An open letter to Jensen Ackles, by a Queer Teenage Girl:

[Shma]

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May 5, 2013
An open letter to Jensen Ackles, by a Queer Teenage Girl:

(tw: mentions of self-harm, suicide, homophobia, etc.) ‘Inspired’ by events at the most recent con.


Mr. Jensen Ackles, you make me uncomfortable. I’m even, at least a little bit, scared of you. You make me uncomfortable because I make you uncomfortable. You make me uncomfortable because who I am, what I am- you don’t like it. And that worries me.

You seem like a nice person. But I’m a queer teenage girl. This means that I am used to being scared of people. I am used to be on edge. I am used to looking for warning signs, no matter how small, that the person I am talking to will stop seeing me as another human.

You give off a lot of warning signs, Mr. Ackles.

You dehumanize me because I am a woman. You have said mysognistic things. You dehumanize me because I am a teenage girl, and people mock teenage girls. My voice does not matter because I am young, and I am female, and I am not your show’s target demographic. You dehumanize me because I am queer, and that is what this letter is about in particular. (The other parts will take part, though, because my queerness is not entirely unrelated to my femaleness, as I am a person, fully formed, and my parts cannot, will not, be dissected.)

And that means I’m scared of you, no matter how nice you are. That means I have to be scared of you. Warning signs are how I, and others like me, stay alive, Mr. Ackles.

It means I will avoid you at cons; it means I will not go to supernatural panels that you are a part of. Because even though you wouldn’t ever physically attack me, you scare me. You scare me because you will dehumanize me. You will put me in situations where you will say things, things that are horrible, and I will be in a room full of people who will agree with you because you’re famous, because they admire you, maybe because they just don’t like queer teenage girls and you’re confirming what they already believe. It doesn’t matter why: they will agree with you regardless. And if I react in those situations- if I cry, because I am a queer teenage girl, and I cry when I am hurt- and others notice, they will be angry with me. They will find my blog and tell me to kill myself. Girls in my school who are fans of you will threaten me. I will be hated, because you, to some extent, hated me. I know this will happen, because it has happened before. It has happened often. In fact, it happens at least once at every con.

If I cannot keep from crying while watching old videos alone in my room, watching a queer teenage girl (like me, another like me, because there are so very many of us, Mr. Ackles) standing in a room surrounded by thousands of people, valiantly trying to tell her hero that “being gay is not unmanly”, trying to help this person she admires learn that what he said is not okay, the way he is thinking is not okay, anger in her voice matching the anger I feel as well, (because being gay is not unmanly, and because being unmanly is not bad), and watching the room turn hostile, watch the actor refuse to listen- how will I keep from crying when it happens in front of me? When it happens to me?

I would cry, Mr. Ackles. I would need to leave the room, so that I could sit outside and curl up in a friend’s arms as she promised me that I was safe, that she wouldn’t let them hurt me, that you hadn’t meant it, that you didn’t know what would likely happen to that teenage girl, the threats she would receive and hatred and anger she would face- anything so that I would feel less betrayed, less fearful, less alienated. Anything to make me feel like I still counted as a person.

I know others who have done far more than cry because of this. People who have no friend to turn to in those moments of betrayal, of fear, people who hate themselves already and you- you have put the knife in their hand. Not intentionally, never intentionally- you seem like a nice man, Mr. Ackles. But that does not change what happens when a young girl reaching for support hears her hero say what translates, so clearly, into hatred for what she is. Some girls cry. Some girls cut. It happens, Mr. Ackles. I will cry, Mr Ackles. But I have long learned to sever others opinions of me, opinions of people like me, from my opinion of myself. Not everyone has. There are others who will do worse.

I have done worse. Queer teenage girls are often betrayed by their heroes, I am afraid. You are not the first person I have looked up to that has given me a knife. You will not be the last. I refuse to take the knife from you, Mr. Ackles, or any other hero who follows. I do not care what you intended. I will not hold you hand so that you understand that the knife is there. I will be blunt, because you do not deserve kindness in this respect.

You are holding a knife, Mr. Ackles.

