HEAVY META ON 5.17

[fannishliss]

Warnings: Little squee here.  Dr. Fannishliss gets serious about the Language Problem in the recent episode. With love.

 

 

“On a good day you get to kill a Whore.” – Dean Winchester.

 

This meta is in reaction to the usage and slippage of the term “whore” in 5.17.  This is not a simple meta to write and I hope a few people find it valuable. Please let me know what you think, and if it matters to you. 

 

My 9 year old, who watches Supernatural with me, wanted to know what a whore was.  I told him it was a very bad word, and he went off to ask for more detail from my husband. 

 

Why is “whore” such a bad word?  Well, a “whore” is a prostitute, someone who sells sex for money – but it’s much more derogatory than “prostitute” or “hooker” and also very strongly connotes a woman.  A “whore” is someone degraded, someone who sells what should not be sold.  To “whore” oneself is to accept money without regard for one’s principles. There is a strong connotation that a “whore” knows exactly how demeaning her actions are.

 

I’ve always felt that Dean is a person who is sex positive, who respects women and does not regard women as “sluts” or “whores” BUT, because he is very poorly socialized, he is not actually very comfortable with women, largely defers to them, and tries to base his appeal to women on his looks and his sexual magnetism. That is, Dean makes it a pattern to hit on women all the time, and sexualizes his encounters with women – not because he disrespects women, but because this is the way he’s made that little bit of contact in the past:  example a, Cassie – remember there was one thing they were good at, as Dean recalls, with some regret?  example b, Lisa – how he describes his weekend with her as simply exceptionally bendy – but because of the soft spot he still holds for her in his heart, I’ve got to presume that he made a deeper emotional connection with her than he is comfortable thinking about.  

 

Dean also has a rude mouth (which I think is an intrinsic part of his character) and he does tend to curse out his opponents.  The fact that some of his opponents are female will not be examined in this essay (I don’t believe that no monsters should be females) – but the usage and slippage of derogatory terms will be.

 

When Dean took Castiel to the Brothel early in s5, I was very shocked and appalled.  I felt like there was too much coercion implicit in taking Cas to a prostitute who was paid not to say no.  After my initial shock died down, I saw things from the other side:  Dean went to the professionals so that Castiel’s experience would be simpler and more honest than Dean’s usual string of lines in a bar – Dean is used to communicating on a level of playful bullshit shared by the women he connects with (remember bartender Jamie repeatedly shooting him down, or the mental image of Starla that Dean had compared to the one Sam had of the same woman?)  -- and Dean was sure that Castiel would not be able to play that game. Dean directly instructed Cas not to “order off the menu,” so that he wouldn’t ask for something he didn’t understand, so that he would have a good quality physical experience.  I still think it was a bad idea, I would never have suggested such a thing to Castiel – but from Dean’s point of view, having sex with a prostitute would be a good thing for Cas.    Castiel, of course, invaded the woman’s past, an outrage that Dean hadn’t predicted.  He had probably hoped that an experienced prostitute would react to Castiel’s weirdness more gracefully than someone they met in a bar. Neither Dean nor Castiel intend disrespect to the woman who work in the brothel, nor is the offensive term “whore” invoked.

 

Prostitution is still an arena where feminism is deeply conflicted over where it stands.  Because prostitution is a last gap resort of women in dire economic circumstances, it is still considered a social evil – whereas women in the sex industry that I’ve heard speak out for themselves tend to see themselves at least in part as doing a public service.  I think the truth is very complicated, and I’m actually not here to talk about prostitution.  I’m here to talk about the misogyny inherent in the term “whore” and why Supernatural failed to avoid the pitfall of misogyny while invoking this important character of the Apocalypse. (I’m in the process of reading the book, “Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women” by Alexa Albert, which is truly fascinating. I’ve also heard interviews with many women who work in the Domination business – not exactly the same, but very interesting.  I think it’s important to listen to the voices of sex workers themselves when talking about prostitution, not just theorize about them.)

