Young people today seem so psychologically distant from me that I don’t feel like I understand them. Perhaps this is always true as people get older and a new generation comes of age. I’m really hoping that what I say in the following is a minority view, even among young people, and I’m not that out of touch with their contemporary world.
[This post originally appeared on my Substack. See the postscript at the bottom for an end-of-season update]
I have been thinking about Woke storytelling recently. How writers that have “woke” commitments tell stories that are different from more traditional approaches. I watched the season (two) finale of Big Sky on ABC, and this little detail jumped out at me: why can’t the new manly sheriff in town fix his own truck and needs a woman to help him? Just this little thing, but could it be a telltale sign of potential woke feminist storytelling?
This new sheriff in town is named Beau Arlen and he is played by Jensen Ackles. I like Jensen Ackles. He is a handsome and talented actor, and he seems to be a genuinely nice person, not some entitled Hollywood celebrity.
So, I made a tweet on Twitter.
The Tweets:
“I fear for Beau Arlen. Apparently, he can’t fix his own truck and has to be driven around by women. I would hate to see Jensen Ackles turned into a “simp” just so Woke feminist writers can show how strong and empowered the women are.”
This tweet got a lot of negative responses, much more than I expected. There were some positive likes (thank you). Often tweets just fall into the abyss of the Twitter void. After being disheartened by so many negative responses.
I followed up with this tweet.
“It breaks my heart that so many people on Twitter want to see Jensen Ackles emasculated in the role of Beau Arlen in order to prove some woke feminist point about female empowerment. And no one is willing to defend him.”
This reaffirms my sense that young people today live in a different mental world than I do. Several of the responses were harsh, including some implicit threats against me. But this is Twitter, and a lot of its users are “woke,” so the personal attacks were expected. These negative responses also got a lot of likes too. And of course, all the responses completely missed the point of my tweet, that the choices writers make in TV shows and movies about how to present characters may be politically motivated.
All they could see in those tweets were misogyny. Why is that? What leads them to read the tweets in that way? Strong men are a threat, not beating them down is misogyny?
The obvious answer to me would be that women can be strong on their own terms and men don’t need to be minimized so women can look better. But that was not an answer that any of them could seem to imagine. I can only assume it’s because they don’t believe that.
This is not the first time this has happened to me. Before, I have tried to ask genuine questions but my motives were always suspected, and I get called a misogynist or a bigot or some kind of phobe. While 280 characters is not much room to express a complete thought, not a single person asked for clarification. Most of them obviously didn’t understand the point I was trying to make, but instead of asking for clarification, they rushed to judgment and condemned me as a woman hater.
Other comments accused me of having issues with my own fragile masculinity. My masculinity was “fragile” because I didn’t want to watch a male character being emasculated for the sake of women’s power. Many asserted that I was the one being all weak, or they accused me of being toxic, and suggested I, like Jensen, should “detoxify” myself. More on that later.
Most of the responses were that I’m a misogynist and hate women. This can be read two ways: first, if you don’t bust the man, you hate women because you want to see them hurt; second, you hate women because you can’t stand seeing them empowered. What was never considered is that men and women can be strong in their own right at the same time. There were no comments to that effect. No one was willing to agree with me.
Woke Storytelling:
Let me reiterate that I thought it was an odd choice for the writers to characterize Beau Arlen, who is supposed to be the new (manly)–why else cast Jensen Ackles, sheriff in a rural Montana town, as someone who can’t fix his own truck and has to have a woman do it for him. Why that particular writing choice? To make him look bad as a man? He is supposed to be the sheriff, right?
This is a relatively minor point, but it jumped out at me. Is this going to be a consistent theme throughout the season of small slights against the masculinity of this character? If they did this to anyone else (other than a white man) people would call it a “microaggression.” Men have few defenders today.
The essential feminist point is that all men have “privilege” gained from “patriarchy” (thus making them “toxic” and prone to rape and violence). For strong women to flourish, men have to be neutered, bound, shamed, or put in a subordinate position, so women can take over and shine as strong female characters. To be a strong female character means to usurp the traditional male role. Women cannot be strong in a traditional female role because patriarchy always defines them as weak.
The upshot of this woke feminist perspective is that being a strong man means hating women. Strong men by their very nature are misogynists. To love women means men have to be willing to be crushed and feminized. I don’t see strong men and strong women as mutually exclusive, but in the feminist world, they apparently are. The logic is that if you like strong male characters then you hate women. Since I’m a gay male, the women characters usually don’t interest me all that much, so by woke definition that makes me a misogynist, regardless of what I actually think of the woman character.