And we are often told it is wrong for us to cry. I was taught that expressing negative emotions is not something a young lady should do. We have been told not to cry. We have learned the world hates us. We have learned that you, our hero, hates us. You are handing us the knife, Mr. Ackles, even if you do not realize it is there.

I am strong. I will cry. I will not take the knife. Not all girls have learned this strength yet. (there are many who never will.)

And I do not deserve to be hated for being sad. I do not deserve to be hated for expressing that heartbreak. You are breaking my queer little heart, Mr. Ackles. I will cry.



You have a lot of power, and you have misused it in the past. You do not intend to- there are not many, I think, who intend to inflict pain on others. That does not change what has happened.

—

Mr. Ackles, let me tell you a story.

Pretend that you are a queer teenage girl. (I know this is difficult for you. I know you find this ridiculous. Do it anyways, please.) You have spent your entire life looking for media that has you in it.

You look through every movie list, every book review, you watch and you read and you try to find a character like you.

And you don’t. For a very, very long time you don’t.

And when you do, you wish you hadn’t. Because what you find is a hatred for what you are- a limiting of what you can be.

You find tv shows where you die for being the way you are.

You find movies where you’re evil for being the way you are.

You find books where you’re evil, and dead for being the way you are.

You can’t turn on the tv and see yourself. Sometimes, when you’re lucky, you find a tv show where you don’t die; but your character revolves around that one trait, and you suffer for it. It’s a stereotype of you, nearly dead but not, and that’s the best you’ve got. I repeat: the closest thing to you you get to see, is ashamed of being like you. They are a stereotype. They are afterschool specials. This is what you are given. This is what you get to aspire to be: not a hero, not even a person. A poorly written stereotype that lives in fear.

That’s it.

And then, one day, you turn on the tv and you find a character like you.

He’s twenty six years old, he’s a man, he’s a monster-hunter. But he’s you. He’s more you than many of the female teenagers on tv shows have been.



And you watch this show, and finally, finally, you get to see yourself as something other than dead.

You get to see yourself as a monster-hunter. You get to see yourself as a protective sibling. You get to see yourself as the person who saves the world. You get to see yourself as a character with traits and flaws and strengths don’t revolve around your sexuality.

You cry a lot, because of this. In this story you’re a queer teenage girl- you cry a lot, when you’re hurt, and when you’re happy.



You put up with a lot of problems within this show- you even ignore the fact that it appears to hate you for being a woman. You put up with rape jokes, and over-sexualized women limited to being romantic interests, and dead women, so many dead women, (even sexualized murders of women, and isn’t that horrifying), and you put up with racism, and stereotypes, and you even put up with fucking gay joke after gay joke after gay joke. You keep watching, and you might not like a lot of aspects, but you put up with it. Because that’s you, on the screen.Finally.



And you care, a lot, because of this. So you watch videos of conventions, of the actors and writers talking about these characters. Talking about this character, this character who is you.

Except, of course, they aren’t. They aren’t you, and they never will be.

And you learn this, watching the videos. The things you related to were jokes. Throw-away lines. You’ve been played. You don’t count. You never counted.



And you hear the actor who plays this character, this character who was you in so many ways you’d never gotten to experience before, and you learn that you make him uncomfortable.

And it breaks your queer little heart, Mr. Ackles.

Because you are learning all over again that you don’t deserve to exist if you’re not going to die for it.

You are learning what you learned when you were ten, and twelve, and fourteen.

You are sixteen years old and you are being told that what you are does not deserve to be seen. You are learning that you do not deserve to be heard. You do not deserve to exist.

(You learned this message a very, very long time ago, but you had hoped-

it does not matter what you had hoped. You are a queer teenage girl, and you do not deserve to hope. You do not deserve to exist. This is what you have learned. You will cry, and it will not make you weak, because the last time you learned this lesson you did much worse. Your heart will break, but it will not matter, because you do not matter.)



“I know they just think it’s a hot kind of fantasy”, you are told.

