Bogwitch

Are you ready for a long, gory post about Doctor Who & gender issues?  :D
Excellent, keep reading.

swordgirl:

Read this article. Here, I will give you a little quote:

Part 1: In the World of Firefly, “Companion” Means Prostitute

Consider the following story.

Far away from here, but not too far, there’s a fairly average girl living a fairly average life.  She’s attractive enough, and she’s no idiot, but, for all intents, our heroine is a normal person with a normal family, normal friends, and a normal life.

And she hates it.

Lucky for her, it’s not going to last long.  Just then, who should arrive in her life but a supernatural mystery man who ushers her into a new, magical life she could not previously access.  Despite his attractive exterior, said mystery man is actually more than a hundred years old, and, for some unknown reason, he enjoys hanging out with this much younger woman and drawing her into potentially-fatal situations.  Our heroine loves it—loves him.  As their adventures continue, their relationship quickly evolves (devolves?) into a deep intimacy (disturbing co-dependence?).  Even so, our mystery man and heroine don’t actually have sex with each other.

Let’s play a game.  Name the mystery man.  Name the heroine.

…

Did you say the Ninth and Tenth Doctors?  Did you say Rose Tyler?  Yeah, those answers work, I guess.  But I wasn’t thinking of them.

I was thinking of Edward Cullen.  I was thinking of Bella Swan.

I was describing Twilight, people.  FRIGGING TWILIGHT.

This worries me.

Aren’t you appalled by that? Aren’t you concerned for this woman’s sanity that she would compare Doctor Who and Twilight? Don’t you not know what to think? And, let me tell you, it just gets better from there! Shana Mlawski takes you on a rollercoaster-ride of Doctor Who analysis (Seasons 1-4 and Season 5.1).

P.S. Shana Mlawski is a big Doctor Who fan, it’s okay.

K, that above was Linnéa quoting the article.
This below is me now. 
Sorry for the confusing layout (c’mon, Tumblr).

I will add some quotes too, because leaving it off like that was concerning, but enough to make me go read it, which was good.  And now I want to talk about it, and this is my blog, so let’s do that here:

“Doctor Who: A wish-fulfillment fantasy for nerdy girls.”

And I am totally FINE WITH THAT. 

“No, I refuse to believe that Doctor Who is sexist.  I don’t know about Twilight, but the new Who is far too clever for that.  No, for all their similarities, there is a difference between Twilight and Who: a major difference—a difference so enormous and so charged that it separates Twilight and Who into two universes that can never, ever touch.”

Agreed.

…

“Young women change their life paths all the time to follow some guy.  Twilight suggests that this is a completely good thing—true love and all—while Law and Order: SVU says this story will always end in a rape-murder.  Doctor Who, like An Education, gives a more nuanced vision of this type of relationship, and I think a more realistic one.

Here’s the other big difference between Who and Twilight.  Edward isn’t all that different from any other teenage boy in the world, so when he bosses Bella around, and she takes it, it grates.  Because, seriously, she does not have to follow him around like a puppy-dog or risk destroying space-time.  On the other hand, when the Doctor bosses his female Companions around, you can’t really blame them for obeying.  Dude’s a nine-hundred-year-old super-genius who lives in a time machine.  What, are you not going to listen to him when he says, “Reverse the polarity?”  Please.  Edward Cullen is a teenage boy who drinks blood sometimes; the Doctor is two steps away from a god.”

…

“The underlying assumption is that women by themselves are too emotional and weak-willed to get anything done, which is why they need men to run the planet.  At the same time, those men need the love of a good woman like Joan Redfern and Donna Noble to round out their rougher edges, especially by softening their supposedly-sharper intellects…

Reducing men and women in this fashion is pretty sexist any way you slice it.  And yet, it doesn’t bother me all that much in Doctor Who’s season four.  Again, that probably has to do with the fact that Donna and especially the Doctor are so well-drawn in this season that I never got a “Men Are from Gallifrey, Women Are from Earth” kind of vibe.  Instead, I got a “This is What Donna is Like, and This is What the Doctor is Like” vibe.  Their genders seemed mostly incidental to me.”

Yes, that’s the vibe I got too.  Donna is Donna, Ten is Ten, the rest is incidental.

…

“…and I completely do not get where the Internet’s hatred of River Song comes from.  A middle-aged female Indiana Jones?  Yes, please.”

Wait…people hate River Song?  Are you serious right now?  How is that even possible???

…

“Is Doctor Who sexist?  No, I don’t think so.  …Some of these ideas appear misogynistic or overly reductive on the surface.  For me, though, the execution saves it.

But, hey, this may just be an epically-long rationalization based on the fact that Who, with its focus on science and geekiness and silly pop culture references, is a better adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy for me than Twilight is.”

So very agreed.

…

In conclusion, this article is fascinating, and I still love the Tenth Doctor & Donna so much it hurts sometimes.