#spn feminine masculine

[sapphicmoonlightlilith]

idk if non-rowenagirls recognize this so i felt the need to make a post ab it but rowena and dean have some of the same issues fr. like rowena is also hypersexualizing and hypergendering herself to boost her self esteem and prevent abandonment after a traumatic life. idk where u missed that in the narrative bc its THERE. it's all a performance, for the both of them!! its a performance where if you fail you die!! thats both of their lives!!!

[soullessjack]

thinking about this again. Plagued by it even

[jvnkless]

a type of episode that I would’ve personally loved to see come out of supernatural but know they would never do is an episode where sam & dean have to disguise themselves as drag queens for a case.

[pinkdean]

5 possible results, each including a masculine, gender neutral, and feminine option (15 total names!)

[shallowseeker]

OKAY HERE WE GO

In a season that heavily hangs with issues of power dynamics and class, Sam meets his match in Rowena, and he immediately enters into a power struggle with her.

In his dogged pursuit TO FIX THE THING, Sam is becom like Magnus, like Mr. Cuthbert. In his trying to tame Rowena this season, he becomes the most MEN OF LETTERS he have ever seen him:

The Men of Letters is the masculine-stereotyped "Warlock," the match to the often feminine-stereotyped Witch.

They hoard knowledge and manipulate others to do their dirty work. (Importantly: Because they've been hurt, and because they're afraid.)

We think back to the line in Paint it Black:

OLIVETTE: Hoarding unbelievable power for their own amusement. Smug, self-righteous bastards. The Men of Letters. ... ROWENA: I see the truth, and it’s pathetic. You let these Men Of Letters pillage the greatest trove of magical secrets in the world and did nothing.

///

We see in The Werther Project what happens when a MoL goes "bad:"

///

A Man of Letters isn't just a class divide here; it's set up to be Rowena's natural enemy.

The MAN OF LETTERS one of Rowena's symbolic bulls. Sam is a "bull" to her flaming "matador."

But when faced with him, Rowena doesn't know quite what she wants to do. Kill the bull? Subdue the bull?

Ride the bull?

///

Rowena can't help but be intrigued.

And ah, look. It's the symbolic family diner... They are flanked by checkerboards, not dartboards. For better or worse, The family diner is the Family Diner for a reason. I think it's notable that they're meeting here and not there. (You'd expect them to meet in a more neutral SPN space, like *bar/Roadhouse of Good Pals.")

Anyhoo, immediately we see that Sam doesn't balk at Rowena's monstrosity. He isn't even taken aback by her darkest of motivations/emotions:

She certainly looks taken aback.

When she looks at him, she sees an ugliness.

(Crucially, it is what DRIVES this ugliness that will really wind up drawing her closer to Sam in the end).

///

For now, they start trying to impress each other with their brains.

Her initial instinct is to flutter and try to impress him.

///

When she reveals she can't read the book in its present form without a codex, Sam immediately starts his power play, shutting the book.

This forces her to parry, and parry she does!

Flawlessly:

ROWENA: "You're desperate. You can stop pretending you're not."

As they talk business, both of their eyebrows rise, interested despite trying not to be:

*eyebrow raise*

///

She talks of a witch who was victimized, Nadya:

And this further underlines what will become their power struggle. Sam will become his worst self, putting the boot on her neck, becoming the worst kind of MAN OF LETTERS.

///

Later, Sam calls her, and she can't help it, but she's excited. She's quick to match brains with him, and what leaks out?

Her desperate need for friends that challenge her.

And he's intrigued, too, but the lure of their mutual dark ambition.

"Great. Thanks."

Sensing a GOODBYE, Rowena is startled to discover that she doesn't want him to hang up. (Rowena is, at heart, a loser who has to struggle making friends.)

She stammers, then she practically engages in a bit of HAIR TWIRLING HERE:

He shuts her down: "I'll take my chances."

She scoffs, disappointed.

///

Ultimately, she can't resist trying to goad and challenge Sam—to "Toro, Toro" him and try to tame what he represents.

We see Crowley do this, too. His play is to goad and mouth off, especially when he's bitten off more than he can chew and is trying to convince everyone that he's "the top in the relationship."

///

As for the rest of the episodes...

Sam's subconscious knows that witchcraft can be incredibly evil, but he can't help want to strive for ambition, for power, for hidden knowledge, for EVERYTHING. Sam is like a Solomonari in this way. The SCHOLOMONAR. (Tradition says they became the Devil's students, either being instructed by him, or becoming a servant to his commands It's actually a bit different when you get deeper,but that's at least the Westernized version of it.)

