Bitchwatch, part two

[apocalypsos]

Okay, here's season two.

SEASON TWO

Bitch

In My Time Of Dying ("Son of a bitch," 1)
Everybody Loves A Clown *
Bloodlust **
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things ("Son of a bitch," re: demon, 1)
Simon Said ("Son of a bitch," re: demon, 1; "Son of a bitch," said by Sam re: Andy, 1) ***
No Exit ("Bitchy," by Sam re: Dean, 1;) ****
The Usual Suspects ("Son of a bitch," to Sheridan, 1) *****
Crossroad Blues (Crossroad Demon, 1; "Yellow-eyed son of a bitch," re: ...DUH, 1)
Hunted ("Son of a bitch," to Gordon, 1; Sam, 1)
Playthings ("Son of a bitch," 1) ******
Nightshifter ("Poor son of a bitch," re: Ronald, 1)
Born Under A Bad Sign ("Bad son of a bitch," re: the hunter Sam killed, 1; "Son of a bitch," 1; "You demonic son of a bitch," to Meg before he knows it's Meg, 1; "Bitch-boy master plan," 1)
Tall Tales ("Some alien made you his bitch!," to Curtis, 1; "Son of a bitch," 1)
Roadkill *******
Heart (Kendall on All My Children, by Sam, 1)
Hollywood Babylon ********
What Is And What Should Never Be (Sam, 1)
All Hell Breaks Loose, Pt. 1 ("Son of a bitch," from Sam to YED, 1)
All Hell Breaks Loose, Pt. 2 (Crossroad Demon, 1; Jake, 1; "Son of a bitch," from Sam re: Jake, 1; "Yellow-eyed son of a bitch," 1; "Son of a bitch," to YED, 1)

Slut

No instances in season two.

Skank

No instances in season two.

Whore

No instances in season two.

* Ellen and the little person at the circus both say "son of a bitch," the little person in reference in Dean.
** Gordon calls Lenore "bitch" twice.
*** Andy calls Ansem a "twisted son of a bitch."
**** Jo calls Holmes' ghost a "creepy-ass son of a bitch."
***** Sheridan responds to Dean's bravado by calling him a "cocky son of a bitch."
****** Maggie and Tyler both say "son of a bitch." Tyler promptly gets scolded for it. :)
******* Molly, referring to Greeley, asks what "that son of a bitch" has done with her husband.
******** Tara, in character, refers to Brody as a "son of a bitch."

IN SUMMATION

I was starting to think that Dean might have made it through the entire season without calling a female character a bitch until I reached "Crossroad Blues." Dean calls the Crossroads Demon a bitch once during that episode, and once during AHBL2. She's the only female character he calls a bitch all season long -- he even manages not to call Meg a bitch during her short stint in "Born Under A Bad Sign," although admittedly he didn't know it was Meg until a couple of minutes later.

In fact, once again he calls more male characters than female bitches -- Sam twice, and Jake in the season finale. And to be fair, Sam calls just as many women bitches as Dean does this season, although he is referring to a TV character, so. *shrugs* Gordon also calls Lenore a bitch just as many times in one episode as Dean refers to the Crossroads Demon as a bitch over a twenty-two episode spread.

Nearly every instance of the word "bitch" being used is in the phrase "son of a bitch," with the exception of Dean telling Curtis an alien made him its bitch in "Tall Tales" and Dean talking to Meg about her "bitch-boy master plan" before he knew it was Meg inside Sam. Do with that information what you will.

Again, we have another season where "slut," "skank," and "whore" are not used.

Now it's off to suffer through the finale once again. The Ruby scenes alone should be a trip. *eyeroll*

Comments

[trinity_clare]

My first reaction to these posts: Oh thank god, I'd been hoping I wasn't just looking at the first two seasons with rose-colored glasses.

My second reaction: Wow, S3 really was the pits. I'm not sure I'm even going to be able to stomach looking at that post, and I'm so sorry you have to put it together.

[medie]

Yeah, that's pretty much my feeling on it as well. The relief that "whew, S1 and S2 weren't that bad, but, oh god, that means S3 was."

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Dude, I'm not even done with season three yet and it's kicking both seasons' asses. With fewer episodes, no less.

Hell, the finale ALONE.

[medie]

Oh I can just imagine. Wait, I don't need to imagine. I cringed my way through the episodes (except Bela's last one. I value my ability to put together coherent sentences that don't consist purely of four letter words and large amounts of RAGE).

And I REALLLLY don't want to watch the finale. Suspect it will make Smallville's look like Shakespeare.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

So far, the finale alone has as many misogynistic insults as both previous seasons COMBINED.

Dean calls Ruby a broad, a skank and a slut. Sam calls her a bitch. Dean calls Bela and Lilith a bitch.

[medie]

...

Oh god, I'm going to spend a lot of time gritting my teeth and trying not to hate them in this episode. I can see this now. (Next year is going to be so much FUN. I'll get to watch The Sarah Connor Chronicles one day, then turn around and watch Supernatural the next. I'm gonna get whiplash!)

[callmesyd.livejournal.com]

I've only seen one or two episodes of Supernatural, so I am useless to this discussion.

HOWEVER.

YOUR ICON BRINGS ME GREAT JOY. THANK YOU.

[trinity_clare]

It never gets old. :D

[sgriobadh.livejournal.com]

Done it for you! They use everything but "Whore"!

