Your dose of pure mushiness for today

[thuviaptarth]

I ♥ fandom. Specifically, I ♥ you. I just spent half an hour reading ten-year-old discussions of "Iolokus" and "Tikkun Olam" on Google Groups, and there you were, some of you, being you before I ever met you. It was like coming back home after my first semester at college and finding that all my high school friends were even more like themselves than I'd remembered them being. Of course, I thought, seeing people for the first time all over again, no wonder I like you. You are so very quintessentially you!

Also, on Friday I saw fans and ate food and watched vids in company and at the end of every vid there was a long satisfied group sigh. I went home and reorganized my vids so that they are on fewer DVDs and alphabetical by vidder and mostly converted to DivX DVD player format, except for the Real Media and Quick Time ones, because it was too late at night when I started reading up on how to convert them and I can do that part next weekend. Also some vids have been corrupted and I have lost them and am sad, but I am sure I will find them again eventually. The Internet is my friend and my friend will provide.

Your real content for the day, spoilers for SPN 3x09

Demons and gender: do they have any? I have never seen any reason why they should, as their natural forms seemed to be clouds of black smoke. This is now different, although how different is unclear, if they really do forget having been human. We've seen one demon take on hosts of different sexes; we've also seen demons that seem to display a partiality for one or the other. YED says, "That was my daughter. That was my son," and Meg calls YED "Father", but is the gendering due to the demons or to the hosts? The Crossroads Demon calls Ruby "that bitch," female. We've only seen CRD as female, but then we've only seen (presumptively straight) men making deals.

It came up this weekend because I was sometimes afraid "Spider Bites" was horribly misogynistic for associating female desire exclusively with sadism, and one person said that she didn't think of the Crossroads Demon as a woman. It startled me, because I think of demons as ungendered, but I did think of the CRD as female (or at least that version of her as female), or I would have had her using "it" (like the Impala) or "sie" (like The Mad Hatter).

So. Do demons have gender? What do you think?

Also, if you know of good screencaps of Dean kissing either Crossroads Demon, please link me. Or icons that may be used for bases.

Comments

[oracne.livejournal.com]

You sound happy. This is very good.

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

I am glad you think so. :)

[kestrelsan.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of demons as having gender until, like you say, all the gendered titles started cropping up in canon. In the SPN canon, I'll go with yes, they do have gender, only because I don't think SPN necessarily wants to or is capable of casting them outside it :). Less cynically, biblically the gender of angels is ambiguous (well, default always = male, though in the NT there's Paul's "there is neither male nor female before God," and I'm less sure of how gender is represented in Hebrew, though it's my understanding that maleness assigned to God, angels, etc., is just the default expression, and not gendered).

So I would guess that demons would follow the same lines, and for humans who become demons...well, I would think they'd retain the idea of gender from their human experience. But in the biological sense, it seems to be moot. And if hierarchy is based on power, and power isn't based on physical power, then I would think that socially, gender wouldn't have the same meaning in Hell.

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

All reasonable, although mostly I think SPN demons sort of have gender because of the meta reason of the SPN PTB not having the kind of imagination to go outside it.

I do wonder what power in the hierarchy of Hell is based on. People have speculated age, which nothing has either confirmed or ruled out.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Mostly that thread makes me weep for fandom. There's Cofax, saying "Isn't it too bad that we've only had public, critical discussion of three stories lately?" PUBLIC! CRITICAL! DISCUSSION! God how I miss it! ::kicks LJ and its social mores::

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

You can do public critical discussion of my stories! ... Yeah, I know, it doesn't help.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

I have done public critical discussion of your stories! Or one of them, anyway. And it was fun and productive!

[cofax7]

I saw that! I was like, "wow, lookie me being all authoritative," when I had only been in fandom for like a YEAR. If that. So funny.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

I think they don't, but I think the show tends to forget that.

But I would *heart* beyond belief if people keep on referring to the demon rising in the west or east or wherever as male, and Sam and Dean keep wondering who it would be, and then it turns out to Meg--and they never guessed because they were too blinded by their gender of human host=gender of demon idea.

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

Actually, Tammy used the gender-neutral singular they. Oh, Kripke. You're so cute when you try to be devious.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

For some reason I have a memory that when the last version of the Crossroads demon was talking about someone else holding the contract, and the CD being just the representative, I thought male gender was specified. Hrm. Could be misremembering.

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

Ohhh. That might very well be true. I see you and I are as one in assuming that the demon who holds the contract = the new power rising in the west.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

Huh. You know, I just jumped straight to that conclusion without even considering it. But yes! I do believe so.

Here's what the TWOP recap said on the final appearance of CD: "I'm just a saleswoman," she explains with a devilish twinkle in her eye. "I got a boss just like everybody, and he holds the contract, not me."