winterlive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterlive) wrote2006-08-23 09:41 am
winterlive) wrote2006-08-23 09:41 am
[ coming soon here on Gender Politics... ]
discussion on how supernatural - and the masculine ethic that it espouses, the WAY it espouses it, and dean in particular - is not sexist.
watch this space.
in other news, i appear to have lost my bank card and all id cards. I DISAPPROVE, WORLD.
likely it is in the cthulhu couch, but i have to get a hold of a certain young lady who is not answering her EMAIL. *shake shake*
ETA: somebody's going to heaven. i appear to have dropped them outside, and some BEAUTIFUL SOUL turned them in at the security desk to my new best friend earnest, the security guy who called the entire world as referenced in my various cards to find somebody who had my phone number, which turned out to be safeway, who called my roommate who called me who ran downstairs to barely restrain myself from hugging earnest to my bosom.
i have my cards! \o/
watch this space.
in other news, i appear to have lost my bank card and all id cards. I DISAPPROVE, WORLD.
likely it is in the cthulhu couch, but i have to get a hold of a certain young lady who is not answering her EMAIL. *shake shake*
ETA: somebody's going to heaven. i appear to have dropped them outside, and some BEAUTIFUL SOUL turned them in at the security desk to my new best friend earnest, the security guy who called the entire world as referenced in my various cards to find somebody who had my phone number, which turned out to be safeway, who called my roommate who called me who ran downstairs to barely restrain myself from hugging earnest to my bosom.
i have my cards! \o/
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it's a fandom-wide trend. i do plan to address it, meta-wise, sometime soonish, probably tonight. as a refutation, with reasonable examples.
i'm not sure why i'm coming off as bitchy or over-involved, here, honestly it's just that i think the opposing viewpoint is wrong. i'm not afraid to say that i disagree with something, man. *hands*
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When I saw the phrase "masculine ethic" and saw that you had commented in her LJ, I put 2 and 2 together, obviously missing the other 2 that makes 6.
Yay! Disagreement! Yay again! I just thought you might want to know what it sounded like (neither bitchy nor over-involved, but perhaps, um, stifling dissent?), when you never intended it as such.
I haven't seen a lot of other whinging about Dean-as-sexist, so I'll be interested to see if people come out of the woodwork for the discussion.
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the forbes thing never did come back to the winchesters, but it was a discussion of gender politics, so.
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Yeah, but if someone said that about a female character (she sleeps around, ergo, hates men), that same crowd would be forming a lynch mob. *sigh* People, you can't have it both ways!
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just like one cannot espouse an ethic that exalts women without also approving of ethics that exact men. there are oodles of women who will explain that feminism doesn't mean we HATE men, it just means women are worth just as much as any man is. but the problem with that is that it's one-sided: nobody accounts for men being worth as much as women, having real value and purpose and worth that can't be duplicated. is every bit as particular to them as a woman's worth is to her.
men are awesome. their ethic is awesome, so long as it doesn't devalue women. and supernatural has consistently showed women a great deal of respect. it's stumbled a few times, yes. i don't say it hasn't. but saying that it's universally sexist is, in my view, just bashing the masculine ethic. there's no evidence for that.
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nobody accounts for men being worth as much as women, having real value and purpose and worth that can't be duplicated. is every bit as particular to them as a woman's worth is to her.
is the best description of my feelings ever ever.
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when gloria steinham said women don't need men at all, i know what she MEANT. she meant that, in this culture, women are expected to be able do everything: hold down a job, take care of the kids and the house and the man, be happy and loving and never complain. and that's not right. i agree with what she meant.
but i don't think it's true that women don't need men. there is something about men that is indefinable and irreplaceable. even lesbians need men, i think, just around. just to know them, work with them, have what they can offer.
just like men need women, even gay men. it works both ways, it's a two-way street. we're not the same, men and women, and that is GOOD. we shouldn't be.
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the trouble with how our culture views men (and white people and rich people and every other group of power) is that they are not expected to earn respect.
everyone should have to earn respect.
that's why i think we all have such a soft spot for cowboys and soldiers and working class guys. and action heroes, these days. there can be no doubt that these guys have earned the respect they have.
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I mean, if you think of the differences alone among three of the women Dean's admired-- Haley, Layla, and Cassie-- that's a pretty broad spectrum of personalities, but yet none of them would I label weak or stereotypical in any way. Now whether Dean-the-character knows that about himself or not is a whole 'nother question (which is one thing I liked about Mary's Dean-Xander comparison, i.e. do we find men attractive who seek out strong women? answer:yes.), but that doesn't really have anything to do with an evaluation of whether Dean is "sexist."
Um, sorry. Maybe I should be saving all these ramblings for when, you know, you actually do post about this! :)
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you wanna know my secret spn otp? it's dean/the waitress from dead in the water.
she swings up to him, leans over and asks him if there's anything else she can get him. and there is a look on her face that, when dean sees it, he returns the EXACT SAME LOOK.
what i love about dean - the confidence, the bravado, the playfulness - it was all right there in that waitress. it was obvious and perfect and i loved it. and all terribly masculine, y'know?
which is why that dean-xander comparison was interesting to me, yes, but also (imho) way underdeveloped. xander is like the anti-macho. he spends his entire arc figuring out whether he's useful, his issues are so totally different than dean's. but they have the same M.O. for dealing with pain, which i would LOVE to see examined, y'know?
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And what pisses me off is that the very people who cry "SEXIST!" are ones who would look at that woman and immediately judge her as "trashy" or "floozie" or "dumb blonde" either because of 1) class (she's a waitress, not a college student or art curator or reporter); 2) looks (she's too "hot" and look at how she dresses! *gasp*); 3) demeanor (like you say, she's sexually aggressive *gasp again*, which makes some people uncomfortable). So she's somehow not "good enough" for Dean. Makes me want to rip my hair out.
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in conversation with a friend the other day, i brought up contempt, and how it is virtually indistinguishable from hatred. anything that's an excuse for contempt just strikes me as wrong, especially when people use a good cause like that.
like using feminism as an excuse for contempt of men. that insults me not only as a human, on behalf of those men, but as a feminist!