Goodreads feminist reviews - All Hail the Queen (Frozen short story)

Book: All Hail the Queen, by Erica David.

  2/5. Goodreads review also here.

I do really like Frozen and Elsa in general (I'm generally pretty obsessed with Frozen 2 xD), so I dislike rating anything Frozen less than 3 stars, but this one is a solid 2/5 for me. I found the writing to be a bit two-dimensional and bland and well yes, obviously it is a short story aimed at children, same as many other Frozen comics I've read this year, but I do think the characterization could be a bit better anyway. However, that isn't the reason why I gave this a 2. 

 

The main reason is that its treatment of social class and monarchy, a general pet peeve I personally have with Disney in general, is particularly atrocious in this story. I kept mentally ranting at the ebook nearly every single page because my gods, it's terrible.  And the fact that it's a short story aimed at children kinda makes it worse, because well, making something 'easier' for children to read means that the writing style and the storyline are generally more simple to follow, it doesn't mean that they should be learning about backward gender roles (not an issue in this story, Frozen actually was a big improvement in this respect, thankfully), or about romanticized ideas of monarchy and class imbalance (which is a Disney trend). More of this below, because wow did this book deliver on this respect.

Social criticism incoming xD

This review contains spoilers

 

+1 The story has sisterly female bonding going on and Elsa's icy powers appear, two of my fave Frozen things. But that was pretty much it 😕

-1 But even when it comes to Elsa's powers the story showcased them as wrong, in a way! Like, Elsa tries to make the villagers like her (or rather, does her job as queen for a couple of days until she falls ill from the exhaustion :S) by helping them out with her powers (the villagers themselves ask for her powers specifically for various needs), and Anna insists that she's exerting herself too much and that she should offer alternative solutions without using her powers so that the villagers like her for what she really is, not just her powers. But isn't the general idea of Frozen that Elsa learns to accept and love herself as she is, and hopes that Arendelle will do that as well, and a sizeable part of who she is *are* her magical powers, which she has had to repress and hide for so long?? To say that her powers don't define her is almost like the opposite thing, because that's like the main symbolism in the whole Elsa arch :S 🙃.

 

-1 And then there's the social class issue. I'm just gonna list a few examples of how it goes in this story, because wow:

• Elsa and Anna are royals living in a huge castle with servants and minimal obligations, right? Well, Anna spends the whole story being a quite insufferable entitled brat (I generally quite like her in the movies, but wow, I couldn't stand her here 😬). She insists that Elsa works too hard in her role as queen and should take a lot more time off to be with her and go on picnics and adventures and gallivant in the village eating pastries for free. 

I did enjoy the description of the desserts they ate xD Puff pastry with cream, chocolate and fruit? Sign me up xD

 

Elsa wants to be more focused on 'helping' the villagers to come to ask her for help in the audience hall (it's rather called 'doing your job', but hey, royals need to feel good about themselves by saying they're helping the poor peasants out, I guess). But Anna keeps enabling her to 'take more time off' and go off with her on picnics, visits to local bakeries, and so on, because they need to bond and stuff and she works too much (yay for female bonding, but how entitled and irresponsible can you be lol). At the end, Anna decides on the following timetable, and I kid you not, this is it: Elsa does her job as queen (aka listens to the needs of the locals, aparently that's mostly it here) for 3 days a week, and the rest of them they have 24/7 free time to do all the fun things in Anna's bucket list. Um 😐🤪.