I think it’s possible to have both strong male and strong female characters at the same time if the writing is done well. I never got the sense that Sam and Dean Winchester (Dean played by Jensen) were being “demasculinized” so female characters like Charly, Rowena, or Mary could be strong. But Supernatural was a show that many feminists hated and complained about. I’m sure they hate Soldier Boy too, Jensen’s character on The Boys.
Big Sky is also a TV show, and most shows are driven by tropes, including gender tropes. I’m guessing that most of the people who responded so negatively want to see emasculated male characters. This is after all one of the goals of woke feminism. Men have to be knocked down, accused of being toxic, and castrated, so women can stand up and take their place.
This doesn’t sound particularly feminist to me (at least old school feminism) that strove for the equality of the sexes, not the role reversal of the subordination of men to women because of men’s inherent danger to women and society.
Flying Monkeys:
There is a new expression I just recently learned: “Flying Monkeys.” Apparently, a flying monkey is a woke person on social media (such as Twitter) who mindlessly attacks other people who they perceive as an enemy of the cause.
Not a single person who commented seemed to understand what the tweet was about, but nevertheless, they still acted all “triggered” and had their own feelings hurt over it, or used it as the basis of a personal attack against me. There were some likes, so maybe some people understood, but they were unwilling to say anything for fear of attack.
It seems that so many young people today are not curious about learning about other people’s values and experiences. They only value their own “subjective experiences of oppression” or their own personal “virtue signaling” as an SJW. They simply condemn others as phobic or bigoted, based on their own subjective feelings or their need to be seen as “correct” with a certain crowd.
It’s disheartening to see the flying monkeys attack, but it’s not really their fault, this is how they have been taught and conditioned. They have not been trained in critical thinking skills, but to react solely on the basis of emotion and subjectivity, while being primed by “woke” theory to find bigotry, misogyny, racism, phobias, and oppression in everything. This is a harsh assessment, but wokeness has filled their minds with brain worms. The only response they can muster is to condemn this post as misogynist, but if you asked them how it is misogynist, they probably would not be able to say. They are good at feeling their feelings and name-calling but not much else.
Feminized Men:
It seems to me, that the only acceptable men to many woke feminists are emasculated, feminized men. The feminist man is obligated to remove himself from the path of women so women can be empowered. Once women are empowered, they can take over and become like men. The woke feminist logic here seems to be that, in order for women to be empowered, men have to be knocked down, neutered, or made ineffective in some way so women can be strong and shine in comparison.
Unfortunately, this implies that women are still weak in comparison to men, and can’t stand on their own without men stepping aside. This seems to me (but no one asked) that this position could be considered misogynistic itself. This is because it assumes that men must be knocked down because women are naturally weak and have to have obstacles removed from their way so they can be empowered. She didn’t really earn her success with her own effort but had the way cleared for her. If the men have to be busted down (or be feminized and subordinate themself to her) for her to be an equal then was she really that strong?
The logic of woke feminism continues, that once women are empowered (they can take over men’s privileges and the power that comes with it–taking over the power and privileges that they so deride men for having) and they can better handle it because they have greater virtue and are more saintly and thus will be more responsible, even when the privileges and power are unearned.
This seems profoundly sad to me, that women cannot be strong on their own terms, but only at the expense of men. I would feel sad if they did that to Jensen with his new character Beau Arlen, after his success with the characters of Dean Winchester and Soldier Boy (who, yes are toxic) and beloved by Jensen’s fans.
The feminist expectation is that all men are toxic, so when someone is a nice guy (like Jensen), they can claim him for feminism. “Nice guys” are considered the exception to the toxic norm. Nice guys are the feminine man, which women are always saying they want but can never find. The nice guy is the man who has been rendered “safe” for women.
This feminist framing forces the conclusion that:
- It is misogynistic to not believe in male toxicity, their inherent violence and danger, and the moral evil of men.
- The only good men are the ones who have been emasculated, feminized, and rendered “safe.”
- Good men are obligated to stand aside for women and let them take power because of women’s moral superiority.
Is that the kind of character the writers want to turn Beau Arlen into? I would cringe if they did that since that would seem out of character for a rural country sheriff on a network drama. And I hardly think the ABC executives would want to go there even though very “woke” Disney owns the network.
Feminizing Jensen:
This part is cringey. You might want to skip it.
Jensen Ackles has a strong masculine presentation. I love his masculinity and that he doesn’t act like a jerk about it. He is quite handsome with his beard, ball cap, cowboy boots, and jeans. He also seems like a genuinely nice guy, not some arrogant male, from what I have seen of him from Supernatural conventions. Maybe that is enough to make him psychologically “safe” for some women so they can become fans.
