sex, gender, and the Doctor
Aug. 4th, 2013 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitThe announcement of the Twelfth Doctor's casting has again led to dismay for people who would like the next Doctor to be a woman.
I have to confess that I've always been a little uncomfortable with the assertion that if the Doctor regenerated as female it would be no big deal to the Doctor. On a Watsonian and also a personal level, I have doubts. These doubts have nothing to do with the solid Doyleist real-world reasons (feminism, basically) why a female Doctor would be a good thing. I acknowledge and agree with those reasons.
My qualms, as I said, are Watsonian and personal. They're to do with the Doctor as a character, which is to say as a fictional person for whom we assume a fictional subjectivity, and with my own experience of gender.
I am, as I think everybody reading me knows by now, transgender. In some ways I actually prefer the term "transsexual" for myself, because for me the issue is a lot more to do with my sexed body and not so much to do with culturally-assigned gender roles. Anyway, being trans means that my relationship to gender and to my body is different from that of cisgender people; I've never had the seamless match of body and gender identity that cis people experience. Much of my life (and I'd better add the disclaimer that I'm not speaking for the Transgender Hive Mind here; there's a huge range of how we trans* people experience our bodies and gender identities) I've inhabited my body with profound discomfort. And yes, my thinking about body and self really is that dualist--my body is something I inhabit, not something I am; anything less dualist would feel like biological tyranny.
So, here's my question to those who think it would be no big deal for the Doctor to regenerate as a woman: would it be no big deal for you to wake up tomorrow morning with a differently sexed body or a different gender identity? Would you honestly feel that nothing of importance to you had changed? I'm not saying no one would feel that, since some people are gender-fluid or genderqueer, but for many people, both cis and trans*, gender is a fundamental part of identity. (ETA: And for genderfluid and genderqueer people, transforming into someone who was single-gendered might feel like just as much of a fundamental change.)
Now, obviously we can't assume that Time Lords experience sex (by which I mean living in a sexed body, not eroticism) and gender in the same way 21st century humans do. But the Doctor has regenerated as the same sex eleven times now. Clearly, being male means something to him. And most Time Lords seem to regenerate as the same sex each time, though we know there are exceptions.
I'll reiterate that I'm not making a Doyleist argument here. There's no innate reason sex and gender should matter to Time Lords in their regeneration, and it would have been cool if the various Who creators over the years had imagined people for whom gender worked differently, for whom changing sex at regeneration really would be no big deal. But the Doctor and every other Time Lord we've seen onscreen, as opposed to heard mentioned, are not those people.
Here's the thing: when people say, in the service of arguing that the next Doctor should be a woman, that gender is/should be no big deal for individual people in their subjective experience of self, I find that both glib and hurtful. The glib part is the way it denies the power of gender in shaping our subjectivities. The hurtful part is the way it blithely ignores the experience of people like me, who live every day with sexed bodies or culturally-assigned genders that feel wrong.
If I regenerated tomorrow into a genetically male body with all the expected secondary sex characteristics, it would be my fondest impossible dream come true. If I regenerated into a cisgendered woman, with my sense of self suddenly matching my sexed body, I would feel like I had changed fundamentally--much more fundamentally than the way the Doctor changes when he regenerates. Either way, it would be a big fucking deal to me.
Feminist arguments about why a female Doctor matters, politically, are valid and necessary. But claiming that it wouldn't matter to the Doctor as a character because gender just isn't that important is disingenuous and actually, when coming from a cis person, shows a lot of unexamined privilege. Cis people can claim gender doesn't matter because they're comfortable in their sexed bodies and (feminist critiques aside) in their culturally-assigned genders. "Gender doesn't matter" is not actually a trans*-positive argument, and I wish people would stop making it.
ETA: Two clarifications, rather late. First, more on Time Lords and gender. As far as we know from onscreen canon, Time Lords have two acknowledged biological sexes and two culturally-validated genders, just like most modern human societies do. And most, but not all, Time Ladies and Time Lords regenerate as the same sex and gender they were before. (I extrapolate this from the fact that we're only heard of one Time Lord changing sex/gender at regeneration, whereas there are lots of examples of Time Lords not changing.) All this, except for the regenerations, is identical to our own sex/gender system, and implies that gender for Time Lords works a lot like it does for us: people are assigned a sex at birth and most of them develop a gender identity that matches it, but some people's gender identity doesn't match their biological sex (nor, for that matter, does everyone's biological sex actually fall neatly into the category of "female" or "male"). Furthermore, the fact that it seems few Time Lords choose to change sex when regenerating implies that for most Time Lords, gender identity persists through regenerations; it's not a fresh start each time. The Doctor will soon have regenerated eleven times as male, so either he identifies as male or, if he would like to regenerate as female, he's both bad at regeneration (canonically true) and very unlucky.