As Dean longs for a "simple" world of 24/7-360 total war where he does warfare "all he's good for" without consequence, Sam longs for a world where he can think and strive to achieve ANYTHING without consequence.

A world where Sam can admire Rowena's and Mr. Cuthbert's brains without feeling guilty:

ROWENA (figment): "I know what I'd said about your kind (Men of Letters), but oh. The man who came up with this? The craftsmanship of the box, the sadism of the spellwork... It's all so... deliciously baroque."

There is a direct line being drawn between Sam... and Magnus. (And Rowena, tangentially.)

In Sam's mindscape, he gets to do what he feels he is good for: the pursuit of knowledge. Dean is the ultimate soldier without the need for decision-making, and Sam wants to be the ultimate librarian without consequence.

With that in mind, he also wants to impress Rowena, to impress someone who's brain he found impressive:

He wants to crack a code with her. Together. To show her that he knows things, can figure out things.

But he's also in a (sexual) power struggle with her. Thus, the need for witch-killing bullets... and to see her in chains.

[sapphicnaturalrights]

here are deep dives for each of the prompts for the week! if you have any more questions, our asks are open! as always, feel free to combine as many prompts as you like, just try one, or pay them no attention at all

day 1: heaven & hell / bury your gays

one of the juiciest binaries in the supernatural lore, you could start off the week with getting to grips with the angel and demon sapphics, from ambriel to abaddon. you could focus on heaven and hell together or pick one. or maybe these aren't places, but instead states of mind?

there's a lot to be said about supernatural as The Bury Your Gays show, and now it's time to focus on the sapphics! as jess moore says, "i was dead the moment we said hello". this is a chance to focus on the women the show killed off and how viscerally and violently it did so. you could reclaim that violence, get revenge, or find new meanings in it. you could also explore women in horror, and maybe bury some gays in fun new ways...

day 2: pink / chappell roan

an iconic colour on many a pride flag - the sapphic, lesbian, bisexual, pan, trans flags to name a few - pink holds a lot of symbolism, and for a lot of women, some baggage too. from the barbie fans to not like other girls, what's the first thing to come to mind when you think of pink?

imagine it: what if we had chappell roan on 2021 spnblr. what would you have created then? maybe the most prolific sapphic icon of the present moment, get inspired by her songs, her lyrics, or her wonderfully camp aesthetic.

day 3: came back wrong / monster

you can bring back the gays you burried, but are they still the same? an iconic trope which occurs in the canon of the show, but has endless potential for other women characters too - what if amara brought back [insert dead sapphic here] instead of mary? what is so 'wrong' about how they've come back? women characters are often fridged - killed for men characters' plot development - so how do these resurrected women get their agency back?

what makes a monster a monster? feel free to play with the good/bad, right/wrong, human/monster dichotomy. what about that fraught, tense, intimate relationship between a hunter and a monster? what if you love that monster; what if the monster loves you...

day 4: butch & femme / disabled sapphics

two iconic terms for queer women, butch and femme play with gender identity and presentation. traditionally, butches '...prefer masculine signals, personal appearance, and styles', and femmes '...prefer behaviors and signals defined as feminine within the larger culture' (x). we've all heard of butch!jo, but how many other supernatural women can you experiment with?

for some more reading on the roles of butch and femme in sapphic communities, here is an article by queer studies scholar gayle rubin.

when you hear 'disabled supernatural sapphic' it is all too easy to think of eileen and pamela. but we invite you to get crazy with disabled headcanons too! you could explore how sapphic hunters cope with disabling injuries, how angels and demons learn sign language for each other, or the effects of learning disabilities and neurodivergency on your favourite spn women.

day 5: lavender / one episode wonder

another colour day! as a variation of purple it is another popular colour on pride flags, and as a flower lavender has all sorts of symbolism in sapphic communities. from 'lavender marriages' between lesbians and gay men, to the lesbian 'lavender menance' movement of the 1970s, we invite you to dive deeply into the varied meanings of lavender with this prompt.

one episode wonder is for the women who only graced our screens for a single episode! they are a prominent theme in supernatural and now we get to ask - how are they doing? are they dead or flourishing; how did their experience with the supernatural world affect their connection to the hunting life? did they get into it like charlie? are they still trying to make sense of what happened? undoubtedly they met other women because of it...

