the way that dean is like. literally, canonically, HEAVILY implied to be into men but is still not considered canon bi at the same time. they wrote scenes for years knowing what it was implying. they had it in mind while writing the scenes that it was gay. ben edlund said that dean’s reaction to aaron flirting with him in 8x13 implied dean is bi. they wrote in the script that dean and benny broke up. they wrote gay scenes between dean and cas intentionally time and time again throughout the years. misha said that both him and jensen are aware of the gay subtext while filming and have discussions about it all the way back in season 8. they paralleled dean and cas to cain and his WIFE intentionally. they paralleled them with MULTIPLE canon romances time and time again. they wrote in that dean and crowley had an orgy. they wrote dean giving cas a mixtape with the full knowledge that it would come across as gay. in an episode that charlie lost her girlfriend and sam lost his girlfriend, they had it end with dean losing cas. jensen has said that dean’s feelings for cas are up to our interpretation so he’s literally just schrodinger’s bi character right now. it’s insane that they could get away with writing all of this into the show and yet we still can’t say he’s “canonically” into men and people will still call us delusional for thinking dean isn’t straight. it’s insane. it’s fucking insane.
god its fucking tragic to think about deeply closeted and repressed dean growing up not only under the thumb of his abusive father but also just in the hypermasculine hunting community in general……like. john winchester was an emotionally abusive asshole and a horrible embodiment of toxic masculine standards. for dean to spend the first twenty six years of his life desperately trying to be the ideal son, the perfect hunter, all while trying not to acknowedge that he was queer god FORBID anyone else find out. like we dont see john say anything homophobic but look me in the eyes and tell me he wasnt the type of asshole dropping slurs and using them as casual insults or expressions of distaste. for dean to be around that sort of normative masculine expectation his entire life, likely mixed in with the homophobia that comes with that, from the one person he was desperate to have the approval of….
and thats just JOHN. hes a microcosm of the entire hunting mindset; the hunting community is so hypermasculine and heteronarmative, i feel in the show we’ve seen the very 2000s feeling of gay as a synonym for shitty/weak/inherently bad as the sort of tone of the hunting lifestyle and that was all dean knew. aside from dean actually being queer and horribly desperately closeted, i would like to bring up that jensen ackles also looked Like That growing up. we call dean gender because he has this almost feminine prettiness, theres an insane delicacy to his features that is absolutely not aligned with the macho beer drinking straight man ideals. id also wager that his ambiguously pretty looks and the sort of assumptions theyd garner were a direct catalyst for his extreme overperformance of classically accepted masculinity in both aesthetics and mannerisms. and even so, i cannot imagine how often dean must have been on the recieving end of jokes from other hunters (i mean, we see this happen to him from random people in the early seasons time and time again) and as anyone who has ever hated themselves for being queer knows, those kinds of jokes hurt in a way that is deeply traumatizing when you are trying desperately to stay in the closet. to think about dean having to laugh and shrug it off and act like nothing was wrong and to outwardly adopt that casual homophobic mindset in order to avoid being outed…..we joke about microaggressions in the show but i truly cant even begin to imagine what that environment was like for him to grow up in.
the amount of shame that dean must have felt growing up with a father who was so perfectly an image of toxic masculinity, in a community where hypermasculine, heteronormative ideals were front and center is genuinely painful to think about. he couldnt be genuinely himself AND the perfect hunter that he needed to be in order to receive an ounce of love and approval from his abusive father, or to be accepted and taken seriously in the hunting community. he had to choose which side of himself to shut up and drown out and attempt to cut out and he chose the queer part because he couldnt not be a hunter. the pressure of needing to be john winchesters perfect son and the perfect hunter forced dean to do everything in his power to kill off the part of himself that was queer and overperform masculinity in a way that he hoped would keep him safe and the pain and shame that caused never went away
This is another one of those what’s happening if it’s not Dean flirting scenes for me. I mean, Sam freaking clears his throat to get them to stop making smirky head bobby, head tilty staring faces at each other. Dean’s little bounce as he holds the morgue guy’s attention. And the morgue guy’s little whoa, was I just lost in this FBI dude’s eyes shit. Dean’s let me just look over here at the dead body while Sam gives him the classic seriously, Dean, right now? We’re working. {7.13}
Anonymous said: If you find the energy and willingness to do so, I'm super interested in why you don't agree with Dean being a closeted queer person. (Not trying to start anything, I'm genuinely interested.)
