#not that every character is perfect--but goddamn they really make her the most ableist bitch out there huh

[maschotch]

Sjejfjej your tags abt jj are so funny i love them

Do you hate her for real or is it for funsies? I wanna read more abt your opinions on her youre cool

ahhhhhh ok i know people are gonna hate me for this but honestly fuck it 

this is way longer than i thought it was gonna be so its going under a read-more

tw self harm, homophobia, suicide mention

jj had never been my favorite. i think she could’ve been cool? maybe?? idk like she’s the only one on the team with blue eyes so thats already a red flag. then as soon as she becomes a mom, they make that her entire personality--suddenly identifying with and empathizing with mothers that... i guess she didnt?? before?? like now for some reason she’s able to understand what they’re going through as if she was just pretending to care before and didn’t really give a shit. she has suuuuch white centrist pro-life energy. but i decided i full on hated her in the episode in season 10: the itch

essentially the premise is that a bunch of people have various mental illness that makes them feel real or imagined pain, and from that come nightmarish delusions like bugs crawling in their skin. a lot of these are so horrible that people will self harm, either willingly or subconsciously. the unsub obviously takes this way too far and starts killing people, etc, but he makes a friend: someone who doesn’t know about the murders and killings but who identifies with his suffering and paranoia and they bond over showing their scars from self harm. it’s clearly an extremely emotional vulnerable moment for her and she’s spent her whole life embarrassed by her condition.

so eventually they find and interrogate this girl (again: she has no idea about the murders). she refuses to talk, so jj and kate take a different approach. they know that the closer to the truth they get, she’ll grow more uncomfortable, and the more uncomfortable she gets, she’ll scratch herself. they force this woman, who’s been manipulated by the unsub to further distrust the government, into self harming--something we see has been a lifelong issue and source of shame. and they take advantage of it. and they laugh about it.

after the whole ordeal and they find the guy save the victim etc etc jj is dropping off the girl. and she has the audacity to be mad when the girl isn’t thanking them for it. this girl was already wary of the government and instead of trying to gain her trust or explain things to her, they instantly resort to exploiting her mental illness and rely on her hurting herself to get what they need out of her. the girl feels rightfully exploited and violated, definitely traumatized by being put in that situation. criminal minds has always been a #copaganda show so its easy for viewers to forget how genuinely frightening and outright dangerous being forcefully detained by law enforcement can be. and jj is mad enough to get out of the car and follow her to her door and essentially demand gratitude.

and these characters aren’t perfect and the writers aren’t perfect and we really could just chalk it up to being a bad criminal minds moment. but hotch, in that same episode dealing with someone who has a similar mental illness with similar levels of paranoia, is able to communicate with that person without forcing her to harm herself. instead he takes the opposite approach and give her something he knows soothes it. so it’s not just a case of “whoops guess the writers blew it on this one” because they did just fine with it earlier. and for some reason jj’s upset that this girl was traumatized by how they took advantage of her. this whole show that’s supposedly about empathy and understand different kinds of mental illness and jj’s just like “okay but you should know better.” 

i can’t remember what episode this is, but the episode where the 911 operator is kidnapping children and killing their mothers? there’s a mom struggling with severe depression and suicidal thoughts. when she’s going through an extreme suicidal episode, she drops her son off at her mother’s so he doesn’t have to witness any of it: she’s trying to protect him. and again, copaganda show, but they usually do a pretty good job of empathizing with the parent and assuaging their guilt: “it’s not your fault” “you couldn’t have known this was going to happen” “nothing you could’ve done would’ve changed the unsub’s desire to take a child” etc. but instead of showing any of that empathy, even as they’re discussing the case on the plane, jj immediately victim blames her. “how could she just leave her child like that? i’d never do that” and calls her a bad mother. which i mean sure she’s probably not number one mom on the planet but she has a severe mental illness and we see derek and spencer explore the house later and realize that, despite her depression, she keeps the house easy for a child to navigate independently. she obviously loves her son very much and, as we explicitly hear throughout the episode, the kid loves his mom too, even if he’s concerned for her safety. he has no illusions: he knows his mom is depressed and he knows she goes through hard periods and instead of resenting her, he just wants to be there for her and keep her from hurting herself. despite her illness she provides for him and supports him and makes sure she has happy memories no matter how she feels about herself.

