the third season, "Family don't end with blood, boy." And yet despite this - or perhaps because of it, for who would not be startled and afraid to see a loved one arise from the grave - the first thing he does when he sees Dean is attack him with a knife. Dean responds in kind, returning the fight with his fists. This continues until Dean has wrested the knife from Bobby and purposefully cuts himself.

This same scene magically repeats itself when Dean sees Sam for the first time. Sam, too, does not know what to do upon seeing Dean alive and thus attacks him with a knife. This time Bobby helps Dean with the fisticuffs, but it is still an act of personal violence upon the person whom, I can say with little reservation, Dean loves most in the world. In fact, Dean is not rejoicing at being out of hell because he is fearing for the state of his brother's soul. And the first thing they do when they see one another is get into a fist/knife fight.

Then comes the fight with the demonically possessed waitress. However, Dean does not slap her because she gave him bad service. In fact, before he visits personal violence upon her person she says, "I'll drag you back to Hell myself," and, "I'm going to reach down your throat and rip out your lungs." And then Dean slaps her twice.

Lastly, Dean does personal violence upon the angel Castiel. He and Bobby both shoot him, but it has been suggested to me that this is not personal violence and shouldn't be dissected here. But he also stabs Castiel with Ruby's demon killing knife. Dean doesn't just want to kill Castiel's body or insult him or bruise him; Dean wants to kill Castiel's soul. Even in the Supernatural world, that's big. Dean's not playing with Castiel. He wants him dead and forgotten.

Now I've written before that I don't like treating demons (or, now, angels) as though they are gendered by their meatsuits/vessels. The demon possessing that waitress could well be male gendered even though his body is currently female sexed. But as most of the people who inspired this meta are treating it one way, I am willing to treat this situation as one of Dean doing personal violence upon male and female bodies.

In this episode, 25% of the personal violence Dean does is upon female bodies and 75% of the violence Dean does is upon male bodies. 50% of the personal violence Dean does is upon loved ones. 25% is done upon angels, 25% is done upon demons, and 50% is done upon humans (for the purposes of my current knowledge, both Sam and Bobby are human). The only unprovoked personal violence Dean does is upon the angel Castiel who is currently inhabited a meatsuit/vessel which appears to be male sexed. Castiel, from what research I have been able to do, is also male gendered. The most frantic of the personal violence which Dean does is upon Castiel who is, to my knowledge, both male sexed and gendered.

Now I will examine the situation with the possessed waitress, which has distressed many. The waitress threatens Dean with two very real threats, "I'll drag you back to Hell myself," and, "I'm going to reach down your throat and rip out your lungs." Dean has just now returned from Hell, a place where, presumably, no one goes willingly. Even Sam, who is sociopathically calm in a later scene with the same demon, is ready to attack the waitress when she threatens to return Dean to hell.

Wondering if perhaps I was reacting violently myself to these threats, which are both gruesome and no doubt frightening to Dean, I consulted an outside source. Our conversation went as follows:

chasingtides: "If you were threatened with actually being dragged to hell and then having your lungs pulled out of your mouth, is hitting the person threatening you reasonable?"

una__sola: "No.

It's not nearly extreme enough."

To be quite frank, I realised I agreed with this. Really, the demon wearing this women isn't just threatening Dean's life, though she is with the second threat; she is threatening his soul. By returning to life, Dean has received a second chance. He doesn't have to go to hell and he doesn't have to become a demon. He no longer has to become what he hates and pray that someone kills him quickly. Well. Damn. That's a good deal. But this demon is threatening to take all of that away. That warrants more than a few slaps.

Also, I have slapped people (okay one guy) like that in a fight. It is one of the most ineffective maneuvers out there. This is why I only used it once. It is very wimpy and pointless. Mostly, your hand stings and maybe their cheek turns pink. This is not a drastic level of violence.