Sure! Well, “closeted” is a word that I don’t find particularly fecund in an analysis, or in general, because “being closeted” has meaning in relation to something - like, for instance, you’re closeted to your parents, you’re closeted in your workplace, you’re closeted to everyone outside of the internet, you’re closeted to people you’re not very close to, etc. And sure, you can be closeted to everyone on the planet, but if you exclude people who haven’t told a single soul, there is no such thing as “being in the closet” in an absolute sense. You can come out to one person and you’re not in the closet in relation to them, but still in the closet in relation to everyone else. You can come out to literally everyone you have ever had a conversation with, but technically, unless you’re going around with a t-shirt that says “I’m queer”, you are “in the closet”, as in “not out”, to a person you’re meeting or getting to know for the first time.
This said, I have seen people using that word to mean - if I’ve interpreted it correctly - that Dean is either a) in the closet in relation to everyone; b) closeted to himself, so to speak, as in, he doesn’t realize and/or acknowledge and/or accept that he’s not heterosexual.
I don’t agree with either. Now, I’m gonna put here the disclaimer that this is my interpretation since Dean’s bisexuality/queerness is not stated textually in the show thus we’re talking on a level of signs and attribution of meanings (*insert something smart about semiotics*) and blah blah blah.
Allow me not to be specific with, like, references to lines spoken in the show in this post, maybe when I am done with my thesis and all will get the time to make a thorough analysis with specific references.
Now, do I think that Dean went up to his dad and told him “I like girls and guys lol”? … Nope. At all. (But being closeted in relation to someone doesn’t really mean anything. Being out isn’t an all or nothing thing. You can go to pride parades wearing feathers and still keep it hidden from your dad. There are people who wait for their parents or grandparents to die before publicly coming out or transition. It’s complex.) Do I think Dean went up to Sam or Bobby and told them “I like girls and guys”? I don’t think so, as in, I don’t think he gave them a speech about being bisexual, but I think that both Sam and Bobby have at least a partial sense of Dean’s not-heterosexuality. Has Dean let his queerness known to people outside his family? Sure he has. On the top of my head, I can think of: Ash, Frank, Charlie (all hackers and queer or queer-coded, there is a pattern of association between hacking and queerness, but this is a thought for another day); Crowley was exchanging innuendo with him after 0.2 seconds of meeting and, well, Crowley has gotten to know Dean pretty intimately; and let’s be real there are characters who just looked at him and caught up because of reasons (Gunner Lawless comes to mind, I guess Aaron Bass, pretty sure Max Banes) and people who assumed and used it against him (the Campbells come to mind, no wonder the poor guy built 5739 walls around himself in season 6 and at some point was like “I was busy having sex with women”). It’s also implied that both he and Garth knew what the Purgatory in Miami was and that Dean expected Garth to get the joke, and Garth is another character that knows Dean beyond the façades. And then there’s a constellation of tiny moments that don’t mean anything on their own but in the context of what we know about Dean fit in the picture, like Jenna Nickerson feeling comfortable mentioning the first girl she’d kissed after knowing Dean for a short while.
At this point we’re left with “does Dean know he’s not straight” and, well, at this point it’s obvious but the thing is: Dean takes pride in his being anti-normative. Unlike Sam, he embraces his underclass identity, his not-normal identity. He acknowledges he’s a freak ever since day 1, and while he has heavy issues with the loneliness that comes with it, he uses it as an important brick in the construction of his identity. May I refer you to this conversation I had with @aslightsgoflashing and @f-ckyeahfutbol that touches this very topic.