 

•  Anna spends the whole story insisting on the idea that Elsa is exhausted for minimally doing her job as Queen for a couple of days, right, so she needs a lot of breaks from you know, her glorified royal job (why do we have royals again? I question this notion everyday). So, she says, 'she has given the villagers the day off' *so that the Queen can rest* 😨. Oooh, the benevolent princess has given the villagers the day off in spite of them not being able to do that because they have to work daily for a freaking living, be they shop owners, merchants, ice gatherers, sewists or what have you! 😑

And do you know what Elsa replies to this? Literally that 'The villagers don't need a day off' 🙃 (but, Anna, says, Elsa totally does because she worked herself to exhaution for two days while helping them out in the audience hall with her powers!). I was just facepalming so hard at that moment. The royals who live in a castle with servants and nice clothes and food they don't have to sweat for are saying the villagers who work daily for a living don't need a day off, but they sure do!! Do Arendelle's working classes even have days off, then?? Seriously, WTF. Am I the only one who thinks children shouldn't think these concepts are OK??

 

•  There's also this emphasis on the fact that the villagers keep queuing up in the audience hall to ask Elsa to use her powers to help them with various things, and they frame this, I kid you not, as if the villagers are exhausting Elsa by asking her favour after favour all day, but she doesn't want to say no because she doesn't want to let them down. So it's almost like the Queen is doing them 'favours' and being super benevolent by wanting to 'help them out' (it's her job!) while the villagers are being too 'greedy' and 'taking advantage of her' because she has magical powers....I don't know, the setting was really, really cringy for me, the fact that these villages don't only not need a day off, apparently, but they're also exerting their Queen with their uncontrolled wishes to help them have working plumbing systems, iceboxes and efficient transportation. How greedy the working classes are! (but not the royals living in actual castles 🧐).

And I mean, it seems to me that Disney often seems to have this conception with monarchy where their role as "benevolent providers of the people" is focal, be the story set in the Middle Ages or the 1830s (a conception that seems a bit obsolete to me in the 1830s - I mean, there's little mention of a Council of State, a Privy Council or a Cabinet in Frozen, right? I mean, there must be one, and if I remember correctly, Cabinet members or similar do appear in some comics when it comes to treaties, delegations, visits of state and such. But Elsa in her throne working as Queen by 'granting favours' or 'looking after her people' in this way kinda reminds me more of feudalism (which isn't all that great, but theoretically) or 'ring giving' thanes of Anglosaxon society, more than anything else :S xD Granted that I'm not a monarchy expert either xD). So, with this conception in mind, wouldn't it be, like, Elsa's 'job' to also help organize and/or provide all that, and not just benevolent favours you do a couple of days and that's it? (in exchange for, you know, your whole life in a luxurious castle with super nice clothes, good food and riches). And why are the villagers suddenly queuing in their dozens to ask for all that two days in a row when the Queen should be working on that kind of stuff more or less routinely as part of her freaking "job"?? 🤔

Like, I get it that Elsa doesn't have a calling for ruling and queendom and tries hard to make people accept her and her powers and so on and forth and the whole thing is just not for her (she's still privileged af because of her social class status and position, tho), but this sends a whole different message. And Anna's supposed to be way more into caring about the ruling parts and the village, so much more that she ends up being the queen in Frozen 2, but that most certainly doesn't show here at all either. 

• The story does mention that Elsa has been working on some plans for a more functional plumbing system and she offers that as an alternative solution to her magic near the end of the story (yeah, that theme that using her magic is not as good or something). Which involves she, the Queen, in her dress, and Anna, the princess (also in her royal clothes, I guess), actually working elbow deep in setting it up 🤣. What? Like, yes, we have magic in this universe, so why am I talking about things being realistic xD, but talk about realistic. This is extra cringy because it's one of the classic Disney moves glorifying just how good royals and rich people are, willing to dirt their hands and clothes *one day* (mind you) so that the whole village cheers for them and all the things they do for them (it's.their.freaking."job" and it comes with a hugely unfair class imbalance all the same!). And so the royals work hard one day, and gain the everlasting adoration of their subjects and all is well, and we continue to romanticize the redundant institution that is monarchy and the social class imbalances. In stories for children of the 21st Century 😕. 