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, I've already got Gordon calling vampires "fang whores" and I know Dean calls witches "whores" in "Malleus Maleficarum." Plus, there's a couple of instances of "broad," which ... nice.

[sgriobadh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's also an "ugly broad" (Dean to Ruby), in the finale.

I hope this helps! :)

[meret.livejournal.com]

I didn't find any use of the word girl as a pejorative in the season 2 transcripts here, but not all the eps are available.
http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/supernatural/

I think Dean says it in Bedtime Stories to Sam when they're talking about disney movies, but I couldn't swear to it.

Re: I hope this helps! :)

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I already went through all of those. :)

[wateryacacia.livejournal.com]

I can't assist, but I just wanted to say how happy I am to see you doing this. While at first I got riled up about bitchiness etc of this season, at this point I've just been pushing it all to the back of my brain and rationalizing to ignore it.

So again, thanks for confronting this where I'm far too weak willed to do so!

Also, sort of related (w/ Kripke being explicit about gender/sex) have you seen his pre-SPN short film, "Battle of the Sexes"?

http://www.glumbert.com/media/ladiesroom

At this point I'm just baffled... Because I guess the intentions are good? But we all know where that road leads.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Most of this is just to soothe my own curiosity, seriously. I just keep watching these arguments go back and forth and thinking, "Well, maybe I'm just blowing it out of proportion."

[cetpar.livejournal.com]

This is interesting, and I can't wait to see the results for S3.

Out of curiosity, have you noticed an association between episodes using any of these words with a specific writer?

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Not really, but then again I've been so busy compiling the words I haven't been paying attention to the writers.

[animamea.livejournal.com]

In what context does Sam refer to Kendall of All My Children as a bitch? I ask because Kendall was played by Sarah Michelle Gellar and I'm wondering if it was a little stab at BtVS. ^_^

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Okay, the soap may be wrong (I could swear it was supposed to be AMC, though, but I may be wrong) but when he and Madison were watching the soap opera, afterwards when Sam was questioning her about the characters he called one named Kendall a bitch.

season three finale... which wasn't as bad as I thought, I guess?

[winterweathered.livejournal.com]

Dean called Bela a bitch (1), called Ruby a skank (1), slutty (1), and an "ugly broad" (1). He also asked Lilith if her plan was to become "queen bitch" (1).

Sam called Ruby a bitch once.

Ruby called Dean a "son of a bitch." (1)

And Bobby said his whole, "you're almost hell's bitch, so you can see hell's other bitches," thing.

Re: season three finale... which wasn't as bad as I thought, I guess?

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

That's still pretty bad, though, you've got to admit.

Thanks for that. :)

Re: season three finale... which wasn't as bad as I thought, I guess?

[winterweathered.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, and the fact like it sounded like more than it was proves that I'm not as desensitized to it as I thought I was.

(I just put up a few thoughts on this subject on my journal and linked back to these posts - I hope that's cool! I figured that's kind of what you're doing it for, but I just wanted to mention it.)

Re: season three finale... which wasn't as bad as I thought, I guess?

[tamtrible.livejournal.com]

On Bobby's comment... that may've partly been a reference to the literal meaning of the word. Hellhounds, after all...

[minim_calibre]

I am on my phone, but I couldn't wait for a computer to say THANK YOU.

And yeah, the bitch in Devil's Trap was shocking and jarring. This year, it wouldn't have been at all.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

I think it's worth noting the underlying gender/queer epithet potential of "made you his bitch" -- although, really, the crux of that part of the episode was making comedy out of male rape. So, kind of a lose-lose, but as these things go, yeah, the exception during the season rather than the rule.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

I should add, minim_calibre pointed me here, and I'm eagerly awaiting analysis on S3.

[esorlehcar.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this. It's really, really nice to see just how drastic the change in S3 has been.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you for doing these posts. I knew that S3 used more sexist language, but this illustrates the difference. I... don't exactly look forward to seeing how bad S3 was, but it'll be interesting to see the numbers.

[kimonkey7.livejournal.com]

Is there a place in this analysis to differentiate the emotional subtleties in Dean refering to a DEMON in a derogatory manner and Dean refering to a FEMALE in the same way?

And in the instance the slur is delivered, is there previous behavior which might be cause for disparaging, out-of-anger name calling?

*drops shit-stirring spoon and runs away*

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

In the first two seasons, he refers only to female demons and a killer ghost as a bitch.

In season three, he calls a demon or creature a bitch eleven times. He calls Bela a bitch four times, none of them to her face but all of them after she had done something wrong. And on one occasion he referred to Gert, the elderly woman who hit on Sam, as a broad.

I tried not to differentiate if I could help it because I was going by the standard that calling a woman a bitch/slut/whore/skank/broad is wrong, "deserved" or not.

[kimonkey7.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of curious about your use of quotation marks around the word 'deserved' up there. I certainly didn't mean to imply anyone deserved being called a bitch (or any other perjorative) but that emotions/emotional behavior rarely result in an intelligent balance of ends and means.

I think I should have clarified that I feel the name calling has less to do with gender specifically, and more to do with behavior/emotions. I know when a female acts horridly, the first name that comes to mind (or lips) for me is 'bitch'. I don't think that makes me a misogynyst, I think that makes me emotional and a knee-jerk reactor. If a man is acting poorly, I'm likely to call him a 'dick' or a 'bastard'.

I think we need to look at a wider - pardon the pun - demonization of the sexualized terms because SOCIETY has taught them.

All that being said, thanks for your work on putting these statistics together.