day 6: new & niche / gaslight gatekeep girlboss

we all know sapphicnatural is brilliant for rarepairs, and this prompt is a chance to celebrate that! we challenge you to come up with new pairings which have never been conceived before, and get funky with them. you could also find a 'niche' pairing which is not often talked about within sapphicnatural and contribute to growing their sapphicnatural following!

for some inspiration here, check out @mrcowboydeanwinchester's sapphicnatural statistics sheet. pulling from the fics in the sapphicnatural collection on ao3, there is info about how many fics are written about each ship. you could pull from a ship near the bottom of the list, or create your own!

gaslight gatekeep girlboss is the final prompt of the week and it's time for a fun one. here at sapphicnaturalrights we support sapphics' rights and sapphics' wrongs and think you should too!!

day 7: free day

this day is a free space! go wild! you can catch up with something you wanted to work with during the week but didn’t have time for, or just explore something else completely

that's it! make sure you tag all your creations with #sapphicnaturalrights so we can see and reblog your gorgeous work!

[synesindri]

lucifer gender symbolism essay part 8: jarpad and mark p's acting styles

masterpost

this is largely subjective, but there are some aspects of how different actors portray lucifer on spn that can read as androgynous or feminine. to me, it stands out the most in jared’s depiction of lucifer, because it’s such a clear contrast to how he plays sam: sam!lucifer keeps his eyebrows raised, uses a softer/smoother vocal tone, and walks/stands differently (whether this last is just because of a difference in confidence standing up straight while moving slowly and kind of model-preening, or because it actually reads as more feminine, is kind of a toss up imo). 

lucifer:

sam in the same scene:

obviously they have different feelings here so they are expressing different emotions, but there are ways to convey smugness and condescending concern etc that do not involve this eye-widening, eyebrow-lifting, mouth-softening facial posture...these were choices that were made to make the characterization stand out in contrast to sam's characterization. sam generally does keep his eyebrows down etc, even when he's happy or insincere or bitchy; he rarely if ever uses his face the way lucifer does in this scene. lucifer's expressions remind me more of bela or meg than of sam.

mark p’s depiction (again, i can only really speak to season 5) stands out somewhat in contrast to other characters as well, for many of the same reasons. to me, nick!lucifer comes across as being acted more androgynously than femininely (again, just my own subjective take), but androgyny is very notable on spn, when so many other male actors portray their characters as very, well, to steal sam’s line about dean, butch. nick!lucifer’s voice is soft and it isn’t pitched down; he walks and stands with a fluidity and grace that is in contrast to many of the gruffer characters; he uses some phrases/gestures that would look odd on dean or bobby or castiel or whoever else. i’m thinking the finger over the lips in swan song, the “‘t’s okay, i’m not mad” line, the wrist posture in multiple scenes, etc. these are clearly all deliberate affectations on the part of the character; they’re all human mannerisms; they just are deliberate affectations that give the impression that gender was not an attitude lucifer was especially interested in conveying. gabriel moves very differently from how nick!lucifer does, but there is a parallel there, i think, because gabriel also plays with posture/gesture/vocal tone/expression/turns of phrase in ways that don’t always fit with how spn does “””Correct””” masculinity. 

anyway, like i said, this is pretty subjective. but it is something people have been picking up on in the fandom for at least ten years. here’s a historical post (not mine but linked on my blog from long after it was originally posted because there have been Deactivations…) as an example of the supernatural fandom historical precedent.

part 7: daughters vs sons part 9: sexual connotations of "vessels," stabbing, and holes masterpost

[wellofdean]

I have somehow never gotten embroiled in spn drama before, and I didn't mean to this time, but I feel I've been implicated in some following comments and reblogs (@blue-chimera) of this post from @scoobydoodean , and many apologies for anything I've said to annoy a person who writes a blog I very much enjoy!

I don't want to pile on to that post, so I am making my own.

If I understand rightly, @scoobydoodean feels that some of the comments Dean makes in season 4, written by new writers on the show, are out of character and down to bad writing, and specifically Dean's comments about the legality of the cheerleaders at the HS in 4x13 are inexcusable. Further, the point was made that times have changed since that was written and those comments might not be written for Dean if they were written today. For the record, I think that last bit is probably true. And, I agree the comments are in bad taste, AND I agree that Dean is not a creeper or a misogynist, so his saying them is not reflection of his actual character or his desires. Finally, I strongly agree with @scoobydoodean's point that it is demonstrably true that Dean's actual interactions with women clearly show that he is not a misogynist, no matter what nonsense he says when he is posturing.