Olaf and Elsa's powers are more realistic than this scenario, tbh

An accurate depiction of my reaction

• But this is not all. I'm not letting this go (lol 🤣) just yet. Because a major storyline of this book is Anna taking Elsa on fun outings, like I said, and these involve the whole team (Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff also appears) literally messing everything up for the hard working locals. And of course, because they're the royals, the locals laugh it off, and actually thank them in adoration when they "help them" out of messes *they themselves created in the first place* by butting into working people's businesses!! This was so frustrating to read 😑.

Let's play at being working people for a day!

 

Like, they get pastries for free in a bakery (because the royals get everything for free, of course, paired with special treatment in everything, salutations and adoration). And then they dabble in trying out what it is to be a baker (for a day, mind you) and Anna - who's just too obnoxious in this story, complete with loud belchs wtf 😣 - freaking destroys the whole kitchen. But the baker, although rightfully angry, has to laugh it off because it's Anna, the princess, and she's so charming and good with people no one can stay mad at her anyway! 🙃

 

Still thinking you shouldn't teach children that this is OK

 

This trend continues a lot. Elsa accidentally makes a fisherman drop all his fish on the ground, and then the fisherman has to literally thank her for helping him to pick them up instead of her being angry at him for being in her way (wtf 🤨). They also make a huge mess at the ice gatherers' and go on a lot of stupid shenanigans trying to 'help them out' (maybe don't interfere in the first place with people who are working for a living) until Elsa realizes she can easily do so with her powers. Cue all the cheers and adoration from the ice gatherers, and Elsa the day afterwards still feeling the high of having 'helped' them save the day's work, conveniently forgetting that she and her friends were the initial reason why they nearly lost a day's work. And so on and forth. Also, isn't Kristoff supposed to be a professional ice gatherer? Because he sure seemed pretty inept at it in this story :S xD Like, they favoured *Olaf* trying to lift heavy ice blocks (and obviously failing) as a first option over Kristoff or Elsa doing it! 🤦‍♀️ Where are everyone's brain cells?  

 

The story does specify that there are women working as ice-gatherers and fisherwomen and so on, so I guess there's that another one for the (kinda scarce :S) pros list.

• And finally, there's this scene when Anna is having a picnic with several female friends, who are middle class (daughters of merchants, fisherpeople, farmers, etc), and said friends are commenting on how Anna lives on a big palace with servants and probably doesn't even have to make her bed ever (I mean, true), and how that's amazing (it's 100% correct to call out class imbalances, but can we also stop glorifying monarchy and high aristocracy as the ultimate goals thanks). And Anna retorts with something along the lines of 'Living in a castle is not so different as living in a farm, I guess. It's not the house that counts, it's the people that live in it' 🙄🙃 (aka 'Oh no, I don't have it better than you'). Also, she says, their servants 'help us take care of the castle, but we still have big responsibilities'. Sure thing, Anna, sure thing, keep on not being aware of your privilege. Sigh.

 

And in this scene it is interesting to note that Anna totally sidesteps and derails the comments of her middle-class friends on how she lives in a castle and has servants with the classical Disney theme of 'It's not the actual house that matters, or my social standing, it's the people who love me and my family that make the castle a home, so *we are equal after all*'. To which her friends readily reply that yes, they wouldn't envision their boats, farms and middle-class homes without their families either. That's all very well (apart from the fact that we're now in the let's glorify the family unit area now as well, another classic Disney staple xD), but this way Anna has successfully navigated the conversation and surfaced victorious without having to address her class privilege at all, with the result that the story makes it seem like this way they're all equal because they all value their families and 'a home is just a home when your family is in it', so it doesn't matter if huge class and wealth imbalances exist as well. 

