Supernatural: Amateurs Can't Do the Job

[itsnotmymind]

Rewatching No Exit, there's a line from Dean that irritates me:

Jo: Your chauvinist crap. You think women can't do the job.

Dean: Sweetheart, this ain't gender studies. Women can do the job fine. Amateurs can't. You have no experience. What you do have is a bunch of half-baked romantic notions that some barflies put in your head.

Amateurs can't do the job? Given that there is no school for hunters that we are aware of, every single hunter on the show started off as an amateur. Dean wasn't just an amateur when he started - he was a kid. Jo is new to hunting, but she's an adult who has done her research. Given that Dean calls her "sweetheart", I think her gender is a bigger part of why he's treating her the way he is than he wants to acknowledge.

Comments

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

Yikes....

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Is that agreement or disagreement?

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

It''s an agreement - sorry about the confusion.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

:)

[dreamsofspike.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on the one hand. I think that Dean's use of the word "sweetheart" here is suspect, and I think he DOES allow gender to play a role in his opinions here. I think he's far more protective/worried than he would be if she was a guy.

On the other hand - I think the bigger thing here is that Dean sees her rushing down a path that he has regrets about.

Dean: Jo, you've got options. No one in their right mind chooses this life. My dad started me in this when I was so young... I wish I could do something else.

Even this early on, they were starting to establish that for all his "I LOVE hunting, it's the only life for me" TALK, Dean didn't REALLY feel that way, not completely. He had regrets about the childhood and "normal life" he missed out on. He saw that Jo HAD her mother (something else he'd missed out on) who loved her dearly and wanted her home and safe, and he felt like she was throwing that away. For Dean, I don't think it was really so much about whether she could or couldn't as it it was about whether she SHOULD.

I do very much see your point though, and I think Dean does have some deeply rooted chauvinistic ideas, probably passed down from his father. :/

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with this. And as the episode progresses, Dean becomes more supportive (offering Jo a bigger knife, telling her there is nothing wrong with wanting to hunt as a way of being close to her father). But this particular moment definitely has a strong basis in sexism.