@scoobydoodean has excluded the concept of "performing Dean" from consideration, with the acknowledgement that yes, he does do that, and rightly feels that some of the replies received don't respond to the point made in the post, which is that these comments specifically are about underage girls and are qualitatively different from previous episodes in which Dean makes icky comments about girls/women. And, please do correct me if I have misunderstood or misrepresented something here! If I have, I most humbly apologise.

I just want to be clear: I was in fact responding to these points. I went back and checked the comments in both episodes (4x07 and 4x13) and I feel like they are of a piece with other things Dean has said for the reasons I gave: Dean responds to certain representations of feminine stereotype in a way that is almost like a trigger -- that includes barmaids in hot pants, sorority girls, and cheerleaders.

There are a lot of comments saying that this is for Sam's benefit, and I think in part it is, but I think it goes deeper into trauma/conditioning territory because it's almost like a reflex, and in fact the whole episode is about the traumatic young lives of both brothers, with a secondary theme of things boys do to prove their credit in the straight world of tough boys.

I think it's hard for me to exclude "performing Dean" from the consideration of his yucky comments in this specific episode because the episode begins with Sam saying that when he was afraid of the *thing in his closet* their dad gave him a gun and Dean tells him that his blind faith in their dad is just "being a good son".

Then, teen Dean spends a significant amount of time in this episode making out with girls unfeelingly *in a closet* and in fact a significant portion of this episode is actually about the very topic of Dean unthinkingly performing hetero-masculinity out of some form of alienated desperation, and being called out for it by the girl ("you spend so much time trying to convince people that you're cool, but it's just an act. We both know that you're just a sad… lonely little kid. And I feel sorry for you, Dean.")

I guess that's why I disagree that this is bad writing. Both Sam and Dean are revisiting the scene of previous trauma and resulting misdeeds -- little Sam proved his masculine bonafides by beating up and humiliating a boy whose own bullying behaviour stemmed from his pain and the loss of his mother, and big Dean is still, in some ways, the same little boy who feels he has to posture and prove he's cool or in charge somehow ("the whistle makes me their god" and "three of the cheerleaders are legal, guess which ones?")

So, I am responding to your points. I don't agree it's bad writing. I think it fits the themes of the episode and it's amplified enough that you notice it as particularly cringeworthy, because that kind of posturing and how damaging it is to the souls of little boys is in fact the theme of the episode.

[mpregspn]

people who think jarpad is ugly are thinking with their nothing, because they’ve clearly got no brain or dick but I guess they’re lucky enough they can watch spn without a constant raging hard on every time Sammy opens that ***** **** shaped mouth 

real!!! also i saw more of that discourse that happened while i was asleep and anon said that jared just isn't feminine at all which is CRAZY bc sam is a woman to me. like aside from the writing, i think he has a delicate looking face, the eyes the cheekbones the mouth, that blends really well with his masculine features

[saltbind]

okay i really got carried away and i dont mean to vent in ur asks but ur post about being uncomfortable with the way fandom misgenders sam and leans into the misogyny of the show is so relatable i had to say something on it. feel free to publish this ask or to add ur own opinion, i dont mind!

i think now i am less uncomfortable with girl sam headcanons and i even enjoy transfem sam hcs in the later seasons,, but especially when i was first joining the fandom seeing the amount of misgendering and girlifying of sam made me so bone deep uncomfortable. because i saw the way sam was degraded and feminized in canon and i related to him so much in a transmasc way instead

then to go into the fandom and see people leaning into the misgendering and calling him a woman for being a man who *checks notes* is nice to people? has long hair. likes to be clean?? felt like it was just perpetuating the sexism of the show. it felt incredibly invalidating to say the least,, and to say a lot more, it made me feel uncomfortable being trans in the spn fandom.

even now its incredibly hard to trust anyone in the spn fandom to not be transphobic or hold transphobic values. someone can have 'terfs dni' in their pinned post all they want but are they really challenging sexism, bioessentialism, or transphobia by calling men women for acting slightly feminine? are trans people supposed to be comfortable around them when they see a man with the slightest amount of ass, with a tiny bit of hip and waist visible, and pointing at him laughing and calling him a woman? (also its made worse by the fact that sams not all that feminine? hes a very masculine big buff guy. the way the show misgenders him is almost comical when paired with that fact, but the way fandom perpetuates it and doubles down on it is something else entirely.)

its hard because i understand that people are going to relate to the show differently to me. i relate to sam in a way that ties into my trans male identity. other people might relate to him and the way hes treated as feminine because of their feminine identity. to some people it could be liberating and an expression of their own identity to focus on sams femininity and i dont want to ruin or make people feel bad for enjoying that. but this fandom makes me feel like im fucking crazy for being uncomfortable with sexism and transphobia sometimes.

