It’s not exactly news that Men’s Rights Activists are obsessed — seriously obsessed — with sperm.
Several days ago, one Redditor took to the Men’s Rights subreddit to warn fellow sperm-generators to keep a close watch on that sperm of theirs, telling the tale of how he allegedly caught his alleged wife allegedly “scooping … up” the sperm he had thoughtfully deposited on her belly during sex and “PUTTING IT IN HER VAGINA!!!” He is now allegedly seeking a divorce.
But this is hardly the first time Men’s Rights Redditors have worked themselves into a lather over the dangers of spermjacking. Or even the hundredth. If you do a search for the word “sperm” on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, you’ll find literally hundreds of posts — many with hundreds of upvotes and/or comments — on the importance of safeguarding one’s own sperm.
Some headlines:
And my favorite:
Ironically, while the Men’s Rights crowd waxes paranoid about spermjackers, many of their comrades in misogyny are planning on filling as many vaginas as possible with their sacred sperm.
Pickup “artists” regularly boast about “raw dogging” their dates, apparently as unconcerned with the real dangers of STDs as they are with the possibility of pregnancy.
Perhaps the most enthusiastic sperm donor of them all? Mike Cernovich, the Juice-Rights Lawyer and GamerGate celebrity who recently treated his Twitter followers to some extended musings on the allegedly addictive qualities of his “super” sperm.
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/541453497598623745
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/541454375890079745
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/541456510946000896
https://twitter.com/PlayDangerously/status/541457198073659393
In case you’re wondering, Cernovich claims that “alpha STD protection” has kept him from getting herpes and other STDs from all the decidedly unsafe sex he claims to be having.
For more of Cernovich’s wisdom on sperm and other subjects, see this enlightening Storify put together by Twitter’s amazing @SJWIlluminati.
Dunno how I feel about a TimeLady Doctor. I haven’t actually watched the last series (because I’ve had enough of Moffat’s many, many sins), but I know there was the whole Master/Mistress thing, so they’ve established Timelord gender-swap as canonically feasible. But still, it seems unnecessary when all of Gallifrey is still there for the picking. Could the Doctor be reunited with his family? There must be a TimeLady to equal him. He’s still got his clone-daughter out there somewhere. Switching gender just seems a bit gimmicky at this point in the timeline, and to be honest, I don’t trust Moffat to do justice to a female Doctor. His representation of women to date has been appalling.
A female or POC Doctor is only gimmicky if you accept the premise that white men are the default human. When you have a creature that regenerate with a variety of different bodies, that body can look like anyone.
Agreed on not trusting Moffat to do it right though.
Nobody, I’ll bet. Hence the juice thing. Next you know, he’ll be offering PUA seminars through RSD, $3000 a head. Betcha.
Well, your instinctive response wasn’t wrong. Hitler WAS paranoid, and probably to a pathological degree. He was in fact a crystal meth addict, and his own personal physician injected him with that and/or cocaine before his public appearances, so that his speeches would be fiery and persuasive. In the end he got the coke bugs pretty bad, and that probably contributed to his end-of-war suicide pact in the bunker. He was not a well man by any standard, and one doesn’t have to be qualified to diagnose to see that something was very “off” with him, mentally speaking.
I know I’ve encountered “crazy eyes” more than once myself: once, in the context of a paranoid schizophrenic guy (on medication, and under doctor’s orders not to miss his meds or take anything else), who never hurt me, but whose fixed gaze was still unnerving because I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t well, and that made me fear — not him, but for him; another time, in the case of a high school boyfriend of one of my sisters, who turned out to be a raging drug addict who would rob even his own parents, and who in the end died of an asthma attack brought on by (a) not taking his prescribed asthma meds, and (b) five hits of LSD in one stupid go. He was an absolute shit to my sister and I was actually kind of glad to hear he was gone, because at least it meant he couldn’t abuse or torment her (or his long-suffering parents, or anyone else) anymore. So yes, “crazy eyes” are a real thing, at least sometimes.
All that being said, even the very worst mentally ill people, including Hitler and my sister’s mercifully dead boyfriend, don’t deserve to be stigmatized for their mental illness, because for every one of the bad kind, there are countless others who are no danger to anyone except, maybe, themselves. But you know that already, and so do I (thanks to this place), and that’s why we’re both working hard on not saying “crazy” when we mean terrible, awful, horrible and simply vile.
Also: LOL, Xanthë…and feel better VERY soon, Michelle!
I’d rather they just had more female and POC timelords in the series, without them having to be The Doctor… unless it’s like a Timelord Thing that once all the regenerations are used up, he’s totally reincarnated as someone else and s/he gets a full set of shiny new regenerations and a whole new set of adventures.
