Tragic role model deficit strikes boys
Well that takes the biscuit.
A former Doctor Who actor has hit out at the BBC’s decision to cast Jodie Whittaker in the role, saying that the decision meant there is “a loss of a role model for boys”.
Peter Davison said she is a “terrific actress” but that he has doubts that she is right for the role.
He said before an appearance at at Comic-Con in San Diego: “If I feel any doubts, it’s the loss of a role model for boys who I think Doctor Who is vitally important for.”
I see – so it’s only boys who should have role models. Girls should just be passive blobs, with no goals, no choices, no aspirations, nothing to do or achieve – they just wait to grow up and be taken over by whatever role-model-enhanced boy decides he needs his own passive blob to fuck.
Boys need role models because they’re real people, who have to grow up and do something in the world. Girls don’t, because they’re not real people, they’re just mindless lumps of flesh.
Also, it’s not enough that boys have had and still have thousands of role models already. No, it’s urgent that all role models should remain role models for boys and boys only forever, while girls do without, because after all, what hope is there for a girl?
It’s not enough that boys have had the Doctor as a role model since 1963, no, that’s not enough, they have to go on having him forever, while girls stand on the sidelines where they belong.
Stay in your lane, girls.
I’ve only ever watched the first series of Doctor Who, with William Hartnell and I thought he was a role model for eccentric old geezers, not boys.
I don’t like Dr. Who at all, maybe saw 1.5 episodes in total spread across at least 4 viewings, but it does strike me as the ideal character to become a woman every once in a while, what with the whole reincarnation thing (is that what they call it?).
I sort of see the point that it’s weird to change the gender of existing fictional characters, especially since it shouldn’t be too difficult to just shelve many of the old ones and come up with a bunch of interesting new ones, but if _ever_ there was a character ultimately suited to changing race or gender over time, surely it would be the Doctor.
I suppose, if role models have to be of the same sex, then there’s some loss for boys in having one less for Jodie Whitaker’s time in the role. But yeah – it’s not remotely as though they’re suffering overall.
For that matter, with a male companion, they’ll have in Doctor Who an underrepresented male role model now: a man who follows and supports a woman. That’s certainly a male role model that is both gravely needed and rarely seen, and will reward boys with a niche that can keep them out of toxic masculinity and show them one entirely healthy way to relate to women.
And – it’s a lifelong hope of mine – maybe, just maybe, the sexual fluidity of the Doctor underlined by an actress finally playing the part may loosen up the sex-based role model paradigm anyway. It’s a problem that kids have a harder time adopting role models of the opposite sex, and it shouldn’t be an eternal truth. Go on, boys – look at a woman taking charge and responsibility and making great things happen and think “I can do that!”, right beside your sisters. Sex shouldn’t matter for aspirations any more than models, and with people of varying sexes occupying the same model space, maybe it will matter even a little less.
I ditto Jeff. Males need female role models who model women that don’t wait on men, that don’t consider male needs automatically the most important, that don’t sit back and let men tell them what to do. They need female role models who are not sexualized toys for men, or unpaid labor for men. And they need to see that when a woman assumes a role that is not all about making men happy, the world does not come to an end. And that men can still be happy, and maybe happier, having partners who are intellectually, socially, politically, and financially their equals.
If anyone wants to feel a bit outraged, check out Pharyngula. He has put up a cartoon in which the Democratic party is being skewered. In his commentary on the cartoon, he references the white male ignoring the brown skinned “person” and going to the beach. Since said brown-skinned “person” also happens to be a woman, I think it relates to this…and to the various other conversations we’ve been having around here about the erasing of women from the equation.
I think it might be time to give up on PZ. Much as I enjoy his frequent skewerings of EvoPsych, he’s starting to get on my nerves.
Iknklast, my last PZ straw was his cowardly treatment of the Tuvel affair—going after the woman’s defenders for using the ‘witch hunt’ metaphor, since there are still *real* witch hunts!!!!eleventy!, along with letting the very same smug asshats what drove Ophelia from the site to crow about having done so.
(Incidentally, I am willing to bet PZ and his fans still say that they’re ‘starving’, when they’re really only mildly hungry, despite all the people around the world who really are starving to death even as I type. But that doesn’t seem to matter, because fuck bitches in general and fuck Obitchia Bitchson in bitchticular, amirite?)
These excuses really are transparently silly, aren’t they? As Ophelia points out, the Doctor has been a role model for (geeky) boys since, well, since I was one. And seriously, the *character* changes with each regeneration — Tom Baker is not Peter Davison is not Christopher Eccles is not Peter Capaldi is not etc. Every actor has brought his own interpretation to the persona — all variations on a theme. Why not try a female interpretation, if only for a change?
OMG! You’re proposing the mass emasculation of all boys everywhere for all time! Feminizing society will lead to boys going to jail on rape charges for just taking what the woman offers with her drunken passed out body! Feminization is the evil of all evils, and must be stopped at all costs! If we don’t listen to CHS, we will all diiiiiiieeeeeee! Because there will be no one to hunt the mammoth, build the cities, fix the cars, create the next best thing like the internet, and in general make sure the ladies don’t run amok with their lady parts! Is that what you REALLY want? Chaos? Anarchy? Tupperware parties?
Geez, I am so, so, so sick of the whole nonsense of hating women.
Seth, I declined to read that. I quit reading PZ’s ruminations on trans issues about the time of the great OB purge. He always says the same thing, no matter what. He’s predictable, and he lacks nuance in his thinking.
But but boys had X number of role models before, now they have X-1! Can’t you see?!? Minus!