-hellhoundlair

i completely get all of this and feel the same honestly!

one of the things that makes me relate so much to sam, whether he's written a cis man or a trans man, is that he's masculine in ways that are non-typical in the environment he's in. especially when it comes to headcanoning him as trans - it's important to me that he has these traits that can be read as feminine and has asserted his identity as a man anyway. it's important to me that he's unapologetic for the ways that he defies expectation and i'm always going to prefer headcanons that center his masculinity as a big part of his identity.

sometimes it can feel like people see the 'feminine' traits sam has and make the same jump that i used to see when it came to autistic-coded characters. feminine traits = trans woman, autistic traits = ace or agender. and while it's true for some people, i think that making that jump in every instance you see can be really disillusioning for people in that community who don't fit into those boxes. it can make you feel like there's something wrong with you for being trans in a particular direction when you still have traits that are 'typical' for your assigned gender or vice versa, or make you feel like you have to adhere to an identity that doesn't quite fit because everyone talks like it's a given for your personality. when i was younger i really did think and feel like i was ace when i wasn't because of just how many people were convinced the characters i related to were. turns out autistic people can just have very different relationships with sex and i'm very normal for an autistic person! i was never ace, i was just really disconnected with the allistic way of looking at sex.

it's the same with trans headcanons for me. a lot, and i mean a lot of characters that people think of as trans fem have been characters that for me have been huge comfort characters or kin characters, both in this fandom and in others. often for the same reasons that i personally see myself in them - those atypical traits that make me feel like oh that's a guy who's like me! - and every time i have found myself going the other way, and ending up really firm on my own trans masc headcanons. you don't have to be the dictionary definition of masculine to be a man. you can be masculine in ways that are different to what is expected of you and those ways are still just as important and valuable and manly.

again, this isn't necessarily a rebuke to trans fem sam headcanons. this shit is personal and i fully understand that. the above are my personal reasons for my headcanons and the way i am about them.

[ssatanicsscrabble]

I'm a destiel LOVER. I adore those two gorgeous gongeouses. But I have a big bone to pick with lots of other destiel shippers and SPN Fandom goers and that is:

The heteronormativity y'all are constantly perpetuating within the Fandom for the ship itself.

The arguments about who's topping or bottoming I stumble across under very NORMAL and even funny posts about these two characters used to be funny to me, but now it's getting borderline fetishy. And I'm not even saying the idea of one of them being a stone top or stone bottom is ridiculous or stupid, I'm talking about the way y'all portray it.

I hate to use this internet coined word so freely, but the literal twinkification of grown 40+ year men in a serious context is so weird and creepy to me. And the way you guys WRITE it is so out of character for both of them.

I get that different shit gets different people off, but I need you all to stop and ask yourselves whether or not your view of these characters, and any characters within a ship in general, is healthy. Gender roles are harmful, and if you keep adhering to them in this sense, it's going to affect your real world views.

There are quite literally people so obsessed with MLM ships that they will invest their real life time thinking about the SEXUAL dynamics of REAL people.

I mean yeah, your kink fics are creative or whatever, but I also want to remind you of the inherent sexualization of 'girly' behavior found within even the straight community. I'm not talking about femininity- I ADORE femininity.

I'm talking about how pedophilic it can come off as when you write your little 'soft uwu small beanGROWN ADULT REGARDLESS OF GENDER OR SEX' as childish and girly.

Yes, this character is my pretty little princess too, but I'm not gonna spend my precious time mental illnessing my way through art and fanfiction blatantly depicting who is who in the bedroom, as a way to point fingers and be like LOOK SEE! ITS CANON THAT THIS MASCULINE CHARACTER IS OBVIOUSLY JUST A LITTLE STEREOTYPED VIXEN IN DISGUISE!!!