 

The biblical figure of the Whore of Babylon is called a whore because of her fornication with earthly kings. I googled the Whore of Babylon to get a more general and less personally biased context for how the figure is understood.  Pretty much, the figure stands for the worldliness/ungodliness of Rome at the time the Revelation was written, and the Revelator is comparing Rome to Babylon, an older image of godlessness and chaos. Babylon is understood as a “whore” because the figure is seduced by the world, but also seduces the world into more vile behavior. For purposes of the Show,  the Whore “bathes in the blood of the martyrs”  -- in Revelation, Roman culture had no problem martyring Christians and so their martyrdom was one of the primary sins of the Whore.

 

Since the Show is working with images suggested by the Revelation, it seems appropriate that the Whore should appear.  (She is closely associated with “The Woman of the Apocalypse” – but the Woman, who travails in childbirth in the Wilderness, is actually her opposite, a figure of the godly Church.  As a pregnant Woman, the Woman is just as obviously sexual as the Whore is, at least to my mind, but her offspring is the Church.)

 

How then does the Show tell the story of the Whore? It definitely portrays the Whore as eager to provoke people into killing some martyrs, and it goes on to show how the Church itself is used as a tool to create those martyrs.  This understanding of the Whore has deep roots in historical Christianity, which tends to divide into denominations, sects, etc, and then points the finger at different sects as being more like the Whore (for example, Protestant churches accusing the Roman Church of being the Whore). 

 

Show attempts to straight-up use the figure of the Whore: she stays within her role of using Churchiness to seduce, warp, and martyr the townspeople.   Sam catches on right away and knows that something is wrong with the way Leah is leading the people. Show is pretty good about not associating the Whore with sexual or gendered Whorishness – the character of Leah pretends to be sweet and modest, even though she is actually an Apocalyptic entity driven by evil intent. Because Show doesn’t go into whether the Whore seduces figures of worldly power, it avoids to that extent the misogyny of the image.

 

The problem with the usage of the term “whore” in 5.17 sits squarely on the tired and careworn shoulders of Dean Winchester.  As a dyed in the wool Dean girl, I am always saddened when he says the stupidest things – which in this case, he did. 

 

Dean acknowledges the offensiveness of the term in this interchange with Castiel, when he is shocked to hear such a term coming from the mouth of an Angel:

DEAN: Well, what is she exactly.

CAS: The Whore.

DEAN: Wow. Cas. Tell us what you really think.

 

Once Dean grasps the situation though, he’s ready to quip: “how do we go Pimp of Babylon all over this bitch?”

 

This is a sign to us that the writers (Julie Siege is credited with the ep, but I assume that the scripts are at least partially group efforts) are not going to be content with simply using the figure of the Whore and letting her zeal for martyring folks lead to horror – they’re also going to throw Dean’s smart mouth into the mix.

 

Unfortunately, the result triggers much more offense than the writers probably guessed.   First of all, the figure of the Whore of Babylon is, actually, inherently misogynist.  It comes from a time of deeply entrenched patriarchy, where stoning adultresses (or prostitutes) -– but not necessarily their partners --  was a perfectly godly thing to do.  To use the figure of a sexually active woman as a figure of bloodthirsty godlessness is pretty much the definition of misogyny (which, by the way, Show nearly successfully sidestepped).  Rome seduced less powerful nations with its luxuries, and so in that misogynist way that doesn’t even make much sense, Rome is called a whore.   The writers knew they were playing with fire, so they mingled the figure of the Whore with the chaste and respectable figure of the Preacher’s Daughter (which begins to sound a little like the setup to a dirty joke).

 

Show really crosses the line when Dean immediately activates the overtly sexualized and degraded overtones of the “Whore” by referring to the “pimp of Babylon”  and calls the Whore a “bitch” – which is actually pretty par for the course for him (and it must be said, tiresomely common whenever a villain is a female in movie after movie, show after show).

