John Winchester, The Dursleys, and Abuse

themothandthestars:

ohgodnotthisperson:

Or, why do people readily accept that the Dursleys abused Harry, but remain on the fence about whether or not John Winchester abused his sons?

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But we do have some circumstantial evidence that John is physically abusive, at least to Dean. Granted, we have to look at it from two points of view at once-that of the audience who knows werewolves are real, and that of a social worker who may or may not-but, in Bad Boys, young Dean’s forearms are clearly covered in grab marks. Human sized grab marks.

As an audience member, we know werewolves don’t work that way-had Dean actually been captured by a were, he’d be in bloody ribbons. (We know from previous encounters that they don’t think like humans, don’t reach and grab, and a wild animal goes for the soft spots, after all, and if it can reach your forearms, it can reach your belly or throat.)

As a Responsible Adult, as we’re supposed to assume Sunny is, along with any social worker who should be seeing Dean at this point, if I’d seen a kid with those marks, with that story-literally replacing a real life monster with the big bad wolf?-John would not be leaving with his sons at the end of the day.

Either Dean is lying, or Dean is lying, and I can’t honestly think of many supernatural baddies that would grab a kid by their arms, and not leave any other marks.

Now, on John and the Dursleys, I think you missed an important point: John’s attractive. Either as Matt Cohen or Jeffry Dean Morgan, there’s a nice sized chunk of fandom who’ll happily expound about his appearance, and, to be blunt, the Dursleys have been described and portrayed as all the worst sorts of ugly-namely fat, but w/e. Just like we don’t want to think of our Hero as being a child abuser, we have issues thinking of a handsome man the same way.