#the righteous butthurt of an intelligent female fan

[mellicose]

Not for Us (or, the righteous butthurt of an intelligent female fan)

As a kid, it happened with masturbation, cartoons, comic books, then sci-fi. I’d be totally into it, but then I’d feel like an interloper in a secret world of pleasure, so I’d drop it and try to find something more ‘appropriate’.

I was never into dolls or the Babysitter’s Club, though, so I just read horror fiction and tread water.

Cut to 2000-something, when the uproar about New Who began. I love love LOVE sci-fi, but I eschewed watching it because...I might like it too much. I didn’t want to commit.

I never really asked myself why this summary dismissal was a thing with me.

The steady influx of Moffat indignation on my timeline, then a little research into the writer and his work, helped me to see the big picture more clearly.

These shows -Sherlock and Doctor Who - just like GI Joe, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and most comic books - were not written for girls/women. In the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s and 90′s, that was okay. We had our own entertainment in Barbie dream houses, Dream Date board games, and My Little Pony, right?

Spider-Man, Spawn and Constantine is for the boys, as us girls don’t do grisly or nerdy or understatedly heroic. 

Why would I want to look through the hero’s eyes, when I could lust after him at the appropriate, ego-boosting time? That’s the only way my female gaze would fit into the narrative. 

Sexually. 

A thirst for adventure, or even the non-sexual curiosity about the trials and tribulations of the everyday Marvel superhero or extraordinary gumshoe are not relevant.

I’m a lady. Ostensibly, I should be content with spiky hair, an eyebrow raise or a smexy bowtie while the boys play how they may. The companions, and therefore us women, are just incarnations of the Madonna/whore complex, reduced to on/off buttons of emotion.

Buttons, ha! Men complain that we’re too complex, but maddeningly, it doesn’t show where it should - in their written depictions of us. Case in point: 

1) Rose flirts, simpers and giggles much to the young handsome Doctor’s delight, but never clearly states her feelings...except when she’s willing to internalize the time vortex which forces Nine to absorb it and die to save her, then later, risk ripping the universe apart and let every living thing in it die to see the Doctor. 

She saved the Earth, but was willing to watch Nine, then the Universe burn for another snog. 

Rose is young, foolish, and extraordinarily selfish, and she’s written to be the Doctor’s one and only. It speaks volumes about what the writer thinks about women.

2) Martha’s written thirsty because if there isn’t a beautiful woman lusting after Ten, the ‘dashing doctor’ trope is fucked. The fact that it makes her into a farce of herself although she’s far more intelligent and empathetic than The One Who Came Before is unimportant. She’s just the current companion after the hallowed Rose, and guess what?

She saves the Doctor, full stop. Ten gave up nothing, and she gave up everything to save his freckly hide. But, again, she’s written as a placeholder. Rose is still the thing.

3) Donna is a thirty-something redhead who is stridently Not Attracted to the Doctor(r), but the visible, straining effort to make Catherine Tate a frump makes me want to extricate my brain and throw it at the wall. It’s obviously written after the fan uproar about Martha, and it backfired a bit.  And Rose is still around, still fucking things up.

Why, oh why did you do that to the lovely Billie?!

And don’t get me started on Tentoo. That is a hairpulling, indignant screed all its own.

And that’s the RTD era, which I love. On to Moffat:

Amy’s perplexingly pointless.

Clara’s irritatingly irritating.

River is....fuck.

And what about femaleMaster!? Jesus.

And speaking about Sherlock, what about Molly? 

A lovely, fragile dumpster blossom (as she’s written, as scientists can’t be sexy) who’s just as useful as what she can do for Sherlock. How many times has she..ahem...saved him?

And Mary - she’s strong, so she naturally has to be shockingly callous. Again, a clever, strong woman can’t be empathetic, or unselfish. That’s not the way it goes, since such a women wouldn’t fit the on/off button paradigm. 

The actresses are brilliant. This is metric fucktons of talent wasted on retarded writing.

And so, the male characters suffer for the writer’s lack of nuance in writing the women as people.

Let that sink in a while. Yeah, it’s deep.

This was passable 30 years ago, when women ‘weren’t paying attention’. The boys could feed their egos on the hero and their eyes on the dimepiece, nodding indulgently at how silly them girls is actin’. Sadly for the boy’s club, it’s not the case any longer.

Guess what, boys - bitches can have empathy. Funny women can be devastatingly sexy. Beautiful women can be selfless. Strong women can be gentle, and not be out to denigrate every male in sight. Impulsive, foolish women can have the best of intentions. Our primary function as women isn’t to save you, emotionally or physically, and any relationship based on that is emotionally draining and breeds resentment.

Fair is fair, so same goes for men.

I don’t need to see men systematically emasculated to prove the show is ‘pro-woman’ -  I love dashing, clever men. That’s why DW became so popular, so don’t castrate the Doctor and make him a bumbling second to a woman who is his equal. Don’t pander to women, thinking we’re so foolish we won’t see it and be put off.

The game needs to be upped. Get more clever, funny, sympathetic female writers in the crew to create some checks and balances. Match your heroes to complex, fully-developed female characters worthy to be their equals.

Don’t cheat yourself, treat yourself.

Us women are watching.