Finally, I will close with a few thoughts on violence against female bodies in media. If I am going to an action movie where the hero has a big ole machine gun and is shooting everyone, I expect women to be shot. If the hero - or villain - purposefully only kills men, then that is sexism in media. If the hero - or villain - only kills women, this too is sexism in media. If the hero - or villain - kills both men and women, that is equality.

There is real violence against women in the world. I do not doubt this. I know and love women who have survived it. I myself have survived it. But when someone hates or hurts or hits people of any and all gender, class, race, or other subdivision of humanity, it doesn't mean that they are being sexist, classist, racist, or subscribing to any other "ism" of the world. It means that they are hateful or hurtful or violent. Period. End of story.

Now, if you don't want to watch a show about a violent person, I'm not sure why you're watching TV. But that's an issue for another day.

Comments

[samidha.livejournal.com]

I love you, and I love you for this meta. :D

I am going to say it right here as the first commenter (I think) to this post: DEAN SHOULD HAVE DONE MORE. And he was fucking scared out of his gourd. Because he knew exactly how fucking terrible what she was saying was. (See also breakdown outside the diner for actual proof beyond samidha said so.)

Sam thanks you for defending his brother, even if Sam is, well, in a dubious condition right now.

[faunaana.livejournal.com]

I really like this. I definitely want to come back and re-read it when its not 1 am.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I look forward to your thought after you've slept.

[una--sola.livejournal.com]

You already know most of my thoughts on this, and in TL;DR it goes as follows: QFT.

This especially is something people forget: "... when someone hates or hurts or hits people of any and all gender, class, race, or other subdivision of humanity, it doesn't mean that they are being sexist, classist, racist, or subscribing to any other "ism" of the world. It means that they are hateful or hurtful or violent. Period. End of story."

Just because your subdivision was part of it, that doesn't mean that someone is after just your subdivision.

[colourmod.livejournal.com]

I always found the whole misogyny thing stupid and quite frankly a load of bullshit.

He's not a misogynist, the so called "women" he hits and refers to as skanks and bitches are fucking demons, and it also makes me laugh when the very same people who call him that do the same damn thing all the time: "she's such a dumb bitch" or "i hate that fucking slut".

Basically I agree with this post.

[antychan.livejournal.com]

I think the problem many people have with the name-calling is it's restricted exclusively to women as a group-- when Vampire!Gordon tried to kill them, or Hendriksen was temporarily possessed, Dean didn't call them "nigger bastards". But if there was some busty Asian beauty demon, you bet the writers would insert, "that chink slut" somewhere among Dean's dialogue-- because chink is not enough; it's a woman and you have to make sure you call her a slut because apparently that truly expresses that the Winchesters don't like demons.

The way I see it, "bitch" and "slut" were thrown around exponentially last season to drive home that Dean and Sam REALLY DON'T LIKE RUBY AND BELA MMKAY??!!1111 SEE AUDIENCE, THEY R NOT LOVE-INTERESTS!! And if that's what it took to make that clear, then misogynist expletives were used to cover up lazy writing and characterization-- contrary to popular belief, the fact that they might be "gritty" and "real" doesn't make lame writing good.

So yeah, I don't blame Dean, I blame the writers-- I don't actually believe Dean is a misogynist-- yeah, he loves pussy-with-no-strings attached, but if said pussy wanted out once they've reached the motel because her last boyfriend was mean to her and she's suddenly scared, I'm sure Dean wouldn't call her a cockblocking bitch but rather drive to the ex's house and knock him down for her. That's not something a misogynist would do.