Second: I think what's basically happening, in the kind of argument I'm troubled by, is a conflation of Doyleist or universe-external reasoning and Watsonian or universe-internal reasoning. Doyleistically, no, it absolutely should not make a big difference if the Doctor were female. It shouldn't cause people to stop watching the show, or cause the Doctor to be written as more interested in love and babies than adventures. It should be possible to have a female protagonist who does exactly what male!Doctor does, although other character's reactions to her might be different than to a male Doctor, and that's worth exploring.. What bothers me is the extension of this argument in-universe, specifically to the Doctor's personality, with people asserting that it obviously wouldn't/shouldn't matter to him if he regenerates as a woman. That's when I start to feel like the argument dismisses real and serious issues of identity, because that "should" has implications I've already gone into.
I have to confess that I've always been a little uncomfortable with the assertion that if the Doctor regenerated as female it would be no big deal to the Doctor. On a Watsonian and also a personal level, I have doubts. These doubts have nothing to do with the solid Doyleist real-world reasons (feminism, basically) why a female Doctor would be a good thing. I acknowledge and agree with those reasons.
My qualms, as I said, are Watsonian and personal. They're to do with the Doctor as a character, which is to say as a fictional person for whom we assume a fictional subjectivity, and with my own experience of gender.
I am, as I think everybody reading me knows by now, transgender. In some ways I actually prefer the term "transsexual" for myself, because for me the issue is a lot more to do with my sexed body and not so much to do with culturally-assigned gender roles. Anyway, being trans means that my relationship to gender and to my body is different from that of cisgender people; I've never had the seamless match of body and gender identity that cis people experience. Much of my life (and I'd better add the disclaimer that I'm not speaking for the Transgender Hive Mind here; there's a huge range of how we trans* people experience our bodies and gender identities) I've inhabited my body with profound discomfort. And yes, my thinking about body and self really is that dualist--my body is something I inhabit, not something I am; anything less dualist would feel like biological tyranny.
So, here's my question to those who think it would be no big deal for the Doctor to regenerate as a woman: would it be no big deal for you to wake up tomorrow morning with a differently sexed body or a different gender identity? Would you honestly feel that nothing of importance to you had changed? I'm not saying no one would feel that, since some people are gender-fluid or genderqueer, but for many people, both cis and trans*, gender is a fundamental part of identity. (ETA: And for genderfluid and genderqueer people, transforming into someone who was single-gendered might feel like just as much of a fundamental change.)
Now, obviously we can't assume that Time Lords experience sex (by which I mean living in a sexed body, not eroticism) and gender in the same way 21st century humans do. But the Doctor has regenerated as the same sex eleven times now. Clearly, being male means something to him. And most Time Lords seem to regenerate as the same sex each time, though we know there are exceptions.
I'll reiterate that I'm not making a Doyleist argument here. There's no innate reason sex and gender should matter to Time Lords in their regeneration, and it would have been cool if the various Who creators over the years had imagined people for whom gender worked differently, for whom changing sex at regeneration really would be no big deal. But the Doctor and every other Time Lord we've seen onscreen, as opposed to heard mentioned, are not those people.
Here's the thing: when people say, in the service of arguing that the next Doctor should be a woman, that gender is/should be no big deal for individual people in their subjective experience of self, I find that both glib and hurtful. The glib part is the way it denies the power of gender in shaping our subjectivities. The hurtful part is the way it blithely ignores the experience of people like me, who live every day with sexed bodies or culturally-assigned genders that feel wrong.
If I regenerated tomorrow into a genetically male body with all the expected secondary sex characteristics, it would be my fondest impossible dream come true. If I regenerated into a cisgendered woman, with my sense of self suddenly matching my sexed body, I would feel like I had changed fundamentally--much more fundamentally than the way the Doctor changes when he regenerates. Either way, it would be a big fucking deal to me.
Feminist arguments about why a female Doctor matters, politically, are valid and necessary. But claiming that it wouldn't matter to the Doctor as a character because gender just isn't that important is disingenuous and actually, when coming from a cis person, shows a lot of unexamined privilege. Cis people can claim gender doesn't matter because they're comfortable in their sexed bodies and (feminist critiques aside) in their culturally-assigned genders. "Gender doesn't matter" is not actually a trans*-positive argument, and I wish people would stop making it.
