I think I’m just fully realizing, as I’m half-rewatching the show via YouTube reaction videos…we really weren’t supposed to love Dean. And we really were not the target audience, and by we I mean a much larger segment of folks than you may think. Eric Kripke (and also Robert Singer) didn’t want a bunch of queer OR mentally ill folks OR women OR people of color OR abuse survivors. Hell, he didn’t even really want an audience of macho manly men!
Eric Kripke was aiming for an audience of Eric Kripkes–the kind of whiny pseudo-intellectual nerdbro who finds men like s1 Dean threatening in real life, thinks being rejected romantically by a woman is comparable to real hardship, views any unfamiliar form of intimacy with some base level of suspicion, and expresses disgust at other men’s promiscuity not because he has more “respect” for women (and don’t get me started on the puritanism of equating sex with disrespect automatically), but because he resents that he can’t do the same.
Something about Dean being the main character when he wasn’t supposed to be and Cas being the endgame love interest when he wasn’t supposed to be and Dean being bi when he wasn’t supposed to be and the story being queer when it wasn’t supposed to be and just the irrepressible power of queerness and queer identity and queer stories and queer love taking this hypermasculine power fantasy and turning it into a queer love story despite the network’s best efforts.
All their token background queers and their bury your gays and their white picket fence heterosexual ending and their endless fucking attempts to give us some palatable watered-down backup singer version of queerness that would let them keep the toxic manly-man b.s. intact and we said NO, FUCKER. This story is queer this story is ours your red-blooded American heroman is QUEER in fact the archetype he’s based on is QUEER TOO and you can’t do shit ABOUT IT.
Supernatural is the story of a few small, mean, unimaginative little men trying to straightwash the archetypal American man so they could stand in his skin and claim he always belonged to them, and millions of queer people dragging them out of that holy place and saying NO, this story is ours and you do NOT get to steal it from us.
everyone in the notes saying that sam’s the monsterfucker, not dean: you disrespect me, you disrespect how this is specifically a joke about sucking dick while sam’s monsterfucking was all weird period sex analogs, you disrespect nick the siren, you disrespect benny lafitte, you disrespect crowley, and most importantly you disrespect castiel thee gay angel. jail. jail for one thousand years
I set out to catalogue the times Dean Winchester has an inconvenient erection on the show after I lost a bet to @sandraugiga following the episode 10.15 (in which he does not have one, in case you were wondering). In this post I have collected the instances up until the end of season nine, but I will update the list as is fit.
So, how ever would we know when Dean Winchester has an inconvenient erection? I’m glad you asked, friend. The thing about the male anatomy is that if one wishes to redirect blood flow from appendices one doesn’t wish for it to be directed at any given time, it can be done by flexing a muscle – often the muscles on your thighs or arms. To contextualize this, we see Sam Winchester apply the technique of redirecting blood flow to will his inconvenient erection to disappear following the erotic dream he has of Bela Talbot in Dream A Little Dream Of Me.
Sam does this by stretching his right wrist and upper arm. The willing of an inconvenient erection by the stretching of the muscles of one’s hand is thus established in the visual story-telling of the show (it’s actually the flexing of his bicep that accomplishes the redirection of the blood flow, but the tightening of his wrist is the tell, the visual cue to Dean Winchester attempting this).
Now, there’s a very famous scene in which Dean seems to have an inconvenient erection that people have been attempting to explain away ever since it aired. In this scene in A Little Slice of Kevin, Dean shields his crotch from view and stretches his wrist to redirect blood flow.
This seems to be his go-to method for dealing with inconvenient erections. And while it’s the best known example of him doing it, it’s by far not the only time he’s made the gesture in a context of inconvenient or situationally inappropriate sexual arousal triggered both by male and female subjects – although the former outnumber the latter by a large margin, make of that what you will. Make note of the fact that this is indeed a gesture he makes when sexual arousal is inconvenient or inappropriate, and we have seen him display sexual arousal in other types of contexts and situations, as well. It seems that he also does this gesture only when he’s sitting down (bar a few exceptions), and has other tells for when inconvenient sexual arousal happens when he’s standing up – such as placing his hand in his pocket.