[jameserin.livejournal.com]

i think that dean should've done more(in fact i was expecting him to lean over and open his mouth and say 'go for it' before killing her), but i honestly think he was in a hurry to get out of there.

the thing that people seem to forget is that all the 'girls' or 'people' dean gets violent with are demons(not talking about fighting with sam at the moment), things that took his mother, his father(and turned his father into a drill sargent earlier on and made his father stop being his father), things that he was raised to hate, whether they are girls or not. i think people think that gender factors into this show more than it does. i honestly don't think that dean gives a flying fuck about what demon is in a girl's body or not. if you're a demon/murderer/some baddie, he's going to kill you/fuck your shit up. the end. he didn't seem to have issues with casey, but she wasn't really a threat to him either, and she was a girl. he doesn't have a problem with women to me, he has a problem with demons/things that take his family away from him and it makes him violent. understandable, it'd make me violent too. if someone tried to hurt/kill my brother, i'd react violently, too. and, okay, dean has some anger issues, but who wouldn't given everything that has happened to the winchesters? dean could be a lot worse than he is.

that was a really long winded way of me saying i agree with this post. :)

[red-handed.livejournal.com]

As usual, I am jealous of your eloquence and whole heatedly agree with your views.

OH DEEM, HOW I LOVE YOU AND YOUR FONDNESS FOR HITTING ALL THINGS.

[pinkphoenix1985.livejournal.com]

I agree

[shorofsky.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, while I am not a big fan of misogynist!Dean, he does have a lot of the usual traits of the misogynist. However, slapping the demon waitress, does not seem to me to have anything to do with misogyny as much as with showing her that he is not afraid of her threats. He's been there, he's done that and now it'll take more to rattle his cage. I think the slapping is a kind of demonstration of either extreme powerlessness or probably even more so, of showing that Dean's place in the world has changed since he came back from Hell.
I think the demon's trying to rattle his cage, but that it also knows it can't possibly because this is Dean Winchester and he's the one that got away.
I,too, was waiting for Dean to lean over and say 'go for it' to Sam, but I was actually relieved when he didn't and I think it shows us how the dynamic's going to play out between the boys from now on. Whether my hunch is right or not, remains to be seen, but so far, OMG this was an amazing ep:-D

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Good points all, but it still squicks me, personally. I don't think Dean is sexist, I think the show is sexist. Someone writing, or someone in the casting office, or just on a general unconscious level. I've only thought this since mid-season three, when stuff started happening that made me cringe and then go "hmmm".

[mresundance.livejournal.com]

I don't know that Dean's misogynist; he is a raging sexist, and the show is sexist.

But this is an interesting critique and made me re-think some of my own reactions. Even though we know that a demon could be male gendered and in a female sexed body/vessel, there is still that deeply ingrained cultural recoil to violence against women of any form. I think the producers and the writers (if they are at all decent writers, and they demonstrate they are on a regular basis) KNOW this, and know how the audience may respond. Knowing this, I wish they would be more . . . eh . . . equitable in the way they write violence sometimes.

On the surface it often appears equitable; I mean, there is violence committed against men in the show, frequently, and it is as frequent as the women. It is not the number of acts of violence on the basis of "assumed gender" which bother me; it's the way in which acts of violence against the women have been scripted and filmed in the past. The men are not so often conventionally attractive. Bald dudes, kinda pudgy dudes, whatever. And they are rarely even REMOTELY sexualized in their death throes. By contrast the women, however, are often young, conventionally attractive. There is a lot of eroticizing the women and their bodies even during acts of violence. THIS is why the violence against women in the show bothers me. Because it is NOT equitable, and it IS blazingly, almost unapologetically sexist.

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks for saying what I was trying to say. :)

[riveryklown.livejournal.com]

Guh, thank you so much for saying this!
Although, I personally think he hit her mostly to see if she would actually do something, to make sure she really is afraid to make a move against him.
But I hate the "Dean is a misogynist" fans so this post made my day :)

but this is a show about two men who fight evil

[threecatmama.livejournal.com]

Hi! I'm sure my ideas are not popular, but I don't think the violence on the show is inequitable. This is about good vs. evil and it depends on who is wearing the meatsuit. Plenty of female demons have tossed and damaged Dean and Sam over the years. And though the women are always thin, they are fully clothed (I've never seen so many layers on a TV show)! I can't see how the deaths are erotisized (sorry spelling)???? And I'm picturing quite a few of them as I write this.