ETA: Two clarifications, rather late. First, more on Time Lords and gender. As far as we know from onscreen canon, Time Lords have two acknowledged biological sexes and two culturally-validated genders, just like most modern human societies do. And most, but not all, Time Ladies and Time Lords regenerate as the same sex and gender they were before. (I extrapolate this from the fact that we're only heard of one Time Lord changing sex/gender at regeneration, whereas there are lots of examples of Time Lords not changing.) All this, except for the regenerations, is identical to our own sex/gender system, and implies that gender for Time Lords works a lot like it does for us: people are assigned a sex at birth and most of them develop a gender identity that matches it, but some people's gender identity doesn't match their biological sex (nor, for that matter, does everyone's biological sex actually fall neatly into the category of "female" or "male"). Furthermore, the fact that it seems few Time Lords choose to change sex when regenerating implies that for most Time Lords, gender identity persists through regenerations; it's not a fresh start each time. The Doctor will soon have regenerated eleven times as male, so either he identifies as male or, if he would like to regenerate as female, he's both bad at regeneration (canonically true) and very unlucky.
Second: I think what's basically happening, in the kind of argument I'm troubled by, is a conflation of Doyleist or universe-external reasoning and Watsonian or universe-internal reasoning. Doyleistically, no, it absolutely should not make a big difference if the Doctor were female. It shouldn't cause people to stop watching the show, or cause the Doctor to be written as more interested in love and babies than adventures. It should be possible to have a female protagonist who does exactly what male!Doctor does, although other character's reactions to her might be different than to a male Doctor, and that's worth exploring.. What bothers me is the extension of this argument in-universe, specifically to the Doctor's personality, with people asserting that it obviously wouldn't/shouldn't matter to him if he regenerates as a woman. That's when I start to feel like the argument dismisses real and serious issues of identity, because that "should" has implications I've already gone into.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-05 05:45 am (UTC)Well, DW is a British show, so I don't think its writers are obliged to capture the experience of American racism particularly. But there's plenty of British racism they could be talking about! It would be really interesting to see Black British writers writing a black Doctor (or I guess I would say as Doctor perceived as black by modern humans, since unlike gender I'm not sure race is much of a cultural presence for Time Lords). Certainly the kinds of things he gets away with, the ways people react to him, and his easy assumption of authority in all situations would be different.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-05 11:22 am (UTC)Yes, this.
There's plenty of things to critique in how Doctor Who handles race, but I think US critiques of it can be wildly off-beam. I don't think Britain is all that much less racist than most of the US, but the racism sometimes manifests differently. I'm reminded of the split in reaction when Martha was engaged to what's-his-name-the-white-doctor: US fans seemed to tend to regard this as progressive, whereas British fans either didn't care one way or the other, or were unhappy at the trope of a Black woman being 'rewarded' with a white partner. But interracial relationships aren't as culturally fraught an issue in the UK as they seem to be in the US.
(I'm not, for the record, claiming that a British interracial couple would never encounter racial prejudice, because sadly that's obviously untrue, but there does seem to be a real difference in how it's portrayed in popular culture).
no subject
Date: 2013-08-05 02:23 pm (UTC)There's zero diversity on the writing staff at the moment, to the point that guest writer Neil Gaiman might be the most diverse guy who works there. (Being Jewish and an American citizen.)
And yes, I don't think the Time Lords have the idea of race, or if they do, it seems to be their own internal concept that doesn't quite translate to our current conception of skin color/ethnic group based race. (I'd argue that they canonically seem to have castes based on which school you attended, and that the non-Time Lord Gallifreyans seem to be like a separate racial group or tribe.) On the other hand, in the modern series we've seen black Time Lords in passing and Romana doesn't seem bothered much by the idea of changing into a different species look on the exterior. And apparently, the Doctor's friend the Corsair changed gender relatively frequently. That stuff is what makes me agree that the continual choice of a white male from the islands that make up the United Kingdom is probably best seen from the Watsonian perspective as being intrinsic to the Doctor's self-image.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 05:06 pm (UTC)Ooh, there's an interesting fic in that. Could the Doctor somehow have got "stuck" in that persona in the same way the TARDIS's chameleon circuit got stuck on "1960s police box"?
no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 05:40 pm (UTC)