Others have had to feminize him to make him into an object that they could be a fan of. Judging from some of the responses I got, many of his fans admire him because they already see him as feminized. This is a “good” thing for them. He has been determined to be a good “safe” non-threatening woke feminist male.
These fans argue that Jensen is fine with being feminized because he has joked about being submissive to his wife (the boss) and openly plays dress-up with his daughters. They point to Jensen, in recent years, being much more open to posing with fans holding gay and bisexual flags (assuming that gay and bi-sexual men are feminine).
All those things are fine, but some female fans go much further. They write fanfiction about his character, Dean Winchester, from Supernatural which turns him into a feminine “omega” male that can be impregnated by a dominant “alpha” male. They write stories that feature him wearing women’s panties and develop plot lines that place Dean into sexually submissive positions (sometimes as a sex slave) to other men (usually Castiel, the angel character on the show, or to Dean’s brother Sam).
I have read some submissive omega Dean male pregnancy stories. And, yes, they are amusing. I love pregnant omega Dean, as a guilty pleasure. However, I’m not so sure Jensen himself would approve. He might be a little freaked out by all that, despite the straight face he puts on at Supernatural conventions. I’m sure he knows but doesn’t seem to want to talk about it. I know he doesn’t want to offend the fans, but some fans are so obnoxious.
Some fans even write RPF (real person fiction) of Jensen in sexual relationships, with him in the submissive role, with his other male co-stars. This feminizing of Jensen is not based on any real-world information, but on fans’ subjective projections of how they construct him in their minds, fantasies, and stories. These fans apparently project those qualities into Jensen’s personality as a man and an actor. No wonder they keep wanting to dress Jensen up in women’s panties and turn him into a pregnant omega, so they can feel “safe” with him and still be a fan. Masculine men scare the woke feminists.
Final thought:
Based on those Twitter responses, we can conclude two things:
- This (woke) form of storytelling is congenial to them. Beat the man down so the woman can stand up. Women can only be strong when men are weak and ineffective.
- Jensen as a feminized man would find such treatment acceptable, even laudable because he already is the “simp,” the safe feminist man.
When the new season starts, we will see how the writers handle Beau Arlen as a character. I hope they let him be a strong masculine character to interact with other strong female characters and don’t do the whole “we have to break his balls” to let her be empowered in comparison. Jensen is such a talented actor. I would hate to see the writers do that to his character. But if they don’t, there will be part of the audience cheering them on.
Post Script
This whole post started out with a silly observation of a curious writerly decision on a network TV show. Why does the manly sheriff not know how to fix his own truck and has to have a woman help him (which, incidentally, was never clarified). Why did the writers make that decision to present this character that way? My first thought was, oh shit, this is going to be some Woke feminist show that insists on demeaning male characters and rendering them helpless and needing to be rescued by strong women. Basically, depowering or feminizing men, so women can be strong and masculine in their place.
I first noticed this aspect of Woke feminism back in 2021 (this had been going on for a while, but I had not been paying much attention at the time). I was planning on writing a blog post about gay men writing fanfiction. I tried asking some questions in a Facebook group about how fanfiction written by gay men was different from fanfiction written by women. Fanfiction is overwhelmingly written by women. These women let me know that they considered my questions to be transphobic and misogynistic. They got really nasty and banned me from their Facebook group. It took me a while to figure out how I had offended them so much. I had stumbled into a nest of Woke feminism.
Two things seemed to piss them off the most. First, many of them didn’t like being addressed as women. They had transcended the oppressive gender binary in some way and to be called a woman was offensive to them. They may have been “assigned female at birth,” but now they identify as non-binary, gender fluid, some version of trans, or have some alternative sexuality, and so forth. I had no chance of being taken seriously. They were looking to be offended.
Second, for many of these “Woke women,” gay men, especially of the “cis” variety, were now considered to be just another flavor of oppressive male toxicity. As long as gay men stayed passive and feminine, good feminist men, they were acceptable, but if you get out of line, and actually advocate for men (even the gay male variety—and their phobic “fetish for genital preferences”) was intolerable to them. Anything that shined a spotlight on something male, to celebrate it, had to be shut down. It’s like I was trying to empower these gay men. A big no, no.