#2
Regeneration. And yes, he – she soon – is completely suitable to changing sex, as it is already a part of canon that that species can change sex through regeneration. As well as complete personality changes… hopefully the writers don’t take this as their cue to change the Docor’s personality to a bunch of female stereotypes.
Iknklast, although it pains me to say this, I think that you’ve mis-read PZ a little. His reference to the white guys relates to the man and woman who are celebrating, so the ‘guys’ is as non-gender specific as is ‘person’. This is, of course, because of the rather conflicting ideas that a) there are no male-female genders, just a spectrum of genders, b) that gender is a social construct and as such does not exist in any real way, and c) that one should not assume a person’s gender from visual clues and therefore should refer to people by gender neutral nouns and pronouns unless their gender identities are known – even when those people are cartoon people, apparently.
So PZ was just being nice to the brown woman by not presuming to know her gender identity and thereby not offending a possibly transgender cartoon character. That’s because PZ is ideologically pure, y’see, whilst the rest of us are either consciously or unconsciously transphobes.
He’s been getting on my nerves for a while now. He doesn’t seem to see his own hypocricy brought on by his desire to be the purest of the pure, so for example he laughs at the religious concept of humans being born in a state of sin, but has no problem stating that all white people are racist, therefore tacitly implying that all white people are born in a state of racism.
Jeff Engel’s point @3 about the companion role is a good one.
Traditionally, the Doctor’s “companion” (or assistant, or whatever) is a contemporary Earth woman. The new series has stuck to this pretty rigidly — there’s (almost?) always been a 21st century British woman on the team, with occasionally an “extra” companion who might be male and/or nonhuman. The companion’s role is to be the audience’s perspective on things. In badly written Who episodes, the companion’s role is to ask questions that allow the Doctor to engage in exposition, and then go get themselves captured so the Doctor can save her, but the new series has been pretty good about having the companions be more pro-active and capable.
Anyway, since it’s easier to relate to a fellow 21st century human than to an alien time-traveler with vast scientific knowledge and a magic box, the companion is really a much more plausible role model for most boys. And having a female Doctor hopefully opens up the companion role for a man.
Holms @12, we’ll see how the writers handle it, but I think the approach with the most promise is to have the 13th Doctor mostly carry on like her predecessors, only to encounter a lot of push back on things that were never issues before. Like “Hey, why do you wear basically the same outfit all the time?” and “wait, why are we taking orders from you?”
Screechy, re:
‘… I think the approach with the most promise is to have the 13th Doctor mostly carry on like her predecessors, only to encounter a lot of push back on things that were never issues before. Like “Hey, why do you wear basically the same outfit all the time?” and “wait, why are we taking orders from you?”.
This really _does_ have promise…
Among the possible resolutions: leave the grumbling companion behind. To hell with this, goodbye, enjoy your life in Maynard Keynes. Recall Ecclestone’s Doctor did that once with one turned out to have ethical issues. And always kinda liked his interpretation for, among other things, just that kinda attitude.
I mostly stopped reading Pharyngula two years ago. It was a combination of: I’d been reading it for about 10 years and there’s a natural boredom that sets in; the Horde were becoming increasingly obnoxious; I realized I was spending a lot of time on blogs in general that could be used more productively (part of which was: going back to school meant I didn’t have that kind of free time to waste). L’affaire Ophelia was the last straw. So, there was a Great Cull in my RSS subs.
The celery Doctor has betrayed us!
More seriously though, The Master had a female reincarnation in around the time of the 10th Doctor IIRC; what’s the big deal?
iknklast, you remind me of the old feminist tee shirt that read, “Ladies Tea and Terrorist Society.” Change the question marks to exclamation points and you’ve got a motto for some very interesting revolutionaries: Chaos! Anarchy! Tupperware parties!
I’d buy that T-shirt. Laughing out loud here.
So Tristan Farnon is concerned about proper role models for boys, is he? ROLE MODELS????
I can hear Robert Hardy screaming at him right now. And up he jumps, guilty and terrified …
Ha! I was having very reproachful thoughts about dear Tristan.
Yes, well if a floppy eared bunny can be a role model for boys, why not a woman?
I thritto Jeff.
Why can’t boys look up to women? Why is that such a strange concept?
Boys can only find admirable qualities in men? (Men of the same ethnicity?) Says who?
And even if the Doctor is ruined as a role model now because boys are blind to women (?), I guess that leaves them only 27,803 fictional characters to choose from. (I counted them all.)
“underrepresented male role model now: a man who follows and supports a woman”
Rory did a reasonable job of that (though he did have his own career as a nurse)
No no, you see, a woman can’t be a role model for boys, because she’s a woman – she’s not the default. Only men are the default so only men can be Universal Role Models. Women are the weird exception, and that doesn’t translate.
Hang on, one of my greatest role models was my mother. I’m pretty sure she was a woman.
AoS, given the ‘rules’ about gender identity are you sure about that? You might like to check.
Rob, her birth certificate says ‘female’ and I definitely recall her being pregnant with my two youngest brothers (I don’t think it was padding but best not rule it out) and saw her breastfeed them (but can’t rule out some clever plumbing and prosthetics), I assumed she was a woman. However, as I’d need the services of a medium to ask her directly, and further, with her ashes being 25 years in the ground ruling out any physical examination, I guess I’ll never really know.
Unless……now where did I put that Ouija board?
Acolyte of Sagan – you have fallen for an age-old fallacy there. Just because pregnancy is coded ultra-feminine doesn’t mean it’s a female thing. I now this is true because I read it on Everyday Feminism:
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/02/messages-trans-men-pregnancy/
Goddammit, have you any idea what it’s going to cost to to have ‘possibly but by no means certainly added’ before ‘mother and grandmother’ on the gravestone?