Mr. Ackles, you misunderstand us. There are asexual fans who want Dean to be canonically bisexual. There are lesbians who want Dean to be canonically bisexual. I am queer, Mr. Ackles. I am not interested in sex with you, or your colleagues, and I am not interested in you and your colleagues having sex. It’s silly I have to state this so specifically, and I am not often comfortable talking about my sexuality at great length, but let me be clear: I may be interested in all genders, but I prefer women. I greatly prefer women. I have no interest in any men currently, and have had no interest for three years. This is pointless, trivial information- but you are making me share this. You don’t care about what a queer teenage girl’s interests are for dating (Or, at least, I assume you do not), but you’re making me share this anyways, so I can make this message very clear for you: I want Dean Winchester to be bisexual because I want to be able to see a queer character on tv that I identify with. I want Dean to be queer, and yes, I wish Dean and Castiel would end up together (though I know many people who want dean to be bisexual who do not) because I want to have the slow-burn, well-developed love story I have always been denied.

When you look at us, you think we are basing this around lust. Mr Ackles, I do not give a fuck if Dean Winchester and Castiel have sex. I do not care if they kiss. I do not care. I want them to love each other, and I want them to admit it, on screen, so that I never have to hear another fratboy fan tell me that it is all in my head that these characters love each other, because that would be gross and wrong and perverted. So that I will have a love story with characters I identify with. So that I can have a queer romance that isn’t a tragedy. I know you do not control this. But it is your choice to react to the idea of Dean being bisexual with something along the lines of revulsion.

And you cannot pretend that the show does not know we want Dean to be bisexual. There have been eight years of queerbaiting, growing more and more intense over the seasons. Your show profits off us by hinting that this character could be like us. Do not act surprised when we want that hinting to become a fact.

Mr Ackles, do you know how many movies have happy or ambigious endings to lesbian love stories? It may seem like a strange question to ask. I looked it up, two years ago. The page is probably long gone, but I had found it. Let me tell you: There were sixteen. I have seen every last one of these movies. Ambigious, it appears, actually means that ‘it can’t get any worse’. Happy, it appears, means ‘Not dead’. I have seen one truly happy movie that was well done, Mr. Ackles. I do not get to be picky about movies if I want a happy queer couple. I have to put up with shoddy writing, bad acting, plots that revolve around how terrible their lives are. There are exceptions, yes, but very few. I like to enjoy the media I consume. I have had one movie about queer people that is actually enjoyable. One. Even for queer people who enjoy plots I don’t, they have a range of twenty films or so to choose from. How many movies have you seen with a happy heterosexual couple? How many tv shows, books, poems?

I have one, Mr. Ackles. Is it so wrong I want more?

You are uncomfortable with us discussing Dean Winchester’s sexuality. You don’t seem to understand why we bring it up so much.

We bring it up because it matters to us. It matters to us a great deal.

It’s very simple, Mr. Ackles: You live a life surrounded by mirrors. We live surrounded by windows. We do not get to see ourselves. We have trouble defining ourselves. We grow up thinking we are broken, and wrong, and bad, because we have never gotten to see ourselves.

Dean Winchester was our mirror. Dean Winchester was, is, us. We write essays about this. We write pages and pages of analysis explaining why we identify with him, why we see him as queer. We write and we draw and we talk about this. Fans who see Dean as straight- and there are nowhere near as many as you think- don’t need to explain why they think so. It is assumed he is straight. Like everyone else. Many, however, argue anyways. The idea makes them uncomfortable. They turn to you, often enough, to reason why. To tell us, not only will Dean never be bisexual- a lesson we have already learned from your reaction to the very concept, Mr. Ackles- but that even wishing he was like us, pretending he is, is wrong. That we are bad for wanting a single mirror, when that’s meant to be their reflection. We do not deserve to be represented.



Pretend, yet again, that you are a queer teenage girl.



“This isn’t that kind of show”, you are told.

You know that. You have always known that. That’s why you need this so badly.

Because you only exist on certain shows. Shows where you’re bullied, shows where you die. It’s not even you, not really- it’s a poorly written stereotype. The character is written to experience nothing but pain, why would they develop them beyond that? You do not exist, he is saying. You are not a person.



Straight people are on every show. That’s normal. They’re people.

You are not.

Filed under tw: suicide, tw: self-harm, open letter, dean winchester, jensen ackles, panic rambles