It’s not surprising that in these “women’s” fanfiction (they love writing gay male/male slash fanfiction—putting Jensen into all kinds of demoralizing sexual positions) and showing him as the good gay man who was emotional and sensitive, often pregnant by his “alpha” mate, who needed to be saved from sexual abuse, and have lots of hot gay sex for these not-women “women” to be aroused by.
So, now that season three of Big Sky has concluded, how did it turn out? I’m happy that the writers of Big Sky largely avoided going Woke. They let Jensen be masculine and assertive and not subordinated to powerful Woke women as their lackey. Other than some cringy emotional “fatherly” moments (mostly a product of bad dialogue) Jensen’s masculinity remained relatively unscathed. Some Woke feminists would be pissed.
In one episode the manly sheriff jumps on a motorcycle and chases a bad guy bank robber, who had kidnapped the deputy, which prompted me to tweet:
“All right! Beau/Jensen being all manly on a motorcycle. The woke feminists must hate that. They like their men all soft and weak. But you did get the bumbling inept male deputy who has to be saved by a strong woman as consolation.”
The sheriff’s deputy did end up being the butt of a few jokes. His character was obviously meant as the “comic relief.” I did enjoy the Beau/Poppernak male banter, especially because it annoyed the Hoyt character, and the little jabs at “strong” women who are unable to make good sandwiches, unlike the man who owns the dinner.
The writers could have easily reduced Beau to a failure as a father and as another example of male toxicity and an irritant to women. The show makes a lot out of Beau struggling to be a good dad. This is hardly a feminist narrative where traditional ideas of fatherhood (and motherhood) are typically rejected by Woke feminists as sexist and oppressive to women.
The writers did occasionally put Jensen on display as a male sex object on a few occasions (they did manage to keep his shirt on though) knowing that some women would enjoy seeing him as a sex object to be commented on.
That’s not to say that we didn’t get some other demeaned and emasculated male characters (notably Walter and Donno). Those characters started out as creepy, but the writers surprisingly let them become sympathetic in the end. Even potentially heroic. These men had to escape from female domination.
The character of Sonny (played by Reba McEntire) who dominated her husband and sons was the real Woke bearer of the feminist message.
When the season was coming to its big finale, when Buck was revealed to be the real villain, I tweeted:
“Who will get the ‘kill shot’ and bring down the ‘bad guy’ Buck at the finale of Big Sky? How Woke will the ending be? Will it go to a woman? A minority? Will it stick to a more traditional ending and give it to a man? Beau, Jenny, Cassie, Cormac, Sonny, Poppernak?”
They gave the kill shot to a strong woman Sonny (and a villain in her own right, even though they tried to redeem her in the end as noble and self-sacrificing). That should excite the Woke feminists.
The character of Sonny is the big feminist score here. She is a strong independent female (who turns out to be a monster in the end). Of course, Woke feminists would not read her character that way. She is a female character that is cold and calculating and kills her weak (yet toxic) and disobedient man. This would be seen as a win for them (and they did get a white man kill after all). That should bring them some joy.
Of the other men subjected to her domination, her son Walter is portrayed as insufficiently human and potentially dangerous (the feminist archetype of all men), and thus in need of his mother (women) to restrain the harm he might do. This Woke feminist reading (of keeping male danger under control) inevitably results in “the mother” becoming corrupted into a monster. Despite Woke motivations, these (supposed) female heroes end up becoming villains.
The writers seem to be aware of this Woke feminist pitfall, in that the show incorporates other “bad mothers” to contrast Sonny with (Hoyt’s scheming mother and maybe Beau’s ex-wife), both of whom endanger their own daughters (so the daughters get a chance to act heroic as strong women?). One wonders if the mother destroying her own children (motherhood as a bad thing) is the Woke version of the male harming women through enforcing patriarchal gender roles?
Making women strong by enfeebling men, inevitably makes women into monsters. If there is a Woke message, then it seems to have happened despite the writer’s attempt to avoid imposing Woke ideology on male characters (the sheriff’s manliness remains intact, Walter is redeemed in the end and gains a brother, Donno finds a woman who loves him even though he is creepy and awkward). The writers rather carry its potential Woke themes on the domineering women. The Sonny character then is the true realization of Woke feminism. She is the strong woman that turns into a monster in order to keep her (defective) men under her control. And Reba played that part very well.
At one point I tweeted this:
“I’m more hopeful now that the Big Sky writers won’t simp up Jensen Ackles’s character Beau Arlen. It’s nice for him to be sensitive and still masculine. Unlike the haters who wanted Beau turned into an inept pussy so the man-hating Woke feminists could cackle over emasculating him.”
You know what, this tweet actually got some likes.
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c. e. hammock 