Geek Culture, Writing and Other Junk from Writer C. A. Wilke
 
FFS, Stop complaining about The Doctor as a woman

FFS, Stop complaining about The Doctor as a woman

Seriously, though. This complaint is as annoying as it is sexist. And, as far as canon for The Doctor goes, it’s just plain stupid. I’ve seen some rather stupid stuff, just in the little time I’ve spent online since the new Doctor was announced, stupid stuff that damages my hope for humanity a little. Stuff like this dumbass pink telephone box. Like REALLY?!?! That is beyond childish and sexist. Grow the hell up.

Okay, not that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let’s get a little more detailed on why I’m so vehement about this.

“But The Doctor is male. You can’t just change genders like that. Not even Timelords do that.”

First off, wrong. The most obvious pointer for this being wrong is Missy, the current incarnation of The Master currently played by Michelle Gomez. While it is true that The Master has done some crazy-assed shit over his crazy-assed existence, regenerating into a woman was probably the LEAST crazy-assed. And personally, I think Missy is a seriously awesome character and one of the best incarnations of that villain.

But let’s put that aside for a moment. I could see an argument could be made (though pathetically) that because The Master has shown that he can actually possess a human, that this is somewhat reasonable, making Missy the exception to the rule. The fact is, though, that there was another Timelord who had at least one regeneration from male to female: The Corsair.

Two years before Missy sets foot on the Timey-Wimey stage, The Doctor, Amy and Rory are called to a pocket of space outside the known universe in the episode titled The Doctor’s Wife. There, they discover several Hypercubes (or Tesseracts), which act as the last form of communication from a Timelord. One of those Hypercubes is from The Corsair, a friend of The Doctor’s. The Doctor then wistfully recalls a time when The Corsair had regenerated into a woman, clearly marking it as a not unheard of occurrence.

“Yeah, but The Doctor has always been male, shouldn’t he always be male?”

My question for this is “Why?” If it’s already been shown that per canon that a Timelord CAN regenerate into a woman, then why shouldn’t it happen once in awhile? The fact is, for the last twelve regenerations, The Doctor has been a white male. To be honest, it seems just as odd to me that all of his regenerations have been white as they’ve all been male. After all, regeneration is supposed to be a complete rewriting of genetic code.

“But our boys need male role models that don’t solve problems with beating people up.”

Of all the arguments I’ve heard, this is the most thought out. For me, though, it still does not hold water. First off, I go back to the argument that canonically, it can happen. But let’s look at the why in this instance: Because our boys need non-combative role models. What about representation for our girls? I do see this point and I agree that far too many of the “heroes” portrayed in TV and film are fist-first thinkers, that’s not a valid argument against The Doctor as a woman. Just because there is a deficit in one area, in this case smart, well-reasoned male heroes who solve problems without blowing things up, does not mean there has to be a deficit in another, this case being smart, strong well-reasoned female heroes who solve problems without blowing things up.

We have had twelve (thirteen counting the War Doctor) male Doctors who fill this role and zero females. You can’t the issues with how male heroes are portrayed by continuing to not work on the issues of showing female heroes. Yes, you could TRY to make the argument that the showrunners are taking away a good male hero, but then it goes back to the fact that there were already TWELVE versions of that. You want to fix the way male heroes are represented? Great, address those that are problematic but don’t suppress representation of female heroes to do it.

Now, in my opinion, if you have any other argument left, they boil down to just one thing… YOU didn’t get the kind of Doctor YOU wanted, and that makes YOU angry.

You know what I say to that? Tough shit.

Or, as the Sixth Doctor put it…

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