when jj is talking with her (to be fair: doing her job and trying to see if she had anything to do with her child’s disappearance), she has such “I’m an Empath” moments. the mom, only thinking of getting her child back and being extremely cooperative and explaining what exactly happened that day, says she was having one of her bad days and just wasn’t capable of taking every step to insure the child’s safety: dropping him off was something she’d done before, the child knows the drill by now, she has no reason to believe he wasn’t capable of going inside grandma’s house on his own. (in fact the only reason he didn’t was because he trusted the man who took him: it didn’t matter if the grandma knew he was coming or not, the guy was going to get him anyway) but jj, empath extraordinaire, says “i understand these bad days that you have, i really do” despite clearly not understanding the severity of the mom’s illness. it was genuinely all she could do to drop him off and protect him in the only way she knew how. and jj’s thrown for a loop when the mom rolls back her sleeves and shows the multiple self harm scars. jj still doesn’t understand and still blames her for her child being taken, something that they almost never do on this show. i’m hard pressed to think of another time they ever do that.

but you know who also doesn’t like the mom and thinks the child would be better off without her? the unsub who kills her. not a peep from jj on that one.

to be fair both of these topics are extremely personal to me, because of my own expriences with self harm and depression and suicide, and my family history of the illnesses referenced that jj belittles. so i may be biased and more offended than i should be, but i’m still justified bc jj’s still clearly in the wrong

both of these are cases of jj disregarding, exploiting, or mocking mental illness. ableism, put bluntly. so rewatching the show (as i’ve done many times over :^)) and bearing that in mind, it’s suddenly easy to see the ways she’s behaved similarly throughout the show. she’s always the first one to make fun of spencer. and even though morgan is just as willing to joke around, morgan also makes it clear that he’s messing around. when spencer seems hurt by something, morgan goes “i’m just playin” and talks it out with him. jj just shuts him down or cuts him off and has no trouble telling everyone they interact with just how annoying he is, even when that person is genuinely interested in what he’s saying. and a lot of these instances are played off as hashtag girlboss moments but its at spencer’s expense every time.

it’s not just that either. she’s insensitive across the board. she will be IN THE ROOM with spencer/derek/hotch and say something like “i guess we all turn out like our fathers in the end” or “the abuse is always cyclical and there’s no escape”. she knows about their issues with their fathers/father figures (or in hotch’s case, what’s been implied that she apparently hasn’t picked up on) and will still repeat common insecurities and lifelong concerns abuse victims have about becoming their abuser. she repeats these misconceptions even when she’s supposed to be a profiler and should know better by now.

jj had potential. she really really did. but they absolutely butchered her character and while also making her suuuuper disrespectful to everyone else. they really love their white feminism girlboss moments on this show (elle and emily are not immune from this) but while elle’s moments are about supporting women and defending herself, and emily’s moments are about embracing her sexuality and quipping at men (again--these aren’t great in context either), jj’s is about identifying with toxic masculinity and making fun of neurodivergence.

jj as a character had potential. she really did. but they kept flip flopping on who her character was. when she became a mom she was a completely different person. when she came back in season 7 she wanted to be a profiler, despite her saying she would never want to do that in earlier seasons. she doesn’t have a personality because they give her a new one every couple seasons, so she’s difficult to identify with outside of her white feminist moments and ableism.

there were so many moments that they could’ve expanded on. like how the episodes about her romantic life are frequently linked with their “gay” episodes and how she always seems especially invested in cases involving violent homophobia. it would’ve been so so interesting if in “in heat” she would’ve come out as lesbian (something i always think they should’ve done!! especially when they have will explicitly say he would be understanding if something like that happened). so at this point i just think she’s a lesbian who grew up with such traditional moral values that she cannot shake so she just stays so deep in the closet that she won’t even admit it to herself. that makes her character so much more interesting to me and i have a lot of thoughts on ways she’s projected that onto her female friends who she kinda falls in love with--the closeted lesbian experienceTM. but i really can’t just ignore all the undeniable ableism: it’s so deeply ingrained in her character--one of the few traits that lasts all show for her.

i’m sure there are more things that i’ve left out and i’m sure @t4thotchniss can help me out because we’ve been talking about this for years but this is already so long i’m not gonna try to think of the rest of it. yeah jj just has those white feminist pinterest mom vibes. honestly it’s almost enough for me to stop watching the show, and episodes with her as the focus are always ones i skip on my rewatch because i just can’t stand her. her only saving grace is that she’s hot