Because I like the Whoniverse, but I think it’s got a bit stale since they keep writing themselves into corners. If The Doctor gets a whole fresh start and an awesome new bod, I’d have no problem with it. I just don’t like the whole “we’ll cram it in there that he’s a woman in this generation for no other reason than we want to appeal to the fans”, which I feel is a bit insulting. I realise that’s exactly the sort of thing that anti-feminists say, but I just hate the way Moffat keeps tacking things onto the cannon in a way that looks sloppy and doesn’t make sense.
I see your point. But let’s face it, a new Timelord character will still be viewed as a secondary and supporting character to the Doctor.
If done right (and I’m not confident Moffat will do it right) there could be some pretty fun plot points resulting from the Doctor changing genders. She could have some hilarious awkward moments having to buy her first bra. She could receive some catcalls and be baffled by it. Her expertise can be not taken seriously by those she’s helping because of her female body. I think it would be a cool shake up. It doesn’t absolutely have to happen, but I could see it really working.
But the most important thing, it provides a chance to bathe in male tears!
@WWTH: The absolutely gobsmacked look on her face when, being twenty-five hundred years old and absolutely used to everybody listening to her the first time, the Doctor runs into someone who flat-out ignores her, dismisses her, doesn’t listen — at least the first time. Then people die horribly and the Doctor has to juggle saving as many as she can and really working at getting heard.
I’m not sure the show at any era would be able to pull that off, though… as an audience we’re too used to listening to the Doctor.
I would love for it to happen, and not be a one-off thing, but I dread the policing that will ensue.
AltoFronto: Why does the Doctor becoming a woman make zir “someone else,” or why is it gimmicky or unnecessary, when no other demographic change is? Why is it necessary to defend the choice to make the Doctor a woman but not the choice to, say, make him younger or older or make him Scottish, and so on?
So, just to be clear, this guy can be a time traveling alien who looks like a human, he can be any age or race or body type, but a woman, that would just be way too weird? Really? I mean, the Doctor is literally not the same species as the people who he hangs about with and apparently that’s no biggie, but a woman, that’s a bridge too far?
People are so weird.
A friend of mine suggested this:
The Doctor regenerates as a redheaded woman. Zie looks in the mirror, is completely shocked, then says “I’m finally a ginger!”
@katz: That would be delightful.
@Katz:
YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES!
I like it. That redhead should be Rose Leslie.
It’s funny, but I’ve always felt the same as what Alto Fronto’s describing about the idea of the Doctor regenerating as a woman. Yes, I know there’s no good reason for it – he could regenerate as a black dude and it would seem less of a change. I can only say for myself, it’s an example of how deep-seated sexism is, and the odd ways it can show up.
Seconding everyone that whatever happens, Moffatt should not be allowed anywhere near it.
Oh – I’ve an idea: let the Doctor turn into Greebo. Cat or human, or alternating, doesn’t matter. After all that’s where “Always wanted to be ginger” comes from. 🙂
I’m not so sure that the Doctor can turn into anything he wants. Historically, he’s trended towards Eccentric Edwardian Gentleman, with varying emphasis on Eccentric.
I am glad to see them get away from Ectomorphic Twentysomething, though. Seeing Doctors who are younger than me is just weird, and that includes Five nowadays.
@kitteh,
I don’t find your reaction irrational. It’s not like he’s a god or a spirit who builds a body from scratch each time he reincarnates. He is supposedly “regenerating” his body and as a matter of biology, sexual differentiation feels a lot more fundamental (happens at the chromosome level) than skin pigmentation (which is a matter of some smaller number of genes).
It would work much better if he’d been established to be genderfluid early on. Going through 12 male forms and then a female one feels improbable enough that I would want there to be some kind of sci-fi explanation for why it happened. Which would not be hard to come by — Doctor Who has a bunch of examples of DNA being altered or “blended”. You could use the same gimmick that created the doctor-donna hybrid to make a female doctor.
@Orion, I think they’d have to come up with something new, or else the never-satisfied elements of the fandom would accuse them of lazy writing.
If it happened tomorrow, though, she’d probably avoid answering any questions about how or why.
Yes. But the show started in the 1960s. Of course a genderfluid character wasn’t going to happen. But it is possible now. As the zeitgeist changes, art changes with it.
My big question is simply why, of all the possible things the Doctor could become, a woman is the one choice that’s treated as inherently needing to defend itself.
It’s a lot like a few months ago when people got upset with a female Marvel Comics Thor but accepted it when he was a frog.
@katz: It doesn’t need any defending. I don’t think I’ve treated as if it did, but if I have, I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.
I hope they cast someone awesome, whoever it is. She’ll probably have to compete with Michele Gomez for screen time.
While I agree with many of your posts, this one is a bit off. MRAs don’t share a hive mind any more than feminists do, and just like I wouldn’t want to be assumed to share the ideals of radfems or terfs, I cant assume all MRAs have the same opinions on their sperm. Though the paranoid obsession with it either way is humorous. Now if the same blog or person swings back and forth between rage about the possibility of condom sperm being stolen and inserted, to the right to keep their wife pregnant through her fertile years regardless of her thoughts on this, then that is noteworthy.