or, even more generally, i have been trying to be more careful in parsing how i articulate thresholds between childhood and adulthood and to which ideology i am giving credence through my articulation. there's, for instance, a difference between saying "i am not a child" in order to 1) underscore a factual change in circumstances that has removed you from the sphere of power of someone, vs 2) refer to a crystallised, naturalised condition of inferiority. but it is not only that. i often see people use the sentence "i am an adult" as a shorthand for "i have reached a nebulous level of mental development that imbues my opinions with weight". see also, the everpresent quip to "grow up" when people behave badly, to our own understanding (surely we can find ways to avoid assigning behaviour we deem disruptive as a natural attribute of children and giving credence to the idea children are poorly formed adults that have yet to be kicked into a socially acceptable shape?). many such cases, it is at least something worth tracking

i've been trying to make an effort to remove from my parlance all expressions referring to childhood as a shorthand for "rightful situation of subordination" and it has been surpisingly difficult. i have noticed i do end up saying "i am not a child" quite often when people try to belittle me/control me etc. i don't like the implication that if i was a child this would be allowed and i think language has meaning, hence the effort. very pervasive mindset once you start to track it

like i do think it's more useful to apply a lens of grace and understanding for the specific pressures someone is facing in exercising their ability to hurt others than to confuse the existence of those pressures with a complete lack of power. it depends!

i should be stopped from rewatching spn but i was reminded of the eternal debate on whether dean has power over sam or not and how inane i've always found it on the ground that both sides adhere to a dichotomic view of power i just find shallow. dean does not become sam's second parent at four, that is silly, but they are not entirely equal in the family structure either, those are not the only two options. they are relative peers in front of the towering height of john's authority, but john forces a fraught hierarchy between them by putting dean in charge of sam: whether he wants it or not, dean receives a mediated, univocal power to direct sam's behaviour and invoke john's authority as punishment. that he himself must answer to john creates an additional articulation to this structure (or rather it is dean that is posed as an intermediate joint between john and sam), making his power far from absolute, but it doesn't collapse it. the reason dean's treatment of sam is not abusive at this stage is that he evidently doesn't leverage this mediated power towards harmful ends, not the complete lack of it. much of s1 revolves around them rediscovering a more solid parity by being granted, for the first time, the freedom to explore their role in their respective lives absent the meddling of john's dictates creating a fixed cast in their positioning. not erasing all traces of the past but trying to repurpose its base materials and reshape them creatively to fit their current needs. and, once john returns, choices must be made on how to proceed and they are made and they are moving because they were not a given and real pressure towards other possibilities was exerted.

spn is a misogynistic show in a very period accurate 2000s tv way but it is always interesting that the general perception by osmosis from non-viewers is that dean is singularly misogynistic within it for...having a lot of sex with willing women that usually know he's just passing through, in scenes that often show him being sweet and involved and not even aggressive. and how many of the quips he makes receive a 100% inflexible bad faith reading as misogyny rather than him placing himself in the woman's position and being self-deprecating about it. like someone pointing to their own imaginary boob job, cheerleading outfit, or whatever number of signifiers of a constructed womanhood dean places on himself with both effaced shame and delight is not exactly the same as them making fun of the same traits on someone else. many possibile venues of interpetations here and this is not the sum of the whole character but yeah just interesting that he's forever immortalised in public consciousness as the manliest man that has ever manned with no vein of contradiction

life and art having material points of contact the hr fandom refuses to examine, as hw - who was casted to play a gay asian man opposed to a white co-star that had slightly more bulk to his figure - immediately felt the pressure to bulk up (by his own words he felt this pressure as a direct result of comparing himself to cs) and now half the fandom is going "oh nice to see him do this, it means the show won't fall into the shane is a sissy effeminate weakling trope just because he bottoms" do you hear yourself