What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

shiphitsthefan:

There aren’t enough people talking about the use of the word “shim” in 11x15. It’s almost as frustrating and rage-inducing as what happened in the episode, because there are still people out there who don’t understand that it was wrong. Please, please, if you reblog nothing else from my tumblr, share this post.

I’ve already seen someone try and excuse the slur because it came from a demon. “But he’s evil! That makes it okay!” No, that just means the writers were lazy. If you have to use a slur to demonstrate that your character is a villain, you’re doing it wrong.

It doesn’t matter that a demon said it, because it’s more than a line, more than a word–it’s a tool of violence and repression. Hearing that “shim” was used in the episode of a show that literally saved my life sent me in a tailspin. Having your identity invalidated like that hurts, especially after several decades of denying that facet of yourself. There are enough Trumps and Falwells and Putins in the world telling trans folks they’re sick and wrong; we don’t need it from our escape from reality, too.

Somewhere in fandom, there’s a girl struggling to fit in with her jock friends while she grows facial hair she doesn’t want in a body that isn’t hers. There’s a man who doesn’t look like a man, who can’t transition, who still gets mispronouned constantly. There’s an intersex person who uses destructive terminology to berate themselves in their own minds for physical features they had no control over. There’s someone who doesn’t fit neatly into any binary box, who hears slurs and gets sick because they feel as smashed together as those two labels.

There’s me, who heard a loved and trusted grown-up call someone a “shemale” at eight years old, and wasn’t able to confront their own identity for another two decades because of it.

Words can hurt. Slurs can destroy. Language can kill. If we want our fellow fans to always keep fighting, if we want them to know they are not alone, then we can neither support nor justify the use of terminology specifically created to alienate them.

Don’t sweep this under the rug. Stand up. You could save a life.

  1. oftenrunaway said: Four years later and im wondering if anyone was ever able to actually see the episode transcript. Fandom bent itself into a knot trying to excuse or rationalize this swiftly under the proverbial rug where carver hid Charlie’s body. I actually left the show completely within a year of this airing. I think this may’ve been the point where I started falling out of love with spn and its family. The fact that something so vulgar prompted 0 clarification from TPtB is telling.
  2. theythemsam-archive reblogged this from shiphitsthefan
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  4. andrewisabraveboy said: Jeremy carver had to explain that they meant zhim to be inclusive
  5. mysanthropeic reblogged this from shiphitsthefan and added:
    THANK YOU.
  6. deanstahk reblogged this from shiphitsthefan
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  10. malsmightyfineshindig reblogged this from shiphitsthefan and added:
    JFC, it can’t be that hard for writers who are being paid for their words to PROPERLY RESEARCH those words before...
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