 

So yeah, I began reading this series as a way to catch up on my Goodreads yearly books with some short, light, simple reads (lol), but yeah, this wasn't a lot of fun. I'm really hoping the rest of short Frozen stories are not like this, tbh, although quite a lot of the comics did veer in this direction :S

Feminist ramblings - Doctor Who and rape culture

Since May 2021, the Doctor Who community has been increasingly vocal about the issues of rape culture, harassment and sexism in the DW sets, the series, and the fandom community. This happened following the news that Noel Clarke, who played Mickey Smith on Doctor Who, abused and harassed multiple women (20 initially spoke out, and quite a few more followed) in various workplace settings, including the Doctor Who set back in 2005. The, I repeat, multiple testimonies of all these women show a wide range of sexist, abusive and predatory behaviour spanning years and including not only various workplaces, but also convention floors. Clarke has until now denied all allegations - As many men accused of harassment and abuse often do, shielded by systemic patriarchy and double standards.

Clarke's multiple cases of sexist workplace harassment were also the cause that allowed the DW community to discuss John Barrowman's (who played omnisexual Time Agent Jack Harkness in the series) own set of inappropiate workplace behaviour (which included continuous flashing on set). This has been know for years now, contrary to Clarke's harassment, but, at least to my knowledge, the fandom community had not really discussed the Barrowman issue till now to the extent I do believe it deserves to be talked about. Barrowman, however, also continues to justify and minimize his behaviour to this day, calling it 'harmless pranks' intended 'in good humour' (???), in spite of more than one set member claiming they felt uncomfortable about the whole situation, and the fact that it is literally completely unprofessional to behave in such a way in the workplace, period. Frankly, I don't care if he didn't intend to be super predatory about it, as it turns out that flashing your junk out and putting it on an actress' shoulder can very much qualify as sexual harassment, and is not just quirky jokester behaviour material.

This last month I've been on Instagram and Twitter (1 and 2) writing a couple of storytimes and threads on these topics, following not only the discussion on Clarke, Barrowman and other predatory DW cast, but also the discovery of several rapists and abusers within the Whovian cosplay community, such as @/redheadedchinny and @/timelordbrett.   I decided to post these threads on here as well, post-format, as rape culture and harassment are topics that have been very relevant to me for years, and many people can often disregard problematic issues when they're presented and normalized as part of their favourite fandoms. So here goes.

PART 1: Clarke, Barrowman and the problem of rape culture and workplace harassment

In this society full of rape culture and sexism, and particularly so in the film and TV industry where toxic workplaces aren't a thing of the past, unfortunately, it's not a rare occurrence to learn about yet another man accused of abuse, harassment and/or assault against women. By more than 20 women in the case of Noel Clarke, no less 😣. It might not take me by surprise, but it's still mentally taxing, especially as a woman, to see so many men abusing women and to see it so normalized it literally takes years and lots of bravery from the survivors to speak out.

And it's even more taxing when a part of the Doctor Who fandom is of course responding with the typical justifications of 'innocent until proven guilty', 'these women are lying' and 'all women definitely lied, but one (1) man saying it's all false is telling the truth, because rape culture rules'. Let's stop that shit already. This is Me Too all over again, and this trend will never stop unless abusers are made accountable for what they are often given free rein to do with no consequences. Fortunately, another part of the fandom was very critical of the behaviour of both Clarke and Barrowman, and they have also been made a bit more accountable by the BBC and other film industries (losing jobs, Bafta awards and/or their participation in ongoing projects).

It's also so important to speak up about this and normalize the fact that it is NOT OK to be sexist assholes to women. That it's not OK that workplaces are still sexist af and unsafe for women. That it's not OK to prioritize an abuser's feelings and 'what about his career' and 'that was in his past' vs what he actually did or is still doing to women. Because so many people, and especially the people in charge, keep accepting their excuses and their word over the testimony of multiple women, and don't demand the accountability they should. And if accountability and consequences and actual rules against sexism and harassment and abuse were more normalized, this would happen less. This also applies to the cosplayer abusers that have been unveiled lately in the DW community.

