Shame on you and good luck to you
Charming headline:
Doctor Who’s first 60th anniversary special is a Terf’s worst nightmare
Yay let’s throw stones at radical feminists some more.
Doctor Who not only has a trans character, but an entire trans storyline – and not even that, but trans joy.
What’s trans joy? Misery that identifies as joy?
Rose as a character isn’t simply put there to make up a quota, Doctor Who thought her identity is worth celebrating – her being who she is literally saves the world.
Sounds like a plausible plotline.
Doctor Who has always had a massive queer fanbase; it has always been progressive, and showrunner Russell already had a quote ready for the people who predictably will have an issue over this.
Speaking at a press event ahead of the episode airing, he said he knew there were some people ‘full of absolute hate, and venom, and destruction and violence who would like to see that sort of thing wiped off the screen entirely.’
Oh yes, that’s us, full of absolute hate, and venom, and destruction and violence. We’ve killed several billion people already.
And to anyone who held those ideals, he declared: ‘Shame on you and good luck to you in your lonely lives.’
What ideals? Hate, and venom, and destruction and violence? No other values are mentioned; that sentence follows immediately on the string of insults. Also “Shame on you and good luck to you” is a bit silly. Make up your mind.
In short it’s a deeply stupid piece; I’d even call it trashy. Trans ideology is undeniably popular but it doesn’t seem to attract the sharpest minds.
H/t Mostly Cloudy
It’s just ever so fun how relentlessly they corrupt and destroy things that used to bring actual joy. At least Doctor Who was already dead, so this is little more than parading a loved one’s corpse around the square.
What’s the trans (MtF) going to do? Eat babies? Punch women in the face/throat? Mutilate children?
Unless it’s misogynistic or anti-LGB, I don’t think anyone cares. Feminist women don’t care that trans people or trans characters exist. That’s never been the issue.
Is the trans character going to be played by a man who claims to be a woman, or is he going to be played by a man, pretending to be a man who claims to be a woman? How will anyone be able to tell the difference?
These days there is a hue and cry if actors don’t match the characters they portray, which kind of defeats the point of acting. I don’t know what they’d demand if a character is male but “comes out” as trans later in the story.
But this got me thinking about trans characters on TV shows. On the show Ally McBeal, which aired from 1997 to 2002, there were at least two trans characters. One was Cindy McCauliff, who was a trans-identified male, who was dating one of the male main characters. Cindy was played by a woman. Another was a gender dysphoric and transvestite man, Stephen/Stephanie, a prostitute, who was mostly referred to using masculine pronouns, and whose issues with gender dysphoria were a primary focus of the episode. Stephanie was played by a man.
Given the nature of the plot points, these casting choices made much sense. A man dealing with gender dysphoria? A male actor. A love interest of a male character, someone he thought was female, turns out to be (“formerly”) male? A female actor. Neither actor “identifies as” trans, though.
Note: not “her” accomplishments, not “her,” values or character, but “her” identity.
Geez, thanks for the spolier alert people! “She” doesn’t have to do anything but exist to save world! That and claim to be something “she” isn’t. So there is some actual issues personal character and values involved; Rose’s being a delusional liar saves the world. As if being centered, celebrated, protected, considered sacred, and being valued above all others wasn’t enough. If “she” wasn’t a narcissist before….
“Queer” as in gay, or “queer” as in “spicy straight?” My understanding is that “queer” is still considered a homophobic slur by many gays and lesbians, so tossing the term about outside the hothouse environment of the Gender Studies Department might not be the best move. You might think it shows you’re cool, but for some, it just shows you’re a trendy dickhead. And for something that has “always” been “progressive,” it took how long to have a female Doctor? And one that wasn’t White? That span of decades sounds more like “following” than “leading” to me. How much of that seeming delay was out of fear of fan reaction? Who says that gender identitarianism is progressive? However much it may appear to be in its press clippings, it certainly isn’t so in practice.
How can Russel be sure that his audience isn’t made up more of the gender critical than the gender fawning? The “predictable” reaction might also come from those who feel they’re being beaten about the head with all things trans, and that the show is chasing Twitter fads rather than good storytelling. Is pandering entertaining to those not being pandered to? He might be shocked to find that outside the self-reinforcing bubbles of social media and captured news organizations, few people really care about trans stuff at all, and that when it is an issue or concern, it’s because of its messing with women’s rights.
Wow, this sounds like something that could be said of trans activists with regards to the works of JK Rowling. Nice bit of projection there, Russel. Though with the slow turning of the tide (one hopes), he seems sadly behind the curve, rather than riding the wave.
@3 someone brought up this subject on Ovarit the other day.
https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/514141/the-paradox-of-trans-representation-in-media
If the trans bit in DW was something like Ian M Banks’ culture humanoids changing sex, then that would be all cwl and groovy i.e. sci-fi:)
But I bet it’s not, I bet that DW is pretending that sex changing is actually a thing in the real world; no ‘suspension of disbelief’ required.
Just shoot me!
bascule
I can’t remember who it was now, but many years ago I saw an interview with a well known and respected sci-fi writer. He said he didn’t much like science fantasy as a genre because too often the main characters were what they were because of an innate talent they were born with, therefore making them special, rather than a talent of skill honed by learning and practice. As a fan of both genre that really stuck with me and made me much more aware of that difference between the two. Parallels to identity as an innate thing (supposedly) rather than making something of yourself because of achievements and hard won skills.
As for the Queer thing, I’m reminded of a US/Canadian trash tv thing based on the Earp story. Apparently much beloved by the Queer community. God knows all I saw was very male and very female characters that dabbled occasionally in a bit of light bi-play. Oh well.