 

Dean’s next riposte is during his pep talk with Cas.  It’s a throwback all the way to Wendigo, when he use to say that saving people hunting things, and taking out a few evil sons of bitches along the way, made life worth living.  Now, he weakly says to Cas, “On a good day you get to kill a Whore” – which at least Jensen vocally plays down... but it still has an overall lame ring to it, and is misogynist no matter how you might try to spin it.  When I watched Dean impale the Whore, I thought of just how many creatures and entities he has killed over the course of five seasons – even after, when he met Lenore and her tribe, he realized that not all of them are as pure evil as he needs to believe. His line, I think, was meant, really, to show how far short of his goal of “saving people” his career of “hunting things” has taken him.... he is a killer, pure and simple, even if he mostly kills in self-defense.   (Dean has been cognizant of and uncomfortable with his core identity as a killer at least since he used the Colt to kill a demon throttling Sammy years ago.)

 

It is also true that Dean, while speaking to Cas, has already made up his mind to say Yes to Michael. Meta has already shown that possession by an Angel is both sexualized and rape-like.  Dean is ready to agree to becoming an Angel condom, as he crudely puts it.  He has conditions before he’ll say Yes – he wants to see Michael’s cash before he gives it up. 

 

Dean’s final interchange with the Whore is telling, as she speaks without pulling punches:

 

LEAH:  Please. Like you're a servant of Heaven. This is why my team's gonna win. You're the great Vessel? You pathetic, self-hating, faithless...  It's the end of the world, and you're just gonna sit back and watch it happen.

 

DEAN:  Don't be so sure, Whore.

 

The Whore is saying what Dean believes to be the truth about himself – but just as Dean uses the creature’s Apocalyptic title as a term of deep opprobrium – he is also reflecting upon himself.  He is willing to sign himself over, as long as he sets the terms.

 

Unfortunately, Dean’s decision to “whore himself” to Michael is subtextual, and is cast in a desperate, tragic, and heroic light, that distances his act from the demeaning connotations of the bad word the episode insists on throwing around so casually. Because of my academic training in the field of Romantic literature, I recognize Sam and Dean as having evolved into Byronic heroes:  their talents and abilities, and moreover, their destinies, set them apart from other humans, not as a blessing, but as a curse. Romanticism also internalizes its own problematic gender politics – when the Byronic hero is cut off and hopeless, it is a utopian image of feminine domesticity that fills the sorrowful hero’s mind. As s5 develops toward its close, the Winchesters have both become more Byronic than I would ever have predicted.  I’m SO GLAD there will be a season six, where possibly Sam and Dean will have a chance to reconnect and maybe even find their “normal.”

 

In this particular instance, I’m not trying to defend Supernatural, I’m just trying to talk about why I think they have chosen to walk such an indefensible line. As other meta has recently pointed out (thanks coffeeandink and rhymephile), women characters have received dramatically more terms of opprobrium since s3.  (Additionally, as my friend somnolentblue has argued, the Apocalyptic storyline has meant fewer motw episodes and correspondingly fewer supporting women characters.  As part of my own fic writing projects, I was able to generate almost 80,000 words of story around women characters from s1 and s2, while the s3 women, not counting Bela, Ruby, and Lilith, have inspired mostly drabbles.)

 

Back to the point though – in dealing with the important Apocalyptic figure, the Great Whore, the writers undercut themselves, and did themselves an injustice.  On the one hand, they were very careful to do their research and to portray the Whore in a meaningful way, smartly applying and developing cultural and literary tradition.  But then, because they can’t resist Dean’s colloquial mannerisms and smart mouth, they fall down, because the quips they give him to say are more misogynist than is the portrayal of Leah/the Whore herself.

 

Shame on Show for “whoring itself out” for the cheap line – selling itself short for something it very well knew was offensive and demeaning – in an otherwise satisfyingly complex and emotionally compelling episode.

 

 

 

Comments

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

I rarely read meta - but I can't resist your educated "voice." ;)

(Byronic heroes? Hmmmm....do you have meta with this Romantic interp of SPN and the charas??? I would LOVE to read that!)

