The Radical Notion That Women Are People Too: Sexism Among SPN Fans

[chasingtides]

Sexism in Supernatural, and its ensuing debate, is old news. I wrote my own meta, drawing on my experiences as a hardened horror fan, about it in September, Why Supernatural Is Like The Evil Dead. However, today, in light of what has happened with Misha Collins and his character, Castiel, I might revise that original opinion, I regret to say. More on that later.

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. Taking a number of things into consideration, from what has happened with Misha Collins and Castiel to the recent wank about an actor's girlfriend daring to exist, I think it's high time that someone did.

If you watched the embedded video above, you watched three actors from the show (Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles, and Jared Padalecki) and their interviewer discuss the blatant sexism in the fandom. I, for one, am embarrassed that I fall, broadly, into the same category as these misogynists.

A quick perusal of Fandom Wank (a source, which, while wanky, is a great place to find an overview of the worst of any fandom) shows us people in this fandom getting upset over (and at) women for years. We get gems like (2007-2-19) fans going after women (ex girlfriends) associated with the actors, (2007-7-12) fans getting angry that two women (Bela and Ruby) would appear in season three, (2007-11-16) people getting angry that an underage actress dares to drink and put the show into disrepute, (2008-1-21) someone is called out for bashing (literally) women in her fanfiction, and (2009-3-31) people getting angry that an actor's girlfriend exists.

Television Without Pity and its associated forums also carry their own anti-female baggage. Ruby is known as Gluby (a name smush, I have been told, of Glinda - of good witch fame - and Ruby). Of Ruby, people write things like, "I'm not going to cheer just because the character wore an expression, for once," "She tries to tell us that she is into the method acting. I wish she wasn't. You really need a talent to transfer it from your mind to outside, in her case she only stuffs her head with wild ideas," "That scene gave off way too many Ruby is too speshul to kill vibes for me," and, "What I saw was that they know about her and are waiting for her to have enough rope to hang herself." It continues with the other women. Anna gets, "It's the casting and the acting that makes Anna into such a wasted opportunity," and Jo gets, "I think if she'd been played by someone who actually looked like an adult, the character would have been far less irritating." although one fan adds, "if she were to come back as a hunter, an ally and possibly kill Gluby once and for all, I'd throw her a parade."

I debated naming names, but why should I hesitate? If you think I have interpreted your posts/language/fanfiction/meta wrongly, feel free to let me know. I am only human. If we have a discussion and you show me that I am wrong, I will change this.

The fans on LiveJournal aren't any better than the TWoP fans.

huntress69 bashes, sometimes literally, the female characters in her fiction. I remember, quite vividly, being new to fandom and reading the fic in which Sam drugs Cassie and buries her alive to keep her away from Dean. Cassie appeared in one episode in season one and was never mentioned again. I don't mean to suggest that huntress69 is unique by naming her. She is not, by any means. She is merely someone I remember clearly. Consider her an example of a genre, rather than a unique outlier.

dean_sam gets more than its share of misogyny, one of the reasons I took it off my flist. spnstoryfinders periodically gets requests for fics bashing female characters. There's the impression, in many communities, and even in personal journals, that one must clarify why or how one likes a female character. "I like Jo, but not as a love interest." "I like Ruby, but not when she was snarky."

In addition, Misha Collins threw a monkey wrench into our sexist habits. He, in my mind, takes away our excuses, negates our ability to turn a blind eye to our own internalised hatred. Before, we were able to say, "Oh, they hate anyone who takes away from Sam and Dean." If Misha is to be believed in his interviews, the Powers that Be said the same thing. They warned him that, as a guest star, he would be reviled. Instead, he has become beloved. I know. I co-mod mishaland, a rapidly growing caplock community devoted to him. And yet, we continue to revile the female characters and actresses. TPTB listened to our hatred and to our outcries. Misha Collins will be returning next season as Castiel, something that no female guest star has done. Yes, this is sexism on the part of TPTB who shouldn't do this. But the blame falls to us - we are the ones who raised the hue and cry. We are the ones who demanded to be heard.

Do I blame Misha Collins for this? No. No more than I blame Alona Tal for the fact that Jo, my personal hero, has not returned to the show. No more than I blame Kate Cassidy for being replaced by Genevieve Cortese. This blame falls to us.

This also creates a problematic binary in the fandom. Either you are for the women or you are against the women. It becomes difficult to dislike a character or an actress and not be painted with the same brush as those who have Cassie buried alive. I, for one, am not a fan of Genevieve Cortese and her Ruby. However, I greatly hesitate to say that, though I love many other female characters who have graced the screen, for saying that I find Cortese's acting to be flat is tantamount to misogyny.

This false binary is just as unfair as the great misogyny. We are, contrary to popular belief, allowed to dislike characters based on what their characters do and don't do. (I, for one, find the whole demon blood drinking bit to be more stomach turning than anything else in the show, probably for cultural signifiers.)