This whole thing is obviously a case of TRAs laughing at a victory over a total strawman, but I also had to roll my eyes at a particular bit:
TRAs today: let’s celebrate the wonderful splendiferousness of being trans by making that specific trait Earth’s salvation!
TRAs tomorrow: never forget trans people are the most maligned people in existence. [probably]
Honestly, I’ve never seen a group so fawned over by media.
And all this because the real Rose (Billie Piper) was sick of playing the character and turned it down.
It’s hard for me to imagine how bad the episode is going to be, but I’ll have to because I gave up on the show about when everybody else did. Did it even end, or did everybody just lose interest? Like Nullius said, they’re just parading around a corpse. Now, with extra defilement.
We can joke about it, though. For example: all the Timelord power the Doctor has and he still can’t make fake Rose pass. Couldn’t he just rewind him and make him a real woman and then fast-forward her again?
Except they’ve already had “trans” characters without making a big thing about it – in exactly the same method as in the Culture universe mentioned above (cool sci-fi mechanism accepted as plausible in-setting).
Did all these obsessive nitwits just forget about Missy? How?! She’s quite distinctive! Given what Missy is short for, her previous incarnation wasn’t exactly a surprise. Missy is clearly having a great time whenever she appears on screen, and is a fantastic character brought to life.
(Spoiler: Missy = Mistress = The Master, a Big Baddy that has been there all the way from the beginning, almost. He caused multiple serious problems for the Doctor and as Missy, treats it as a game. It’s the same “soul/spirit/whatever” in a different body each time, same as the Doctor)
So they’ve already done this without belaboring the “trans” thing, without making it a massive “look how pwogwessive we are!” thing, without being obnoxious and aggressive about it. It was just a factor of the storytelling in that world. It worked perfectly well, because it wasn’t all about the “most special narcissists evar”, it was just about telling a story. This was before it all started to really go downhill, of course. Before it became “issue of the week” instead of “monster of the week” with a few recurring characters (like Missy). The obsessive stuff has resulted in a serious drop in storytelling quality, and is a reason that a lot of people lost interest in the series – including my social groupings. The continual hatred of Teh Ebil Terves is wrecking the story, and the obsessives don’t even seem to see it.
It’s almost as if this is just another chance to show how much all these people really hate women and girls who set boundaries and understand reality. Wonder why that might be…
‘Shame on you and good luck to you in your lonely lives.”
“You should be ashamed and lonely for not agreeing with with my political views. Also, I wish you good fortune!”
Russell T. Davies studied English Literature at Oxford, and yet he can’t construct a sentence properly.
I wonder is RTD’s latest bout of virtue-signalling on the trans issue an attempt to make people forget actor John Barrowman was exposing himself to shocked female DW cast and crew while RTD ran the show:
https://the-media-leader.com/its-a-sin-won-with-critics-but-bafta-folk-have-long-memories/
Having watched Dr. Who back in the 1970s and enjoying the show for not taking itself seriously, I’ll pass on watching it now as it revels in such trite moralizing. (Which isn’t exclusive to Dr. Who, of course.)
Sackbut @3,
I don’t remember those Ally McBeal stories (I think I only watched some of that series), but I recall two other trans stories from 80s/90s television.
L.A. Law had a story about a trans woman who one of the male attorneys represented. (And dated? Probably. It was the 80s.) The character was played by Claudia Christian, a very attractive actress known to many from her work on Babylon 5.
Picket Fences (another David E. Kelly production, like Ally McBeal) had a first season episode where an elementary school teacher is “outed” as a trans woman. They went with a more average-looking, middle-aged actress, but again, it was an actress and there were no issues with her “passing” — in fact, a plot point in the episode is that the male character who started dating her is hurt and embarassed because he didn’t know, and we are informed that even doctors could be fooled, her transition was so expertly done.
Screechy Monkey #13
Law and Order TV show did a story with a trans “woman” way back when the series started. The man pretending to be a woman was played by a woman, of course. The interesting part was that the trans person was allowed to make the pity-me-my-life-is-so-hard speech but one of the detectives was allowed to point out that people were now dead because of that character’s uncaring selfishness. Not a thing that would be allowed to be said to a trans character today.
“Bob’s Burgers”, that amusing comedy, has a trans woman character, Marshmallow.
Although Marshmallow has been depicted fairly sympathetically throughout the show, the People Online were annoyed that she was referred to as a transvestite (HORRORS!) in one BB episode.
They also complained that Marshmallow was voiced by one of the Dreaded Cis-Het White Males (veteran voice actor David Herman), So she’s been downplayed in the recent BB episodes.
I’ve never watched Doctor Who but have been told repeatedly by people who know my tastes that I’d probably like it a lot. So yesterday I was on Disney+ and saw a new Doctor Who series had just begun on it. I thought, hey, perfect, I can watch a fun, modern version of Doctor Who which will probably be at least pretty good and give me a taste of the series.
And then I read this, which sounds like it will have a lot of preaching about trans rights. That doesn’t sound like much fun.
I’d also thought about the paradox of trans characters, particularly in sci-fi. Star Trek: Discovery had one, who had the common not-quite-passing uncanny-valley vibe, which made me think surely in the future the surgeries and treatments would be much better than this. So the “correct” representation would just be men and women who generally seemed normal (not with voices permanently stuck in the “male voice starting to change” phase, for example). There would generally be no reason to bring up or care that they’d switched genders (or maybe even sexes).
Anyway, maybe I’ll still check it out. Maybe they’ll get all the trans preaching out of their system early on then move onto something more interesting. Or maybe I should watch an older Doctor Who series.
So instead of coming up with a new character, they retconned Rose? *rolls eyes*
Skeletor: Start with the 2005 series/season, starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.