Sam and Dean are warriors. They have been at war their entire lives (including their childhoods). They do not live in the normal world. They encounter evil and beings that are trying to kill them. They either have to fight or they will die. That is what this show is about.

The above meta was eloquently written (wish I could be that clear in my ideas) and I like the points the author makes.

[paper-cranes.livejournal.com]

I don't label Dean a misogynist because of who he hits, in fact most of the time he's hitting male "bad guys" and saving female "victims" which... looking at Dean's character, gives him more brownie points. [examining the production and creators though, not so good, the victimization of mostly women is just perpetuating stereotypes, etc. etc. etc.]

But, I digress. The reason I call Dean a misogynist is because of his use of language. Almost every insult or intergection of anger is derogatory. "Son of a bitch," "bitch," "whore," "black eyed skank," and now a new one, "douche up." There's more, but it's all linguistically anti-woman.

So, I think it's interesting that you've picked this all apart, and I'd even add the fact that when he was attacking Castiel he thought Castiel was going to SERIOUSLY hurt him. [I mean, until we knew he was an angel, imagine how scary the idea of an unknown SOMETHING that even demons are afraid of would be] I agree that Dean tends to be an equal opportunity hitter [he'll hit a woman if necessary, although he hesitated more way back when Meg was the first woman we saw him hit] but not an equal opportunity speaker.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

What male-oriented derogatory language would he be allowed to use? Words like "jackass" and "asshole" and "fucker" - which are, actually gender neutral - are restricted on television. I'm having trouble thinking of language he could use, but I freely admit that my brain is clogged from the cold/fever from Hell, so if you could point me in the direction of derogatory language that isn't female oriented or restricted on cable television, I would be appreciative.

[ckll.livejournal.com]

The guys don't hit women out of reason. They hit women demons.
How Dean uses women? Like every man in this planet.

[mresundance.livejournal.com]

How Dean uses women? Like every man in this planet

I could come up with a number of responses to that, but think the most direct and succinct one would be: no. Not every man on the planet.

[talullahred.livejournal.com]

To add to your argument, in other episodes, while speaking or or talking to Meg and Ruby, Dean has left it clear that he doesn't think demons in girls bodies are girls.

Also, the only derogatory terms he ever uses to speak of women are reserved for those possessed by demons - e.g., skank for Ruby.

I don't think this makes him sexist - it sure makes him discriminatory against demons, but not sexist.

Nice analysis there.

[fangirlsays.livejournal.com]

Dean has left it clear that he doesn't think demons in girls bodies are girls.

See, I don't think so. When YED was posessing John, he specifically told Dean that Meg was his "daughter", and the male demon his "boy". So, we know (and so does Dean) that demons do have male or female genders. If Dean does have the idea that demons are gender-neutral, it's because he's in denial or something.

[crimsonkitty88.livejournal.com]

Misogynist!Dean comments make me roll my eyes because it is so not true. As for your meta, AGREED!!!

[chainedinbeads.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing things a bit differently than you are.

The waitress - Dean wasn't hitting her for what she said, he was hitting her to show that she was afraid of Dean and whatever brought him out of Hell.

Bobby and Sam - Both Bobby and Sam started the fight because they didn't know what Dean was. Their experience is that demons use dead bodies to move around the earth. I'm sure that's what they thought this was. Dean hitting back was self-defense.

Castiel - Dean doesn't trust anyone's word. Castiel saying he's an angel doesn't make it true. Therefore, when the bullets didn't work, he used the knife that kills demons on him. When Castiel didn't die, Dean knew he wasn't a demon.

Just my opinion.

