Despite the talk about the show itself being sexist, I've never seen anyone look specifically at the sexism and misogyny present among the primarily female fans.
I agree with you here in this post, on almost all counts besides this one. Which is not to say that I don't think it's important to have a reminder such as this, and it's embarrassing to have one of the actors name internalized misogyny in the fandom so clearly.
But we were talking (arguing, debating) about this years ago. Alongside all of those wanks you mentioned, there were "side wanks" that sometimes verged into "SHUT UP FEMINISTS SHUT UP IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT WATCH ANOTHER SHOW." And sometimes, some equally unnuanced responses. There were many times where I felt like just making a post with both the words "supernatural" and "women" in it might be controversial.
Two Wincons ago, myself and a couple others led a panel about feminism and SPN fanfic. For the record we talked about misogyny and critical interventions both.
In general, I think SPN is read in some wildly disparate ways by different people, and that includes all those young men we don't know who are making up major CW demographics (some of whom are my students!). To quote myself from this post (http://femmenerd.livejournal.com/305408.html) of over a year ago:
I've heard it implied that SPN gets "unfairly" or disproportionately targeted within fandom in terms of gender and racial representation, especially given that these are areas where television at large tends to fail. (I'm not actually sure if this is at all true - the relative amount of critique, I mean - a lot of people on my flist are willing to make critical observations about a variety of things that they watch.) I have a couple of things to say about that: First of all, yes, our media and culture at large are threaded with racism and sexism. But, how exactly do we talk about that without bringing up specific instances? ALSO, if in fact it is true that SPN is the object of more critique than other shows, I think this might be for two seemingly contradictory reasons. 1. Maybe it's merited. 2. But ALSO, a lot of the critical voices are coming from WITHIN SPN fandom - i.e. people who are fannish about SPN and so clearly don't outright hate it - and so it follows that this particular show, while in some ways arguably problematic, also ATTRACTS people who are interested in (presumably "progressive") representations of race and gender. I think it's fair to surmise that there are probably aspects of its representational politics that *do* appeal to them.
I don't say all this to be all fandom hag, etc. - I thought perhaps it would be cheering to hear that this kind of ick hasn't just been the outright hegemonic position the whole time.
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Date: 2009-04-27 03:38 pm (UTC)I agree with you here in this post, on almost all counts besides this one. Which is not to say that I don't think it's important to have a reminder such as this, and it's embarrassing to have one of the actors name internalized misogyny in the fandom so clearly.
But we were talking (arguing, debating) about this years ago. Alongside all of those wanks you mentioned, there were "side wanks" that sometimes verged into "SHUT UP FEMINISTS SHUT UP IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT WATCH ANOTHER SHOW." And sometimes, some equally unnuanced responses. There were many times where I felt like just making a post with both the words "supernatural" and "women" in it might be controversial.
Two Wincons ago, myself and a couple others led a panel about feminism and SPN fanfic. For the record we talked about misogyny and critical interventions both.
In general, I think SPN is read in some wildly disparate ways by different people, and that includes all those young men we don't know who are making up major CW demographics (some of whom are my students!). To quote myself from this post (http://femmenerd.livejournal.com/305408.html) of over a year ago:
I've heard it implied that SPN gets "unfairly" or disproportionately targeted within fandom in terms of gender and racial representation, especially given that these are areas where television at large tends to fail. (I'm not actually sure if this is at all true - the relative amount of critique, I mean - a lot of people on my flist are willing to make critical observations about a variety of things that they watch.) I have a couple of things to say about that: First of all, yes, our media and culture at large are threaded with racism and sexism. But, how exactly do we talk about that without bringing up specific instances? ALSO, if in fact it is true that SPN is the object of more critique than other shows, I think this might be for two seemingly contradictory reasons. 1. Maybe it's merited. 2. But ALSO, a lot of the critical voices are coming from WITHIN SPN fandom - i.e. people who are fannish about SPN and so clearly don't outright hate it - and so it follows that this particular show, while in some ways arguably problematic, also ATTRACTS people who are interested in (presumably "progressive") representations of race and gender. I think it's fair to surmise that there are probably aspects of its representational politics that *do* appeal to them.
I don't say all this to be all fandom hag, etc. - I thought perhaps it would be cheering to hear that this kind of ick hasn't just been the outright hegemonic position the whole time.