It also grows difficult to separate the characters from the fandom. Is Castiel, and his actor by extension, a part of the clamor of fans who love him and slam the women, presumably on the value of what's between their legs? Is Ruby, and her actress by extension, a part of the crowd that labels you sexist if you suggest that you don't like her acting? Or can we accept the characters as separate from that? Are we able to separate the actors from their characters? Does it all blend into a giant ball of hatred, anger, and wank?

I don't know the answer to this. I know that I am becoming more and more selective in the communities I read and erring ever closer to going exclusively capslock, though it seems almost irrational to go to capslock communities to avoid hatred and irrationality to an outsider. I become hesitant in friending people. I also hesitated to write this meta. I know that it will cause problems. I've been planning this for months, but it was seeing the YouTube video that spurred me on.

Whatever the answers are, whatever reasons we have or don't have, this has got to have an ending point. We are women tearing down women. We are calling women whores and sluts and worse, for what? Daring to grace our television screens? Most of these women kick ass and take names. For the most part, they're awesome (Bela's backstory and Ruby's current apparent subservience aside). Why can't we, as presumably awesome women ourselves, appreciate that?

Comments

[femmenerd.livejournal.com]

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.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. When I said that I haven't seen it, I meant that I haven't seen it.

I haven't been in the fandom long - just over a year now. There's tons of stuff I haven't seen because I wasn't around for it and it's not archived in places I can easily find (meta especially falls through the cracks as time passes).

It makes me really happy to know that people have been talking about it.

And I agree that SPN fandom talks about things like this - but about the show, more usually than the fandom - more than most fandoms I participate in. (Firefly, in particular, seems to be allergic to people having issues with the show.) There's got to be a reason we're still watching. (Someday I'll talk about why I like SPN over other shows - and how part of that is how it's talked about - we don't say SPN is a revolutionary in terms of sexuality/race/feminism/whosiwhatsis and I think that's *important* to me as a viewer. It's one of the problems I have with Whedon's shows and that I enjoy about SPN. I also think... urgh. Yes another post for that.)

[femmenerd.livejournal.com]

When I said that I haven't seen it, I meant that I haven't seen it.

Point. There is an important semantic distinction between what you said and the somewhat implicitly defensive tone of my response.

Honestly, I kind of see in SPN fandom a pooling of discomforting misogynistic tropes present in a lot of fandoms: namely, bashing the girls to make the boys kiss and possessive-exclusionary behavior in relation to (male) fantasy objects.

At points I have also noticed a complicated sense that sometimes in these debates gender politics are pitted against class issues. i.e. an association of feminism with elites/academia and "the boys" (and certain fans who identify with them) with the working class. o.O.

"Back in the day" as I recall, a lot of us were uncomfortable with the representation of women on the show but weighing that against how interesting/compelling we found the representation of male interiority/emotionality, etc. I haven't heard as much of that kind of talk lately, but admittedly, I've kind of checked out of fandom for awhile in order to survive graduate school.

Sidenotes on Whedon fandom: I think so much of that is wrapped up in Joss's star text as author, especially since he overtly aligns himself with feminism. Interestingly, I think he's more open to criticism of his work than some of his fans are!

I wish I could tell you exactly where to find the self-reflexive meta. Probably the issues of metafandom from the same time periods as the various "omg! vaginas!" wank reports (since fandom wank and metafandom are fraternal twins, imo). It's probably hovering around the same places as "Winsister" fic too.

[femmenerd.livejournal.com]

P.S. Totally out of date, but here's the "SPN specific genres" area of my delicious: http://delicious.com/femmenerd/bundle:SPN-specificgenres

I used to keep track of stories featuring women in various ways: gen, het, femslash, girls of the week, roadhouse (Ellen and Jo), girl!Winchesters, etc.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Thank you!

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

It still boggles me when people associate feminism with the elite. I grew up in a not-so-elite area - my parents are both college educated, but my grandparents didn't graduate high school and no one in their generation did. College education in my family had as much, if not more, to do with Vietnam War politics than with education - and we were and are educated in socially-specific places, my personal self aside. I was taught that feminism was specifically a working-class issue - it was the issue of the mill and factory workers in the family; it was the issue of my aunt, who worked as a maid in the WASP homes; it was the issue of my grandmother, the seamstress wife of an undereducated factory worker; it was my widowed working grandmother who went to the first suffrage meeting in the US.

When I got to college and everyone had feminist theory and feminist language, it kind of baffled me at first. Feminism - still, in my mind - is what you do when you're working and you've got to get it done and damn the man. It wasn't and isn't theory - it is action and relationship and living.

Slight aside, but, in my mind, feminism, or the feminism I grew up with, is definitely more within the boys' realm of life than, say, mine with my hoity-toity women's college education.