So even though it's been a rough time reading about multiple men in the DW cast and cosplay community being abusers and creeps and inappropriate and sexist, it's also positive that these issues are being talked about. And I applaud all the women who are speaking up about it most of all 👏👏👏👏 Women are so often silenced for fear of not being believed and being judged and attacked, which is a totally valid fear because it happens *a lot* :S, and I truly think you're all badasses.

Regarding the fact that these two actors have less than desirable behaviour in real life, personally I've never quite liked the character of Mickey (or Adam, or Captain Jack, to be honest). So fandom-wise it hasn't been as painful for me, as the work of separating character vs actor while consuming the fandoms we love can be difficult and hurtful. But still, it's horrible to see that the Doctor Who 2005 series set was full of so many creeps 😫. We can list Bruno Langley (Adam) and John Barrowman as well as Clarke, which makes me think if Billie Piper was OK and whether Christopher Eccleston was referring at least partly to that when he mentioned the toxic working environment which made him leave :S And if RTD and the rest of the team were aware of it all and let it slide :S

Toxic workplace environments are most certainly still not a thing of the past. Not enough has changed since Roddenberry et al abused their female cast on the set of Star Trek TOS in the 60s :/ Which is why we need to speak of this way more often, and stop it with the sexist double standards and the normalization of women being regularly harassed and abused in their workplaces. It happen too often, to too many.

I also have never liked Jack Harkness or John Barrowman very much, which was, at least to my perception, often an unpopular opinion in the DW fandom. And both Barrowman's behaviour on set and the way he often portrays Harkness is the main reason why :S Because Barrowman's portrayal of Captain Jack also seems to share traits with his workplace harassment in real life. The incessant unsolicited flirting, inappropriate comments and non-con kisses are not what being a queer character (or a queer celebrity) should be all about. It's just more harassment.

As an LGBT+ queer woman myself, I can appreciate the queer representation Jack brought to the show early on, but his portrayal also brought a problematic way of normalizing what is plain sexual harassment, as well as problematic queer stereotypes, to be honest :S For example, the idea that "bi/pan, gay and queer people in general are super horny and hypersexual all the time and will kiss you without asking while making inappropriate flirty remarks! Progressive! Representation!". Being flirty and/or queer is not the same as being creepy or inappropriate.

Nor does harassment and non-consensual behaviour, or sexism and misogyny, suddenly become cool and legit once the character or the real life person is queer, and I'm tired of seeing it all mixed up in more than one (usually male) queer character and celebrity in the media, tbh. Intersectionality matters. Well-off white gay men like Barrowman, for example, are obviously oppressed in the sexual orientation intersection, but can also be hella privileged when it comes to the gender, race and class intersections, and can most definitely be sexist, racist, classist and/or inappropiate.

I resented for years that Jack's behaviour was seen as cool and adorkable by (to my perception) quite a lot of people in the fandom. It seemed like I kept seeing fans hyped about Jack kissing Graham without consent or drawing fanart of him kissing Thirteen non-con in expectation of the special. The way the character was idolized for those traits as well, it seemed like not loving Jack was a super unpopular opinion hand in hand with not being able to openly criticize Barrowman to the extent that was needed (and this isn't news like it's more with Clarke :S). Like, I shouldn't be pleasantly *surprised* that he ended up, at freaking last, treating Thirteen and Yaz with respect at the special, and that he ditched the inappropriate innuendo for the most part. That is the bare minimum. I shouldn't give anyone a medal for that.

 

We deserve better queer rep than a non-con kiss between a queer man and a straight man, tbh :S

 

 

 

We need better queer role models, characters and celebrities both, and we need to hold people accountable for their harassment no matter any other intersections. And we most definitely need to hold MEN accountable for their actions regarding rape culture and harassment.

And I'm not saying you have to hate the characters now! Maybe you still like Mickey Smith and/or Jack Harkness for the positive traits and representation that they also bring to the world of Doctor Who, and that's OK as well. I'm saying that we should also be critical of the questionable traits of both the actors and characters, and talk about how the actors' irl behaviour normalizes sexual harassment and rape culture, especially against women, and how they've been getting away with it for years.

