round and round the winchesters go

You’re correct. Dean is, unlike Barney, trying to be safe and not be carted off to a hospital for d-lusions or such things, in most cases. (The same as Castiel is, by keeping it quiet that he’s a fallen angel, when Reaper!April pursues him.) That’s why he’s lying, a lot of the time, and there really isn’t much of an option to tell the truth, in those cases. (That type of agent, an FBI agent, isn’t the one I was talking about.)

But that’s not all cases. And some of the lies he chooses, are purposefully people he knows women would sleep with for specific reasons, even if they wouldn’t sleep with him. The example of pretending to be an agent, to prey on actresses who think he can help them in the industry, is one of those. He could lie and say “Hey, I’m a mechanic” and that would be different, than saying “Hey, I’m a banker” or “Hey, I’m an agent” or “Hey, I’m a [insert affluent job here]” because he thinks that’s who women are after.In that, he is doing exactly what Barney does. Lying to get them to sleep with him, even if they didn’t want to sleep with him. He’s coercing their agreement to sleeping with someone he isn’t, with some form of awareness that they wouldn’t have said yes if he hadn’t posed as what he did. That isn’t consent–we haven’t seen, specifically, someone withdraw consent the way Castiel did to the Reaper, but that doesn’t change, that his conduct is that of a rapist. Because that is #Rape by Deception. It’s not about ‘lying about your job’. It’s about knowing that if you hadn’t lied, they wouldn’t have agreed, and choosing your lies for that reason. I don’t think he knows it’s rape, as I said, because most people don’t, but he does know it’s wrong.Furthermore: the example in 2x15 implies that he slept with a woman so drunk she was choking on her own v-m-t and swaying and forgetting words, which has nothing to do with deception, but is another form of rape. And, Dean checked before they worked a case in a high school which students were ‘legal’. He ogled men and women half his age at a college. Those are, again, actions of a rapist like Barney Stinson.Does that help? Is it easier to understand now?

I wouldn’t. I don’t think he isn’t, by a lot of metrics, including my own a lot of the time. And I never argue something I don’t think is true, not ever, even if it would “help my case”. (I would, argue, it’s still probably the best relationship either has ever had. But that sad statement, relative to other relationships on other shows that aren’t defined by such frameworks and get to be healthier, is on Supernatural for setting up the situation they set up to begin with for them all. Among other things.)

I would argue, I also don’t think it exists in a vacuum. I don’t think it’s organically part of his character anymore. I think it is a box he wants to break out of, that the writers are forcing him back into, repeatedly, so as to prolong the series by making the journey towards a satisfying ending full of growth stretch out. (A good bit of this, is forcing his toxic relationship with Sam to stay the same so that people will keep tuning in for the same, stale Brothers Shit, which makes it impossible for them ever to have healthy individual lives themselves.)

I would point out how the narrative has established lots of opportunities for him to learn from that and make amends and change, lots of opportunities of him wanting to, and then, for cash-grabbing, terrible writing reasons, as per literally everything else they do, they’ve fucked it up, and he has stagnated and regressed and stayed the same, because they won’t follow through. They never follow through, especially when it comes to Dean’s relationships and Dean’s own personal growth. (So typically, fandom does it for them. We can see the box. He is not shaped like said box anymore. We write what would happen if they opened it and let him step out. They keep him inside it by sheer force of institutionally-empowered will.)

(I would also point out how many borderline abusive tropes [violence, neglect ala ignoring phone calls to enhance misunderstandings or whatever, lil semi-insulting banter, etc.] have been used in straight pairings that have then been followed through with, and ended happily and healthily because they began with a mutual reaction to each other and respect for consent. I would point out that more often than not, the use of them to begin with, is a symptom of attempted dramatization [especially in focal romantically-coded relationships] and suspense and comic relief and such. 

And then I’d point out that Supernatural is not a good enough show to do any of that delicately–keeping the characters’ verisimilitude in mind and treating them like people instead of devices, instead of making it hit like a hammer. Particularly with the irritating, artificially mischaracterizing addition of queerbaiting, that revokes most amounts of emotionally sincere, character- and relationship-related progress that typically follows dramatized violence and/or arguing and such, in many other pairings.

The latter is definitely a huge part of said box, and, the biggest part of the reason that Dean is repeatedly written as abusive, to me, instead of just like fighting with Cas or whatever, in a healthy fashion that will be resolved [see: Buffy and Angel], is because the resolution part, requires dealing with what they’ve established between them as part of their relationship, while the tension, confusion, mistrust, and separation tropes and the like, lets it perennially remain, unresolved, and “not too gay”.)

Why do people listen to Chris Brown or Beatles music? Why do queer people watch Ender’s Game? Why do kink haters still watch queer stuff that includes kink (like QaF)? How can you watch the Oscars if you’re not an abled cishet white dude when it’s that fucking gross to everyone else, yourself included? How do you read fic from an author you don’t like as a person? How can you as an abuse survivor sing along to Blank Space and Pretty When You Cry? How can you as a rape survivor engage with anything a rapist has been in ever? 

How is it possible to like a thing when you don’t like every single fucking person or concept involved in it because OBVIOUSLY this is a zero sum game and you’re a queer woman who hates a misogynist homophobe for playing a work in progress complex misogynist homophobe under the control of the writers and of fictional rules who’s fighting to keep him that way for ten years, you lost, can’t like Supernatural at all anymore. Choose something else, exile yourself from yet more places both socially and systematically, it’ll make you happier. 

#Sarcasm.

Literal. Exact. Same.