#13.15

SAM WINCHESTER in random scenes 21/?

hi and hello! unfortunately this took me so long to get back to in part because it opens this can of worms that's been sitting on my shelf as it were that i keep glancing at knowing i will have to deal with someday. but it requires an amount of research into past queer terminology about which i simply do quite know where to start. so sorry to take it on somewhat of a journey from your initial ask but here we go.

just to preface, i personally don't tend to use terms like "femme coded." maybe that's a little bit pedantic and to each their own. but it harkens me back to the "woman coded" discourse which is misogynistic, reactionary, and reductive.

all that said, i completely agree with all the points you've laid out in terms of dean's many statements which complicate his relationship to cis, male gender (from 4.07 and 12.22)! and we get that from jump with "my boobs" (1.01)! some other examples are: "do i look like paris hilton (1.05), "there's no way I'm kissing a damn frog" (3.05), "i've been rehymenated" (4.05), "they were pink and satiny and we kind of liked it" (5.04), dean happily being assigned charlie's "handmaiden" without complaint (8.11), the freddy mercury "female" fake ID we see in 10.22, and "i’m not gonna be his mother," (13.04).

there's a lot more as well! dean's knowledge of spas (7.05), his interest in ballet/dance (7.16, 15.10), his love of "chick flicks" (7.05, 7.06, 11.23, 12.11, 13.15), his frequenting of mommy blogs (14.20). all of these are things which are witnessed and commented on by sam in ways that vary from surprise and skepticism to judgement. but i don't list those in the same category because - like my issue with "woman coded" - there is nothing inherently feminine about dance or cooking or spas or liking sappy movies. the way our society maps gender onto those stems from a complicated history of capitalism and patriarchy. nevertheless, because the show exists in this same capitalist patriarchy, it's worth noting this pattern in dean's interests.

i am not going to lay out all the ways we know dean's sexuality is queer because i feel that work has been pretty well established. but now we get to this complicated spot where i think dean's gender and sexuality are in communication with each other in a way that maybe eludes modern terminology. that is the aforementioned can of worms.

i absolutely have no problem, and in fact encourage, reading dean as a trans woman. there is textual support for it - in my opinion slightly more-so than reading him as a trans man. but i don't personally see him that way. this brings us to the part of your ask about dean wanting to be the girl in the "hero gets the girl" scenario. because THAT is 10000% spot on, i think. i mean that IS the kissing the frog thing. but that complicates things a bit because many of the examples above about dean's gender are about fulfilling a specific gendered role within relationships (eg the princess or the desirable cheerleader).

i'm not trying to promote antiquated stuff that suggests that all queer relationships still have to mirror who's the "guy" and the "girl" or something like that. but there is a history of gay men who use feminine pronouns sometimes and wear much more feminine clothing - including dresses sometimes - and do things which we might these days read as straightforwardly trans but it wasn't really. it was a component of gay sexuality and our modern terms can't quite get at it. and that is more or less how i see dean. and when i say dean's gender leans gnc/trans-femme, this is what i mean. (the issue is that i've seen this a lot in older queer media and yet when i try to look up terms, i'm coming up really short. it feels very likely that someone on here knows what i'm trying to get at and could say it a lot more clearly. if that's you, please feel free!!!)

not that it would be wrong to call him gender-non-conforming or non-binary in more modern ways but i feel like there's another layer to it.

anyway, sorry for that long and tangential ramble.

as you mention, the feeling kinship with the women he has relationships with is so deeply true. especially since, as wiser folks than me have pointed out, dean is so often on the receiving end of particularly sexualized violence which is often reserved for women protagonists.

and i heartily agree about his "womanizer" persona, a veneer so thin that it is obvious as a performance and a shield as early as episode 2 and which relies primarily on the sexist expectations of those around him with very little to no effort on dean's part to maintain unless he's using it to specifically distract from something else. (my fave example of this is dean pretending to be interested in a porn mag in 8.17 in order to buy himself time to find sam's bloody tissue).

lastly, i LOVE your idea of dean getting to discuss cas' female vessel with him. i think if dean felt safe and freer of judgement than we ever find him in the show, that conversation could be such a beautiful exploration of gender - both dean's own gender and cas' trans man adjacent experience!