[bodgei.livejournal.com]

I've alwasy thougth of slaping people as a more symbolic move. It says (more of less) 'I could hurt you,but I'm not there yet. You need to listen to me before I get there'

I know there was more I was going to say - but man it's gone... sigh*

[clipsie.livejournal.com]

This was very good in this way, and after reading the comments, I want to point out a few things about the 'sexism' of the show.

I am female, abet, a bit odd in personality for a female nonetheless, and yet I don't see this sexism that they are seeing. Maybe it's the way I grew up, where I tended to read about many myths, and many are sexist in many ways. This maybe causes me to ignore the sexism, but I haven't seen anything wrong. There is also the point that much of the 'important' crew of the show for behind the scenes isn't exactly male.

There is also a thing about language. In America, from what I can tell (I live in Canada... Our language rules aren't as strict I find), many words you can use are female oriented, but there is also the fact that they are ingrained in everyday language. I know of many days where I have heard every single female oriented foul language from both male and female parties. I also hear fuck a lot, but that is beside the point. Therefore, though much language on the show is derogatory towards females, it's because the other isn't allowed on American TV so much, and the fact that it is in our everyday language from both parties, so it isn't that odd.

In other words, it's a TV show, and the things are part of our culture whether we like it or not. We don't have to like it either.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes.

You are far more eloquent than I.

[blackcat333-99.livejournal.com]

To be quite frank, I realised I agreed with this. Really, the demon wearing this women isn't just threatening Dean's life, though she is with the second threat; she is threatening his soul. By returning to life, Dean has received a second chance. He doesn't have to go to hell and he doesn't have to become a demon. He no longer has to become what he hates and pray that someone kills him quickly. Well. Damn. That's a good deal. But this demon is threatening to take all of that away. That warrants more than a few slaps.

Also, I have slapped people (okay one guy) like that in a fight. It is one of the most ineffective maneuvers out there. This is why I only used it once. It is very wimpy and pointless. Mostly, your hand stings and maybe their cheek turns pink. This is not a drastic level of violence.

I took that whole two-slap sequence to be about Dean sending a message to the demon that was trying to threaten him. Way back when there used to be a very specific way of delivering an insult - the "glove across the face". Not intended to damage, but intended to send a message. You're beneath me. And I don't fear your retaliation. Now in this scenario in the diner Dean was operating off his gut instinct -- this posturing demon is full of a lot of bluster. This was the best way to strip the demon of the bluster and reveal it for the terrified coward it was underneath. Which also gave Dean a little more insight as to the reactions of EVERYONE regarding his resurrection. Not low level stuff at all, but something that has at least low level demons also scared. The tension comes from the uncertainty of whether Dean's gut has gauged the situation correctly. And as we saw -- he had.

[estarmuerta.livejournal.com]

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I | u too, bb!

[static-pixie.livejournal.com]

The thing about SPN (and it actually kind of makes me laugh at this point because I see that it's not changing any time soon) is that I don't think the show often considers the scenes outside of their context in the show. Certainly, for all the reasons you listed, Dean slapping that girl wasn't a mysoginist act at all, but when you shoot a scene and you've got these two huge guys sitting there with a girl who's clearly frightened and then one of them slaps her not once but twice for no apparently reason (it's not like she started a brawl, he escalated it to physical violence which, again..is just how Dean is) and I think most people automatically recoil from it just because the image itself carries so much potency outside of its context on the show.

Like, I don't consider SPN racist, but I do consider it pretty racially insensitive. I'm not even going to go into death totals but honestly, that scene with Jake - when Sam shot him five times and then disfigured his face as he lay there begging, even though it had no reason to, my mind automatically kind of went to Emmett Till. It's dark, it's in the woods, it's the mindless execution of an African-American man and even though I knew racism has nothing to do with it and Sam was somewhat justified (in killing him; shooting him in the face was supposed to seem extreme), just the scene itself creeped me out (especially because Jake had gone bad, it was true, but was sympathetic at the same time). I remember, when all four of them had their guns trained on Jake and Dean was about to spit out an insult, in my gut, because of the visual presented, my immediate reaction was to brace myself for 'nigger' even though on a mental level I knew that wasn't what it was about. And it was the same thing in Magnificent Seven. This black man dies not only a horrible but a humiliating death while a group of white onlookers laugh around him in this little bar in the middle of nowhere. Whenever you read about historical racist events, it's not the violence that gets you, it's the stripping of dignity that almost always goes with it and that scene, as much as I knew it had nothing to do with race, it just hit me on a gut level and I haven't been able to watch that episode since just because it makes me so uncomfortable.