I think part of the "issue" here - if we can legitimately refer to a serialized television show as having literary/moral/biblical/philosophical "issues" is that the team of writers are working from a "supernatural" foundation that has truly borrowed everything and the kitchen sink. It's problematic to those of us with religious and/or literary backgrounds because at this point in the series so many of the premises and characters are just not making "classic" sense. It's frustrating to me....but I've made my peace with it as a kind of trade off for thoroughly compelling modern entertainment - but with that "peace" I've had to be honest about my biases and admit that if "Supernatural" the TV show was "Supernatural" a weighty contemporary trade novel, I would be far far far less forgiving. TV seems so....transient? I don't know...that's another dialogue. So, this particular show's involvement in religious/biblical/literary/mythological story-building is basically a weekly massaging to get the pieces to fit and work together. Rarely is it a perfect fit. The show was far more successful in that consideration the first three seasons when the arcs were far more Folktale and Urban Legend inspired. This wildly tangential move into angels and demons and the Apocalypse is just simply problematic for myriad of reasons of which you've touched on some of the more obvious ones here - yes, keeping charas in chara.

Well presented!

One thing your meta really put me back in mind of - something I stopped wrestling with at the beginning of this season/end of last season is this newly minted permission to be "okay" with actually murdering human beings who have been possessed. For me, that was the point at which the show switched moral horses mid-stream/series....and anything that has been questionable to me from that point has been chalked up to the ginormous headache of a jigsaw puzzle the writers have created....The only way I can really continue to enjoy this truly enjoyable show is by checking my education at the door. ;)

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for reading and commenting!!

The thing about spn is that it's project is to deal with American urban legends... the underbelly of the American psyche. and for good or ill, popular conceptions of the End Times, the Antichrist, the four horsemen etc, and Lucifer especially, feature large in that mental map of the supernatural. I wonder if Brits were at all taken aback by the way the Apocalypse suddenly loomed up.

I did a meta during s3 on Romanticism and Wincest if you're interested. :) This is about two years old now, and when you read it you'll see that a lot has happened since then!
http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/3414.html

[tahirire.livejournal.com]

I think this is really well written and thought out, (as is all your meta) and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would agree that Dean's terminology is often a problem.

Personally, I don't find it to be an issue. I've seen a lot of complaints along these lines over the years, and I've more or less stopped reading them.

Dean is human, and a man. He speaks and thinks and acts like a man. I have 4 brothers and 12 guy cousins and I know that men talk that way without thinking about the implications almost every day. One of the things I've always loved about Show is how realistically human the boys are, not just in their actions but their speech as well.

They say 'Ain't gonna' instead of 'is not going to' and they tease each other about thinking with their upstairs brain and they call ghosts and monsters bitches and sons of bitches, and it's just the way it is. In this instance the creature actually was the whore, so I had hoped that this ONE TIME over every other time, people wouldn't be offended.

I mean, if this episode is a problem, what about s1? How far back does the dissatisfaction go?

"Where's our father, Meg?"
"Oh, you didn't ask very nice."
"Where's our father, bitch."

I'm sorry, but I can't be bothered to get upset by these exchanges. If I was up against a demon or the dragon of the apocalypse, you can bet your ass I'd call him every name in the book I could think of.

Now, as for whether it is appropriate for children and whether they should have aired it on tv, I think that's something that has to be left up to parents. I view it as an adult show - even back in s1 and s2 if was way too scary for children, and this season the gore is through the roof. Even so, though, when you compare it to ANY other show on television, the sex and innuendo is practically nonexistent, and that includes its own network.

I'm not saying your kid shouldn't watch, just that you know your kid and you know your show, so that'd be your call.

Anyway, sorry to be a dissenter, but there you go. :)

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I welcome dissent! :) that's why we have an internet.

My kid loves spn and has been watching it with me for years now. He is about to turn ten. He recently watched Spirited Away and declared that it was much scarier than spn (I agree). But I welcome the opportunity to discuss this kind of thing with him... he's in the fourth grade and of course that's when the crude minds really kick in.

My kid knows not to call people "bitch" -- he doesn't like it when they do it on the show either, and I'm glad.

I do really think that Show had every right to invoke the idea of the whore of Babylon, and I was proud that the story they told did not fabricate a "more whorish" element for her character, but rather, stuck to her thirst for her blood of the martyrs.

