Sexualized Saturdays: Childbearing and Womanhood

Baby-having. It’s traditionally one of the societal markers of womanhood—women are supposed to have uteruses, and men aren’t, and if you’re a woman and fail to successfully grow a baby, for whatever reason, that makes you a failure at your gender.

I’m a cis woman, and society has told me from the get-go that one day I’ll be giving birth to the next generation. I spent the first eighteen or so years of my life plotting out elaborate (and often fandom-based) names for my future kids, and now today, when I tell people I don’t really know that I want children after all, I have to qualify it with a reassurance that I might change my mind—before they assure me that I will.

What this boils down to is gender essentialism. This method of thinking boils women down to what thousands of years of society says is woman’s defining trait, and sets that above everything else. Women who can’t have children are referred to as “barren”, a negatively connotated word which calls up desolate fields in which nothing living grows. (There’s no equally negatively connotated word for men—“sterile” just suggests cleanliness.)

Steven Moffat is so, so guilty of this.

It also moralizes the existence of women without uteruses or without the ability to bear children, making sterility into an issue of good and bad rather than just an apolitical medical condition. Trans women exist; they can’t bear children. Cis women who have had hysterectomies for personal or health reasons, or who are infertile for other reasons, can’t bear children. They are not any less worthwhile, or any less women, for this. Unfortunately, pop culture seems to disagree.

Spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Orphan Black, and Series 7 of Doctor Who below the jump.

Sexualized Saturdays: The Price of Existing While Female

There’s a high price tag on being a woman in our society. And I don’t mean financially, although cis and trans women both can easily spend thousands of dollars trying to meet the minimum social requirements of femininity—tampons, makeup, clothes for passing as female, gynecologist appointments, hormone treatments, as well as pepper spray and self defense classes, add up to a pretty penny. I mean the fact that women’s bodies are considered public property. In both fictional media and real life, women must be beautiful before they can be anything else, and we are at fault for not upholding those standards of beauty to an impossibly precise degree.

An oft-cited real world example is the difference between the media receptions of Lance Armstrong losing a testicle to cancer and Angelina Jolie’s mastectomy—while the former was treated as a sad but necessary loss for Armstrong in his struggle with cancer, the latter was met with significant outrage. Didn’t Jolie know she was a sex symbol? By having her breasts removed for the important and personal reason of cancer prevention, didn’t she know that she was selfishly depriving horny guys around the world the ability to jerk off to them?

This entitlement leads men to treat women as sexual objects first and people second, and this mentality is pervasive in our culture, including geek culture.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Steven Moffat, the New Feminist

gif via giphy

Few people inspire more division and frustration in the geek world than Steven Moffat. Showrunner of Doctor Who and co-creator of BBC’s Sherlock, Moffat’s storylines and female characters have attracted plenty of accusations of misogyny. But Moffat refuses to acknowledge any problems with the way he handles his shows. It’s abundantly clear that he believes he’s a feminist… and I think he might be right. Although he probably doesn’t know it, I believe Moffat is a New Feminist. New Feminism is a flavor of feminism popular among many religious conservatives, arising from a supposedly “biblical” view of the sexes.

Sexualized Saturdays: The Doctor and His Many Companions

I think I need to take a break from Doctor Who, at least in terms of article writing. As it stands right now, there is only one thing I have not done yet, and that’s to look which of the Doctor’s companions are in love with him and which aren’t.

The interesting thing about the companions is that they spread along the scope of sexual preference. Yes, most of the Doctor’s main companions are females that usually have deep seated crushes on the Doctor. But that’s not the entire makeup of the alumni.

Are Doctor Who’s Companions Too Sexy?

A few days ago Hypable raised the question, “Is Doctor Who too sexy?” It was in response to The Telegraph‘s piece interviewing Carole Ann Ford (aka Susan, the very first companion) about how working on Doctor Who affected her career. And Hypable isn’t just another site desperate for clicks; this question is a common fan criticism of “New Who,” especially Moffat’s era. Some believe the show’s writing and companions have crossed some sort of risqué line, and it’s damaging the show. So is it?

Doctor Who as a show has a complicated relationship with sex. The show began as a mostly educational children’s TV program, featuring Susan as the granddaughter of “Doctor Who.” Ford reveals that Susan was also originally envisioned to be pretty badass:

“They told me Susan was going to be an Avengers-type girl – with all the kapow of that – plus she would have telepathetic powers. She was going to be able to fly the Tardis as well as her grandfather and have the most extraordinary wardrobe.”

Oh, My Pop Culture Jesus: Holy Mother of God!

The Angels Take Manhattan, Inspire Many Feels

I have many excuses for why this is late. For one thing, I was watching The Avengers and getting smashed on Saturday night. For another thing, I have a lot of feels to parse through. Hit the jump to find out what those feels are.

The Power of Three Gets a Nine Out of Ten

Hit the jump to see what I thought!

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship: Review Time!

What did I think about this week’s Doctor Who? Hit the jump to find out!

Asylum of the Daleks: A Review

I’m putting the jump right here because I don’t want to spoil anything. Beware of many feels behind.