I also ask the reader to pay attention to the fact that this tick of Dean Winchester’s is an acting choice of Jensen Ackles, an acting choice he made for the character early on in the show, which he has displayed in episodes directed by a dozen different directors. The actor is doing this on purpose.
The first time we see Dean shield his crotch and make a fist in the context of sexual arousal is in Dead in the Water, and the interpretation of the scene is uncontroversial since it is triggered by a hot waitress.
The next time he shields his crotch is while sitting by the bar in Everybody Loves a Clown while first meeting Ash. The only difference is that he’s not wearing a coat and hence uses his arm for the same effect. He keeps his arm between his crotch and the object of his arousal until Ash exits the room.
InYellow Fever, Dean attempts to both make a fist and put his hand in pocket, but is too drunk to accomplish either. Yet he is clearly aroused by the Deputy. Dean is standing up.
Dean both stretches his wrist and shields his groin area from the object of his arousal in The Rapture while Jimmy Novak is making obscene noises of physical pleasure. Dean tells Jimmy, “You’re going to give me angina” in an attempt to reign in his moaning while looking a little dazed. You may compare Dean’s reaction to those of Sam who is unperturbed.
The next time Dean stretches his wrist is during the angel/demon striptease when Anna appears in The Song Remains the Same. He also shields his crotch from her view. The context is again unequivocally erotic and the object of his arousal is female.
Does does a light version of the stretch in All Dogs Go to Heaven while sitting at the table interviewing Cal Carrigan. His tongue also darts out briefly.
Dean stretches his wrist but does not close fist as Castiel watches porn in Caged Heat.One of the occupants has an erection in the scene, in text.
:Dean keeps his hand firmly in his pocket while interviewing the male hairdresser in Shut Up Doctor Phil. The hairdresser has a very arousing voice.
Dean stretches his wrist very noticeably in The Mentalists as the magician Nikolai Lishin comes to their table to stroke a spoon. Dean also shields his crotch from view and raises his eye brows, a sign of attraction. He is clearly physically attuned to the psychic. The psychic bends Sam’s spoon. He bent Dean’s spoon too, if you know what I mean.
There’s a possible instance in Season Seven, Time for A Wedding while Dean and Garth are sitting on a sofa in front of a secretary. It’s uncertain who the source of his arousal is, but Dean has his other hand shielding his crotch from Garth.
Dean tightens his fist while interviewing a hot nanny in Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie.
Dean stretches his wrist twice in Party On, Garth – first upon seeing Garth in a military uniform, during which he also puts his hand in his pocket. Garth does look good in a uniform. He does it again later after watching Garth do martial arts kata, and subsequently hides his lower body behind a table.
There’s another light version of the tensing of fist in There Will Be Blood while he’s sitting with his hand around the shoulders of the cute Leviathan zombie victim.
InSurvival of the Fittest he does it while Castiel and Crowley are verbally sparring. In this instance, it may not be sexual arousal but a desire to punch someone. You will notice that this interpretation does not fir the other contexts.
A Little Slice of Kevin – the example par excellence.
He tightens his wrist in the old folk’s home in Hunteri Heroici while he and Castiel are sitting by the chess set. It is unclear whether the source is Castiel or the hot nurse that walks by. He shields his crotch from Castiel.
InLARP and the Real Girl Dean is sort of half-way there while they are interrogating Greywolf the Mystic.
.Another prime example of Dean both flexing his bicep and shielding his crotch from view is in Everybody Hates Hitler while he is sitting at the motel table with Aaron, his gay thing.
We see Dean stretch his bicep in Remember the Titans as he says the words ‘Dragon Penis’, having just read about a warrior he described as ‘bad-ass’. Where Dean’s imagination took him, we’ll never know.