Get a life, or at least, respect yourself and other by not soullessly arguing with a wall about top and bottom dynamics. They’re literally just sexual bedroom preferences, not a lifestyle.

If you're proud of your sexual preferences, good for you. I literally think that's great, and I don’t even hate you for it. On the other hand, if you are my target audience for this post, please don't misconstrue anything I just said just because it pissed your sick little MLM fetishist brain off. And rather analyze your feelings and ideas, and maybe get help with your obsessive line of thinking.

Anyways, so sorry if this reads as very scatterbrained -signed by a switch!destiel truther. (I love all opinions on what y'all think their preferences are, but please please please stop letting yourselves get addicted to this kind of Fandom behavior. It's psychological.)

I'm a queer person, and a very mature one I like to think, and I THINK that until y'all challenge how comfortable you are to be acting this way, the world will remain unchanged and stereotypes will continue to harm e v e r y o n e.

How do you people manage to rationalize this yucky stuff? Please don't go giving me that 'but it's a coping mechanism' stuff either, cuz that's the same argument made about r@pe fiction.

[four-of-cups]

Thinking about the way Jensen Ackles continues to characterise Cas as Dean’s ‘brother-in-arms’ and how it ties deeply into both the homoeroticism and the misogyny of spn. 

I love season 8 and I’m rewatching it right now and it just seems like such A Choice to not have introduced any female characters in purgatory. And then to characterise it as a ‘pure’ place.

They really just made purgatory into a homosocial space where violent contests of strength and will determine survival. This is...textbook hegemonic masculinity?

In this context, of course Benny is the companion they come up with. (No shade - I adore Benny.) He's an exemplary brother-in-arms. The wartime allegory isn't exactly subtle and it's clear that the writers and actors are very interested in exploring this space.

But in doing so they end up queering the narrative again because hey - their audience is savvy enough to understand that these cis-male-only hyper-masculine mythologies are closer to propaganda than vehicles for good story-telling.

And we know that excluding other genders from a narrative doesn't inherently diminish a male character’s capacity for love or tenderness or desire.

And so we end up with a driving narrative that feels deeply romantic: the single most important person in this world to Dean is Cas. It could not be more overt in the text that Dean's primary motivation is not getting back to the world or Sam - it's finding and saving his angel.

We’ve seen Cas as the object of Dean’s motivation before and we’ll see it again. But it does feel singleminded in purgatory in a way that I think the show only ever permits in this hyper-masculine space.

Marylin Frye puts it best: "To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex exclusively with women. All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men [...] Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving."

Purgatory is the stage on which Dean's performance of masculine heterosexuality is most visibly entwined with the show's misogyny and the result is deeply homoerotic.

And it explains, to me at least, why Jensen’s characterisation of Cas as a brother-in-arms feels both romantic and dismissive: it’s true even while it refuses to look at deeper truths. 

It describes a love so deeply overshadowed by a fear of femininity that the shadows of violence and death and sacrifice end up being its only ‘pure’ place of expression. And even there, it remains unnamed. 

[soullessjack]

🔥 jack

oh my godddd I have so many unpopular opinions where do I even start….HOLY DISCLAIMER BATMAN!

anyways so in no particular order or tier system:

✯ i don’t think jack would wear anything feminine im sorry spn fandom. for lolz he has same-outfit-pattern-everyday autism and for serious it’s like. Really weird how fandoms tend to HC/portray non-binary amabs (and men/transmascs in general) almost exclusively as GNC or fem-presenting…like DGMW that is a real and valid form of self expression but it’s not the Only type of non-binary expression that exists. and honestly…**dare I say that most fandom/queer spaces just need to realize that queer masculinity exists and it doesn’t always have to be a matter of breaking gender norms??

** genuinely do whatever u want idc I can’t stop you i don’t want to stop you yada yada. paint his nails and put him in a skirt all u want but Please recognize patterns yall 😭

✯ more headcanon complaints (see disclaimer above ⇧) but I promise to switch it up soon. anyways every time somebody on this lil website says something along the lines of “Jack can’t handle/doesn’t like [insert violence, scary or adult-oriented thing], he prefers [soft or blatantly childlike things]” I shrivel inward like a dead spider. It’s annoying, it’s completely inaccurate to his canon personality and interests, it’s annoying ˣ2, and whether ppl wanna admit it or not—it stems from infantilization. not necessarily ableism, as infantilization is not exclusive to disabled people, but still just about the same thing.

honestly all I see of majority jack headcanons are ones that set him back to just being a child or otherwise being treated like one. for example, the one about him being able to shapeshift is pretty cool...until it just becomes about him deciding to age regress, yknow, to an age set he canonically chose not to go through, showed no desire to be in, and is more offended than anything to be considered as such. all of his interests have to be some shit like bluey or animal crossing, and he drinks apple juice from a sippy cup instead of beer. BARF.