But I really can't just sit back and let Dean say, "On a good day you get to kill a whore" --- I think it simply got away from them and tonally, they failed there. But I do try to portray a balanced critique of the episode by exploring what I think they were trying to do.

It's pointless to talk about whether or not people "should" be offended -- the fact is that many were. I'm just exploring why. :/

[andreth47.livejournal.com]

Gah, why did they do this? Been making us all crazy trying to figure out our reactions to it...hmm. Maybe that's why. ;D
Seriously, this is very clear and pointed. I can tell how hard it was to keep yourself focused on the issue at hand.

I do agree that the Whore of Babylon is a misogynist figure, but I'd argue that usage of the derogatory term 'whore' is sexist rather than misogynist.

And I think there's some rather pointed self-hatred going on, as you note. Dean's definitely very aware of the parallel between himself and a whore (lowercase) in this episode. I like your point about how his whoredom is cast in a heroic light, which distances it from the gendered insult he throws around in this ep. That's the problem with putting words like that in the mouth of your protagonist! ;D

However, maybe it becomes less problematical if you consider that Dean's so-called heroism in whoring himself out to Michael is, actually, a very bad mistake, and a mistake that the show, the text itself, is making a very negative judgment on. (Even if Dean himself isn't thinking of it as a mistake.)

So there isn't very much distance at all between Dean and the Whore or the whores.

Still, as you say, Show is using a gendered noun as signifier for A Very Bad Thing.

Huh. I guess I'm more defensive about Dean's use of that creepy word than I expected. :\

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reading and commenting! See how the episode's use the the trope goes every which way at once? They really made quite a deep and multi-layered episode, and I just think it's a shame they lost control of the tone with Dean's ill-advised jokiness.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to hear from you though!

[brennanspeaks.livejournal.com]

This is a fascinating meta. It makes me feel a bit better about the episode, to be honest; you identified some mitigating complexities that I hadn't thought about. The interpretation that Dean has chosen to "whore himself out" makes a lot of sense, considering how sexualized their treatment of Vessels and possession has always been. It's interesting to me because I'd always interpreted Dean as having a fairly negative opinion of prostitution in general and johns in particular. There's that one scene where he "strikes out with a prostitute" after she propositions him and another where he accuses Sam of "paying now?" or something to that effect. I got the impression that it was a bit of a sore subject for him, which makes this parallel all the more fraught.

[elliemurasaki.livejournal.com]

I think the scene you're thinking of is from Lazarus Rising. Dean: "What'd it cost?" Sam: "The girl? I don't pay, Dean." Why that was the first thing to Sam's mind, I don't know, because no matter how badly he wanted to cover for Ruby, he should've known Dean was asking about Sam's role in Dean's resurrection.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Yeah, overall I thought it was a rather good episode, and I can even seen where they ALMOST didn't go wrong with Dean's comments, since they are spoken from within Dean's negative self-image.

The "striking out" is in Sin City, where Dean thinks the girl is hitting on him, and then asks him to pay, at which point he gets offended. ... In Lazarus Rising, when Dean asks Sam what it cost, I think Sam was trying to deflect Dean's question -- but I think it's amazing how Jared's acting reveals the extent to which he is already intent on deceiving Dean. I think in general Dean has a positive and healthy attitude toward women - but he does tend to use very insulting words when he fights against monsters in the shape of women.

[desertport]

LOVE this. You took apart the issues and gave them dimensions I would never have seen otherwise. My main issue with Dean's 'kill a whore' line is that sex workers are quite often victims of violence, and Dean's words seem to condone their victimhood. At the very least, they do nothing to deter it. Bad writing in a social sense, but also in the sense that my reading of Dean is that he's just not that guy, y'know?

Anyway, thanks for giving background on the biblical reference and deconstructing the issues. The prostitution theme as related to Dean's vesselhood is especially interesting. When these parallels are underplayed as in this ep, I wonder whether the writers are even aware of them, or if they appear subconsciously.

Would also really enjoy some meta on the show through a Romantic lens.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for your comment!

