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By David Futrelle
A tragic day for whiny baby-men — the BBC just announced that the next Doctor Who will be a lady. Naturally, these sensitive souls took at once to Twitter to make their displeasure known. And to make jokes about Doctor Who turning into Nurse Who amirite fellas high five!
Here are some of the best of the worst Tweets I’ve seen so far. I can’t decide which are my favorites — the ones lamenting the loss of a crucial male “role model” or those suggesting that a female Doctor Who makes as much sense as a male Mary Poppins (which would be perfectly fine to me, by the way).
https://twitter.com/thomasdeeacon/status/886723202168344576
I'm actually quite shocked at the decision to cast a woman the should call it Nurse who now lol 😂😂
— Rhys (@rhysjordanstew1) July 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/Gapehorner/status/886609824242438144
https://twitter.com/DelDiablo007/status/886613308639514624
https://twitter.com/DelDiablo007/status/886629727745826816
"Doctor Who" what's the deal? Pushing the "gender fluidity" narrative now? Remember when entertainment wasn't social engineering propaganda
— Dan (@NotoriousDano) July 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/Amen1924/status/886681803167236099
https://twitter.com/spcwriter/status/886664276877991936
https://twitter.com/Erin_Danielle77/status/886639647387942912
The BBC have literally just ruined all the heritage and history of Doctor Who making the new Doctor a woman
— Aydin Osman (@Aydin_Osman96) July 16, 2017
Doctor Who officially ruined. Time Lords being women not an issue, 50 years of tradition out the window is. What next 007 being Janette Bond pic.twitter.com/Hj3buVMx8s
— Ewan McColl (@TheMcColl) July 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/hucksworld/status/886682969833865217
https://twitter.com/williamparslow/status/886700469648842752
https://twitter.com/GreavesyX/status/886613123666513920
#DoctorWho So patronising to women to be chosen due to political correctness. No room for merit and talent if PC comes first.
— Holomatrix (@Holomatrices) July 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/BasedKielbasa/status/886647001885978625
https://twitter.com/MJDebio93/status/886691678647705600
https://twitter.com/racerdog45/status/886677551770476545
Women have their own heroes like RIpley, Buffy and Wonder Woman, there is no need to take away role models for men #notmydoctor
— P. J. Lowry (@PJ_Lowry) July 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/thomasoldham/status/886712069021683712
https://twitter.com/Keef44002574/status/886700034934362112
https://twitter.com/Electromoth/status/886674967106125824
I remember when Ripley, Leia, Buffy, Xena et al. trailblazed great women characters. But now, feminism seems pleased with mere pandering.
— Bradley Yellop (@bazz83) July 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/winklewilly89/status/886689221418856448
https://twitter.com/revjackashcraft/status/886693656647913473
https://twitter.com/__AlexN_/status/886631666915172352
https://twitter.com/Blackbirds1632/status/886655183224229890
#doctorwho The regressive left are going crazy over the choice, next they will want a transgender to take the role as the Doctor.
— Rust (@Rust_NoMask) July 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/amusedphysicist/status/886655148235161600
No, I don’t understand what that last one means either.
@Lorcan Nagle
That’s awesome, and a considerably better relic than Indy himself ever managed to find!
Interesting. Personally I felt more ownership and investment in fandom when it was harder to access. For example, I had a certain sense of pride in knowing where to find anime and tabletop stores or how to get ahold of a catalog to import stuff from France or Japan. Now everyone is a fan of everything and I feel less like it’s “mine”.
The really disconcerting thing about all of this is to see how many women have not only accepted misogynists rhetoric but internalized it to the point they are spouting it themselves. The internet has done a great job of brainwashing women that they are overstepping by wanting cultural equality.
It’s not the internet. Women dedicating themselves to upholding patriarchy is unfortunately nothing new
http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/womens-anti-suffrage-movement.html
This anti-suffrage rhetoric is not much different than what anti-feminist women say today
Just throw in something about hook up culture or unshaved armpits and replace ‘factory’ with ‘STEM fields’ and you’ve got 21st century misogyny.
@Kupo
Good point, and I’m not really sure where I was going with my ‘musings’ anyway; since then I’ve had four art workshops and a lunchtime patrol to deal with, and my focus has been elsewhere.
This may be TL:DR, on reflection, but here goes…
To give an example of where I think where I was going with this, was, take ‘Aliens’, the first film universe I liked enough to try and get merchandise for. This was in 1990; I didn’t have a TV or a VCR of my own, however, so couldn’t watch it whenever I wanted to. When my local comic shop opened, and had the Dark Horse ‘Aliens’ comics, I was super excited, but I sort of accepted it was a monthly deal. I could occasionally experience the world of the movie, but there was no hope of (mentally) suffusing myself in it enough to ‘live’ in it. The deal was, enjoy it while it was on, know all about it, but move on when it’s not there. I could always read the Alan Dean Foster paperbacks, but that was as much playback as I was getting.