I’ve lessened on my keyboard warring over babyjack in the past year but I have not lessened in being a hater. and I’ve said this before, but the baby-jack au already breached headcanon containment a long time ago when it’s not only so widespread that ppl take it for canon and it makes having any intelligent conversation about him nearly fucking Impossible, but it also lead to harassment and accusations of being a fucking predator, to anyone who dared find a whole grown man attractive. any potential jack ship, like jackharper? automatic grooming case to them. it’s like the fandom is just so dead set on this idea that jack really truly is a child in every aspect you can think of, and for what? if it’s just a headcanon, something you know is not part of the actual show, then don’t go Travis the Chimp levels of apeshit when you see him being treated like he is canonically 💀

unpopular opinion numero 3 which is slightly connected to 2:

✯ baby-jack and a handful of the domestic au’s are BORING (see disclaimer again ⇧), not just on a surface level to my suiting, but also because I feel like it just ..misses the point of the show?

the ragtag untraditional found family is now as nuclear and traditional as the Atomic Age. Dean and Cas are the most heteronormative “who wears the pants in the relationship” gay couple ever, Sam is demoted to the uncle that gets written out of his own family, Jack is just there to make his gay dads look cute and emphasize that they’re a gay family (while still being very heteronormative), and at least 5 of them could be found in a California gated community. everything that made any of them unique or defined their personalities is just scrubbed off, even for an AU.

so much of the later seasons focus on Sam and Dean realizing that they don’t have to make a hard splitting decision between the lives they want to live; that they can find a balance; be happy and have good things—namely families—without giving up hunting (and vice versa, that they can have hunting without giving up on family or happiness). everybody loves the gay hunters from S10(?12?) and what they represented for Dean, but I almost never see that be put into practice in the fandom.

THEY’RE ALREADY DOMESTIC!!! AND WITH THAT PERFECT BALANCE!!!! Season 13 quite literally gave Team Free Will a surrogate son to raise and established them as a family; highly untraditional, largely dysfunctional, overall not fitting of a family family, and yet they are a family still. Dean wears an apron and cooks and bakes for everyone; he built himself a man cave and established two separate family night events that they all ritually keep up; Sam has a morning jogging routine and visits his girlfriend every so often; Jack was taught how to drive, has normal chores like washing dishes, and gets groceries. And they didn’t just have that while fighting monsters—they had that while fighting a whole fucking archangel. Even if it did go down the gutter by the end, they still had it: domestic familial bliss and violent messy hunting without having to trade one for the other.

✯ I truly genuinely think Jack’s relationship with Dean is the best, most interesting and most misunderstood out of the three, and I also think that the problems with his relationship to Cas and Sam are hugely overlooked by the fandom—granted they are very small, especially if you’re comparing it to Dean, but they’re still there and I think we should bully Cas and Sam about it more. I shan’t elaborate because it’s 5AM and this was an impulsive add-on ❤️

✯ getting normal now…his plaid pattern jacket from the first half of Ouroboros is ugly as SHIT i have never liked it and don’t think I ever will. but I cannot deny it; he got that shit on.

✯ most unpopular opinion of all, I wanna do insane shit to his cervix 🙌

[lampgate]

In your own personal version of SPN that lives in your head, when do you think Dean started transitioning?

Ooooo I love this question.

Personally I think Dean realized he was trans very young in his early teen years, maybe around 12/13. That being said, I think he was very masculine presenting to begin with in his youth--somewhat as a safety measure, somewhat for comfort, somewhat for practicality of the life they lived. Focusing on presenting a certain way and being seen as a feminine wasn't really in his priorities as a kid, as much as survival and expenses of clothing were (buying "masculine" clothes that he could pass down to Sam after use was better than buying "feminine" clothes he'd eventually throw away). He kept his hair short for practicality of hunting, as well. (At least, that was his excuse.)

Because of this, many people would just assume Dean was a little boy upon meeting him along side John and Sam, and he never "corrected" anyone about it...he kind of preferred it that way. Sam and John eventually stopped "correcting" people, too.