Because they apparently think they still can get away with it, with Clarke denying all allegations (the nerve, ugh) and Barrowman quite literally thanking his fans in a recent video for defending him and supporting his inappropiate workplace behaviour (wtf) 😐.

 

PART 2: How New!Who also normalizes the problem of rape culture among the DW community

In this second part, I'm expanding a bit on the issue of the normalization of rape culture and harassment in the DW community, focusing on the way the series itself can actually promotes rape culture in its depiction of non-con scenes as either comedic, romantic, empowering, or queer representation.

General disclaimer that of course the DW community is also a wonderful place to be, that there are many wonderful DW cast and set members, and that the DW series and fandom is also full of amazing ethics and messages, and steadily more and more diversity and representation 😊✨🌈 But it's also important to be critical of the more problematic issues within the series and the community. And the issue of how rape culture is sometimes normalized in the series, and how a faction of the fandom reacts to this topic, is one of them. 

 

TW: Non-con kiss gifs and pics below

Why are some Whovians prone to excusing and justifying sexual harassment, and violence against women especifically? Maybe because the show itself - and Rassilon knows I adore Doctor Who - is also culpable of normalizing and legitimizing harassment and rape culture as legit more than once 😬

Apart from the inappropiate and creepy behaviour of some members of the cast in this case, I just wish that the series (and the media in general) would also stop the trend that a non-con kiss (I'm focusing mainly on kiss scenes here, seeing as DW is PG-13) is either funny, romantic, celebratory, or queer representation😐. It's none of these things! It's normalizing what is basically harassment and assault as completely fine. No matter who’s doing the kissing, we’ve got variety in New!Who, and it’s not just Jack Harkness. I’ve always been so frustrated at seeing these moments hyped by the fandom, to be honest, like I mentioned above as well 😬 .

The thing is, men kissing women non-con isn’t romantic, women kissing Tennant or any other incarnation non-con isn’t what agency and girl power should look like, and queer characters kissing others non-con as their MO is not good enough LGBT+ representation. It's just not.

And in the series, just the reaction of the characters to pretty much all instances of non-con kisses and sexual harassment as something used for either romance, female empowerment, comedic purposes, or queer rep helps a lot to normalize this behaviour just plain acceptable and normal. Some examples of this:

1) When Jack Harkness flirts at complete strangers as a hello, most of them are scripted as reacting favourably ("I don't mind!") or being so dumbfounded they don't say anything. He never gets admonished for his actions, the most he gets is the Doctor jokingly exclaiming 'Don't start!' - Which is more in the line of 'boys will be boys' than anything else. His penchant to sexualize anything that moves and make unsolicited advances is generally seen as a 'fun' and 'adorable' character trait, as well as the way legit queer representation works (not really tho). 

 

2) Scenes abound when the Doctor kisses or is kissed non-con, brushed as either romantic moments, grl power or comedy, with hardly any negative reactions going on either. Some examples:

 

Ten started his (shitty) dynamic with Martha by doing exactly this, and Martha reacts by having a crush on him for the entire series 3. She deserves so much better than this.

 

Rassilon also knows I adore the Eighth Doctor (go listen to Big Finish you fools xD) and actually rather like his dynamic with Grace Holloway, but a low of his TV tenure is having him kissing Grace as a celebratory thing, which also gets another favourable response instantly. I mean, it could be somewhat understandable, at least from a fanfic point of view, that you would be attracted to the concept of an attractive Time Lord in full Byronian aesthetic kissing you, albeit hopefully in a more consensual setting, but maybe let's not normalize the false idea that every woman is thrilled at the "romantic" prospect of being kissed out of the blue by what is technically a random stranger.