There’s a nice example of Dean’s Heaven Can’t Wait: sitting in the car alone with Castiel. No, not during the scene at night in front of the house while Dean looks Castiel up and down like he wants to eat him up. No, this happens during the day in front of the school while they’re talking about something else entirely. He stretches his wrist while holding his hand on the back of the car seat. It’s an inappropriate reaction,and hence he wills it away.At the end of the scene Dean also moves coat to shield his crotch like in the diner in the first season.
InRoad Trip, Dean flexes hand while sitting alone with Castiel on the couch at the lobby of the NSA listening post. He also yanks the hem of his coat to shield his crotch from Castiel. The gif is not of the event in question but of Dean checking his watch.
InBlade Runners he flexes his wrist in front of the attractive head detective, after first standing with his pelvis thrust toward the man with hands akimbo at the waist. He’s standing up. Make note that he does notdo it while later being aggressively flirted with by Dr. McElroy.
If you have further examples, please let me know and I will keep the post updated.
~waves Fairy Wand of Approval over this meta~
Best bet I ever won. Mind you, I never thought I would win. Prospects of Dean showing signs of arousal were high in the steam lodge, but no…
Did Dean having a boner over Garth gulping down a beer not make the list?
Oh, he was definitely into Garth through out the episode, but we don’t see his hands during that shot. In fact there are several, several scenes throughout the seasons where I’m certain he was doing it but we just don’t get to see it because it’s framed out of the shot.
I’ve never been so happy to see the results of a lost bet before
I wonder how the anti-Bi!Dean camp will excuse these.
*looks forward to add-ons from season 9 on*
Take a pick from Jensen Ackles thinking that Dean is straight so he never would have made such an acting choice to reading too much into random happenstance because the people involved in the making of expensive television shows are all amateurs. I don’t really expect data of this kind of convince anyone that doesn’t review it in good faith.
But the thing is, I don’t recall Jensen ever straight-up stating that Dean was straight (if I’m wrong tell me and I’ll be wrong).
But it also brings up a previously mentioned point… does Jensen think he’s playing Dean as straight, because he doesn’t actually know the difference?
Well, I don’t think he is playing Dean as straight because it seems that he has known from very early on some of the subtextual elements of the show. But he has described Dean as a ‘straight guy’ – in one con he even paraphrased Ben Edlund describing Dean as a ‘manly, heterosexual guy’ which doesn’t sound like anything Edlund might say. He is on record saying these things. The thing is, though, that he clearly does not differentiate between gender presentation and sexual orientation. There’s a famous kerfuffle of a con in which he equated gay with “unmanly” and a lot of the time when he uses the word straight it is to mean “manly”, not someone that’s only interested in the opposite sex. He uses ‘straight’ to mean ‘not effeminate’.
He seems to lack the language to talk about the issue. He doesn’t understand The Discourse. So yeah, he’s called Dean straight, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think Dean is bisexual. He’s certainly made that acting choice for over ten years.
That’s a good point. I am the same age as Jensen/Dean, and growing up, there seemed to be a stigma that all gay/not straight men were effeminate. I grew up in the environment, having gay uncles and lesbian aunts. Even in the 80’s there seemed to be a “certain quality” that made itself known.
The idea that a “manly” biker could be interested in men… just didn’t seem to occur in our generation. Seems it’s only recently (in media) that people of all kinds (and I mean in the “manly biker” way) have come out and destroyed the sterotype.
And I think that’s just fanTAStic.
But yes if Jensen’s Texan background is anything like mine (I live in “little Texas”, as it’s dubbed) then yes I can see how he wouldn’t quite “get it”.
Admittedly, most of my sexual education came from Tumblr.
And isn’t that just sad.
As for the Ben Edlund thing, no I don’t believe that’s something he would have said. This is the same man who, in the commentary for 8x13 - Everybody Hates Hitler, said that Dean was realizing the possibilities for love could come from anywhere (really wish I could remember the exact quote).
Ben Edlund is awesome.
I do remember the keruffle. I think you’re right, he may not know the difference between gender and sexuality. At least, he may not HAVE KNOWN, as he hasn’t said anything like that since.