I think I’m trying to say is that because I couldn’t access it all the time, I was being entertained by it, rather than engaging with it. Being able to access it all the time might have led to cosplay, fan fiction, RPGs, etc; the immersion in a world that the internet, pay-per-view, Netflix etc makes possible. The huge amount of choice out there makes NOT choosing the things you like, the least likely choice. And then, spending all this time/money/effort on a show or film, makes you invest more emotionally than you might have with a movie you could only watch occasionally.
I am aware there are plenty of counter-arguments to this; it was just musing, and from a particularly English/middle-class/1980s/provincial/male experience. Others will of course think very differently, and with equal or more validity.
@DanHolme
Oh, I wasn’t trying to make a counter argument. I just found it interesting that we kind of had opposite perspectives on the matter. I can definitely see how being able to do a deeper dive into media because it’s so readily available would give someone more sense of ownership.
@Kupo
Well, it’s nice that there’s lots of different ways of being a fan of something. Despite what a visiting alien (of any, several or no gender) might infer from the comments this blog post was about!
(By which I mean the tweets that David was showing in his original article, not anything in this thread.)
O.K., Lorcan Nagle, I thought you were making shit up about the Diana Jones Award because it sounds like a Tom Pratchett story.
But, No. No. It’s all TRUE!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Jones_Award
@DanHolme
I don’t think that is necessarily the case, or maybe I’m just a sample size of 1, but when “Star Wars” came out in 1977 I was a huge fan. I saw it 25 times in the theater that year and the next. I remember being sad that I wouldn’t be able to see it again in its entirety (1977-78, long before VCRs and regular access to the full film was available). The thing I coveted most at the mall was at a camera shop that had an 8 mm cut of the film that was I think 18 minutes long.
But I still was able to immerse myself in the universe. Through drawings, records, tie-in merchandise, etc. But then again this was Star Wars, very heavily merchandised, much more so than Alien or Aliens.
I also drew a LOT of Star Wars themed drawings. And I made my own Darth Vader helmet from a paper grocery bag & black spray paint.
Behold, 13-yr-old dreemr in all her Star Wars geek glory (picture taken by her 10-yr-old brother, and believe me, there was no shame whatsoever at the time of this picture!)
All these dudes going on about losing a role model. Buddy, if this is how you turned out, then they didn’t exactly do a good friggin job, did they now.
Being in my 60’s and a sci-fi fan since I was a teenager, I can only laugh at someone saying
Dumpling, back in 1979, you have no idea how radical (and how big a gamble) it was to put a woman as the kick ass hero of a blockbuster sci-fi flick against one of the best enemy aliens ever.
The original Buffy was a comedy / satire movie about a valley girl taking on vampires, all played for laughs. I didn’t watch the first few episodes of Buffy because I thought it was going to be vacuous comedy. Josh turned it into a deeper, darker and (IMHO) better story.
And Wonder Woman has always been the “poor sister” in the superhero line-up. She did have her own comic book, but never got star billing when all the guy superheroes were around. It’s been 40 years since superheroes were first put on the big screen and only NOW she gets her own movie.
The anti-feminists were just as rampant when these movies came out as they are today and many complained, but they hadn’t collected into organized on-line gangs that could be sent out to swarm the internet with their misogyny.
It’s funny, but not funny, how these reactionaries howl at any changes that upset their personal comfort zone, then within a few years accept the changes as the status quo.
Only to go on and howl about how the newer changes are overturning the Will of God and the Forces of Nature.
Dreemr, good on you! That’s a great photo.
The only things I ever felt fannish about were never generally popular; not sure how it would have felt if they had been. I’ve gotten comfortable with being a black licorice fan in a red licorice world.
EJ, good call on the popularity of things like Khan Academy. I’m one of the adults with gaps in my education, and the desire to fill them. In my case, I’m not concerned with being laughed at so much as with sparing others the painful experience of trying to explain things like art or music to me.
The Star Wars and Indiana Jones stuff reminds me of a story my mom told me. Dad, Mom, and I were watching the first Indiana Jones movie, and towards the end when they open the Arc of the Covenant, and nasty things happen to Nazis… I said “It’s OK, mom, it’s only a movie”
@dreemr, ohmigosh that is adorkable
re: the CYOA thing, I guess my issue with making it an App is that, well. I can see a lot of people saying “uh, so it’s Wikipedia, but I pay for it? No thanks.” That’s not what it would be obviously, but sight-unseen I could imagine it being a problem.
I can see that there are a lot of different ideas about what it would be, though! Middle school, young children, adults, etc. That doesn’t surprise me. I shift in what its goals should be, too.
The major goal here is to introduce a little bit of self-direction and a little bit of play into education. Someone mentioned that it should be, like, a deep-dive of Wikipedia or TV Tropes, and that’s not a bad analogy. The major difference is that you aren’t just diving into hyperlinks, you’re more having a conversation with the material. The prototype I built was sort of like that, anyways.