In terms of coming out, I don't think Dean really had a word for what it was, nor was the coming out extremely in depth, but basically Dean just sat Sam down and was like "Listen I don't know how to explain this nor do I want to. but from now on I want you to call me Dean. I'm your brother now, okay?" and little 9 year old Sam was like "...ok duh. whatever" and they never really had any conversations about it after that. LMAO

I have such a mixed bag of how I see John feel about Dean transitioning, but in simple terms I just think he lets Dean do what he wants as long as it doesn't distract him from hunting. (Not necessarily encouraging it, but if anything he's accepting it in terms of "becoming a man and getting stronger will make you a better hunter" shitty masculinity bullshit, probably.) I don't think Dean really has a conversation with him about it, rather than a "I'm a boy now, not a girl, don't question me about it" and John has more priorities (dead wife) to deal with than arguing with his son about gender. Dean has to figure out the testosterone stuff on his own, though.

[drfrankensteinvsthequeerborgs]

Tara: “Well didn’t you grow up pretty.”

Gwen: “My god, you have delicate features for a hunter.”

I don’t know what it is about female hunters and calling Dean pretty (derogatory), but it’s happened often enough that I’m really wondering about the disconnect between Dean as poster boy for toxic masculinity and his inability to pass. Like, we’ve all already talked at length about how SPN simultaneously presents Dean as the paragon of working-class masculinity while also constantly undermining this by poking fun at how contradictory his form of masculinity is, but that’s a show thing. The other characters actually read him as either butch (i.e. queer) or too feminine to be a hunter (i.e. queer). I mean the trans readings write themselves, but even setting those aside, Dean doesn’t actually pass as straight, pretty much ever. Like if it were just the regular homophobic gaybaiting of calling other guys queer for breathing wrong, that’d be one thing, but between being genuinely mistaken for gay several times and these unsolicited remarks about how pretty he is as literally the first thing out of people’s mouths when they see him, it feels a little more targeted, especially since the only times we really see this happen to Sam are when Dean’s doing it or when they’re read as a couple.

I mean, one would expect that Dean’s pretty because he’s a CW character played by actual model Jensen Ackles and that if SPN were real he’d look like a regular joe, but apparently he really is simply that pretty in-universe too. And the implication seems to be all the pretty hunters end up either dead or no longer conventionally attractive. What is it about him that doesn’t fit their view of what a hunter should look like? These specific examples are also after he stopped wearing his jewelry, like I don’t know where I’m going with this but the only characters who seem to consider Dean straight are Chuck and arguably Dean himself, and his physical attractiveness is actually a negative in his profession.

[snailsandpuppy-dogtails]

I wanna talk about the dangerous language that spreads like wildfire every time a character not immediately introduced as queer lets on they're in a same sex couple or comes out on a show. Yeah, this is on my mind because of Tara Lewis. People need to stop using stereotypes as punchlines and "evidence." The only thing that should be said after someone shares that part of their life should be "cool" or "nice" or "awesome" not I knew because you cut off your hair and do this typically masculine thing ha ha ha. Those are gendered stereotypes. Gendered stereotypes are rooted in sexism and misogyny. As in "that's so feminine of you, masculine archetype, you must be gay." And don't even start with stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. Would you say that if it were about race or sex? No? Good. Don't do it about sexuality. Ever met someone who said, "He's gay, he's so gay, just look at how he walks, talks, holds his hands" ? Yeah. Me too. And it's fucked up. Stereotypes are not helpful, they diminish and they demean, and they're meant to put this physical label on people so we can shove them into boxes for our own comfort. What happens when people don't fit into how society has categorized what that Type should look like, sound like, and what hobbies they should have? What happens when it's so fucking "common" (because people keep saying it is) but they just don't see themselves that way/ aren't interested in that/ don't like that style? It adds to the confusion for people working out who they are. By consistently, jokingly or seriously, perpetuating and spreading gendered stereotypes about queer characters we do damage to the community at large, and to people individually. They're queer because they work on cars or they're queer because they like to wear dresses is not helpful or supportive it's reductive. Often times these are things that also get said to kids in ways meant to mock them and other them and hurt them by peers. I could go on and on about this but it would just spiral as it's already started to circle. So, spn, cm, adventure time, everyone. Let's just be happy for queer characters and queer relationships, not speculate on who knew what how or why unless it's "they showed us or told us."