 

Plot armour also means that when Nine kisses Rose, she's in Bad Wolf mode and in no state to consent, and actually never even remembers the kiss. Not the best Doctor/Rosse setting for a romantic kiss. Whovians can like Doctor/Rose however much they like (I have dabbled in it myself), but this point still stands 😬

3) Violence against women is still the major societal problem, but it's also troubling how the media thinks it's subversive and empowering to have female characters with agency show that by kissing people without consent, too. The Doctor, mostly. Which he tends to receive either positively or with a 'comically' dumbfounded look, too. Women like Amy, Clara and Missy (even with villains in queer-coded dynamics it isn't a funny trope), written that way by men who don't understand either feminism or consent. At least during those scenes. 

 

Honestly I'm so tired of seeing the non-con kiss move as a grrrrl power trope :S

Hell, people seem to love the 'Doctor gets kissed' trope so much even Donna Noble, the ultimate best pal who doesn't want anything romantic going on, ends up kissing Ten in this way for comedic effects. After all, the best antidote for cyanide is an abrupt snog, am I right?

4) Then we have Matt Smith's 11th Doctor, who regrettably spends S7 not only being creepy af with Clara, but also kissing his male companion and his lesbian friend for laughs (some of these kisses were also unscripted 😬). What made you into such a creep all of a sudden, Eleven 😐?

 

 

It doesn't matter that Rory makes a disgusted face or that Jenny Flint rightfully slaps him. It's supposed to be funny! Rory is part of a (kinda 'no homo' homophobic) joke about the Doctor's quirks (with another straight character being abruptly kissed for laughs by the always-oh-so-predatory queers - which does check out for Barrowman tho :S 😐). And not only doesn't Eleven ever apologize to Jenny for his creepiness, but the next scene gets her blatantly sexualized by the camera in the following fight, including disturbing screwdriver innuendo courtesy of Eleven (just, wtf). About your lesbian friend. Again. So yeah, joy 😑 

 

 

There's also the fact that it really looks like there are more instances of rape culture and sexual harassment being normalized and played for laughs in New!Who than in more than one era of Classic Who, contemporary in the 1960s of the infamous sexism - both on and offscreen - of Star Trek's TOS o_O

Classic!Who has its share of sexism as well, tho  (we could go on about this whole topic too), including themes of sexual harassment and sexualization. Female cast members were sexualized and probably also harassed on set. And more than one actor was/is dodgy too in these respects, including but not limited to: Patrick Troughton (as much as I love the Second Doctor) and his double lives; Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) and his cheating and casual pervy comments on female cast members; Richard Franklin (Mike Yates), another rapist and abuser; or Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor) and his pretty blatant sexism when he talks about women in his  interviews. But the thing also is, at least to the point I'm in, the mid-Fourth Doctor era, I've also seen much fewer onscreen instances of rape culture with the First-Fourth Doctor eras than in the freaking whole of New!Who. Which is also kinda troubling.

Fortunately, the series has gotten way better in this respect especially since S9, but we still have moments, like the Jack and Graham kiss from S12, that follow this problematic pattern of making light of sexual assault and harassment. And my perception is that these instances, even if rarer, are still being too celebrated by a part of the community as something harmless, and as legit representation or empowerment :S We deserve female and queer representation, but also need to not normalize rape culture as well.

This is not to say that Doctor Who is as of today unwatchable, not at all. I adore Doctor Who at the same time that I'm also critical of it when it needs to be. And there's definitely also good representation in this respect - Positive female and queer characters, and consensual kisses. Some examples of the latter are Bill Potts and Heather, the second fully consensual takes of Twelve and Missy and Eight and Grace, and the gay couple from S12's 'Praxeus':

 

 

In conclusion, in my opinion it's about being critical of the fandoms we consume as well as enjoying them, especially when there's a problematic trend like this one that can pervade real life in the fandom :S It's important to talk about this too, while also enjoying all the good parts, of course 😀 !