I only made a single question and it was a straightforward math problem: what’s this times that? And then a list of four choices beneath. Selecting the right answer would go on to the next question, but selecting a wrong answer would have the test start talking to you. At first it’d be fairly straightforward: “no, 13 * 8 isn’t 138. I’m sorry. blah blah blah tens column, ones column” – but the wrong answer would still be present in the choices beneath.
Select the same wrong answer again and it’d get frustrated with you, “No no, I already said that 13 * 8 isn’t 138, you’re concate– sigh. Now I know you’re just messing around with me.” And then the choices aren’t answer to the questions, but replies to the statement, like “What’s that ‘concat-‘ thing?”, “haha yeah I’m just playing with you.”, “Yeah, math sucks.” and so on. Those questions would all eventually wrap back to engaging with the question again, but would give the student some time to just play around a bit – while introducing some of the fundamental concepts behind the mechanical procedures of basic math.
The goal was to inject some fun and some feelings of agency into the experience. The ability to escape the exam a little and direct your own learning, while at the same time learning a little about why 8*4=32, and why numbers do anything at all, and why they’re important. Inject some fun and wonder into the topics instead of leaving them as a rote exercise.
That’s the thought, in more detail. I still like the idea! It would be a lot of work, though D: I wish I had time to pursue it.
Welp, my new favorite “DR WHO IS A WOMEN” reaction is the blogger I found who was all “A woman Dr. Who makes Reverend King cry!!” which is not a reaction I was expecting, to be honest.
Because you see, Rev. King’s famous line about judging by the content of the character means everyone is equally able to look up to white dudes (“I had inspirational quotes from Native Americans on my walls as a kid” is one of his arguments), and casting ~a woman~ is morally bankrupt because you’re picking someone ~because of what she is on the outside~ and I just.
I.
Argh.
@DanHolme:
I think the noise I just made could rightly be called a cackle. That was hilarious.
Good luck finding the Indy RPG! Good luck reading it! It can’t be the worst RPG I’ve ever read (and boy, won’t that be a conversation), but I want to stay far away from it anyways.
Oooooooooooh, this feels … not so great.
Falconer,
Just imagine how very scandalized Dr. King would be if he found out there are women who are also Reverends!!
*Cluches pearls on dismay*
More likely, he’d be all “Don’t use me and my legacy to whine about something so trivial as a women being cast as a fictional alien Doctor, fool.”
Well, I would have liked to put “I had inspirational quotes from Native Americans on my walls as a kid” on my walls as a kid. Instead I had plastic models of spaceships hanging from the ceiling on fishing line.
@PeeVee:
My sister was actually the crucifer at our local (Anglican) church for a while when she was still in high school; for those not familiar with this practice, the crucifer is the person who carries a cross during the procession that walks the priest to and from the altar. It tends to be a ‘high church’ sort of thing: Catholics, Anglicans, a lot of Lutherans and Methodists still do it.
Just after her first time at this, at a family dinner, the question was raised as to what her great-grandfather, an Anglican priest, would have thought of the achievement.
After a bit of thought, we realized that there was a good chance that his reaction would have been horror that a woman had been allowed to do the job.
Yeah, like FATAL still exists
@Lorcan Nagle:
I wasn’t gonna bring it up. I don’t think I can stomach it right now.
I’d rather talk about The World of Synnibar, which at least doesn’t try to be as offensive as possible.
I actually almost got involved in a World of Synnibar game; had the character done up (with several rather lucky rolls) but never got into the campaign itself.
This was while I was working co-op term at Microsoft back in 1989-1990. To probably nobody’s big surprise, there were a number of evening role-playing groups amongst the Microsoft employees, and yes, there was a group playing Synnibar.
I wonder if I still have that character sheet. Got random stat rolls high enough that could have qualified for a B.S.C. character, and made a 6% roll check for psionics or something like that.
Jenora,
Oh, yes, a niece of mine was a Crucifer in the RCC, and my late FIL was quite offended. Then my MIL told him to build a bridge and gtf over it, so he finally calmed down about it, lolol.
dreemr, can I tell you how charmed by that awesome pic of you? So cute. (Plus, I had an argyle sweater very similar to that, lolol)
I agree.
FATAL is the worst game system I’ve ever read through the first 15% of. The book seems so proud of itself for being edgy, too.
I’m following someone on Tumblr who has wonderful anecdotes about her time growing up in the Catholic church, like the time she set the altar cloth on fire during her confirmation, and the time she walloped an elderly bishop in the forehead trying to get a thurible ignited.
The gross rapeyness of FATAL isn’t even the part I couldn’t get over. It’s just how hopelessly nonfunctional the rules are! Like the incredibly complicated equation for calculating your character’s age…that can yield a negative number. They went out of their way to make everything as convoluted as possible, and it doesn’t even yield a number that makes any damn sense!