Now, I know someone posted pretty much the same thing about the Jake incident before and got ripped apart for it, and maybe it does sound like I'm too sensitive. And I also know I've totally gone on a teal deer here but I think SPN needs to do a better job considering the way things kind of look. And I think also, if you look at the demons they've actually spent time vanquishing, the ones who get tied to a chair, humiliated and slapped around, I wonder whether you wouldn't find a higher number of female demons than of male. It's almost a guarantee that Sam and Dean are going to kick the crap out of whatever villain they go up against so it becomes about how they do it and which villains are quickly vanquished and which get tortured. Because it's ok to hit a demon, you could ague that there's a subconscious kind of misogyny going on in their casting female demons to be the ones who get slapped around and really put in their place before they're vanquished.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I guess I feel like Supernatural is like all of my Saturday Night Bad Horror Movies rolled into a television show with a great soundtrack and I therefore feel that it should be treated with loving callousness.

That aside, I've been taught (and believe) that horror is about tangling with what we don't understand and fear. I thought that the death of Isaac was one of the most terrifying scenes of early season three (and the fear and estrangement of the environment you mentioned can be compared to the possessed priest kissing the possessed young woman in Sin City for me, who was raised primarily Catholic). It is horrifying and sickening on many levels to watch Isaac drink drain cleaner while the demons watch and laugh. I think that's the entire point of the scene.

Part of a point I made in a previous meta is that this is stock horror. In this kind of of literature, everyone dies, usually brutally. That's what happens. It's a given. No one gets special treatment and I mostly expect that Sam and Dean will either die or be brutally, irreversibly traumatised/destroyed by the end of the show. This is a genre that doesn't believe in happy endings. This means that, yes, people of minorities (in Supernatural's case, the most vocally represented groups by fans are African Americans and women) will die brutal deaths. However, the white men of the show have also died horrifying, brutal, senseless deaths as well. Things are not as clear cut as Supernatural killing black men and all women and then keeping the white men. Everybody on this show dies. Most fans are on tenterhooks, waiting for Bobby to die this season. And most characters, no matter the colour of their skin or sex of their body, have died terrifying, gruesome, painful, bloody, stomach-turning deaths.

[subtly-modded.livejournal.com]

I'm late in the game on this discussion, so I'll keep it short.

I'm pretty much agreed with you on this whole thing. Yay!

I thought the Waitress-Flo-and-the-Demon-Diner scene was overdone and poorly acted on the demon side. It was supposed to point out how bad ass Dean still was, and it did. That's...about it.

*shrug* I think I'm one of a minority that wasn't uncomfortable with the slapping thing. I thought it was supposed to point out to the demons that Dean realized Flo's threats were empty. It almost made me giggle with the whole foppish glove-slap angle, but other than that I wasn't really affected.

[hotfuzz85.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh. My brain is popping a boner. Thank you.

[labseraph.livejournal.com]

How is Dean, a man who loves women in any and every shape (particularly with curvy posterior), a misogynist? When he deals with monsters, he no longer takes into consideration their gender or age (re: pagan gods in A Very Supernatural Christmas). They are monsters, period. All bets are off.

I often wonder about Dean girls who scream Dean is badly written when he hits women. Excuse me. He. Is. Not. An. Abuser. He. Whacks. Monsters. And who says women / female can't be monsters?

*scratches head*