Now, Dean’s relationship with his sexuality is extremely complex - we need, for instance, to count his experiences with sexual assault into it (I mentioned season 6 before, which also happens to be where he gets assaulted by a man in a sexually charged context, while I believe the other instances of sexual assault on him are carried out by women). Dean lives a life where is body is a) a commodity for the job, b) always at risk of being violated (in multiple ways, from wounds to possession). He’s always walking on a line between protecting his body and weaponizing it (it’s not a coincidence his body has been used as bait so often) and he that goes with sexuality too. He’s vocal in expressing knowledge of obscure kinky sexual practices, talking about how he’ll “try everything once” or whatever (but enjoying wearing pink panties is a secret…).
He builds his identity is a complex, ambiguous, ever-changing relationship with his body and his sexuality, and there’s nothing about him that suggests to me that he lives in a bubble where he doesn’t know he’s queer. Maybe he didn’t always (or ever) had the correct terminology for it or really conceptualized it, but in his twenties the guy knew his Pink Flamingos references (and Sam didn’t).
I think that among the reasons why Dean isn’t throwing himself at Cas’ feet and declaring his undying love for him, the fact that Cas has a dude body is, like, the last one on the list. I mean, I’m not saying he does not perceive men and women differently - he has different ways of relating to men and women due to the overwhelmingly homosocial context he’s lived pretty much his entire life, although he’s clearly developed a less sexist way of relating to women through the years - but his reluctance in opening himself to Cas is not due to some “gay panic” thing. I mean, it would be pretty diminishing to read it as just that.
hey guys not to be gay but i want to kiss a boy breathless and then hold him close as our foreheads are pressed together while we both grin and i stroke his face with my thumb softly and he’s intertwining my free hand with his and everything feels okay
i think a lot about dean– who grew up in a macho alpha
male hypermasculine subculture under the hand of an abusive father who somehow
managed to be both overbearing and absent– being gay. and how from god knows
how young, all he knew about women was that one had been his mom, and others he
should try and, “well,” john and his friends would say with an eyebrow waggle
when dean still had yet to hit double digits, “you know.” and how it didn’t take long, hardly any time at all in
fact, for dean to clue into the fact that the only time his dad seemed proud of
him was when he thanked a waitress for bringing his food (“nothing wrong with a
mature woman, son”), or even when his eye lingered for more than a moment on a
girl his own age (“my son the womanizer. wouldn’t have it any other way”). and
the thing about dean is that he wants to be good. he wants to please people,
just like he wants to save them. so behavior that gets a neutral or, depending
on who notices, negative reaction (liking boys) is always, every time going to
lose out to behavior that garners him a positive reaction (liking girls). you do
something enough times it becomes natural. you kiss a girl enough times because
no one ever told you there was another option, it becomes natural.
and the way these “truths” (have to please dad, boys like
girls, have to be masculine) intersect for dean is just. the most heartbreaking
thing. like, compulsory heterosexuality isn’t easy for anyone to overcome,
regardless of circumstance, but dean, man. he really didn’t stand a chance. hell,
I wonder how long it took for dean to even know what being gay meant. cant imagine a lot of motels in the
midwest in the 80s had the most progressive literature available. cant imagine
there were a lot of gay hunters. cant IMAGINE john had gay friends, or even acquaintances,
and if he did, like hell he’d introduce dean or sam to them.
anyway its just sad. and its also sad to think about how so
many of dean’s relationships with women are more about companionship and him
feeling a sense of belonging than anything else– dean “always the adios” winchester, after all. or how, at
the end of the day, all he wants is to be close to someone who won’t leave. and
how, maybe, the first time he kissed a boy (or, more accurately, the first time
a boy kissed him), his first thought was, “oh, so that’s what everyone’s talking about.” and suddenly the concept of
romance, of being in love, of building a life with someone, stopped feeling
like a script he was blindly following.
dean sure loves stroking pool cues and wrapping his hand around the necks of beer bottles and putting his mouth on them in a weirdly sensual way and winking at cute male bartenders who give him free nachos and bumping into a table when a cute guy flirts with him and looking at cas’ lips and overcompensating cause he’s kinda (not very) butch and talking in church confessionals about how there’s things, people, feelings that he wants to experience differently than he did before, or maybe even the first time and