You say Dean is just not the kind of guy who would promote or condone violence against women, to which I say, EXACTLY!! That's why it's so frustrating when they make him say such stupid things.

With the character of Dean, we are already dealing with a man of violence. He is a hero, yes, but he largely goes through life KILLING THINGS, and a lot of times, he kind of hates himself a little for it. I mean, I think he's overtly aware of the stains on his soul when he kills these sentient entities he's gone up against -- especially when he kind of gets a satisfaction out of it, like when he killed Ruby -- he knew he killed her largely out of revenge, but he went ahead and did it anyway. I think we hear in this ep Dean's weariness with the role of Hunter, killer, antagonist toward all things supernatural. I'm in s3 with my women of spn project, so I just rewatched the ep where they go up against Vampire Gordon. In that ep we see the actor who played Harmony on Buffy, playing a new and confused vampire who was turned without her knowledge.... Dean kills her. Did he want to? Probably not -- but it's his job, kind of like the guy who puts down feral animals. The ep was called "99 Problems" because it's the 99th episode, and Dean has probably dispatched at least that many entities during the run of the show. Think about that!! We've actually gotten a pretty grim perspective over the course of time from when Dean defined himself as a Loner and a Hero in high school, to his embracing the life of a Hunter while Sam was at Stanford, to his realization that his zeal to Hunt is actually fairly scary -- up to the point in Family Remains where he finally identifies himself as No Different from the monsters he dispatches. Once he reaches that point, his quest to Save People by Hunting Things becomes sad and hopeless -- every person he fails to save looming large over his successes, but no less important, every monster he dispatches, also wearing on his conscience.

Poor guy. I still love him.

If you'd like to read a kind of old meta I wrote about Romanticism and Wincest, it's at http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/3414.html.
It's from before Dean went to Hell, so the boys are not as fully developed into Byronic types as they are now. :P

[glasshouses.livejournal.com]

I think there may be a bigger issue in Dean's psyche that your meta touches on - Dean has a Madonna/Whore complex. As a Dean girl I say that with love :-)

I wouldn't have thought of it if Show hadn't played with the word whore so much. A commenter on my LJ pointed it out to me.

Madonna: Mary (maybe the name wasn't so random) and now, Lisa (having graduated from bendy whore to possible mother of his son, or at least a Good Mother)

Whore: Pretty much every other female he interacts with, exceptions are:

Warrior Women: Anna, Ellen (possibly Madonna) and eventually Jo. Jo is a bit of a complex case, with Dean thinking of her first as little sister, then ready to move her into a kind of Warrior/Whore category, except she turned him down cold.

Sam, who has much less sexual experience, has a (more) balanced view of women. Seeing glimpses of them as kids, I think Sam always had. Maybe because Mary was never a Madonna to him.

Or I could be smokin' crack. Wouldn't be the first time :-)

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting idea to apply to Dean, but I don't think it really fits.

I don't think that Dean expects women to be pure and good, and then turns to revile and loathe them when they fail to live up to that image, the way a true Madonna/Whore complex would work.

I think that Dean is a very isolated and lonely person... I think he seeks connections with women on a very basic (sexual) level, because he can't afford to try to make a deeper connection -- remember Unattached Drifter Christmas? :( ... but I don't think he reviles the women he has sex with, to the contrary, he is grateful. Poor sad Dean.

Now, I do agree that he idealizes Mary! :) Every boy idolizes his Mama at least to a certain degree, I think.

When Dean made his move on Jo, I actually really liked it. He was awkward, but he wasn't disrespectful. What if she had taken him up on it? Wouldn't he have been shocked?!? Then when he kissed her twice when she was dying it broke my heart -- he was like "you're my little sister and my equal and I love you" -- (weeps). Remember when Anna wanted to have sex with him -- he was so sweet and hesitant and gentle. I think that right there is the heart of Dean Winchester. I LOVE HIM SO. *_*

Now, if I am lucky, I will begin to write the story of Lisa and Dean's bendy weekend. :)

[alleysweeper.livejournal.com]

The first thing I have to ask myself when I read this is why you would tell your nine year old the literal definition of whore when it seems fairly obvious he was asking what context it had on Show. Might it not have been wiser to loosely explain The Whore of Babylon than unwittingly add to his arsenal of curses?

That leads to my next point. Context. When taken in context of this episode, whore is no more misogynist than demon or angel. Leah is The Whore. Not in the classical sense, but as the corrupter of souls - a being in it's own right. That she is referred to as such is not to disparage her femininity, but to acknowledge her as the abomination she is.


“On a good day you get to kill a Whore.” – Dean Winchester.

Had Castiel and Dean had this conversation in another episode the term 'whore' would have been demon or shifter or ghoul. This had nothing to do with Leah, or women in general, for that matter. There are times when you have to read behind the words, and this was about as metaphoric as Show gets.

This was Dean telling Castiel that being a good son was something he could value, even if God wasn't worthy of his loyalty. That even though it's a thankless job, you occasionally get to do some real good...in this case, kill The Whore. It was Dean telling Castiel to have faith in himself, something no one ever took time to tell Dean, and that his judgment was sound and trusted.


I don't have a background in religion or literature, so I cannot speak with authority in those areas, but I am a woman who fought hard for a place in a man's world and I see no misogyny here.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

My son is really not looking to add to his arsenal of curses, he was just curious. We are at that stage, the Fourth Grade to be precise, when his peers are eager to bandy about with obscenity, so we walk a pretty tight rope between what he's ready to understand and what he'd rather not know. That's why I sent him off to talk his his dad rather than have him reading over my shoulder. :)

I'd hope you might think again about the archetypal image of the Whore. It really is pretty much the definition of misogyny to use the idea of a sexually active woman to represent godlessness and corruption. That's what misogyny IS -- the hatred of femininity and the identification of woman with the bestial, the corrupt, and the evil. That's why misogyny is not the same as sexism (the idea that women should confine their activities or interests to only certain spheres). What I try to convey in my meta is that though the archtype is in fact inherently misogynist, Show did succeed in telling a story that WASN'T, -- except for when through Dean's colloquialism, the usage of the term whore slipped into the place where it WAS.

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

This is a sign to us that the writers (Julie Siege is credited with the ep, but I assume that the scripts are at least partially group efforts) are not going to be content with simply using the figure of the Whore and letting her zeal for martyring folks lead to horror – they’re also going to throw Dean’s smart mouth into the mix.

I have to take issue with the implication you've made that a woman, Julie Siege, did not in fact write the problematic word you're questioning here. I've seen this implied in other episode reactions and it disturbs me. Critique the use of the word by all means, but implying an erasure of the fact that a woman wrote the script, implying maybe other writers/the creator have put this word in her mouth figuratively, is immensely problematic.

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

(I've recovered from my annoyance) and I do want to add that I appreciated the distinction you made between Dean's use of the word and how the show actually portrayed "the Whore of Babylon" which wasn't sexualized at all.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I really don't know how it works... but I have to assume that storylines are at least in part worked up together by the team... is that not right? Don't the ideas go through Kripke, the producers and what not? I wasn't trying to take away from Julie, but I was trying to indicate that television seems to me to be a more collaborative effort, than say a fic -- where even then, you have betas suggesting wording changes etc.

Collaborative works are hard to attribute. I was just trying to be clear that Julie Siege is credited with the episode, but that the idea of using the Whore of Babylon likely at least went through Kripke and others. Don't you think?

[esorlehcar.livejournal.com]

TV scripts are partially group efforts, though, and there's no guarantee that the person whose name appears on the script is personally responsible for any line. What a writer originally turns in and what eventually comes out of the writers' room are often vastly different, and I'm not sure how acknowledging that is problematic. If the OP had said, "Julie Siege is credited with the episode, but obviously that line was written by frat boys," I could see your point, but acknowledging that scripts are group efforts and that you can't necessarily place all the blame (or credit, as the case may be) on the person given the writers credit for an episode is just common sense.

[marchbear.livejournal.com]

This was an excellent analysis. It was mentioned on Television Without Pity, so I came over to look at it. The idea that Dean feels that he's in the same boat as a 'Whore' was a good catch - I missed that completely, but you made a great argument for it. Thank you for this - the episode was good, but the 'Whore'-ing cheapened the effect. You communicated this much better than I could. Thanks!

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to comment -- I'm glad it worked for you!

[bonwriter.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that Dean's view of himself as a whore for Michael is exactly what makes his use of the term not misogynistic. In modern usage, the word no longer means only a woman who sells her body but rather anyone who sells his or her principles in a particularly corrupt way. In the law biz, the term is applied regularly to men and women (but mostly men) who are willing to do anything for money or power or fame (but mostly money). Since Leah is the Whore of Babylon, Dean's use of the word is first literal, but the secondary reference must be to "whore" in the sense of anyone of any gender who has no ethical boundaries.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Your point that the word whore is being applied to both men and women in current usage is perfectly true. Look at the difference though -- and it is very subtle -- between what you are saying and what actually occurs. As I state in the meta, the subtextual implication that Dean is "whoring" himself remains in the subtext. Dean's impression that he is whoring himself is never stated, and while obviously he is a man and not a woman in a whore's position, this is what is called in theory a "feminization" -- a term I find very problematic, but nevertheless, it identifies the process by which men are devalued in a patriarchal or misogynist schema by putting them into the woman's place. Do you acknowledge that?

Contrast what Dean did NOT say: He didn't say, "On a good day you get to kill a Monster" and he didn't say "On a good day you get to The Whore." By saying "kill a whore" his language slips from the specific monster in question to the general killing of whores, and he doesn't say, people who whore themselves. I'm not splitting hairs, I'm demonstrating how the language slips from specificity in the larger storyline about the Whore of Babylon, to generalities that invoke a painfully misogynistic language base.

[shadowc44.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I think the reason I don't get as upset about Dean's derogatory terms is that I see them as the writers having an opportunity to be little boys and say the words they maybe just recently found out they can say. Remember last season when Dean was calling a lot of people a douche or douchebag? I figured it was simply because he *could*. I thought the same thing with him using the term whore. Now he has another word besides bitch to describe women, and the writers get to feel naughty because they're saying a word that (I think until recently) they weren't allowed to say on television.

I just see them all, including Dean, as little kids who are gleefully discovering a new "toy" and getting a little overzealous in playing with it.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment. I remember Jensen actually saying in an interview with a bit of disdain that the censors agree to let the word "douche" or "douchebag" go through, and that he expected to be saying it a lot, with eyerolls, so yeah, you have a good point.

I also brought my own Boy into this discussion, because language use is not "natural" -- it is 100% a product of culture. I wanted my son to know that this is a word you do not throw around lightly. He already declines to use the word "bitch." I have a polite and perceptive boy. :)

The origins of the epithet "bitch" are of course strongly misogynist -- to call someone a "bitch" was to deny her the status of human being, to call her a dog meant for the purposes only of breeding. Again, this is how misogyny differs from sexism -- where a sexist opinion attaches preference or exclusion based on sex, misogyny is hatred and fear of the female. Nowadays, a "bitch" can also be a minion or pawn (still with the traces of sexual overtone) "you're about to become Hell's bitch, so you can see Hell's other bitches" -- or it can be a verb, to complain loudly and stridently. I actually read a magazine called "Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture" -- which tries to re-appropriate the term in a feminist way. Language will change and evolve, but I still don't like the term because I know where it comes from. The fact that it is all over my favorite Show is not a blessing, but something I put up with -- I am lenient because I know the word is evolving in culture.

Still, I felt like the way they used "whore" in this episode was enough of a problem to call them on it.

[rhymephile.livejournal.com]

Hi there! I was committing the admittedly brazen act of searching for myself on LJ and came across this meta and the mention of my name. After reading this very astute and well thought-out bit of meta, I must ask: what the heck did I write that might have contributed to it? LOL, I would love to know that other people are reading my SPN ramblings, as I don't get many comments when I meta on my journal.

Sorry for popping in via a search, but I'm very interested.